90sAllDecade wrote:I'll start off with arguments you haven't refuted and still stand.
1. Hakeem is a better athlete than Duncan
2. Better individual playoff performer
3. Played tougher competition in his peak
4. Had less team support throughout his career
5. Duncan had a GOAT level coach over Hakeem
6. Duncan was a worse scorer in both the RS and PO
7. Duncan has a lower peak
8. Duncan is worse defensively as an individual (steals, blocks and defensive assignments)
I'm troubled you don't think these points were addressed in the Duncan v Hakeem mega thread, because they all were.
1. It is irrelevant if Hakeem is a better athlete, we only care who was a more impactful player
2. I have no idea what you are basing your claim that Hakeem was a better playoff performer on. I've directed you multiple times to the table which shows Duncan and Hakeem's stats side by side with pace and minute adjustment, and Hakeem's advantage vanishes... and that's regular season,
Duncans stats go up in the playoffs... consistently, not just cherry picking a 4 game series where Hakeem put up big stats. Of course, in his 93-95 prime Hakeem's playoff impact (and all around impact) is Duncan like, but that's 3 years.
I saw a lot of this sort of "big stat" argument made in the Stockton thread, where his supporters would say "yeh, he lost to this bad team, but he put up good individual stats". If peak Lebron put up great individual stats but lost to a 39 win team in the playoffs I don't think his critics would just give him a pass. What really matters is how your stats translate into impact, into wins. This is devastating for Hakeem, because he consistently had good team mates in his post Sampson pre-93 years (87-92) and the team was not good. I posted on this extensively several posts above this one. Hakeem is 100% accountable for that. We don't rank players by volume stats. Even in 93, when Hakeem finally put it together, he was unable to overcome the Sonics "illegal" defense, which owned him time and again in the regular season and playoffs, an illegal defense that it was totally legal for teams to employ against Duncan.
3. Yup, the Xavier McDaniel Sonics, the Blackman Mavs, the Payton/Kemp Sonics, were clearly superior competition. How could Hakeem compete with these giants of NBA lore? Here are some of the teams who won more games than Hakeem's team did in 1990 (that year he had another all-star big on his team, Sleepy Floyd and a number of good to solid role players); the Fat Lever Nuggets, the Alvin Robertson-Jay Humphries Bucks, the Mark Price Cavs (crushed by injuries), the Reggie Miller Pacers, and they were tied with the D.Ellis/X-Man Sonics and the Hawks. In 1992 when you missed the playoffs the Clippers made it.
The Clippers, who were in the middle of a 26 year run with only 1 season above 500. (and your win% with Hakeem healthy is
still less than the Clippers won this year). Sure, Hakeem lost to the odd good team in the playoffs during this period, but if he'd won more games in the regular season like Duncan's crappy Spurs teams from 01-03 then he wouldn't be playing the Showtime Lakers in round 1.
4. I agree, he generally did have less support (though not by nearly as much as you make it out to be). However he also turned in far worse results than Duncan too, so it's not like we're comparing like for like here. What we can look at then is
when both guys had bad teams, how did they do? Duncan had no problems from 01-03. Hakeem had huge issues from 87-92 (and even issues in 93, 96, etc, being totally unable to counter the Sonics
now legal zone D)
5. a) Coaching can be overestimated in some ways, a good coach knows how to get out of the players way, but he doesn't make the team. Talent makes the team. b) Pop grew in the role. His offensive systems in the early Duncan days were extremely primitive, they just threw the balls into Duncan and waited for him to make something happen. c) Hakeem had 2 HoF coaches, Fitch and Rudy, and that does not seem to have been the difference. They tailed off before Fitch left, and they didn't get immediately better under Rudy either. Hakeem got better as a player. Even if you were to blame coaching for underutilizing Hakeem,
it is irrelevant, because we are judging the careers they actually had, not the one they might have had if things had played out differently.
6. See the table on page 1 and point 2. This is actually not even true, especially in the playoffs.
7. Hakeem might have peaked higher, it's certainly a debate you could win, but that was for 2-3 years, and then the rest of his career doesn't stand up to Duncan's prime at all. Nor does he have Duncan's longevity.
8. I'll take Duncan as a better man defender, though Hakeem was better on help D.
Doesn't make him any less of an elite defensive player though?
, but I seriously doubt I can be convinced to put Magic this high)
