Rank these players offensively (peak): Magic, Jordan, LeBron, Curry, Jokic

[Djoker]

Respect the full shift back to vibes-based analysis.

Lebron’s teams had scorers and bad defenders (i.e. offensive players), therefore they must have been a better offensive roster.

Yet somehow, the 1998 Bulls offence tanked without Pippen. Somehow, the 1994 Bulls had a relative offensive rating with Pippen right on par with every Jordan Bulls team pre-1990, and somehow, they were then able to post a +8 rOrtg against a historic defence in the postseason.

To whatever extent we want to say Lebron’s teams had better offensive support in the 2010s, it never manifested. Lebron missed 18 games from 2011-14, and the Heat were bad offensively. Filtering for games where Wade played (down to 9), and they were still bad. Granted, Wade was only a superstar through 2011, but it is not like he was running good offences in 2009/10. Same story with the 27 games Lebron missed in his second Cavaliers stint. Okay, Kyrie only played 18 of those games, and they were better when he did… as a +1.5 offence (and of course the defence fell apart without Lebron acting as one of the team’s two or three best defenders).

Which leaves the question, what could be this mysterious 11-ring winning variable producing unexpectedly strong offensive results with ostensibly less “talented” offensive teams.

You accused me of using SRS (which I admittedly did use simplistically on its own) to prove my point so I gave you betting odds showing that the 2012 Celtics and 2020 Nuggets were not considered to be great teams.

Personally I care more about what teams do than about what people think they will do eight months earlier, and you already threw out SRS by making it abstractly about “great teams” than about any tangible cutoff markers. Is the move now going to be who performed best against which teams had the best preseason odds? Cannot wait.

Using tiny WOWY samples without Lebron to make your point doesn't really work well especially when a large chunk of these games were late season games with seeding wrapped up. In other words, these were largely meaningless contests. Wade was still All-NBA caliber in 2012 and all-star caliber in 2013 and 2014. And don't forget Bosh who was also an all-star caliber player in Bron's Miami stint. Kyrie was also All-NBA caliber with Love all-star caliber from 2015-2017 and 2015-2018, respectively. Look up top player lists from those years and see where those players were ranked at the end of the day if you don't believe me.

To echo my last point, I also care more about what players do than about how they are perceived. Shawn Marion never made all-defence, but Kobe made it 12 times. Duncan and Pippen do not have a DPoY but Marcus Camby, Metta Artest, Marcus Smart, Gary Payton, Alvin Robertson, Michael Jordan, and Michael Cooper all do, and Kawhi, Rodman, and Moncrief have two. Rasheed Wallace never made all-NBA (or all-defence), but Julius Randle has done so twice. And Jamal Murray is not an all-star and may never be one, but I dare you to try to meaningfully distinguish his playoff production from Kyrie’s. This is not a real argument for anything.

I gave you odds right before the playoffs and going into the conference finals series. So it's not 8 months before.

Everyone agrees there is disparity between perception/accolades and real value for some players. The problem is when people swing too far in the other direction and pretend that it doesn't matter at all or doesn't matter in all cases. Of course Jamal Murray is really good despite never making an all-star game. But doesn't mean that all-star appearances are useless as indicators of player value. Or All-NBA teams. Or player rankings on NBA.com, ESPN etc.

[OhayoKD]

Look up top player lists from those years and see where those players were ranked at the end of the day if you don't believe me.

In other words, you had a prior about those teams based on reputation and personal headcanon and now you are ignoring how those teams did in games without Lebron because they contradict your prior?

Gee, that sounds an awful lot like...

There's a great deal of cognitive dissonance

Would be more sympathetic to sample concerns if you hadn't insisted a 35 minute sample overrules multiple 2000+ ones:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=108226321#p108226321

or spent the last year crafting arguments around what happens when a player misses time for spot minutes with no regard for what happens with whole games or whole seasons

Everyone agrees there is disparity between perception/accolades and real value for some players. The problem is when people swing too far in the other direction and pretend that it doesn't matter at all or doesn't matter in all cases.

How much a secondary sources matters is largely contingent on how they hold up to primary ones. We had 94 and 95 contradicting your priors. Just like 84 and 86 did. And just like 2011, 2008-2010, 2011-2014, and 2015-2017, and 2019 did.

That's why almost none of the regulars on this board take your priors seriously(including some who used to). Your pre-conception of talent was likely wrong. This isn't hard.

[AEnigma]

You accused me of using SRS (which I admittedly did use simplistically on its own) to prove my point so I gave you betting odds showing that the 2012 Celtics and 2020 Nuggets were not considered to be great teams.

Personally I care more about what teams do than about what people think they will do eight months earlier, and you already threw out SRS by making it abstractly about “great teams” than about any tangible cutoff markers. Is the move now going to be who performed best against which teams had the best preseason odds? Cannot wait.

