RealGM 50 Highest Peaks Project Thread

colts18 · Post #81 » by **colts18** » Sat Aug 18, 2012 7:43 am

ElGee wrote:A few things looking forward because the pace will pick back up once the Sacred Peak guys go...

-I'm leaning toward David Robinson 14th. That may surprise people, but he's a monster defensively and I think his offense looks better in a secondary role (which is a good thing here). The other guy I can see really arguing over Robinson right now is Wade, and I think his peak may be...2011!? West, Oscar and Barkley would be the other contenders there.

-I have a group of 11 guys after the Sacreds before I hit Dirk.

-I have Scottie Pipen in that group of 12 guys. This might seem bizarre, but I've gone over it again and again, and Pippen's an ultra-portable player with big-man like impact on D and great facilitation/secondary presence on offense. Again, this is a good thing, making him sort of a David Robinson Lite...I'm not opposed to him being at the back of this pack, but right now I don't see it.

-Current guys in the group: Paul, Howard and Nash .

Am I reading that correctly with you having at least 25 guys ahead of Dirk? I can't see an argument for Robinson over Dirk considering Dirk's offense is very portable and his postseason performance is that much better.

bastillon · Post #82 » by **bastillon** » Sat Aug 18, 2012 11:44 am

Dirk is right there with Sacreds IMO.

Revv · Post #83 » by **Revv** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 2:04 am

how are guys like west/oscar/wade/dirk getting so much talk but not kobe when his peak was at least as good if not better. lmao @ the bias in this place.

ElGee · Post #84 » by **ElGee** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:01 am

I don't think Dirk was the best player in the NBA in 2011 or the second best, and I'm not sure he was the 3rd best..so how could he be right there with the Sacreds based off that year???? Really, no player has instantly had more done to his reputation than Dirk because of (a) Winning Bias and (b) The All-Starless Boost that people are obsessed with.

Dirk wasn't very different in 2009 and 2010 as a player, and he could barely get votes in the RPOY project. I don't think 2011 was his peak. Now you want to say because he had ~two good offensive series (his Finals wasn't great) that he's one of the best peak players in NBA history??

What's the case? It's not that I don't see an argument for having him near the top of the next group, I just don't see a very plausible one. As of now (and the last year), I have NO internal conflict about Dirk and the guys ahead of him, except for Pippen as I've mentioned. And there's no need to act incredulous at the number of guys ahead of Dirk -- if 23 of those players didn't play, I'd consider him the GOAT peak. They did play, and that's how many guys were better (Kobe, Wade, Nash, Malone, Paul, Howard, maybe Pippen)

colts18 · Post #85 » by **colts18** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:11 am

But what about Nash vs. Dirk? Don't you think its a little odd that Nash goes from 2nd banana in Dallas to all-time great offenses when the offenses are built around him? Dirk proved his offensive portability from 01-12 doing it different casts of characters. Nash was much worse impact wise in Dallas then all of a sudden was the greatest offensive player in history when the team is built around him and his style.

therealbig3 · Post #86 » by **therealbig3** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 4:47 am

ElGee, did you forget T-Mac, or do you really not see him on that level? Personally, I'd take his peak over Wade's and Kobe's. He did everything they did, except more efficiently (better shooting, less TOs). Better passer than either imo too.

ElGee · Post #87 » by **ElGee** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:20 am

Yes, I have McGrady, Dirk and Moses right there together. I do not find your stance to be unreasonable on Mac, so let me be clear -- there is some fluidity in these areas. Hashing them out helps me be a little clearer in some circumstances, but I think the most value here is in the "tiers" if you will, because some of these guys are so close together it's really hard to say who is better. I'm clear on 95% of players what tier they are in, so most of the discussion is about nitty-gritty that might help with some clarity in some cases. Really, this is why this is a brutally challenging project, and IMO the reason why unlike other projects the peanut gallery is basically silent (especially after all the moaning and groaning about "realgm" opinions these past few months :lol:

)

Colts, I've levied that point about Nash AND Magic. I think we know why Dallas didn't solely play through Nash -- it's understandable and not an indictment of him since he was an all-nba player there. The ORDER of things needs to be kept in perspective at all times. If Wade-LeBron started together, then went to different teams, the one who was in the shadow would suddenly look great and people would be asking the same question. I mean really, what are you asking -- is it odd that two great offensive players, when playing together, formed all-time level offenses statistically? Of course not. (Then, on top of it, Nash got better with his training AND they changed the rules to open up the perimeter...)

