RealGM Top 100 List #53

[Joao Saraiva]

Vote for Allen Iverson.

I'd like to get some arguments that don't include Iverson's ts%, since we got a C with less than 50ts% in the last spot.

At this point Iverson's accodales will look great against anyone, and so will his stat lines... I hope someone actually gives him the vote he deserves on the runoff since he has lost a ton of them.

C'mon now, Cowens rates ahead of Iverson - to the extent we can agree he does - primarily based on defense. I don't have a problem with someone saying Iverson's the better offensive player, but Cowens was an All-D center and Iverson was a weakness on D.

If we're going that way why not vote Rodman or Ben Wallace? I think they're better on D than Cowens was.

[john248]

His impact in Philly appears to have been comparable to KJ's in Phoenix based on collective team measures. And his defense is not as negative as Steve Nash's, but in Nash's case we were allowed to wave that away on the premise that PG defense is sort of masked by the team, and generally of small importance. If so, I don't quite get why this needs be a big consideration.

Nash's defense isn't simply waved away. The overwhelming support for him is due to his offense and how much value he provides on that end which is far greater than how much of a negative he is on defense. His defense is talked about as much as those saying he was in a gimmick offense.

The same thing here. There's far more focus on Iverson and his mediocre efficiency and offensive rating more than it is about his defense. This doesn't mean he didn't have offensive value since he was keeping that offense afloat while the defense was near the top of the league. When he's in there, FTs and 3PTs went up which was partly due to him whether by shooting or making a play. But we all weigh that and compare players differently.

I do see the point you're making and one that I agree with. When it comes time for me to support Iverson, I likely won't spend a lot of time on his defense except as just a mention. It's clear his value is on the offense end and whatever negative he was perceived to be on defense certainly wasn't affecting Philly in the most harmful way.

I think what gets lost in this is that each of these spots or threads takes a couple days to pass, so it seems like it's taking awhile for a player to be voted in. Maybe it's just me, but the difference between a guy going 50 or 60 isn't all that much...at least in comparison to how I felt comparing guys when we were voting in the top 25 since there's a lot more noise now.

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote for #53 - Alex English

After dantley got in I said I was between cowens, hayes and english. Now cowens is in, and I didn't get a chance today to do a full write up for a vote. As I looked at dantley vs. english, I came away really impressed with english's versatility as a scorer, and still brought an all around skill set to the table. He was about as consistent as anyone at a high volume for a long time (26.9 PPG on 55.7% TS from 81-89). During that span he only missed a total of 5 games, and his playoff production was similarly impressive. I've always thought highly of gasol's performance in the 2010 finals, and being one of the best passing big men we've seen puts his game on another level. I'd be considering him and iverson soon.


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[penbeast0]

OK, I will call this one a THREE WAY runoff between English, Iverson, and Gasol . . . If y'all object to changing the rules this way, I will change it back but let's go ahead and get some head to head discussion . . .

It basically comes down to:

Iverson scored more than anyone not named Jordan; he was a decent playmaker and his on/off is solid.

English scored a bit less than Iverson but was appreciably more efficient. He was also an outstanding team player who adjusted his game to whatever Denver needed without an appreciable falloff in production.

Gasol was the second banana on two championships and had a stronger defensive impact than either Iverson or English.

[Quotatious]

Damn, that's tough...Anyway, I'll vote for Pau Gasol in the run-off.

I know it may be surprising, considering my support for English (I even voted for him as early as #44, IIRC), but here's the way I see it - Iverson, English and Gasol are almost equally deserving of my vote here, so I'll just vote for the guy who can be the most useful for a championship team, and that's Gasol (it's NOT because he actually won two titles - even if I didn't know that Pau is a two-time champion, I'd still definitely think that he's the most likely of these three players to be a part of a championship team, assuming all guys are in their primes - in other words, Gasol is IMO definitely a better #2 option, than Iverson or English are as #1 options, and honestly, I find it a bit hard to imagine English or especially Iverson, being a great #2 option - it's really doubtful that Alex or Allen were good enough lead dogs on offense, to lead a team to a championship).

