RealGM Top 100 List #34

[therealbig3]

My count:

Vote:

Gilmore-5 (penbeast0, mysticbb, Doctor MJ, lukekarts, drza)

Gervin-3 (ElGee, DavidStern, RoyceDa59)

Pierce-3 (therealbig3, Fencer reregistered, Dr Mufasa)

Wilkins-1 (JordansBulls)



Nominate:

Paul-3 (ElGee, therealbig3, Doctor MJ)

Cowens-2 (JordansBulls, Dr Mufasa)

Moncrief-1 (penbeast0)

Miller-1 (mysticbb)

Cousy-1 (Fencer reregistered)

Iverson-1 (DavidStern)

Walton-1 (RoyceDa59)

Mourning-1 (drza)

[Laimbeer]

Gervin is the most deserving of that lot. I prefer Cousy, but Cowens is the one with a chance against Chris Paul(!) for Gawd's sake.

Vote: Gervin
Nominate: Cowens

[ElGee]

No one has still addressed my issues with early RAPM. Ridge regression is a squeezing technique -- it will lump the population closer together. The math being used in the early single-year RAPM, ignoring that the one-year sample size is always an issue, seems to be squeezing the whole league into a tight pocket.

Am I to believe that in the middle of the decade, individual impact suddenly became much better according to Englemann? The 2002 leader was Shaq at +3.4 (peak Shaq, fwiw), Doug Christie (3.2, eek) and peak Duncan (3.0). In 2006, they would be ~ the 35th best players in the league. No one finds a problem with this??

Finally, I've always said this about the +/- family of stats, but how good the team is needs to be accounted for as well. I've written about it in detail, and I just don't see any way around the fact that both empirically and logically it's easier to improve a bad team by a bunch than a good team by the same amount. As far as I can tell, no APM/RAPM number adjusts for that, so when you see Tim Duncan and Elton Brand have the same number, but one makes his team +10 and the other +3, I don't see those as equatable values.

I've mentioned it before, but I don't think your oft-repeated bolded stance is true. I think you are somewhat talking about a "diminishing returns" effect, but that you're applying it incorrectly. The diminishing returns aren't so much a factor of "the team is as good as it can be so can't be improved more" as much as it is a factor of "this player is contributing something to the pot that none of his other teammates can". Which isn't the same thing.

For example, the 2011 Heat were not optimized to the greatest extent possible based upon the talent upon the team. Logically, the Wade/Bosh-led cast was better (with LeBron removed) than any of the Cavs casts without Bron. Yet, the Heat actually won fewer games than the last couple of LeBron-led Cavs, and LeBron's APM was lower. For the diminishing returns concept to be based purely on how good your team is, this couldn't be unless LeBron suddenly just got a lot worse. But when you look at it through the lens of redundancy, we see how the ways that LeBron could be maximized overlapped in large part with the way that Wade (and to a lesser extent Bosh) needed to be maximized. As such, LeBron's value wasn't purely additive because he was bringing things to the table that others already did.

On the flip side, Nash joined a Suns team in '05 with a lot of talent on it led by Stoudemire, Marion and Johnson and shot the team up a bunch of notches because his skill set WASN'T replicated by his talented teammates. When you put his skillset together with theirs, it was a strongly additive effect, more so than what we saw with LeBron this year.

A player's ability to be strongly additive regardless of the team situation is definitely a plus for that player, but it isn't easily quantified by the data we have now. Likewise, it is fair to talk about that as a potential weakness in APM to the extent that with players on strong teams with redundant talent it may be difficult in the short term to separate that player from his teammates. But this just reduces to the "colinearity" issue with APM studies that is a well-vetted issue that is best addressed by looking at multiple years at a time.