Using tiny WOWY samples without Lebron to make your point doesn't really work well especially when a large chunk of these games were late season games with seeding wrapped up. In other words, these were largely meaningless contests. Wade was still All-NBA caliber in 2012 and all-star caliber in 2013 and 2014. And don't forget Bosh who was also an all-star caliber player in Bron's Miami stint. Kyrie was also All-NBA caliber with Love all-star caliber from 2015-2017 and 2015-2018, respectively. Look up top player lists from those years and see where those players were ranked at the end of the day if you don't believe me.

To echo my last point, I also care more about what players do than about how they are perceived. Shawn Marion never made all-defence, but Kobe made it 12 times. Duncan and Pippen do not have a DPoY but Marcus Camby, Metta Artest, Marcus Smart, Gary Payton, Alvin Robertson, Michael Jordan, and Michael Cooper all do, and Kawhi, Rodman, and Moncrief have two. Rasheed Wallace never made all-NBA (or all-defence), but Julius Randle has done so twice. And Jamal Murray is not an all-star and may never be one, but I dare you to try to meaningfully distinguish his playoff production from Kyrie’s. This is not a real argument for anything.

I gave you odds right before the playoffs and going into the conference finals series. So it's not 8 months before.

Thank you for clarifying you were using more immediate odds. It does not change that expectations do not equate to real quality. Just like the 1998-2000 Knicks teams, and just like the 2020/23 Heat.

The Celtics were a well-established playoff team I would characterise pretty much on par with their 2010 form, and I take them over the 5-SRS 2011 iteration which I am sure had better pre-playoff odds (although incidentally, +9 rOrtg over them too). And the 2020 Nuggets were not that distinct from the Nuggets who just cruised to a title, nor were the respective series between them that different. You talk about playoff odds as if that matters more than the Nuggets going on a conference finals run and being the closest competitor to a dominant Lakers squad after upsetting a 7 SRS Clippers team. It is just an unserious position, and I would not care if you had set a real standard and just excluded those types of teams, but instead you are arbitrarily picking who qualifies and who does not, where title-winning cores playing in the conference finals evidently must be excluded out of narrative inconvenience.

Everyone agrees there is disparity between perception/accolades and real value for some players. The problem is when people swing too far in the other direction and pretend that it doesn't matter at all or doesn't matter in all cases. Of course Jamal Murray is really good despite never making an all-star game. But doesn't mean that all-star appearances are useless as indicators of player value. Or All-NBA teams. Or player rankings on NBA.com, ESPN etc.

So why are you wasting time here when broad media already takes Jordan over Lebron.

I do not think any of it matters to real assessment, no. You may as well tell me the greatest (English-language) movie is Titanic because it won eleven Academy Awards and is top five all-time in box office gross, adjusted or otherwise. Popularity is not quality in itself, and if you want to argue who was more popular or who played next to more popular players, we all already know the answer.

[lessthanjake]

The Celtics were a well-established playoff team I would characterise pretty much on par with their 2010 form, and I take them over the 5-SRS 2011 iteration which I am sure had better pre-playoff odds (although incidentally, +9 rOrtg over them too). And the 2020 Nuggets were not that distinct from the Nuggets who just cruised to a title, nor were the respective series between them that different. You talk about playoff odds as if that matters more than the Nuggets going on a conference finals run and being the closest competitor to a dominant Lakers squad after upsetting a 7 SRS Clippers team. It is just an unserious position, and I would not care if you had set a real standard and just excluded those types of teams, but instead you are arbitrarily picking who qualifies and who does not, where title-winning cores playing in the conference finals evidently must be excluded out of narrative inconvenience.

I don’t think it’s all that helpful to quibble over which teams were good and which weren’t, since it’s the type of argument where people will dig into motivated-reasoning-based views and go down rabbit holes about it. But, despite that sentiment, I’ll just note a couple things:

1. The 2012 Celtics were definitely a lesser team than they had been. When your core is as old as theirs was (34, 35, and 36 years old that year), significant team drops can and do happen quickly. The 2012 Celtics were not a major contender that year. They did make the ECF, but they hadn’t beaten anyone that was actually good along the way, so that doesn’t tell us much. I think it’s fair to say the Celtics were better than their SRS, since their best players did miss time, but it’s also the case that the Garnett/Pierce/Allen minutes had a significantly lower net rating than they’d had in any of the prior years (and the dominance of that group together had been such a big driver of the team’s greatness), so it wasn’t just about people missing games. For reference, you say you’d take the 2012 Celtics over the 2011 Celtics, but the Celtics big three had a +5.76 net rating together in 2012 and a +14.24 net rating together in 2011. The 2012 Celtics were still a dangerous team—particularly since they were the type of defense-focused, low-pace team that can get you into slow grinds that lesser teams have a better chance to nab wins in. But their status in the league at that point was closer to that of a team like the 2012 Clippers than it was to the top contenders. Which wasn’t true in years prior to that. That’s what can happen when a team with a very old core gets older. And it’s perhaps telling that the core didn’t stay intact after that year.