So, my argument for Gasol is basically based on his portability. I know that English was an unselfish player willing to adjust to many different roles, but his most valuable skill was still volume scoring, which makes his portability relatively poor, or at least I think he'd lose some value if he had to sacrifice some of his point production. Maybe if he was a good 3-point shooter, I could see him changing his game like Paul Pierce did in 2008, putting more effort into defense and all-around game instead of volume scoring (English was a decent defender and playmaker, from what I've seen, and I think penbeast would agree), but he really wasn't a 3-point shooter. I understand that 3-point shooting wasn't emphasized in the 80s, but some of his contemporaries, like Jordan, Bird, Drexler, even Dominique or Aguirre, were capable of making threes, while guys like English, King or Dantley normally didn't even attempt shooting threes, which makes me think that his shooting range was limited to about 20 feet (to be fair though, he was a GREAT midrange shooter, kinda like Grant Hill was in the mid/late 90s).

Getting back to Gasol for a moment - his playoff runs in 2009 and 2010 kind of sealed the deal for me here. English was a solid playoff performer, too, but Gasol actually performed extremely well, for an extended playoff run, TWICE, while English just seems to be capable of that, but unproven in reality.

[RayBan-Sematra]

Quick question for the Iverson supporters.
Are his on/off numbers in Denver good or "as good" as his Philly numbers?

I say that because his on/off numbers in Philly might be inflated by the fact that he was on a team which really lacked offensive talent.

[trex_8063]

Quick question for the Iverson supporters.
Are his on/off numbers in Denver good or "as good" as his Philly numbers?

I say that because his on/off numbers in Philly might be inflated by the fact that he was on a team which really lacked offensive talent.

I didn't figure out the on/off SRS, ts%, and ortg differences for '07 (which was played MOSTLY in Denver), because it was going to be way too difficult/time-consuming (I cannot simply compare numbers to the teams season avg's.....because he didn't play the whole season in Denver). And in '08 he didn't miss any games with which to make a comparison.

I can tell you that his BPM looks a little lower, but his non-scaled PI RAPM in '08 was the highest one of his career (and '07---again: mostly in Denver---was the 5th-highest of his career).

[tsherkin]

English remains my clear choice, because IMO he was better at the thing that Iverson is most known for, scoring. Not the same style, certainly, but a highly adaptable style of player in terms of teammate synergy. Well accomplished in his own right and IMO the superior player.

Vote Alex English

[Doctor MJ]

Vote for Allen Iverson.

I'd like to get some arguments that don't include Iverson's ts%, since we got a C with less than 50ts% in the last spot.

At this point Iverson's accodales will look great against anyone, and so will his stat lines... I hope someone actually gives him the vote he deserves on the runoff since he has lost a ton of them.

C'mon now, Cowens rates ahead of Iverson - to the extent we can agree he does - primarily based on defense. I don't have a problem with someone saying Iverson's the better offensive player, but Cowens was an All-D center and Iverson was a weakness on D.

If we're going that way why not vote Rodman or Ben Wallace? I think they're better on D than Cowens was.

Because we're evaluating the entire player, and Cowens doesn't have to be better on offense than Iverson to be better than a no-offense player.

[Doctor MJ]

Would you be receptive to any of them? There have been several posts covering Iverson’s ability in multiple areas. To say he was “maybe” a positive playmaker is ridiculous, he was one of the best shot-creators in the league every single year he was in or near his prime. .

When people talk about a volume scorer not necessarily being a positive playmaker, they're talking about passing.

While I can't claim to speak for him, I think DNice is aware of that, and that he was referring to creating shots for others. At least it would seem so, given the context---his post was in reply to a query of what else (aside from scoring) Iverson can do---and that he then immediately referenced my post (which was entirely about Iverson's effect on his teammates' shooting efficiency).

Wow. I didn't realize you were trying to make a claim that bold. That a player known for taking horrible shots in great volume was among the very best distributors in the league? I guess I should look at what you wrote more closely.

Ah yes, RAPM. That holy grail of stats, which we can always take at face value, dispensing with the need for any other measures because RAPM is wholly complete and never misleading (although in '12 in ranked Kevin Durant 43rd in the league, as well as 20th in '13, and only 8th last year; in '03 it ranks McGrady 71st!?!, and so on...)

Context matters. If you don't believe in using with/without information to make causal statements, while I'd say you're misguided, I get it. You can't though use the technique in one stat and then scoff at using it in the mother stat. To the extent any of your anecdotes hear are at all damning of RAPM, they also damn all the work using on/off on teammate shooting.

And of course, all the anecdotal complaints have been responded to a million times here. If they don't satisfy you fine, but people like me aren't using them blindly, and when I make statements about players in a GOAT list discussion it's based on what we see year after year.

.....makes Iverson look like a player who has no business being considered an MVP type of player.