In the specific case of Kidd, as I've pointed out several times, we don't HAVE a multi-year APM study that covers his peak without also covering his decline. Thus, the best that we have to look at are multiple single-season studies taken during his peak with the best single-season APM studies that we have access to. But the fact that Kidd consistently measures out among the better in the league (and better than Pierce by a solid margin) for four consecutive years before he obviously started on an age/injury downside in his mid-30s, to me, is very convincing. I look at that, and see no way that a multi-year 2003 - 2007 APM study wouldn't conclude that Kidd had a clearly higher value than Pierce over that period.

I'll let someone else tackle the issue of Englemann's compressed years...when it was brought up before, someone (probably Mysticbb) explained that the year-to-year compression was due to him choosing different lamdas for different seasons and that the take-home was to analyze differences within-seasons more-so than trying to compare across seasons. If that's not enough to satisfy you on that front, I'll have to leave it to Mystic (or someone) to address that for you.

But as for the improving from bad to average being harder than from average to great, despite how many times you've repeated it I still see nothing to support your stance. At least not nearly to the disqualifying degree that you've been attempting to use it. And I'm really not sure about the Duncan/Brand example you gave, as my quick perusal had Duncan comfortably ahead of Brand in each individual year between 2003 and 2011 in RAPM as well as in both the Ilardi 03 - 09 and the Englemann "10 year APM" studies...so as far as I can tell, the RAPM studies we've been heavily discussing agree with you.

Yeah, and you didn't address it before when I explained it in detail and provided an example (and there are countless examples). Many players can move a team from 0.95 to 1.10. Basically no one has ever moved a team from 1.10 to 1.25 (pts/pos). That would have to be one heck of a coincidence

Call it diminishing returns, but it's more than that because it doesn't take much to get an offense respectably over a point per possession in the NBA. You have to have a total paucity of offensive talent and a non-offensive coach basically to lurk in that putrid territory. And I've explained why -- one ball, 5 players, and rules totally catered to the offense.

But as easy, in one sense, as it is to put pieces in place to make teams respectable on offense, it becomes equally challenging to get them elite because, well, there's 5 players and one ball. You have to add the right parts, as you point to, and those parts have to interact properly. That's hard...unless you have offensive geniuses like Magic Johnson and Steve Nash.

Funny you mention the Heat first, since they had a 112.7 ORtg w/James on the court. Let's not act like that's bad -- we were just hoping with the volume of superstars they would hit 115+. Hasn't happened yet. Your description of roles/additiveness is spot on, and that's the crux of the issue with getting 99% of NBA teams from say, 113 ORtg to 120 ORtg. A 106 team would love a shooter to space the floor, and as such see efficiency steadily improve (eg Ray Allen). Adding a shooter, probably redundantly, to a team already scoring 113 points won't just push them to 120! We literally have almost no evidence of this and just a boatload of evidence confirming the former.

Nash is who he is because you can put so many different combinations of foursomes together with him and he makes the offense so good (by making shots for these players so easy). In 2006, Phoenix was 106.4 ORtg without Nash and 114.8 with him. A 115 ORtg with those parts is pretty staggering, especially when you say "let's give him a mediocre spot-up 2-guard, a slasher/defensive 3, a PnR offensive star at the 4 and a lumbering center who can make an open 15-footer...and the ORtg of that team (including bench permutations) with Nash will hit 119!

Take Dirk, the great flavor of the year with his sexy spacing and whatnot. In 2004, he was +6.2 (115.6 on). McGrady, in Orlando was +8.1 (107.2). Do you think what McGrady did was 31% better?

Duncan and Brand were made-up numbers. Didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I've been looking at 82games on/off data for years now and don't see where you're coming from. Quick, name someone who lifted a sub-100 offense by 10 points. Now name someone that lifted a 110+ offense by 10 points.

(Vlad Rad in 08 comes close...I can't think of another.)

[ElGee]

Well I still just can't get behind the 1-2 year superprimes in Walton, Tmac, Paul and the argument that you have a better chance of winning a title with 1 or 2 years as a top 3 player than 10 years as a top 10 one.

