trex_8063 wrote:Generally agree with your comments, with the exception of the bolded one.
We've had some respectful disagreements (one of my favorite features of your posting, btw: you're always courteous and respectful even when disagreeing with people, and basically never make things personal) in the past regarding Chris Webber.
And it suddenly stuck me today, weirdly: I thought I remembered you ranked Elvin Hayes pretty high (which I just double-checked: you had him #31 on your pre-list). What does this have to do with Chris Webber? you might be asking. Well, because when I try to think of a modern-era comparison for Hayes, to some degree it's Webber who comes to mind, and I'll explain......
Your primary criticisms of Webber (iirc) were two-part: 1) poor shot selection and consequent poor scoring efficiency, and 2) lack of effort on defense.
First of all, let me say this - I really appreciate your comment (even And 1'd it), because I often feel like some of my rankings may be a little unfair. I'm always trying my best to be objective, but certainly humans are susceptible to biases and may choose the kind of argumention that supports their preconceived notions. I may be guilty of that with regards to Webber. I really have nothing against the guy (actually seems like a pretty cool, decent dude), and even on the court, he was certainly a unique player...Just not always in a positive way. His finesse game/passing was certainly great, but he just happens to be relatively mediocre (for a star, supposedly a top 5 player at one point, in the early 2000s) in the most important areas for a bigman - efficient scoring, defense, and willingness to attack the basket (his jumper was pretty decent, but not still not good enough to justify that kind of shooting volume from the midrange area), and he couldn't really draw fouls well, either.
To be fair, me being low on Webber may be a result of his unimpressive advanced numbers, and generally poor playoff performances, which makes me think the recognition he got (All-NBA team 5 straight years, three times 2nd, one third and even one first team, as well as pretty high MVP shares) was undeserved, but looking at his RAPM numbers, they're surprisingly good (even defensively, and for example he's similar to Tim Hardaway in the sense that his RAPM looks much better than his boxscore numbers), but even then, the fact that Sacramento didn't decline by any significant margin with him being out for the majority of that season, makes me doubt his impact, just a bit...
trex_8063 wrote:Well, Elvin Hayes would have to sustain the first criticism as well, would he not? Perhaps even to a marginally higher degree than Webber, actually. In that way, he's very similar to Webber, but with less guard skills and significantly lesser passing/play-making. But on a positive flip-side, Hayes was the more capable (or certainly more willing) defender.
Now obv defense is a more important aspect of a big man's game than passing/play-making, so I'll give Hayes a bit of an advantage (as I'm calling it more or less a wash as far as scoring, and they were more or less equals).
And then Hayes probably has a marginal edge in rebounding, and a pretty substantial longevity/durability edge.
So how many places on an ATL is that worth?
Defensively Webber lacked consistent effort, but it's not like he was as lackadaisical as Amar'e Stoudemire (and on the flip-side, Hayes---while good---wasn't like Ben Wallace good). And while play-making isn't as important in a big-man, the gap there (in Webber's favor) is likely even larger. I wouldn't say these things cancel each other out, but I don't think the defense "over-counters" Webber's passing edge by too far. Probably worth a few (maybe even a handful) of places, but not too much more than that, imo.
The rebounding edge is very small, so that's certainly not worth too many places on an ATL.
And then there's the durability/longevity. This is quite obviously the most substantial factor, imo. How many spots is that worth?
If I remember right, you rank Webber in the vicinity of #80 (is that right?). So how then do you justify Hayes as high as #31? It seems that you must be crediting the durability edge alone to be worth ~40 places (which seems like an awful lot).
There seems to be an inconsistency in having ~50 places separating these two individuals, is what I'm saying.
Fair point about Webber/Hayes being similar (poor) in terms of scoring efficiency, but his defense seems to be really underrated. I admit I'm influenced by ElGee here (I remember he once ranked Hayes as a top 15 defensive player of all-time), and I value longevity/durability really highly (I mean the kind of longevity that Hayes had, where a guy is an All-Star caliber player for almost his entire career, like Hayes was basically for 13 or 14 seasons in a row), and as much as Hayes gets criticzed for his playoff struggles (he certainly had a few - 1979 finals, in particular, when he shot below 40% from the field as a bigman), his career playoff numbers actually looks a bit better than his RS numbers.
One thing I'm surprised by is that you say I ranked Webber around 80...I certainly didn't, actually never even put together an all-time list longer than 55 (and I'm sure you've seen my remarks about not being satisfied with my consistency). Off the top of my head, I'd say around 65 would be right for C-Webb, and it means that I probably overrate Hayes a bit. Maybe #40, or so, would be a more proper ranking for him, but I think that Hayes is roughly comparable to players like Kidd and Havlicek, who are almost universally seen as top 35 guys, so it's hard to figure out...I mean, Hayes, Kidd and Havlicek all had the same weakness - relatively ineffficient scorers, but excellent defenders with great longevity. Elvin's passing wasn't good, but he may've had an even higher defensive impact than Kidd and Havlicek, because of the bigman > wing/guard thing, particularly in the pre 3-point era. In my mind, he doesn't even look bad when I compare him to the guys who mainly impacted the game on the offensive end, like Baylor and Barry (sure, FWIW both were high volume scorer, more so than Hayes), but Hayes was much better than both on defense, and he has clearly better longevity than both.
I guess I may be a little extreme as far as how I rank the Big E. I was really low on him because of his poor offensive game, even just a year ago, but then I realized how great his longevity, durability and defense was, also good rebounding, and moved him up quite a bit on my list (or rather, just ranked him higher than I thought I would have, because my pre-list for our top 100 project is actually the first time i was able to compile a list like that - now, looking back at that, I immediately see some obvious flaws and inconsistencies on it).
I'll really have to extend and rethink my list as we're slowly approaching the 40s in our project though, because while I'm fairly satisfied with my top 40, anything beyond that is pretty much wide open.
