Peak Project #15

[trex_8063]

RealGM Greatest Player Peaks of All-Time List
1. Michael Jordan ('91---unanimous)
2. Shaquille O'Neal ('00---unanimous)
3. Lebron James ('13---non-unanimous ('09, '12))
4. Wilt Chamberlain ('67---non-unanimous ('64))
5. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ('77---non-unanimous ('71, '72))
6. Hakeem Olajuwon ('94---non-unanimous ('93))
7. Tim Duncan ('03---non-unanimous ('02))
8. Kevin Garnett ('04---unanimous)
9. Bill Russell ('65---non-unanimous ('62, '64))
10. Magic Johnson ('87---unanimous)
11. Larry Bird ('86---non-unanimous ('87, '88))
12. David Robinson ('95---non-unanimous ('94, '96))
13. Bill Walton ('77---unanimous)
14. Julius Erving ('76---unanimous)
15. ?????


Get her rolling boys....
Personally, I'm looking at Oscar, Durant, then any one of Paul, Wade, Nowitzki, TMac, or Curry. West, Barkley, Moses not far behind.

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[Clyde Frazier]

Will probably stay with oscar and west as my first 2 ballots, and leaning toward dirk for #3. I’d love to put dirk in front of both of them, but trying to be objective as I possibly can in this project. We'll see.

EDIT - Dirk vs. Barkley vs. Karl Malone peak is definitely worth discussing now, too.

[Quotatious]

I'm so glad Erving is finally in...Not even just because I think he was well-deserving of that (should've been even higher, for me), but there was a lot of pretty futile division about him. Other than my debate with Trex, those discussions about Dr J were hardly productive. I wonder if Artis Gilmore will be as controversial as Erving was (I expect A-Train to start gaining traction around 25-30).

By the way - participation has been awesome lately. 114 posts in #13 thread, and 137 in #14. Keep it up, guys. I'll try to chime in whenever I can.

[ceiling raiser]

Throwing a few names out there, when do:

Penny
Ewing
Dwight
TMac

come into play for you guys?

[trex_8063]

OK, so I'll make a confession: I don't have a completed peaks list. Not that I haven't done some peak study and evaluations, etc. I just haven't distilled it all into a specific list (at least, not one of any great length). I had my top 5 set going in, and I knew who the four guys I wanted at 6-9 (though I went round and round on the order of them). And then it got increasingly vague after that (e.g. "OK, probably these 3-4 guys for the next 3-4 spots, don't know what order......then this next group of 7 guys..."). So at this point I'm allowing my order to grow pretty organically.

And there's really nothing between the individual places at this point. Honestly, the difference between #15 and #18 is basically just preference. And the diff between #19 and #25 is likely to be pretty much nothing more than preference.

Before the project started, off the cuff (without thinking too hard), I might have said all of the following were "very likely (if not assuredly) top 25 peaks all-time":
Oscar Robertson
Kevin Durant
Chris Paul
Dwyane Wade
Charles Barkley
Moses Malone
Dirk Nowitzki
Tracy McGrady
Kobe Bryant
Karl Malone
Stephen Curry
Jerry West

.....and that the following guys "might be top 25 peaks all-time":
Anthony Davis
Elgin Baylor
James Harden
Steve Nash
Patrick Ewing
Dwight Howard (or maybe he'd be in the group below)

.....and that the following guys "unlikely, but maybe have a very slim/outside shot at top 25":
Connie Hawkins
Walt Frazier
Scottie Pippen
Bob McAdoo
Artis Gilmore


You maybe see where I'm going with this: that's 12 guys (not yet voted in) who I'd have said "very likely" to be top 25, plus another ~6-11 guys with varying degrees of "maybe"........but we only have 11 more spots available to round out the top 25!

[RebelWithACause]

I'm so glad Erving is finally in...Not even just because I think he was well-deserving of that (should've been even higher, for me), but there was a lot of pretty futile division about him. Other than my debate with Trex, those discussions about Dr J were hardly productive. I wonder if Artis Gilmore will be as controversial as Erving was (I expect A-Train to start gaining traction around 25-30).

