RealGM Top 100 #49

[penbeast0]

Criteria: Take into account both peak and career play, era dominance, impact on the game of basketball, and how well their style of play and skills would transcend onto different eras. To be more exact, how great they were at playing the game of basketball.

Voting Will End In 2 Days -- Please vote and nominate

Newest addition:

Grant Hill
[img]http://gcobb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/GrantHill2.jpg
[/img]
1x 1st Team All-NBA
3x 2nd Team All-NBA
7x All-Star
Rookie of the Year


Wes Unseld

Hall of Fame 1988
MVP 1969
All-NBA 1st 1969
NBA Champion 1978
Finals MVP 1978
5x All-Star


Bob Lanier

HOF 1992
8x All-Star

Ray Allen

1x All-NBA 2nd
1x All-NBA 3rd
NBA Champion 200
10x NBA All-Star


Alex English

Hall of Fame 1997
3x All-NBA 2nd Team
8x All-STar

Bob McAdoo

Hall of Fame 2000
MVP (1975)
1x All-NBA 1st Team
1x All-NBA 2nd Team
2x NBA Champion (LAL)
5x All-Star
Rookie of the Year (1973)


Kevin Johnson

4x2nd Team All-NBA
1x3rd Team All-NBA
NBA Most Improved Player 1989
3xAll-Star

Sidney Moncrief

1x All-NBA 1st Team
4x All-NBA 2nd Team
2x Defensive Player of the Year
4x All-Defense 1st Team
1x All-Defense 2nd TEam
5x All-Star


Chris Paul

1x1st Team All-NBA
1x2nd Team All-NBA
1x3rd Team All-NBA
1x1st Team All-Defense
2x2nd Team All-Defense
Rookie of the Year 2006
5xAll-Star


Elvin Hayes

Hall of Fame (1990)
NBA Champion (1978)
3× All-NBA First Team Selection
3× All-NBA Second Team Selection
2x All-Defense Second Team Selections
12× All-Star

[penbeast0]

Voting Candidates
We have two PGs on the board. Chris Paul has only played 5 years in the NBA and only 2 really peak years but those two were as impressive as any small guard who has ever played in the NBA. Kevin Johnson had great numbers and played on some very good Phoenix teams although he never won a title but he has less accolades than Paul. Paul has better peak numbers than KJ but when you look at how elite the teams are, KJ's Phoenix teams were far more likely to be elite, even before Barkley joined them so I lean to KJ over Paul.

Moncrief has the peak advantage with equal offense and all-time GOAT man defense among the wings; but for only 5 seasons. Still, his 5 seasons were more dominant than Chris Paul's both on an individual and a team level. English and Allen give you a long consistent run on the wing with good efficiency and team values; Grant Hill played at the same peak level as English or Allen (less efficient scorer, more of a do everything guy) but injuries cut him down to a role player after his short peak as they did Moncrief (only Hill has lasted longer as a role player).

Then you have the bigs. Elvin Hayes has huge raw stats (inflated by big minutes) and a championship although known as a whiner more than a leader; his teammate Wes Unseld is the opposite, not great stats but does all the things tht didn't show up in the stats (outlet passing, GOAT picks, leadership). Bob Lanier was the Amare Stoudamire of his era, good offense, weak defense, but without the accolades (never made a single All-NBA team). Bob McAdoo had the best numbers of the bunch (peak numbers anyway) but gives you little defense, didn't win as a star, and had major substance abuse and coachability issues.

Vote: So, short peak, it's Moncrief over McAdoo; KJ had slightly longer but less dominant peak; long careers at a high level would indicate Hayes or English. Moncrief's team was good offensively (2 top 6 years in his 5 year prime) and elite defensively (4 times out of 5 in top 2 defensively) despite rotating big men so I will vote for Sidney Moncrief, he was just that terrific for his short 5 year stretch.