I scanned his post twice, and I still don't see where DNice stated Iverson was an MVP type of player.......which shouldn't really be a prerequisite at this point regardless: with the possible exception of Bob Lanier, none of the other vote recipients for this spot have any business being considered an MVP type of player.

Okay point taken, but aren't we in a discussion where Iverson is seen as an elite playmaker in addition to being, presumably, at least as good at scoring? I wasn't aware any one actually believe that and didn't think Iverson's MVP status was reasonable.

To be more clear though, as I listed out on a previous thread, there are dozens of guys in this era alone not yet voted in who come out ahead of him when you look at the years all stacked up next to each other. So no, I'm not holding Iverson to a higher standard than the rest of the candidates.

Not because he isn't a good offensive player, but because he's not as good as supporters think in terms of impact, and his defense is a negative.

His impact in Philly appears to have been comparable to KJ's in Phoenix based on collective team measures. And his defense is not as negative as Steve Nash's, but in Nash's case we were allowed to wave that away on the premise that PG defense is sort of masked by the team, and generally of small importance. If so, I don't quite get why this needs be a big consideration.

Can you elaborate on "collective team measures"?

Re: Defense not as negative as Nash's...waved away. Nash's defense wasn't waved away. He's an offensive GOAT candidate who, quite correctly, wasn't seriously treated as a strong candidate for the first month plus of threads in this project, and defense was a big part of that.

Then there's the matter that with the numbers I see in RAPM, I don't see the basis for saying Nash was clearly worse than Iverson.

Most practically though, when we at times tell be to chill on the effect of point guard defense in relation to guys like Nash, it's because we know the ratio of the impact is really small.

Nash's scaled PI ORAPM in '06-07 was +10.22, while his DRAPM was -1.94. Massive ratio. Absurd to treat it like that defense was doing anything remotely like canceling his offense out.

For Iverson the best year we have for him in ORAPM is '99-00, and he rates a +5.77. So even if his DRAPM were the same as Nash's, ratio-wise it's a much bigger deal.

(In reality it's worse than that though. His DRAPM that year was -4.46. THAT is the real problem here. Iverson in his prime was absolutely a Top 20 level offensive player and maybe even more, but the defense quite literally ate most of that impact away.)

[Doctor MJ]

Runoff Vote: Pau Gasol

Gasol is one of the guys I feel wary about overrating. I don't think it's a given that he's the right choice here.

What I do think though is that he's a worthy all-star level alpha, and that he's far more rare of a player when it comes to fitting in with other talent. Given how we've seen other stars struggle together, including Kobe when he had Howard & Nash come, to me it's just really clear that Gasol is an incredible team player. You could call him a beta I suppose, but it's not that simple. It's not about being the #2, it's about fitting in and adding value wherever you can.

Realistically if I'm building a club that's to win championships, while I'd be tempted to pick English before Gasol, I'd be more confident that when we got the rest of the talent we needed Gasol would work with them, and that's a big deal.

[SactoKingsFan]

I'll go ahead and vote for Pau Gasol. He was one of my top candidates and I would have voted for him before the run-off but I got distracted. With Gasol you get a two way player (very good offense + solid/underrated defense), excellent passing PF/C and consistent rebounder capable of being the best player on a playoff team and co-star/2nd best player on a title contender. Pau also has good longevity and was a reliable playoff performer (had a few monster playoff runs). At this point in the project I think that's about as good as it gets.

Run-off vote: Pau Gasol

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[Joao Saraiva]

Hope the votes spread in the runoff between English and Gasol. That's the only way Iverson can get in, because some guys here will vote Iverson in the 80 range, I think.

[Joao Saraiva]

Quick question for the Iverson supporters.
Are his on/off numbers in Denver good or "as good" as his Philly numbers?

I say that because his on/off numbers in Philly might be inflated by the fact that he was on a team which really lacked offensive talent.

I didn't figure out the on/off SRS, ts%, and ortg differences for '07 (which was played MOSTLY in Denver), because it was going to be way too difficult/time-consuming (I cannot simply compare numbers to the teams season avg's.....because he didn't play the whole season in Denver). And in '08 he didn't miss any games with which to make a comparison.

I can tell you that his BPM looks a little lower, but his non-scaled PI RAPM in '08 was the highest one of his career (and '07---again: mostly in Denver---was the 5th-highest of his career).

So he seems to have a positive impact... Again.

[trex_8063]

Ah yes, RAPM. That holy grail of stats, which we can always take at face value, dispensing with the need for any other measures because RAPM is wholly complete and never misleading (although in '12 in ranked Kevin Durant 43rd in the league, as well as 20th in '13, and only 8th last year; in '03 it ranks McGrady 71st!?!, and so on...)