By the way - participation has been awesome lately. 114 posts in #13 thread, and 137 in #14. Keep it up, guys. I'll try to chime in whenever I can.

Yeah, hardly productive because the DrJ crew wasn't really able to counter anything that he was critiqued of.

We even had scouting reports like yours, calling him the defensive anchor with great help D and initimidation factor, when Spaceman and I both said we hardly ever saw someone with such a bad off-ball focus, not in the right place, with bad man to man defense.

So there's that. Moving on now.

My ballot for #15:

1. Curry 2015
2. West 1966
3. Robertson 1964

I feel Curry is the ultimate top choice here. His never been seen before shooting, challenges defenses, like never before.
Incredible combination of shooting, playmaking and handles make him unstoppable.
One of my offensive GOATS.
Neutral defender which puts him slightly ahead of Nash among modern point guards. I have both of them ahead of Paul, who in my opinion quite clearly reached offensive heights like Curry or Nash.
In his peak year 08, he also wasn't a plus defender. Neutral probably.

With West and Robertson it comes down in-era domination.
The Wowy data really opened my eyes and made me curious about West.
I have West over Robertson because I believe West to be at least as good on offense as Robertson and a much better defender.
His portability is a lot better, because of his shooting and off-ball play and I would expect him to perform better in the modern era than the Big O.

Next up on my list after those will be Dirk and the wings of the modern era Kobe, Wade, McGrady and Durant. Nash, Cp3 and Penny will be the PG's in the mix.

[trex_8063]

Throwing a few names out there, when do:

Penny
Ewing
Dwight
TMac

come into play for you guys?

Penny -- Not yet for me. Probably not until somewhere out past #30 (or maybe even #35 or so). So tbh, depending on how long this project lasts, we may never reach the point where I'm casting a ballot for Penny.

Ewing -- Pat already has one poster throwing him a #2 ballot. For myself, he's likely still 7-10 places out from where I'll be giving him a ballot (circa-25 for me).

Dwight -- Similar to Ewing (probably just behind him). So 25-30 range.

TMac -- This is (imo) definitively the highest peak that you mention above. TMac is in consideration right now for me. He'll likely be getting a ballot from me somewhere within the next 2-3 threads.

[Clyde Frazier]

Throwing a few names out there, when do:

Penny
Ewing
Dwight
TMac

come into play for you guys?

I think 90 ewing vs. 83 moses is interesting. Hard to argue with moses’ championship run, though, so maybe ewing should be considered shortly after he gets in. 2011 dwight was an incredible player, too.

Good mentions with mcgrady and penny, i’d just have to look into them further.

[eminence]

Throwing a few names out there, when do:

Penny
Ewing
Dwight
TMac

come into play for you guys?

Penny- Not for awhile yet, have all of Oscar/West/Nash/Paul/Curry all solidly above him just among PGs.
Ewing- Pretty soon for me, gut instinct has him as the #2 C left for me behind Moses, and it's a big mans game so I could see him being around 20 for myself (probably a bit below).
Dwight- Not sure.. Probably my #3 center on the board (need to research Gilmore more), but I feel like there's a bit of a drop from Ewing to him.
TMac- Pretty darn soon, amongst the wings I'm currently considering


Guys I'm actively looking at now:

Curry, Wade, Paul, West, Oscar, Moses, Ewing, TMac, Kobe, Nash, Dirk, Durant are the guys that jump out to me. Need to look into Gilmore a bit more, Barkley/Karl/Davis/Harden seem to a step lower to me.