[Dr Positivity]

Vote Kevin Johnson

Already expressed my thoughts on KJ a lot

Nominate Pau Gasol

Between him and Parish for me. Could be persuaded towards Parish and his magnificent longevity but I think Pau is a better player for enough of a time period

[penbeast0]

Point Guards -- Chauncey Billups was suprisingly efficient and solid on both ends of the court once he got established in Detroit. Nate Archibald was the most dominant PG left for 4 years, but was neither terribly efficient nor played any defense. Penny was similarly flashy in his short peak but without Tiny's superior playmaking and less dominant overall.

Wings -- On the wings, there are still great scorers left . . . the more spectacular but less consistent Bernard King, Mark Aquirre, or David Thompson, or the statistically most efficient Adrian Dantley or the early NBA stars like Paul Arizin, Sam Jones, and Hal Greer -- I lean to Sam Jones. James Worthy got some mention too but like Cedric Maxwell (though for much longer), he basically was a third option who fattened off being a single covered postup player with a Finals MVP. Very good player, not great on the level of some of the previously mentioned stars -- I think Bobby Jones is a clearly superior player.

Big Men -- At PF, Bobby Jones and Dennis Rodman may be the greatest pair of defensive forwards but Jones, while extremely efficient, didn't score or rebound that much while Rodman had no offense and for 1/2 his career, left his man at times to pad his rebounding stats at the team's expense. On the offensive end, Amare Stoudamire and Chris Webber just have too many issues to rank above Jones or Rodman. Pau Gasol may be the best alternative to Bobby Jones -- championships do matter and both are more great second bananas than primary stars though both were the best player on their teams early in their careers (Bobby Jones's 75 Denver team had the best record in either league with him as top star).

The centers left all have some issue with their games. Neil Johnston and Mel Daniels played against inferior competition during their primes and were more limited besides. Dikembe Mutombo wasn't a scorer but brings great shotblocking. Dikembe Mutombo

Playoffs between these. Billups had the big playoff run and earned the nickname Mr. Big Shot, Sam Jones was the lead scorer on a lot of those Celtics champions, Dennis Rodman has 5 rings despite several meltdowns, Mutombo helped get Allen Iverson to a title game.

Tentatively Dennis Rodman with strong case for Sam Jones as well.

[penbeast0]

David Stern from a list supports:

Bob Lanier

Nominates:

Dennis Rodman

[drza]

I'm seriously considering Paul here. My other main candidate is Hayes.

I think Paul and Johnson are similar style players, but that Paul is better. He hasn't done it nearly as long, but long enough that I'm confident that it's not a fluke, which makes him the player that I'd rather have between the two.

Paul vs Hayes is about as hard to compare as it is, as there's almost no common ground. Big vs little, 35 years apart, entirely different game styles and environments. I know about Hayes' inefficiency or whatever, but so far no one has taken a crack at taking down Laimbeer's post which suggests that whenever he changed teams his new team saw a big effect. It was very general, and if someone dug into it I could see places for rebuttal. But in the absence of that, this rudimentary evidence in conjunction with the accolades and the seeming consensus that it was Hayes and not Unseld that keyed those Bullets teams, could be the basis for a reasonable argument that Hayes had a big impact that would trump efficiency to me.

Still thinking on that one.

As to the nominee, I'm still going to go with Rodman. Would very easily go Ginobili here as well, if he had the momentum.

Nominate: Dennis Rodman

[Snakebites]

I've voted for Kevin Johnson 3 times in a row now, but at this point I'm also interested in hearing arguments in favor of Elvin Hayes and Sidney Moncrief.

For that reason, I will wait on my vote for the time being.

Also looking at a number of nomination options.

[JordansBulls]

Vote: Kevin Johnson
Nominate: Penny Hardaway (Was the best player on the 1996 Magic team and led them to 60 wins and finished 3rd in MVP voting)

[Laimbeer]

Vote: Elvin Hayes
Nominate: Dolph Schayes

[ThaRegul8r]

The centers left all have some issue with their games. Neil Johnston and Mel Daniels played against inferior competition during their primes and were more limited besides. Dikembe Mutombo wasn't a scorer but brings great shotblocking. Dikembe Mutombo

Hmm. I wonder if I should talk about Mutombo just because I know no one else will.