I think it's very important to have at least like... 5 years. To win a title you need a lot to go right... you need teammates to fit, chemistry to fit, luck in the playoffs, health, to be able to avoid an unbeatable competitor (great example: longevity allowed Olajuwon to have bad luck by facing a GOAT team in the 86 Finals and having his teammate's career collapse - but then have luck to get a Jordan retirement in 94 and 95), you need a team who can win without taking lumps and experience hits in the playoffs first (I would say the 08 Hornets and 09 Cavs are GREAT examples of this), etc.

Yes, Walton was able to beat the odds. He also wouldn't have done it without landing Maurice Lucas on his team from the start, or a relatively weak competition in 77, or the Sixers kind of self combusting.

I think there's a lot of proof in the pudding that disproves the Walton theory. You've got Paul and Tmac themselves, peaking at best in the league level and not even getting within a stone's throw of a title team. Bernard King had a crazy year and didn't come close. You've got Lebron having a first 8 years as good as anyone's in the regular season and going titleless. KG repeated the same in Minnesota. You've got Jordan playing 6 magnificent years and not winning on. Kareem went from 72 to 79 as by far the best player in the league and didn't get one. Wilt, Oscar, West lost a lot.

Likewise, you CAN win a title or make the finals with Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Alonzo Mourning, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, Pau Gasol, Jason Kidd. Because all of them either have a title or have been closer than Tmac and Paul. They were all closer than freaking 87 and 88 Jordan or 2009 and 2010 Lebron, much superior players.

I think if you take Tmac or Paul over contemporaries, you're putting a ton into the hands of LUCK. That everything will come together just for that year or two and not the ones where they aren't there. Yeah it's hard to get a player who's best on a title team caliber like those guys were, but it's also hard to get a supporting cast good enough for them, too. Just mentioning Paul first, I don't think he's proven that with merely good players he can win a title. The 08 and 09 teams were pretty solid by my standards. As good as 77 Walton's? Not that far off. Tmac had his 05 and 07 good teams... it wasn't his superprime, but how much worse was he that it'd make the difference between Round 1 knockout and title caliber with that team? Even the GOATs can't pull a 77 Walton or 94 Olajuwon or 11 Dirk on a dime. Not even Walton or Olajuwon or Dirk most of the time

There are very few shortcuts in the league IMO. The majority of title winners and Finals teams had best players in the 2nd half of their careers, who'd already seen close to it all in the playoffs. Even the teams that won with under 25 stars like Wade, Duncan, Magic, Kareem, Russell had someone else on the team that'd been through it: Shaq, Robinson, Kareem, Oscar, Cousy on those teams. I think most of the time if you take the Tmac and Paul route of a young star beginning his career with a franchise and having that early peak only, you're going to lose. IMO. Virtually the only exception is Walton, who won right before the widely accepted weakest title teams (Seattle, Washington) in the druggy, ABA transition, parity league, against a chemistry nightmare team, where they fell down 0-2 in the Finals and just had everything go right from that point on and had help from the GOAT basketball Finals crowd. I just don't think you can dependably ape the 77 Blazers.

I don't understand why you're thinking about it this way. It sounds like a different form of the Rings argument. It's the Hypothetical Rings argument!

Players can only increase the chances a team wins a title. The more random team a player can push closer to a crown, the better. It's probabilistic, not dichotomous. There are also plenty of examples of new teams coming together and winning early (57 Celtics, 71 Bucks, 80 Lakers, 99 Spurs, just off the top of my head). Obviously, Paul, Walton and King would be better options than almost everyone else if they too were put on one of the best teams in the league...