[The-Power]

My ballots remain the same - and so does the reservation of changing the ranking of Paul and the year of his peak:

1st Ballot: 2015 Curry
2nd Ballot: 2008 Paul
3rd Ballot: 2011 Nowitzki

[ceiling raiser]

I'm not sure if Penny should get a ton of consideration, but I was just looking at lorak's numbers for 94-97 (we don't have on/off for 93; sorted by MP):

94
Shaq 81 GP, 3224 MP, +7.7 on/off
Penny 82 GP, 3015 MP, +5.2 on/off
Anderson 81 GP, 2811 MP +2.9 on/off
Skiles 82 GP, 2303 MP, -5.4 on/off
Scott 82 GP, 2283 MP, +2.1 on/off
Turner 68 GP, 1536 MP, -8.4 on/off
Royal 74 GP, 1357 MP, +5.0 on/off
Grant (CHI) 70 GP, 2570 MP, +8.2 on/off

95
Shaq 79 GP, 2923 MP, +11.9 on/off
Penny 77 GP, 2901 MP, +12.1 on/off
Grant 74 GP, 2693 MP, +9.5 on/off
Anderson 76 GP, 2588 MP +8.9 on/off
Royal 70 GP, 1841 MP, +1.4 on/off
Shaw 78 GP, 1836 MP, -7.3 on/off
Scott 62 GP, 1499 MP, -2.3 on/off

96
Scott 82 GP, 3041 MP +11.3 on/off
Penny 82 GP, 3015 MP, +17.1 on/off
Anderson 77 GP, 2717 MP +2.9 on/off
Grant 63 GP, 2286 MP, +11.3 on/off
Shaq 54 GP, 1946 MP, +10.2 on/off
Shaw 75 GP, 1679 MP, -7.2 on/off
Koncak 67 GP, 1288 MP, -2.9 on/off

97
Seikaly 74 GP, 2615 MP, -2.3 on/off
Grant 67 GP, 2496 MP, +6.3 on/off
Penny 59 GP, 2221 MP, +12.0 on/off
Wilkins 80 GP, 2202 MP, -10.9 on/off
Scott 66 GP, 2166 MP, +7.0 on/off
Anderson 63 GP, 2163 MP +9.9 on/off
Strong 82 GP, 2004 MP, -0.2 on/off
Shaw 31 GP, 1867 MP, -18.3 on/off
Shaq (LAL) 51 GP, 1941 MP, +4.9 on/off

------------

From ElGee's WOWY sheet:

Anderson - -4.9 (96) ; +0.3 (97)
Grant +3.4 (94) ; +4.8 (96) ; +1.3 (97)
Penny +3.5 (97*)
Scott +0.9 (93)
Shaq +4.0 (96) ; +2.1 (97)

* With Grant and Scott in, there is no entry for all 23 games he missed as far as I can tell. The sheet also lists "25+ in (41)" as +3.5 and "25+ in (40)" as +2.4. If anyone knows how to calculate ElGee's WOWY score and has a few minutes, would be great to see.

------------

Now, I don't know that I'd necessarily argue Penny against Shaq during this period (though who knows?), but it is interesting to see that kind of separation in 96 (and to some extent in 97) from everyone else. Caught my eye at least.

[trex_8063]

1st ballot: Oscar Robertson '64
Put simply he's the greatest offensive player of his generation, imo.
I've watched fair bit of game tape of him, and I've never been really blown away by any single plays; he's not flashy, and doesn't tend to amaze on a play-by-play basis the same way that some other greats do. Yet you get to the end of the game and he's got like 29/9/11 or some such.
Big big body for a PG (he'd be strong even for a modern SG), could just back guys down to where he wanted to be. Then had that short-mid range turnaround (odd one-hander form) that was so effective (could turn over either shoulder, too); and he turned his shoulders so late that it was really hard for defenders to swipe at. The slow-mo highlight reels don't do justice to how quick the release often was. I wish we had the shooting data to say exactly, but Oscar must have been lights out in that 10-17 ft range. Good athlete who was a decent slasher, too; very very fine FT-shooter as well. All in all, he scored an awful lot of points at MUCH higher efficiency than the vast majority of his peers.