[Doctor MJ]

Two very different posts from last thread I wanted to carry over and address in one general post here.

Lol....

Crazy how hard it is for some to accept that not everyone shares their view on his career up to this point.

Its not that people are just fighting him getting there specifically. Its that we really do believe those players should be placed ahead of him.

I know it's debateable whether we should do this, change our votes and nominations according to the count at the end - But I figure our voting is so spread out that it's encouragable to do some instant run off voting and get closer to a consensus

Let me state up front, that I have zero problem with people changing their votes to affect who wins. It's not only allowed in the rules, but as beast said when he allowed them, it's generally not clear it's a bad thing.

That said, the changing and/or late-voting to support someone who has emerged as a "finalist" I think pretty clearly has reached the point that I think it's destructive with Paul. It's complicated, but I'll try to explain:

It's well and good to in a particular thread change your vote to the one of the finalists you prefer. However, in doing so you are essentially picking a lesser of two evils, and thus are taking support away from the actual "right" choice. And if you keep doing this thread after thread to side against one player you think is very overrated, then you've essentially ceded your impact on all the players in question except that one player you're pushing down.

Now, if both finalists are essentially immovable, then you haven't lost anything. However, it's important to consider that the order of are inductions during this time haven't at all matched their nomination order:

Inducted: Reed, Cousy, Cowens, Iverson, Walton, Zo
Nominated: Cowens, Iverson, Reed, Cousy, Zo, Walton

Then factor in that there are players nominated all through that time not included.

There's just ample reason to think that the player who emerges as the top contender in a given thread simply has a lot to do with who get so a couple quick votes and then becomes the guy to pick if you simply really disagree with the philosophy of others on another player who you know will get votes.

And of course that's Paul, who has now finished 2nd in the induction voting 5 times, typically losing to someone who wasn't even really a major part of the discussion in the previous thread.

btw, while there is a reason this is happening with Paul (current player, short longevity), it could easily happen with other players. I think had Cousy emerged as a finalist against anyone but Paul, we would have seen this happen to him for a while too.

So, people can keep championing the anybody-but-Paul candidate, but I feel like what just tends to happen is a kind of random list. I tend to do the whole tiebreaking thing only every once in a while, and I do this more than anything else not out of integrity but because by picking my battles I feel I maximize my impact overall, with part of that being my ability to actually champion a player which I value more than being able to push a guy down.

[Doctor MJ]

@ Dr MJ

Comparing Melo to Amare is interesting because I think Amare is one example of APM underrating a player's impact. It's long held him as a player ranging from mediocore to negative, but the results differ pretty strongly - Both NY and the Phoenix had about a 10 W swing in caliber with Amare changing teams. The fact that both teams had a swing like that all but confirms Amare's value to me

Key question: How exactly is APM underrating Amare? You're free to put more stock in team wins than APM, but I'm wary. We know a ton of things can happen to screw up a team from year to year, but what can cause a player to have constantly mediocre APM year after year?

Let's also be clear: A player with an APM of zero is not contributing zero value to his team. Everyone should understand that while one can use APM as the basis for a value over replacement statistic, it would never make sense to consider their zero points to be the same. The level of a replacement player would be certainly have an APM in the negatives.

So the idea that "Well APM says Amare's having zero impact, and that's not true, so APM just has no credibility" is completely misguided.

Two other things, looking at the RAPM on this http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ranking

- Melo and Amare's offensive numbers are excellent...The problem with Melo's RAPM is his defensive numbers are awful. But when I look at Melo, I see that's he's athletic enough to rotate hard and he's played on lots of respectable defensive teams. I'm concerned about Melo's d, but not that concerned.

I think it's really dangerous to accept APM on one side of the ball but not the other. I'm not aware of any reason to think one side is more reliable than the other, so it would seem you're basically just accepting the stat that meets with your opinion's approval, and rejecting the part that doesn't.