Context matters. If you don't believe in using with/without information to make causal statements, while I'd say you're misguided, I get it. You can't though use the technique in one stat and then scoff at using it in the mother stat. To the extent any of your anecdotes hear are at all damning of RAPM, they also damn all the work using on/off on teammate shooting.

And of course, all the anecdotal complaints have been responded to a million times here. If they don't satisfy you fine, but people like me aren't using them blindly, and when I make statements about players in a GOAT list discussion it's based on what we see year after year.

I'm not "damning" RAPM in favor of all other measures. I'm arguing against doing the opposite (damning all others in favor of RAPM, and citing it's potential for error as a reason why). Which, maybe I misinterpreted, but that sure seemed to be what you were implying here:

Look the bottom line is that what you're doing is using on/off stuff, and the overall on/off stuff (RAPM) makes Iverson look like.....

Paraphrasing--->"Bottom line is", you need not bother with any of this other on/off stuff you took the time to do (with/without win%, SRS, ppg, ORtg, Team/teammate ts%, maybe BPM was considered in there too??), because we have RAPM: case closed.

I don't agree with that. I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket (or even just 2 or 3 baskets). We've debated in the past, with somewhat different context, regarding criteria: you arguing it should essentially be pretty narrow, reasoning being that the more criteria you add the more cluttered things become and the more difficult it gets to make sense of all the information, maybe making it too difficult to accurately assess everything.
I, otoh, disagree. Any statistical measure or variable you choose to utilize has it's own failings, inaccuracies, and biases. Any narrow focus philosophy for player evaluation is going to be by definition selective for certain players and exclusive to others. That's why I like taking the very broad approach. The more variables I involve, the inaccuracies and biases of the individual variables (both statistical and contextual/philosophical) get diluted out in the masses; hopefully leaving me with a fair and even playing field.

Have I disregarded RAPM in Iverson's case? No, I have not. Have I brought it up? No, I have not. It was purely a tactical choice, as it's not as flattering to him as other measures (also, within the context of this thread, most of his main competition doesn't have RAPM data available to compare to anyway).

But since we're on the topic, I'll address it. Where RAPM is concerned, Iverson's more or less on par with the guy who's apparently about to take #53 in this project: Pau Gasol. Below are comparisons of non-scaled PI* RAPM (*NPI for '01):

Best 3 years
Gasol: +7.74
Iverson: +6.48

Best 5 years
Gasol: +10.22
Iverson: +9.89

Best 7 years
Gasol: +11.95
Iverson: +11.69

Best 10 years
Gasol: +12.14
Iverson: +12.78

EDIT: Also worth noting that RAPM is a per #possession stat, and Iverson was playing WAY more possessions per game than Gasol throughout their respective primes.

His impact in Philly appears to have been comparable to KJ's in Phoenix based on collective team measures. And his defense is not as negative as Steve Nash's, but in Nash's case we were allowed to wave that away on the premise that PG defense is sort of masked by the team, and generally of small importance. If so, I don't quite get why this needs be a big consideration.

Can you elaborate on "collective team measures"?

What I referred to above, which I'd taken the time to investigate and post in these last 2-3 threads: with/without record/win%, SRS, ORtg, ppg, ts% (both total team, and teammates only).

Re: Defense not as negative as Nash's...waved away. Nash's defense wasn't waved away. He's an offensive GOAT candidate who, quite correctly, wasn't seriously treated as a strong candidate for the first month plus of threads in this project, and defense was a big part of that.

Then there's the matter that with the numbers I see in RAPM, I don't see the basis for saying Nash was clearly worse than Iverson.

Most practically though, when we at times tell be to chill on the effect of point guard defense in relation to guys like Nash, it's because we know the ratio of the impact is really small.

Nash's scaled PI ORAPM in '06-07 was +10.22, while his DRAPM was -1.94. Massive ratio. Absurd to treat it like that defense was doing anything remotely like canceling his offense out.

For Iverson the best year we have for him in ORAPM is '99-00, and he rates a +5.77. So even if his DRAPM were the same as Nash's, ratio-wise it's a much bigger deal.

(In reality it's worse than that though. His DRAPM that year was -4.46. THAT is the real problem here. Iverson in his prime was absolutely a Top 20 level offensive player and maybe even more, but the defense quite literally ate most of that impact away.)