I don't consider him in the class of Magic, Nash, Paul, or Kidd (or Bird or Lebron) as a passer/playmaker, but obv he was quite adept. Kareem has little but praise for his passing. Again, nothing too flashy, but some precision entry passes and hitting cutters or passing out of a double-team; good at putting it someplace easy for teammate to catch and finish smoothly.
Led I think 4 or 5 consecutive #1 offenses, including the year I'm going with as his peak (admittedly none of them were on an all-time level, but still....).

Rebounding: pace (and minutes) inflate his prowess as a rebounding guard to near-legendary proportions. I do NOT consider him the best rebounding PG of all-time; but I do consider him 3rd-best (behind Magic and Kidd), which obv is still awfully good.

Defensively.....I always thought he looked decent (again, not jumping off the screen at me; but solid). I've read a few peer reviews praising his defense as a seriously under-appreciated aspect of his game. So it's perhaps even a pinch better than I've given him credit for.

Here's HCA-adjusted WOWY data over his career (which is awfully darn impressive):

Code: Select all

Season  G With G Without SRS With SRS Without SRS Diff
----------------------------------------------------------
1961       71       8     -2.44     -14.59     12.16
1962       83       1      1.16     -11.24     12.40
1964       89       1      3.72       0.38      3.35
1965       79       5      1.94      -1.33      3.27
1966       81       4      0.76      -5.11      5.86
1967       83       2     -0.10     -16.22     16.12
1968       65      17      1.98     -10.69     12.67
1969       79       3     -0.57      -7.42      6.85
1970       69      13     -1.28      -7.64      6.36
1971       95       1     12.80      -6.64     19.44
1972       75      18     12.07       7.07      5.10
1973       79       9      7.98       7.42      0.57
1974       86      12      7.84       7.83      0.01


2nd ballot: Kevin Durant '14
I freely acknowledge the Durant is a completely average defender overall. But: very good to elite as both a rebounder and playmaker for a SF. And then GOAT-level pure scorer: 41.8 pts/100 possessions @ 63.5% TS . fwiw, I'd also constructed formula founded on Moonbeam's Score+ rating (I called mine "Modified Score+").......'14 Durant is the 2nd-highest MS+ rating on record (just barely behind '88 Barkley, and just barely ahead of '83 Dantley).
He couldn't quite maintain that in the playoffs, but still......35.9 pts/100 poss @ 57.0% TS while playing 42.9 mpg; that's still very elite level scoring. And bear in mind the defense he was facing while he did that:
1st round: -2.1 rDRTG (ranked 7th of 30; being guarded primarily by Tony Allen)
2nd round: -1.9 rDRTG (9th of 30)
3rd round: -4.3 rDRTG (3rd of 30; being guarded by Kawhi Leonard)

How does the playoff scoring look now?


3rd ballot: Dirk Nowitzki '06
Tentatively throwing my 3rd ballot to Nowitzki (I can't guarantee that that won't change in the next thread, though). Helluv' an offensive anchor, who was also a very fine defensive rebounder in '06, and didn't dwindle in the playoffs while bringing his team to the brink; and I'll be honest, the '06 Finals almost has a small asterisk by it in my mind, as there was some fishy-seeming officiating going on in that one.
Why '06 over '11? I know his post game isn't as refined as in '11, and hasn't figured out how to deal with double-teams quite as well as in '11 either.....but I kinda like the better motor and mobility he had on him in his younger years, like that fact that he could carry the load and have a big impact for 38 mpg (instead of 34) while missing only a single game all year, too. Significantly better rebounder in '06 than he was in '11. And it was my impression of both eras of his career that he was a better defender in '06 (again maybe the better motility and lateral quickness, etc), though I'll admit the impact data does not reflect this opinion.

[E-Balla]

Trex mind me submitting a vote this go around?