I would also note that it is of course possible to sacrifice one side of the ball for the other to some degree. If a player is truly doing that a significant amount, then counting his APM on the side that matters to the player while discounting the side that he doesn't try on will systematically overrate him.

This might seem odd coming from a Nash supporter, but if Nash regularly had a terrible defensive APM, this would indeed influence my opinion of him.

- There's other rankings near Amare and Melo that I find... questionable. Tyson Chandler is below both even though his value has been apparant every place he's gone and left. Deron isn't higher than them and he's someone who just passes any eye/logic test for a player who should be positive impact. Ben Wallace and Joakim Noah are lower than them, Granger is below them, Luis Scola is barely positive, David West is at 0, Rondo is negative, Wes Matthews is negative, Haslem is very negative. If Melo and Amare were the only rankings that looked far off from my personal perspective (and the fact that they're actually still top 20/30 offensive players by RAPM means they aren't that far off) I'd be more inclined to believe it's right about Melo, but there is a whole swack of rankings that don't pass the logic test for me at all. We KNOW guys like Chandler, Wallace, Noah, Deron, Scola, Haslem, Rondo etc. have value and it's pretty clear to me that RAPM is just dead wrong on them

Well, to me +/- stats are really only valuable when you start seeing outlier results. You see a group of players that players much better or worse together than expected, then you need to a detailed analysis of them. Otherwise, there's no clear action item. And when talking about individuals, I tend to really use them when talking about stars. The noteworthy thing here then is that some stars don't look like stars at all by +/-. Details been C-list players don't really matter to me that much.

Deron Williams is interesting though and makes clear that one shouldn't say "Melo couldn't possibly ever have big +/- numbers". Deron became an official star well before his +/- numbers actually looked solid, whereas draftmate Paul's +/- numbers were strong even before he was a star. I do factor that in among other things when I side with Paul quite clearly over Deron.

Thing is though, when Melo's been in the league 8 years and never had huge numbers in any of those years, to me that says that the most reasonable conclusion is that he's never had huge impact. Maybe on a new team with a new strategy that can change immediately, but Melo's supporters (which I'm not saying you are one of them) never argued "He's just misused in Denver". No, there argument was always "You're blind. He's clearly having huge impact. You're just hating."

[Doctor MJ]

So yeah, planning to stick with my votes:

Vote: Chris Paul

Nominate: Bernard King

Would really appreciate pro/con commentary on King relative to others on the horizon.

[Laimbeer]

I'm seriously considering Paul here. My other main candidate is Hayes.

I think Paul and Johnson are similar style players, but that Paul is better. He hasn't done it nearly as long, but long enough that I'm confident that it's not a fluke, which makes him the player that I'd rather have between the two.

Paul vs Hayes is about as hard to compare as it is, as there's almost no common ground. Big vs little, 35 years apart, entirely different game styles and environments.

Not just directed at you, but the post typifies the lack of regard we're seeing for longevity. You sort of extrapolate Paul against Johnson, then don't even mention it when comparing him to Hayes(!)

Someone suggested elsewhere we do a list of best primes, but I think this list morphed into that at some point. The higher end of the list seemed to consider it, now it's falling by the wayside.

[Laimbeer]

Two very different posts from last thread I wanted to carry over and address in one general post here.

Lol....

Crazy how hard it is for some to accept that not everyone shares their view on his career up to this point.

Its not that people are just fighting him getting there specifically. Its that we really do believe those players should be placed ahead of him.

I know it's debateable whether we should do this, change our votes and nominations according to the count at the end - But I figure our voting is so spread out that it's encouragable to do some instant run off voting and get closer to a consensus

Let me state up front, that I have zero problem with people changing their votes to affect who wins. It's not only allowed in the rules, but as beast said when he allowed them, it's generally not clear it's a bad thing.