While you have picked Iverson's best ORAPM year, this is also happens to be his single worst DRAPM year, and outside of his first 3-4 seasons is not at all representative of his career as a whole (the shift is seen immediately after the season you mentioned).

Below is DRAPM (non-scaled) for both Iverson and Nash, using only the years where they were playing starter level minutes:

Nash
'99: -0.83
'00: -1.67
'01: -1.0
'02: +0.1
'03: -0.5
'04: -1.6
'05: -0.8
'06: 0.0
'07: -1.5
'08: -0.58
'09: -1.24
'10: -1.57
'11: -1.45
'12: -0.84
'13: -1.41

Avg: -0.994

Iverson
'98: -3.16
'99: -2.18
'00: -4.00
'01: +0.2
'02: -0.4
'03: -0.7
'04: -0.3
'05: 0.0
'06: -1.0
'07: 0.0
'08: -0.16
'09: +0.13
'10: +0.15

Avg: -0.878

So it's very small, but there (remove even 1 or 2 of those first years from the equation, and it becomes more noticeable). Add in other considerations, for whatever they're worth: DRtg (Nash +5.5 to league avg, Iverson +0.7), standard or box DPM (Nash career -2.5, Iverson -1.0), DWS (Nash 16.1, Iverson 38.1), etc......overall (to me, at least), there's little doubt Nash is the inferior defender between the two (but yes: Iverson's D is certainly nothing to write home about).

Basically, I would sum up the comparison to Nash as such: Iverson clearly not on Nash's level offensively, but in his prime was fairly consistently at least a top 20-25 offensive player in the league (with at least 2-3 years as top 10---if not top 3-5---offensive player), was largely not as poor a defender as Nash (and fwiw, Iverson was a better rebounding guard, too, though obv not a noteworthy rebounder). Nash has a little longevity on him. So given the nearly 30 places that have passed since Nash was voted in, I don't think this comparison precludes Iverson from consideration at this point.

[Clyde Frazier]

Through post #55:

Alex English (5) -- penbeast0, ronnymac2, Moonbeam, Clyde Frazier, tsherkin

Allen Iverson (3) -- Joao Saraiva, trex_8063, Basketballefan

Pau Gasol (6) -- RSCD3_, RayBan-Sematra, john248, Quotatious, Doctor MJ, SactoKingsFan

[Texas Chuck]

Run-off Pau Gasol


The most skilled post player of his generation. Great passer. Decent rebounder and defender. Was probably as important as Kobe to those title teams and 3rd Finals appearance.

Carried a pretty mediocre Grizzlies team to the PS in brutal WC. I know they didn't win any games, but still impressive.

My biggest issue with him and why I haven't been voting for him yet is he tended to drop way off in efficiency in the playoffs outside of the 3 Finals runs. Seemed to allow some personal stuff to really impact his play. Understandable, but it does hurt you a bit in an all-time ranking.

[D Nice]

Would you be receptive to any of them? There have been several posts covering Iverson’s ability in multiple areas. To say he was “maybe” a positive playmaker is ridiculous, he was one of the best shot-creators in the league every single year he was in or near his prime. .

When people talk about a volume scorer not necessarily being a positive playmaker, they're talking about passing.

So was I...

Look the bottom line is that what you're doing is using on/off stuff, and the overall on/off stuff (RAPM) makes Iverson look like a player who has no business being considered an MVP type of player. Not because he isn't a good offensive player, but because he's not as good as supporters think in terms of impact, and his defense is a negative.

You guys are well past players of that caliber though, and have been for a while. The only “MVP type player” left on board is Bill Walton. Other than Dwight, T-Mac, and Zo all of the “MVP types” were in by the mid-30s. He doesn’t need to be an MVP-level player to be better than Dave Cowens. Consistently top 10 every year of your prime and you’re a guy who laps Cowens...

And whenever I ask someone for the nuts and bolts of RAPM calculations I never get them. I’m fine with using them as a reference but when you can’t even give me priors or the regression equation being used, or the cross-validation technique being employed, I mean, at least +/- is a very easy thing to pin down. It is what it says it is.

According to RAPM Tracy McGRady was the 69th best/most impactful player in the league and generally a low-impact player despite being a +18 on offense while making a team consisting of him, Jacque Vaughn, Darrell Armstrong, Pay Garrity, 50 games of Mike Miller, 30 games of injured Hill, and 20 games of Drew Gooden the #10 offense league-wide...in instances like these I'm going to side with his raw +/- data.

[penbeast0]

Looks like Pau wins this. On to the next . . . .

[john248]

Yes! I can start voting for someone else!