[penbeast0]

I'm a bit iffy on that last idea. Walton could fit into almost any team, Paul not quite so much, Bernard King would not work well on a lot of good teams, especially those built on chemistry and defense . . . for that matter, Gervin, much as I loved him when he played and great as his impact was when the team was built around his skill set. He isn't a guy that you can just plug into the 2 guard spot on a team like this year's champion Dallas although that was probably their biggest hole. The impact might very well hurt Dallas rather than helping it (though having a PG like Kidd might make it work -- you couldn't add Gervin to Miami add that successfully either to use the other finalist).

[ElGee]

I'm a bit iffy on that last idea. Walton could fit into almost any team, Paul not quite so much, Bernard King would not work well on a lot of good teams, especially those built on chemistry and defense . . . for that matter, Gervin, much as I loved him when he played and great as his impact was when the team was built around his skill set. He isn't a guy that you can just plug into the 2 guard spot on a team like this year's champion Dallas although that was probably their biggest hole. The impact might very well hurt Dallas rather than helping it (though having a PG like Kidd might make it work -- you couldn't add Gervin to Miami add that successfully either to use the other finalist).

Wasn't trying to equate their level of play. I was saying that be it Walton, Paul or King, that they are so much better than almost everyone else (largely increasing the chance to win a title) is what matters.

I have no idea why you don't think Bernard King in 1984 wouldn't work well on a lot of teams. Same with Gervin...?? Simply because you can come up with radical examples doesn't change their average value to random teams.

[Doctor MJ]

At what point does this stop being a coincidence and start indicating that Kidd was really having a huge individual impact?

You're overestimating the size of the trend and ignoring a glaring counterpoint.

1) Twice Kidd changed teams and we saw clear improvements in his first full season with the new teams.
2) Both times, the key to the improvement was defense.
3) Kidd's primary +/- impact according to stats was offense.
4) In many year league-wide data, we've yet to see any point guard have the kind of defensive impact to justify the improvements we saw with Kidd's 2 team changes.

So all we've got are two general data points supporting the Kidd rainmaker narrative, but the specific data points about Kidd go against that narrative, and the more reliable league-wide data goes against the narrative even more strongly.

By far the most likely scenario is that Kidd got flipped heads on a coin twice, and everyone ate it up because people (myself included) tend to want to believe that a high IQ player who racks up assists has intangible impact well beyond the stats.

But how does that in any way address his high in-season in/out winning percentage and scoring differential impact? That come from 7 different qualifying situations? That measures out as among the best in the last 25 years?

And how does that in any way address him having such high RAPM values in 03, 04, 05 and 06 consecutively?

He didn't just flip heads twice and have to be explained. He flipped heads in every year that we have those stats for, then the "rainmaker" years happened to be the 2 times that the in-team impact could be tested going from one team to another...and in both cases he aced the exam. What do you know, he actually made it rain.

This is a really weird situation, as usually I can at least see where you and ElGee are coming from even if I disagree. Here, I really don't get your logic. It's like you just decided that his accolades must have been undeserved, and we should just ignore that in every way we can measure it he was one of the highest impact players of his generation. I don't get it.

Okay, good stuff to bring up.

First though: I'm with LG about the distinction between offense and defense. It doesn't make any kind of sense to me to credit a player with a team's defensive turnaround because his offensive RAPM looks good. Now I can imagine someone saying "I have much more faith in overall +/- metrics than offense vs defense, and so a turnaround plus strong individual overall +/- to me adds up", but the deal breaker to me is that we know again and again that point guards just don't have massive defensive +/- impact. To have Kidd's offense/defense split to come down exactly where we'd expect it to given his position, and to have that be inexplicably incorrect is just too much for me. That's simply getting into hand waving that might as well wave away +/- stats altogether.

But then you say "Okay, so it's just a total coincidence that Kidd puts up huge overall RAPM every year of his time in Jersey where he had a reputation as a rainmaker?" and you've got an excellent monkey wrench.

I won't claim to have everything worked out, but a key thing is that I just don't have that much confidence in Engelmann's one year numbers as true snapshots of what a player did in a given year.