I finally complied a way to sort players by separating and comparing like positions and roles. So here's my field right now:

PGs:
1. 63 Oscar Robertson
2. 08 Chris Paul
3. 66 Jerry West
4/5/6. 05 Nash/15 Curry/96 Penny (in order of who I'm leaning towards)

Wings:
1/2. 03 T-Mac/09 Wade
3. 06 Kobe Bryant
4. 14 Kevin Durant
5. 61 Elgin Baylor

Bigs:
1/2/3. 11 Dirk/90 Pat/83 Moses (in order of who I'm leaning towards)
4. 90 Charles Barkley
5. 11 Dwight/98 Karl/00 Zo (again, in order)

My nominations will be:
1. 63 Oscar Robertson
2. 03 Tracy McGrady
3. 09 Dwyane Wade

Reasoning coming later.

[trex_8063]

Trex mind me submitting a vote this go around?

Please do.

[E-Balla]

I'm not sure if Penny should get ton of consideration, but I was just looking at lorak's numbers for 94-97 (we don't have on/off for 93; sorted by MP):

94
Shaq 81 GP, 3224 MP, +7.7 on/off
Penny 82 GP, 3015 MP, +5.2 on/off
Anderson 81 GP, 2811 MP +2.9 on/off
Skiles 82 GP, 2303 MP, -5.4 on/off
Scott 82 GP, 2283 MP, +2.1 on/off
Turner 68 GP, 1536 MP, -8.4 on/off
Royal 74 GP, 1357 MP, +5.0 on/off
Grant (CHI) 70 GP, 2570 MP, +8.2 on/off

95
Shaq 79 GP, 2923 MP, +11.9 on/off
Penny 77 GP, 2901 MP, +12.1 on/off
Grant 74 GP, 2693 MP, +9.5 on/off
Anderson 76 GP, 2588 MP +8.9 on/off
Royal 70 GP, 1841 MP, +1.4 on/off
Shaw 78 GP, 1836 MP, -7.3 on/off
Scott 62 GP, 1499 MP, -2.3 on/off

96
Scott 82 GP, 3041 MP +11.3 on/off
Penny 82 GP, 3015 MP, +17.1 on/off
Anderson 77 GP, 2717 MP +2.9 on/off
Grant 63 GP, 2286 MP, +11.3 on/off
Shaq 54 GP, 1946 MP, +10.2 on/off
Shaw 75 GP, 1679 MP, -7.2 on/off
Koncak 67 GP, 1288 MP, -2.9 on/off

97
Seikaly 74 GP, 2615 MP, -2.3 on/off
Grant 67 GP, 2496 MP, +6.3 on/off
Penny 59 GP, 2221 MP, +12.0 on/off
Wilkins 80 GP, 2202 MP, -10.9 on/off
Scott 66 GP, 2166 MP, +7.0 on/off
Anderson 63 GP, 2163 MP +9.9 on/off
Strong 82 GP, 2004 MP, -0.2 on/off
Shaw 31 GP, 1867 MP, -18.3 on/off
Shaq (LAL) 51 GP, 1941 MP, +4.9 on/off

------------

From ElGee's WOWY sheet:

Anderson - -4.9 (96) ; +0.3 (97)
Grant +3.4 (94) ; +4.8 (96) ; +1.3 (97)
Penny +3.5 (97*)
Scott +0.9 (93)
Shaq +4.0 (96) ; +2.1 (97)

* With Grant and Scott in, there is no entry for all 23 games he missed as far as I can tell. The sheet also lists "25+ in (41)" as +3.5 and "25+ in (40)" as +2.4. If anyone knows how to calculate ElGee's WOWY score and has a few minutes, would be great to see.

------------

Now, I don't know that I'd argue Penny against Shaq much during this period, but it is interesting to see that kind of separation in 96 (and to some extent in 97) from everyone else. Caught my eye at least.

I was just about to post these numbers... Why am I always getting beat to the good posts? Either way I personally think Penny should be seen as on Nash and Curry's level (if my post didn't make it obvious enough). As a scorer he's weaker than Curry but he's a way better passer. As a passer he's under Nash and as a scorer they're about even but for all of his defensive issues Penny was a better defender than Nash. Remember Penny was 3rd in MVP voting to 2 guys already in.