That said, the changing and/or late-voting to support someone who has emerged as a "finalist" I think pretty clearly has reached the point that I think it's destructive with Paul. It's complicated, but I'll try to explain:

It's well and good to in a particular thread change your vote to the one of the finalists you prefer. However, in doing so you are essentially picking a lesser of two evils, and thus are taking support away from the actual "right" choice. And if you keep doing this thread after thread to side against one player you think is very overrated, then you've essentially ceded your impact on all the players in question except that one player you're pushing down.

Now, if both finalists are essentially immovable, then you haven't lost anything. However, it's important to consider that the order of are inductions during this time haven't at all matched their nomination order:

Inducted: Reed, Cousy, Cowens, Iverson, Walton, Zo
Nominated: Cowens, Iverson, Reed, Cousy, Zo, Walton

Then factor in that there are players nominated all through that time not included.

There's just ample reason to think that the player who emerges as the top contender in a given thread simply has a lot to do with who get so a couple quick votes and then becomes the guy to pick if you simply really disagree with the philosophy of others on another player who you know will get votes.

And of course that's Paul, who has now finished 2nd in the induction voting 5 times, typically losing to someone who wasn't even really a major part of the discussion in the previous thread.

btw, while there is a reason this is happening with Paul (current player, short longevity), it could easily happen with other players. I think had Cousy emerged as a finalist against anyone but Paul, we would have seen this happen to him for a while too.

So, people can keep championing the anybody-but-Paul candidate, but I feel like what just tends to happen is a kind of random list. I tend to do the whole tiebreaking thing only every once in a while, and I do this more than anything else not out of integrity but because by picking my battles I feel I maximize my impact overall, with part of that being my ability to actually champion a player which I value more than being able to push a guy down.

Short answer, I rate a lot of guys over Paul because of longevity. He just doesn't belong this high. My guess is others feel the same.

[Snakebites]

Thats most definitely how I feel about it (though I have voted for KJ, and not changed my vote at all, the last few rounds).

I just don't see his peak as being so far above the other guys being discussed that forgoing the longevity issue is enough.

The issue here IMO is that he was nominated too early, not that he's being voted in too late.

[Fencer reregistered]

Thats most definitely how I feel about it (though I have voted for KJ, and not changed my vote at all, the last few rounds).

I just don't see his peak as being so far above the other guys being discussed that forgoing the longevity issue is enough.

The issue here IMO is that he was nominated too early, not that he's being voted in too late.

Right.

If Chris Paul regrettably had to retire today, I wouldn't favor him getting into the HOF. Ditto Grant Hill.

Just about everybody else we've nominated has gone or would go into the HOF with my blessing, and the same goes for a number of guys we haven't nominated yet.

[Doctor MJ]

There's broader stuff at work here though guys. If you personally are just picking the guy you think is best of the nominees each time, then of course I'm not referring to you, but plenty of other people are clearly again and again just deciding between the two guys with the most votes. What I want them to realize is the game theory cost to that. While in doing that you improve the power of your vote for that thread, this continued behavior results primarily in adding weight to the early voters over the late voters, and this effective reduction in voter balance (along with the actual decrease in the voting pool) adds noise into the mix.

In short: If you want this project to most reflect your opinion, the strategic long term choice is not to wait until the end choosing the lesser of two evils, but to get out in front posting vehemently and voting early for who you actually believe in.

[Snakebites]

^I don't know, I almost find that preferable to seeing a player with 3 devoted fans get voted in just because there was non unity among the other voters who didn't want to see him in.

Besides, it looked to me like Paul was getting late votes last round too. He just happened not to come out on top.

[ThaRegul8r]

I honestly don't get just voting for one of the candidates with the most votes. If I'm going to vote, I'm going to vote for whomever I believe deserves to be at that slot. I couldn't care less what other people think or how many other people voted the same way I do. I have a brain and am capable of evaluating the facts (and gathering them if I don't have them) and making a decision based on that. Anyone else's votes are irrelevant to me if I've come to a considered decision.