Remember, value is not goodness. Nash is a quarterback. So is Magic. They DO the need the keys to the car to have their big impact, but giving it to them should be seen as a difficult or unreasonable strategy choice.

Dirk is a spacer. A stretch 4. A mid-post iso player (who is not a great passer). He's a smart screen setter and positioner. This fits well into many offenses but I don't think you'll see nearly the impact you see in the Dallas system that is almost dependent on him. And then of course, you introduce the problem of a defensive cap when he's in your lineup, which in a nutshell is why he's way off the Sacreds to me.

PS Can you, bastillon, or anyone really make the case that he's better on offense than Barkley? What about better than Kobe?

colts18 · Post #88 » by **colts18** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:52 am

ElGee wrote:Yes, I have McGrady, Dirk and Moses right there together. I do not find your stance to be unreasonable on Mac, so let me be clear -- there is some fluidity in these areas. Hashing them out helps me be a little clearer in some circumstances, but I think the most value here is in the "tiers" if you will, because some of these guys are so close together it's really hard to say who is better. I'm clear on 95% of players what tier they are in, so most of the discussion is about nitty-gritty that might help with some clarity in some cases. Really, this is why this is a brutally challenging project, and IMO the reason why unlike other projects the peanut gallery is basically silent (especially after all the moaning and groaning about "realgm" opinions these past few months )

Colts, I've levied that point about Nash AND Magic. I think we know why Dallas didn't solely play through Nash -- it's understandable and not an indictment of him since he was an all-nba player there. The ORDER of things needs to be kept in perspective at all times. If Wade-LeBron started together, then went to different teams, the one who was in the shadow would suddenly look great and people would be asking the same question. I mean really, what are you asking -- is it odd that two great offensive players, when playing together, formed all-time level offenses statistically? Of course not. (Then, on top of it, Nash got better with his training AND they changed the rules to open up the perimeter...)

Remember, value is not goodness. Nash is a quarterback. So is Magic. They DO the need the keys to the car to have their big impact, but giving it to them should be seen as a difficult or unreasonable strategy choice.

Dirk is a spacer. A stretch 4. A mid-post iso player (who is not a great passer). He's a smart screen setter and positioner. This fits well into many offenses but I don't think you'll see nearly the impact you see in the Dallas system that is almost dependent on him. And then of course, you introduce the problem of a defensive cap when he's in your lineup, which in a nutshell is why he's way off the Sacreds to me.

PS Can you, bastillon, or anyone really make the case that he's better on offense than Barkley? What about better than Kobe?

See my last post in the #9 thread.

I'll get into Barkley/Kobe a little later. But from 01-11 the Mavs were the best offensive team in the league. They had a 110.5 (+4.7) O rating (+2.61 SD from the mean). They also had the lowest TOV% in that span, they were 2.54 SD from the mean in that category (Dirk has the 5th lowest TOV% from 01-11 among players with 15000 MP). They were also +1.98 SD from the mean in TS%. Barkley's a good offensive player, but his impact in Philly was not that great. Then he went to a Suns team that was a #1-3 offense the previous 4 years with KJ (arguably better than Barkley on offense)

mysticbb · Post #89 » by **mysticbb** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:20 am

ElGee wrote:Yes, I have McGrady, Dirk and Moses right there together.

:lol:

Neither McGrady nor Moses Malone showed at their peak the impact Nowitzki had in average for the last 12 years.

ElGee wrote:PS Can you, bastillon, or anyone really make the case that he's better on offense than Barkley? What about better than Kobe?

Why does he need to be better on offense? He is clearly a better defender than Barkley, and his overall impact exceeds Barkley's. The same goes for Bryant, even though Bryant's offensive impact seem to be underrated somewhat.