[The-Power]

Well when Draymond shoots 58% from the field, Klay 54 TS%, Harrison 55 TS%, and all of the other players have long careers without playing with Curry where their TS% is about equal to what it was this past season I find that hard to believe. Obviously his shooting opens up their offense and his on court rating shows his impact a lot (116.6) but I don't think they're under a 105-107 ORTG without Curry (and they had a 111.6). They have a ton of great playmakers, some shooters, and two very good scorers on the roster (Klay who requires a G to set him up but can still get his own shots off ball, and David Lee who was hurt half the year). So I believe his impact is large but not GOAT level.

I actually don't know what you're arguing right now. You seem to realize Curry's impact on the ORTG, so for obious reasons he also has an impact on the players' efficiency. The 111.6 is, by the way, slightly misleading if we take it at face value because of the distrubution of minutes due to the dominance of the Warriors. And I don't feel like discussing pure guesses here, that's pointless.

Anyway, some notes:
- if by 'a ton of great playmakers' you mean three or four players with above average playmaking for their position (Iggy, Green, Bogut and Livingston, although that's not a given), sure. But neither is a 'great playmaker' aside from maybe Iggy and all of them have major flaws in their scoring game which hasn't been exposed that much because of how good Curry runs the show.
- two very good scorers? Still calling Lee a good scorer makes it look like you ware asleep for quite some time now. After he completely lost his midrange-jumper somewhen in 2014 he wasn't a good scorer by any means. Also you can't say 'Lee was hurt half the year' and then walk on to fully include him in a hypothetical scenario without Curry.
- some shooters? Well, Klay and Curry are obviously great but other than that the team isn't blessed with shooters at all. Barnes can only shoot open corner threes which he get due to playing with this team an Curry, Iggy can't really shoot, Draymond is a below-average shooter for the amount of threes he takes, Livingston has no range whatsoever, Bogut can't shoot at all, Barbosa certainly isn't known for his shooting, Lee lost his jumper completely and this leaves us with Speights, who had a career-year in terms of shooting from 10-16ft (guess why, the answer is already somewhere in this list).
- I also fail to see the players who we know are certainly better than this year with Curry suggests. Speights wasn't, Livingston wasn't really, Lee is washed up, Barbosa made a huge leap last year compared to the years before and Iggy wasn't more efficient during his prime.

If you want to argue that without Curry the offense drops from best in the league (had Curry played regular minutes, otherwise second best) to league-average (which is what 105-107, your guess, is) then we're not even far off. But we seem to look at the impact in a different way because the difference from top to average is absolutely huge.

Some fun numbers from the RS:

Player - TS% with Curry on-court - TS% with Curry off-court
Livingston - 62.6 - 49.8
Iguodala - 55.8 - 53.0
Bogut - 57.8 - 42.3
Lee - 54.3 - 53.3
Green - 53.2 - 59.2
Barnes - 57.8 - 54.6
Ezeli - 61.9 - 51.0
Thompson - 59.7 - 54.1
Barbosa - 56.1 - 55.6
Speights - 57.3 - 51.5

Aside from the outlier Green is, I don't know how someone can look at this and don't see incredibly huge impact. It shouldn't be possible.

I'll agree here. Curry's shooting makes the whole system possible. But in a comparison to TMac or Wade who weren't in great situations where their teams could get the most impact out of them and they just had to score themselves I think it bears to mention that the reason their offense was so great was that he had an offensive system to tell him how to best use his skills.

The reason why the offense was great had, in my book, more to do with Curry's abilities. You simply can't run a system like the Warriors did with Wade or McGrady as the lead guys and expect it to be this successful - and frankly I don't believe you can run any system with them as the main guys and expect them to be as successful as a Curry-run system with comparable talent.

There's a difference between saying Curry wasn't used in the right way and having total freedom. Curry WAS the offense under Mark.