Go and look at the Top 5's for each of his year. They are incredibly consistent. Typically of the 5 top guys one year, 4 will be in the top 5 the next year. That's crazy. You don't see that kind of consistency in box score stats, and let alone in the vanilla APM stats.

What he's doing is using data from outside of the year in question to help come up with a rating for the player for the year in question that has as little noise as possible. It's understandable why he does what does, but I think it's a mistake to look at each year's numbers as independent experiments.

What's also interesting to note is that we have Ilardi's 6 year APM numbers from '03-04 to '08-09, and now Engelmann's 1 year RAPM numbers for each of those years. How do they compare?

By Ilardi, Kidd ranks 29th.
By Engelmann, Kidd ranks 5, 4, 9, 26, 25, 14.

Literally, every year of the study, Engelmann has Kidd higher than Ilardi's cume.

Okay, so who do we believe? Well, I don't believe anyone fully, but I give Ilardi's study significantly more weight for a few reasons:

-You can't just add totals from each year and get a cume score. It's always more accurate to put them all in the same data set and compute it together.
-RAPM's advantage over APM only exists in small scale studies. I don't believe a 6-year APM study requires the fluff RAPM puts into to stabilize matters, and Engelmann's RAPM basically agree (though they put it in terms of "In longer term studies, APM comes to more closely resemble RAPM data").
-Engelmann's 6 year study from '05-06 to '10-11 doesn't look terribly different from Ilardi's study.

Last I'll note that by Lewin's 1 year APM numbers from '04-05, Pierce actually finished 1st. I don't use that to say "See, Pierce was better.", but just to show that there is data clouding the issue on both sides.

[Fencer reregistered]

I'd be interested in a recap of how Kidd's apparent impact on defense could be a misreading of what was actually offensive prowess.

The main mechanism I can think of for that is that you hurt your defense less with an offensive make than a miss, and with a miss than a TO. But I'm not clear on how that would map to Kidd's situation in such a numerically remarkable way.

I don't remember the exacts of my previous post, but the gist was that having Kidd as a point guard changed the way that his teams approached the game and that while the net gain was a positive in the overall team product, it may be difficult to decide whether the improvement was more on offense or defense.

The example I used was the way that those early 00s Nets played, and how that might differ with a Nash type PG. Those Nets played an aggressive, attacking style on offense/defense that was made possible primarily because of Kidd's strengths and also played to the strengths of the personnel. The games were a track-meet, and stylistically probably closer to the old-school 60s style of low-efficiency get-out-and-run-and-stop-your-man-more-than-he-stops-you than we've seen in recent years. Martin and Jefferson, at that stage of their careers, were hyper-athletic finishers offensively that also played get-in-your face defense. They were able to play that style, in large part, because they had a system and point guard that ended an abnormally high number of defensive possessions with the ball. Between his guard-leading rebounding and his near league-leading steals, Kidd was making the defense/offense shift very quickly throughout games. As such, the Nets naturally became more of a fast-breaking team on offense. Because Kidd was able to gather those rebounds, Martin and Jefferson were free to consistently spend more time and energy on their man without worrying about crashing the defensive boards. And the offense that the Nets did generate was strongly dependent upon Kidd, whether it was in initiating the breaks or even in creating whatever shots they did get on offense. But on the whole, it would certainly appear that the Nets were putting more focus and energy into their defense than their offense, and that a significant portion of their offense was coming from the break.

Now, were Nash the point guard instead of Kidd, I would expect that the team O-Rtg probably goes up. Very likely the Nets bigs have better rebounding numbers. They still could be a fast-breaking team, but it would be more of a traditional big-man-outlet-pass style, And in the half-court, Martin and Jefferson likely shoot the best percentages of their career at their best volume, with a much larger offensive bent to their games. And by the same token, Martin and Jefferson are likely spending less energy and focus on defense because they are concentrating more on their offensive responsibilities. Instead of pressing up into their man and just boxing out on defense, they now have to leave their assignments more often to crash the boards. And the Nets defense is no longer the top in the league.