You are still ignoring that in 12 years we have seen a lot of different players being able to perform well with Nowitzki on the court, while not being as strong when Nowitzki was off. Nowitzki skillset and height making it possible to play his teammates more to their respective strength is something really, really valuable in a 5on5 game. Also, in 2009 and 2010 Nowitzki played worse than in 2011, no idea how you can claim otherwise. He didn't play much different, but overall he played worse.

colts18 · Post #90 » by **colts18** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:36 am

mysticbb wrote:
ElGee wrote:Yes, I have McGrady, Dirk and Moses right there together.

Neither McGrady nor Moses Malone showed at their peak the impact Nowitzki had in average for the last 12 years.

ElGee wrote:PS Can you, bastillon, or anyone really make the case that he's better on offense than Barkley? What about better than Kobe?

Why does he need to be better on offense? He is clearly a better defender than Barkley, and his overall impact exceeds Barkley's. The same goes for Bryant, even though Bryant's offensive impact seem to be underrated somewhat.

You are still ignoring that in 12 years we have seen a lot of different players being able to perform well with Nowitzki on the court, while not being as strong when Nowitzki was off. Nowitzki skillset and height making it possible to play his teammates more to their respective strength is something really, really valuable in a 5on5 game. Also, in 2009 and 2010 Nowitzki played worse than in 2011, no idea how you can claim otherwise. He didn't play much different, but overall he played worse.

Mystic, Do you have any kind of numbers on Dirk playing the 5? I would bet that the O rating would be through the roof with Dirk at Center.

mysticbb · Post #91 » by **mysticbb** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:54 am

colts18 wrote:Mystic, Do you have any kind of numbers on Dirk playing the 5? I would bet that the O rating would be through the roof with Dirk at Center.

No, but a quick look over the 82games.com numbers since 2003 suggest that the Mavericks with Nowitzki at C were incredible offensively. That is not so surprising when we look at the offensive abilities of the centers played next to Nowitzki over the years. It will be interesting to see how Kaman/Nowitzki and Brand/Nowitzki are doing next season.

colts18 · Post #92 » by **colts18** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 3:51 pm

mysticbb wrote:
colts18 wrote:Mystic, Do you have any kind of numbers on Dirk playing the 5? I would bet that the O rating would be through the roof with Dirk at Center.

No, but a quick look over the 82games.com numbers since 2003 suggest that the Mavericks with Nowitzki at C were incredible offensively. That is not so surprising when we look at the offensive abilities of the centers played next to Nowitzki over the years. It will be interesting to see how Kaman/Nowitzki and Brand/Nowitzki are doing next season.

I have the Mavs lineup data from 01-04. I deleted out all the players I considered centers to see what Dirk's O rating is without a center.

Without Center: 46.1% of poss, 114.42 O rating, .561 TS%
With Center: 53.9% of poss, 111.46 O rating, .551 TS%
Diff: +2.96 O rating, +1.0 TS%

If you add Raef Lafrentz to the non-centers, the difference would be +3.82 O rating, +1.5 TS%. It amazes me that Dirk had a top offense in 2003 with Griffin and LaFrentz in the starting lineup but also had a top 10 defense with Nash, Finley, and LaFrentz in the starting lineup. Maybe the Mavs win a title in 2003 if Dirk is healthy and and we have a different narrative surrounding Dirk's career.

Post #93 » by **Doctor MJ** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 6:00 am

Okay, so Duncan just got vote in despite LeBron getting more votes. In principle, this is not a problem at all. Here's the question i want to talk about here:

Are people wanting to make switches at the last minute and then simply getting too busy? If this is the case then perhaps this system isn't going to work so well. Let me know your thoughts.

Post #94 » by **Doctor MJ** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 8:30 am

Apparently there's still some confusion here about how deadlines work. I've posted in detail on the #10 thread but, I'll say it here too:

When the deadline is met, votes are tallied. If the vote is a tie based on votes at that moment, then it's up to me to decide how to proceed. (Thus far, I've re-opened voting for an additional day, but I reserve the right to change that in the future. If this concerns you, I can say more.)

Practically speaking, I may not be able to come here right away so I might be coming in and checking edit times. If something comes too late then it doesn't count.

That might seem anal, and frankly I could make a mistake at some point, but y'all have plenty of time to do your votes. If you think you DON'T have enough time to do your votes, then people need to come talk to me about that.

