Spoiler:
tsherkin wrote:trex_8063 wrote:Schayes was listed at 6'7" (would probably be listed 6'8" today for his "in shoes" height). Was listed 195 lbs then; some modern weight-training on board, he's likely be anywhere from 205-220 lbs in a modern context. This is a frame similar to guys like Shane Battier, Trevor Ariza, or Rick Barry. So he'd be playing the SF position; which is perhaps not a bad role/option for him given some of the things he showed particular aptitude for.
I'd like to point out a few skill-set similarities Schayes portrayed (in his own time) to that latter character, Rick Barry:
Elite outside shooting: check.
For a PF? Yes.
For a contemporary SF?
No proof of that, since he never took a single three in his life and even Barry looked fairly mediocre once he was introduced to the shot later on in his career. This is definitely not a given for Schayes. It's possible, even likely, that he could develop into a 3pt shooter given his touch at the line and what-not, if he was in a Bonner-esque type role (or anyway, getting those kinds of shots from that range, I mean), but again, not a given.Food for thought if one is going to insist on making era portability speculation a big part of one's criteria (which I'm not advocating, as I think it's BY FAR the "noisiest" criterion we can go to).
There are a lot more questions about forward portability for Schayes then there are reverse portability for Dwight, so that's one angle where Howard definitely has a favorable edge. Schayes played PF in his own time and MIGHT be able to convert to SF... and very likely would be diminished in the process, never mind the era-based deflation of his overall production.
Furthermore, you still have to contend with the fact that, despite all of his efforts to get to the basket, he still blew chunks from the field on a scale that's really embarrassing by modern standards. Not nearly so compared to his peers, naturally, but we're talking about a 38.0% FG player (15.5 FGA/g).
Terrible percentages on low volume while driving aggressively to the rim doesn't really produce confidence in forward portability. If his volume were higher, then it's at least justifiable. He did, however, have only ONE season of 40%+ from the field. League average FG% that year was 41.0% and he posted 40.1%.
So there are a lot of question marks regarding Schayes, as several others have already addressed.
His numbers look alright, I mean he's a career 18.5/12.1/3.1 guy in a slower era than the 60s, so in terms of possessions (and with a view to his fairly contemporary MPG), there isn't a ton of inflation based on those factors. What we have to look at is...
Do we really expect Schayes to rebound like Dennis Rodman in the modern league? Would he still be drawing at that rate in the modern game, against today's competition (or even that of the 70s/80s/90s)? Maaaaybe, but it becomes increasingly unlikely.
Are we talking about a low-efficiency guy?
He's a career 38% FG, 48.8% TS guy. That efficiency (not the FG%, but the TS%) was marginally above average, but we'd still have to project something like a 10-15% improvement in his FG% for him to get anywhere near modern efficiency, and since we didn't see a trend of rising FG% as the league improved during his own career, that seems unlikely. There are age and injury concerns associated with looking at a player's improvement over the course of his own career, of course, but he stayed relatively constant. A lot like Baylor, actually.
In 62, he was still a 20+ ppg scorer and he was still leading the league in FT% and he was a 46.1% TS player. He was injured, of course, which plays a role, but his 35.7% from the field versus the league average of 42.6% doesn't look so hot (he'd shoot 38.8% the next year on diminished volume). League average TS% was 47.9% against his 46.1%.
Not sufficiently substantial to conclusively prove anything, but basically, we're looking at a guy who's main strength was getting to the line and making those opportunities count, while sucking from the field. That sounds a lot like a smarter, lower-volume James Harden, a player who very few people respect in today's game. Obviously, Harden is more of a douche in many ways than Schayes, so that's really limited to "low FG%, high FTR, high FT%" as far as the comparison, but the point stands. You have to REALLY stretch yourself with some epic mental gymnastics to project him turning into a worthwhile first option based on those core traits of his game. In essence, he looks like a lower-volume version of Karl Malone or David Robinson having a bad playoff series where they can't hit the broad side of a barn from the field... a performance for which both would be (and have been) widely lampooned as ineffective.
And you could still increase his career-high FG% by 3-5% and still come to that same basic conclusion.
That sort of stuff gives me pause. As a SF, he'd be out on the wing a lot more. It's conceivable that he could post, and it's conceivable that he might receive touches at the elbow, but most SFs are used as spacers these days if they aren't primary scorers or point forwards, neither of which seem to really apply to Schayes in the modern context. He seems like he'd find a role, but I suspect that role would look a lot more like Buck Williams or Horace Grant than the 43rd best choice on an all-time greats list.
IMHO, of course, and by no means am I attempting to inject vitriol in this response to what trex was saying, since it's good to have the opposite viewpoint to keep perspective.
Addressing your rick Barry point I think that his mediocre shot from was the idea of a 3 point being a last resort shot or off a broken play and the clock ticking down, or a heave at the end of games/quarters.
Because of the lower volume a lot of these 3 point shots were of worse quality. I think Barry in a situation were the shot was encouraged and looked for would be taking better looks and thus have a higher percentage of made shots
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