Now in these two scenarios, the team O-RTG and D-RTG numbers would suggest that Nash is an offensive wizard while Kidd isn't, and that Kidd just lucked into being on such strong defensive teams. But, at least according to the offensive RAPM numbers from 03 - 06, the individual offensive RAPMs for Kidd and Nash look similar. And their overall team results look similar as well with comparable levels of supporting talent. To me the logical inference is that, as I alluded to above, the way that Kidd played allowed the Nets (and before that the Suns) to run a system that was more defensive in tenure but that still relied upon Kidd's offensive and defensive abilities and overall had a similar OVERALL rating/impact to what a team would have with Nash in his place...but that when trying to break down that impact into offense-vs-defense team ratings the difference is going to show up in the defense. But when taken from team level to individual level, as the +/- stats are designed to do, we can see that Kidd's impact is clearly there and large, on a similar order to Nash's.

Thank you.

It sounds as if you're suggesting that Kidd taking the rebounds let everybody else play better DEFENSE. I'm not totally sure how that works. I absolutely agree that the rebounding scheme involved the bigs blocking out while Kidd actually got the ball, but I'm not sure how that turns them into better DEFENDERS until such time as the ball goes up.

It also sounds as if you're suggesting the games turned into a track meet, with everybody getting tired and being sloppy on offense accordingly, and Kidds' opponents suffering even worse than his teammates. If that's what you mean, do possession counts or something back it up? Those aren't totally dispositive; the idea of an old-style running offense is to sprint down, hope you get a good shot, and set up in the halfcourt if you don't. Still, that would be the obvious place to look for evidence.

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah, and you didn't address it before when I explained it in detail and provided an example (and there are countless examples). Many players can move a team from 0.95 to 1.10. Basically no one has ever moved a team from 1.10 to 1.25 (pts/pos). That would have to be one heck of a coincidence

I often marvel at how we can't seem to get past 1.15. Pretty amazing.

Your point about how no +/- stat can truly adjust for the fact that it's easier (typically) to lift a bad team than a good one is correct. I also don't think there's any objective way to make a stat that appropriately adjusts for this.

I do advocate factoring this in when rating the impact +/- indicates a players...but...it's important not to be too carried away. The dominant APM guys are typically on winning teams, and in the most glaring counterexample (Garnett), we didn't see a huge drop off in +/- when he moved over to a winning team.

[penbeast0]

Gervin is the most deserving of that lot. I prefer Cousy, but Cowens is the one with a chance against Chris Paul(!) for Gawd's sake.

Vote: Gervin
Nominate: Cowens

I agree and will change my nomination from Moncrief to Cowens . . . I love Paul but he just hasn't proved enough yet.

[Dr Positivity]

Yes, but the thing is, the longer a team has a player, the less "random" they can make that cast. Time should generally help teams improve their supporting cast around a player, both by accumulating the good players one at a time and holding onto them, and by building chemistry, roles, getting the right coach in place, building assets to make a big trade, etc. That's why almost all title teams win with their star in the 2nd half of their career, or if not, a old former superstar helping guide the way

[ElGee]

@drza - some quick data from 2004 to 2008

I've got a 167 player sample size of rotation players (1000 MP+) improving an offense by at least 6.0 pts/100. Here is the breakdown:

Team's performing at 107 ORtg or better without the player
21 times. The average increase was 7.46 pts/100.

Team's performing at 100-107 ORtg without the player
115 times. The average increase was 8.56 pts/100.

Team's performing at 100-107 ORtg without the player
31 times. The average increase was 10.45 pts/100.

So 21 players had a team with a 107 ORtg or better without them and improved it at least 6 points. Of those 21, the average increase was 7.46. 31 players had a team with a 100 ORtg or less, and of the 31, the average increase was 10.45. The data support the general trend.