No, that's definitely wrong. Curry had freedom under MJ, true, but that's true for basically every player - even when that means icnredibly inefficient offense like frequently posting up Barnes. This led to the fact that Curry had less offensive supremacy than he has under Kerr. It remains true that this season has been the first season in which Curry could lead an offense which is predicated on his strengths - and it was brillant.

I have no reason to believe he could outperform TMac in a perfect system for example especially when TMac is a way better passer and only a slightly worse scorer.

I don't believe T-Mac was nearly the scorer Curry is, he also was a worse playmaker. I have no other to believe that TMac - as great as he was - could have even come close to what Curry did with the Warriors. Curry's impact goes far beyond the box-score and I can't say the same about McGrady.

[Quotatious]

Yeah, hardly productive because the DrJ crew wasn't really able to counter anything that he was critiqued of.

It's funny because I could say the same thing about the anti-Dr J crew - all you guys did was talk about his NBA career, and draw conclusions based on that, when things could be different in his '76 season. I understand that we don't have the same data for his '76 ABA season, but for this exact reason, I don't see why anyone would speak with the kind of conviction you did, that he was supposedly the same player in '77 as he was in '76, but his competition was just stronger in '77 so he looked worse impact and stats wise. I'm still not buying that argument. Well, none of us should speak with conviction (no matter which side each person is on) about his '76 season as none of us saw a lot of footage of his game from that season.

We even had scouting reports like yours, calling him the defensive anchor with great help D and initimidation factor, when Spaceman and I both said we hardly ever saw someone with such a bad off-ball focus, not in the right place, with bad man to man defense.

I got the same impression when I watched the '77 finals (I mean bad man to man defense), but his help D was somewhere between very good to great in that series, so he was still at least average defensively, overall, but again - this is based on something that happened a year after the season we all considered his peak ('76), and considering that defensive effort from superstars tends to vary far more than their offensive output, from one season to another (look at Shaq or Kobe, for example), and you really can't judge it if you didn't watch a player on a consistent basis (we can rely on stats to evaluate offense to a FAR greater degree than we can rely on them to evaluate defense, I think we'll agree about that).

[Clyde Frazier]

I'm so glad Erving is finally in...Not even just because I think he was well-deserving of that (should've been even higher, for me), but there was a lot of pretty futile division about him. Other than my debate with Trex, those discussions about Dr J were hardly productive. I wonder if Artis Gilmore will be as controversial as Erving was (I expect A-Train to start gaining traction around 25-30).

By the way - participation has been awesome lately. 114 posts in #13 thread, and 137 in #14. Keep it up, guys. I'll try to chime in whenever I can.

Yeah, hardly productive because the DrJ crew wasn't really able to counter anything that he was critiqued of.

I responded to all of them...

viewtopic.php?p=44693043#p44693043

[Quotatious]

My votes are pretty much wide-open again. It's not a given that I'll vote for Wade and CP3 here, as I did earlier. Concerns about CP3's defense in '08 are pretty legitimate, but his offense was still good enough that it may warrant a vote here.

Oscar is a pretty good pick here. I'll strongly consider voting for him. For West, as much as I like him, I think it's too early. Wade was able to get basically identical stats as West did on far slower pace, and playing against much better perimeter defenders. Same is true for T-Mac. I have West around the same level as Kobe, and Bryant is definitely below Wade and McGrady in terms of peak, to me.

Moses and Ewing are two guys I'll strongly consider here, too.

How about Barkley and Karl Malone, guys? I haven't seen anyone mentioning them yet, but they may be worth looking at, at this point in the project.

Oh, and getting back to CP3 for a moment - how about '15 as his peak? I think a case can definitely be made, and it's definitely his best season as a Clipper.

[Clyde Frazier]

How about Barkley and Karl Malone, guys? I haven't seen anyone mentioning them yet, but they may be worth looking at, at this point in the project.

Yup, edited my first post in this thread earlier as i had thought about it, too. Dirk vs. the 2 of them would be a good discussion.