Glad Cousy has gotten in. My next vote is going to
James Worthy. Clearly he was never the most important player on any of the Lakers' teams while Magic was around, but what an awesome piece he was nonetheless - very skilled, dangerous scorer who elevated his game when the moment called for it, not just in the playoffs, but in the regular season, too.
In head-to-head comparisons of against other leading 80s small forwards (Bird, Erving, Dantley, English, Aguirre, King, Marques Johnson, Nique), here are some summary stats taken from
this spreadsheet:
131 wins, 64 losses on +1.47 SRS above expectations (ranks #1 out of 9)
Relative PPG up 1.23, opponent relative PPG down 1.25 (net -4.03 PPG vs. opponent, rank #9 of 9)
Relative RPG up 0.20, opponent relative RPG up 0.27 (only available from 1986 on, net -0.29 RPG vs. opponent)
Relative APG up 0.20, opponent relative APG down 0.38 (only available from 1986 on, net -0.24 APG vs. opponent)
TS down 0.05%, opponent TS down 0.38% (net +2.59% TS vs. opponent, rank #2 of 9)
So while Worthy tended to be outscored by big-time SFs (though he had a sizable edge in efficiency), he increased his scoring output and his opponents saw a dip in their output and efficiency, and there was no real difference in rebounds or assists. It appears that "Big Game James" had a notable bump in his production and a notable decrease in that of his opponents, even during the regular season.
Win shares aren't overly kind of Worthy in comparison to others - he's got a career WS/48 of 0.130, with about 63% coming on the offensive end. I did a comparison of offensive win shares for the 80s small forwards
here, investigating whether they were perhaps poaching them from teammates, or rather providing lift. Well, in Worthy's case, his teammates seemed to generally far outperform their expectations with respect to offensive win shares. A lot of that credit should go to Magic, obviously, but Worthy's deadly scoring was a key part of their offense's success, I feel.
As a playoff performer, there are few who have raised their games quite like Worthy. I think in the playoffs, he became a legitimate top 10 player in the league for several years. He produced a playoff O+ from 1985 onward of 8.07 (12.05 from 1985-89) on a Score+ of 2.072 (3.338 from 1985-89), and those are obviously big sample sizes, and those career numbers are likely to go up if we include his 1984 season.