Looking at specific players, Bryant has the biggest change over the period (+18.9 in 2006), lifting his team to a 112.6 ORtg. But what happens the next year, when he looks like the same player visually, in the same system, with similar teammates, similar regular and advanced stats, and so on...? He still lifts his team to a comparable 111 ORtg, it's just not +18.9 points, it's only about 6. If there were something inherently important about the raw increase itself, we should have expected the 2007 Lakers to have an ORtg around 122 with Kobe in the game. Obviously, that's not how it works. (OR, your way, you'd have to somehow suggest Kobe was ~12 points worse in 2007. Godspeed with that task.)

Nash reaches the greatest heights in 2005, lifting Pho to 121.7. (!) In 2007, which is IMO Nash's best season, he "only" lifts Phoenix 12.5 points. Again, a big difference in the increase number (5.1 pts worse)...but the final ORtg with him QBing is just under 119...fairly close, especially when we consider how rarified the air is at ~1.2 pts/pos.

Again, the actual level the team is performing at matters. In general, it's harder to lift good teams more than weaker teams because of the distribution of skill sets and available strategies with 1 ball in basketball.

[Fencer reregistered]

...
As for Gervin being a more explosive scorer than Pierce -- were defenses stacked to stop him the way they were in Pierce's iso prime?

Oh hell yeah. He had one year I particularly remember where his front line was George Johnson, Mark Iavaroni, and Reggie Johnson . . . basically three bangers with no shot. He and James Silas were the whole offense; when Silas was hurt, usually Larry Kenon was the second banana and neither was as big a gunner as Antoine Walker. Defenses were keyed on Ice every game.

But what did it mean to key on a wing player in those days, before modern switches and zones?

That said, I'm inclined to buy your view, and further to say that if a guy releases running mid-range shots -- finger roll!!! -- rather than going all the way to the rim, he's avoiding defenders who stand in his way.

[Fencer reregistered]

Gervin is the most deserving of that lot. I prefer Cousy, but Cowens is the one with a chance against Chris Paul(!) for Gawd's sake.

Vote: Gervin
Nominate: Cowens

OK. I'll change my nomination from Cousy to Cowens as well.

[ElGee]

^^^ I'd say check out the effect Allen, Miller, etc. have over the years, and consider that Gervin is a lot like Durant. Look at his team's offenses. Really, he has great value on that end as they ran a lot through or off him (even off ball) and he was a total high-efficiency scoring machine. Nothing to suggest Ice wasn't an excellent offensive wing IMO...

[Fencer reregistered]

But how does that in any way address his high in-season in/out winning percentage and scoring differential impact? That come from 7 different qualifying situations? That measures out as among the best in the last 25 years?

Best among all players, or best among ones who are injured frequently enough to qualify?

[Fencer reregistered]

I'm a bit iffy on that last idea. Walton could fit into almost any team, Paul not quite so much, Bernard King would not work well on a lot of good teams, especially those built on chemistry and defense . . . for that matter, Gervin, much as I loved him when he played and great as his impact was when the team was built around his skill set. He isn't a guy that you can just plug into the 2 guard spot on a team like this year's champion Dallas although that was probably their biggest hole. The impact might very well hurt Dallas rather than helping it (though having a PG like Kidd might make it work -- you couldn't add Gervin to Miami add that successfully either to use the other finalist).

Wasn't trying to equate their level of play. I was saying that be it Walton, Paul or King, that they are so much better than almost everyone else (largely increasing the chance to win a title) is what matters.

I have no idea why you don't think Bernard King in 1984 wouldn't work well on a lot of teams. Same with Gervin...?? Simply because you can come up with radical examples doesn't change their average value to random teams.

To me, the crux of the argument is that longevity matters more than short peak, because with longevity:

* There's a chance to assemble the RIGHT cast around a guy, and have the team grow familiar with each other.
* The guy picks up savvy, postseason-specific intangibles to go with the rest of his merits.