I do want to be clear though, that what happened here is not me being anal. The would be tying vote switch happened not only after the deadline but after I had called a winner and started a new thread. I'm a little bit weirded out that people could think that that particular time machine was an option to be honest.

thebottomline · Post #95 » by **thebottomline** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:37 am

ElGee wrote:-I have Scottie Pipen in that group of 12 guys. This might seem bizarre, but I've gone over it again and again, and Pippen's an ultra-portable player with big-man like impact on D and great facilitation/secondary presence on offense. Again, this is a good thing, making him sort of a David Robinson Lite...I'm not opposed to him being at the back of this pack, but right now I don't see it.

How would you rate Pippen's D on your SRS scale? I noticed you had Shaq at +6 off / +3 def, and Jordan at +7 off, so I just assumed you have Jordan around +2 def since you said you rate their peaks somewhat closely. And I figure Pippen is somewhere in between that and the +4 defensive bigs. What's your take on his defensive impact?

ardee · Post #96 » by **ardee** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:55 am

So the top 9 of the Peaks list has exactly the same players as the top 9 of the Top 100 list. Don't know if that's something I was expecting (since there are a lot of people who love Garnett, Walton and Erving around here..)

ElGee · Post #97 » by **ElGee** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 4:58 pm

@ Ardee -- it's different people voting. And the number of people voting has a huge impact -- I probably would have voted LeBron in the No 8 thread if I had a do-over, and then LeBron would be 8th. Magic then most likely would have gone 9th and we'd be having all-out KG-Duncan war in this current thread (10th)...so people reading this should realize how fragile some of these voting results are, especially the last few threads re: LeBron.

@thebottomline -- I have it as +3, which is exactly what makes Pippen's peak so interesting to me. I want him on SO many teams I would architect -- the idea that he's a so-called second option on offense isn't a bad thing here, it's a GOOD thing. Pippen is basically a PG, and he doesn't need shots, which means he facilitates offense for others. He can score when needed, has a post game, and was second-fiddle on some ridiculous Chicago offenses.

And let's keep something in perspective: he finished 3rd in MVP voting (38.6% share) behind peak Hakeem and peak Robinson despite missing 10 games. (94 Bulls were +4.3 SRS w Pippen and Grant, +3.7 SRS before MJ in 95 w/out Grant... ~ 52-win teams)

bastillon · Post #98 » by **bastillon** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:16 pm

(94 Bulls were +4.3 SRS w Pippen and Grant, +3.7 SRS before MJ in 95 w/out Grant... ~ 52-win teams)

iirc 4.5 SRS if you include the PS.

Dr Positivity · Post #99 » by **Dr Positivity** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 1:07 am

Is it just me, or is there an air of heated-ness and come at me bro to the way people are responding to arguments/voting results they don't like in this project. I don't know, maybe I can be included in that attack-heavy group (such in as perhaps, attacking the In/Out method above), but these threads feel a lot closer to an MMA octagon than the Cheers bar lately. Just MO, it seems like some people are happy enough with the way the project is going so I guess I shouldn't step on that if it's not what I typically dig in either tone or ratio of statistical content, but anyways

therealbig3 · Post #100 » by **therealbig3** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 5:52 am

Dr Positivity wrote:Is it just me, or is there an air of heated-ness and come at me bro to the way people are responding to arguments/voting results they don't like in this project. I don't know, maybe I can be included in that attack-heavy group (such in as perhaps, attacking the In/Out method above), but these threads feel a lot closer to an MMA octagon than the Cheers bar lately. Just MO, it seems like some people are happy enough with the way the project is going so I guess I shouldn't step on that if it's not what I typically dig in either tone or ratio of statistical content, but anyways

I don't see a big difference between this and the top 100 project, to be honest (which is a good thing, because I enjoyed the top 100). I think people respect the hell out of certain players, while others may not respect those players quite as much (but just as passionately). So you might get some heated debate. But all in all, it's makes for some pretty fun conversation, and everyone stands to learn from it.

I know I've learned a ton about Bird and KG and Duncan and Hakeem and LeBron, even though I may have strongly disagreed with some aspect of their games at some point along the line.