Makes sense to me. If you generally need a few tries before you're seasoned enough to win it all, then it's best that you be consistently good enough to actually get those tries.

Bird, Magic, and Russell were able to take their teams to the championship level almost instantly, but:

* They were Bird, Magic, and Russell.
* They were each coming into a weak league.

[Dr Positivity]

I'm a bit iffy on that last idea. Walton could fit into almost any team, Paul not quite so much, Bernard King would not work well on a lot of good teams, especially those built on chemistry and defense . . . for that matter, Gervin, much as I loved him when he played and great as his impact was when the team was built around his skill set. He isn't a guy that you can just plug into the 2 guard spot on a team like this year's champion Dallas although that was probably their biggest hole. The impact might very well hurt Dallas rather than helping it (though having a PG like Kidd might make it work -- you couldn't add Gervin to Miami add that successfully either to use the other finalist).

Wasn't trying to equate their level of play. I was saying that be it Walton, Paul or King, that they are so much better than almost everyone else (largely increasing the chance to win a title) is what matters.

I have no idea why you don't think Bernard King in 1984 wouldn't work well on a lot of teams. Same with Gervin...?? Simply because you can come up with radical examples doesn't change their average value to random teams.

To me, the crux of the argument is that longevity matters more than short peak, because with longevity:

* There's a chance to assemble the RIGHT cast around a guy, and have the team grow familiar with each other.
* The guy picks up savvy, postseason-specific intangibles to go with the rest of his merits.

Makes sense to me. If you generally need a few tries before you're seasoned enough to win it all, then it's best that you be consistently good enough to actually get those tries.

Bird, Magic, and Russell were able to take their teams to the championship level almost instantly, but:

* They were Bird, Magic, and Russell.
* They were each coming into a weak league.

That seems vaguely important

[Dr Positivity]

The real question naturally isn't whether a 1 or 2 year superprime can be more valuable than someone peaking from 5 to 12 years, since theoretically you could have a 1-2 year stretch that valuable, as you could have the 5 to 12 one being more valuable. We know 1 year of Walton is more valuable than 12 years of Horry. The real argument is where the line gets drawn

As always I'm fine with the opinions that Paul's advantage in prime over guys like Cowens, Reed, Miller, KJ, Hill, Iverson, Cousy etc. is great enough to make that gap. I don't think it is. Paul is the better player but if he's even 10-15% more valuable, it's not enough. Paul isn't enough to take randoms to titles that those guys can only bring to playoff knockouts. Both Paul and that group and everyone else needs GOOD players around them, at least one other all-star most likely, shooters and rebounders, the right coaching, the right chemistry, the right competition. If that's the case for all these guys, I'd rather take the slightly less player in return for time, quite possibly the most valuable asset a team can have

Also in the case of Paul, I think I must be slightly less high on his prime than most. I have him as the 4th most valuable player in 08 and 5th most in 09, behind Lebron, Kobe, Garnett in 08 and Lebron, Kobe, Howard, Wade in 09. Now those are two insanely tough top 5 years. But still. Calling him the 5th best player in 2 years takes some of the shine off

[penbeast0]

Here is how it looks to me using therealbig3's earlier post as a doublecheck:

VOTE

(5)Artis Gilmore – penbeast0, mysticbb, Doctor MJ, lukekarts, drza

Dominique Wilkins – JordansBulls

(4)George Gervin – ElGee, DavidStern, RoyceDa59, Laimbeer

(3)Paul Pierce – therealbig3, Fencer, Dr Mufasa

NOMINATE

Reggie Miller – mysticbb

(5)Dave Cowens – JordansBulls, Dr Mufasa, Laimbeer, penbeast0, Fencer

(3)Chris Paul – ElGee, therealbig3, Doctor MJ

Allen Iverson -- DavidStern

Bill Walton – RoyceDa59

Alonzo Mourning -- drza