2. Saying “the 2020 Nuggets were not that distinct from the 2023 Nuggets” is a wild statement. As an initial matter, there’s literally no one on both rosters except Jokic, Murray, and Porter Jr. So that by itself is good reason to say the teams were indeed pretty distinct. And the three of the guys who were on both teams were meaningfully lesser players in 2020. To begin with, Porter Jr. was a 21-year-old rookie bench player in 2020—a completely different player and context for him than in 2023. More importantly, Jokic himself was a completely different player in 2020 and 2023. He was already good in 2020, but this is a player who made a very clear jump from a really good player to an MVP-level player in the meantime. Murray is the only one that you could reasonably argue wasn’t very different. But the bottom line is that the 2023 Nuggets and 2020 Nuggets only have three players in common, and one of them was a rookie bench player in 2020 and the team’s 3rd best player in 2023, while the other was a really good player in 2020 and the best player in the NBA in 2023. To say the two teams “were not that distinct” is just bizarre.

[AEnigma]

That tracks for someone who likes to treat the 1991-93 Bulls and 1996-98 Bulls as completely disconnected from each other, but for the rest of us, the through-line is extremely evident.

The 2011/12 Celtics bit is irrelevant quibbling: either way, we are talking a +9 rOrtg that was arbitrarily excluded. I do not believe you would take the same approach if it ever happened to be convenient to the arguments you wanted to make — Rajon Rondo elevated to all-NBA that year, of course they are better! — but both iterations serve the same core point.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Jokic isn't quite in this tier for me yet. He's great, clear MVP level, might be top 10 offensive guy ever, but he's unproven for a top 5 type guy. No RS team result to really hang his hat on (this is their best result and they're a 57 win, #5 offense, #4 SRS squad, great, but not historically great).

I actually think there’s a pretty major RS team result offensively that people don’t realize: No star player has ever had their team score as many points per 100 possessions with them on the floor as the Nuggets scored with Jokic on the floor in the 2022-2023 season (and no one is even all that close). The Nuggets were only 5th in offensive rating overall, but that’s just because they were an awful offense with Jokic off the floor. No offense in NBA history has scored as efficiently with their star on the floor as the Nuggets did last season with Jokic on the floor. Of course, the league-wide explosion in offense is a huge factor here and it’d be perfectly reasonable to look at league-relative terms and say that something like the 2005 Suns with Nash on the floor was actually the best. But I do think that the fact that no player has ever ran an offense more efficiently than Jokic did last season qualifies as a “RS team result to really hang his hat on” offensively.

He has one great playoff run, but it's 1 run and the competition was underwhelming. His impact stats are great, top of the league level, but don't seem to be at the level of outlier that Nash/LeBron/Steph all reached.

He’s been dominant in impact metrics in general. Since his true prime began, he’s usually led the league in measures like EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, etc. And, of course, offense is the main thing driving those numbers. I think when people label players outliers, they forget that these stats are noisy enough that no one is truly dominating them constantly—even the past players they’re saying were outliers. LeBron did not have a 5-year span where he led the league in NBAShotCharts RAPM (though that started in 2011, so it’s quite possible he would’ve led in an earlier 5-year span if they had it). LeBron only led the league in EPM three times (2006, 2010, and 2013), and two of them were by a pretty small margin. He led the league in LEBRON four times (2010, 2012, 2013, and 2016), and all but one of them was by a small margin. LeBron never led the league in RAPTOR (though, of course, the stat only started in 2013-2014). On a year-by-year basis, we have not actually seen anyone that just dominates every year across all measures. There’s too much variance for that to happen. The best players lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of virtually every measure. Over larger sample sizes of seasons, that consistency makes them look incredible, but if you look holistically they’re not typically year-to-year outliers overall. Jokic is very consistent with that IMO. And, unsurprisingly, larger sample sizes of seasons make him look incredible too—with Jokic having the highest RAPM in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM, including having the highest ORAPM (ahead of Steph, who has the 2nd highest ORAPM). Of course, impact data is not definitive at all. There’s lots of additional nuance, as well as potential methodological flaws and biases, statistical noise, etc. But I don’t see impact data as a thing that can be used against Jokic in any meaningful way, if we actually take a holistic look at the data (rather than cherry-picking out the best and worst measures for given players—not saying you’ve done that, of course).

That said, I definitely agree on the Nash shout, and I do actually lean towards Nash being the better offensive player than Jokic, at least in era-relative terms. Some of Nash’s greatness at the time was being significantly ahead of the curve in terms of general basketball strategy, so I’m not *sure* he’d be nearly as good in era-relative terms now (where he wouldn’t have that advantage), but at the time he was just outrageously effective.

EDIT: Also, as I said in my first post on this thread, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to keep Jokic at or near the bottom of this list, just on the basis of him being much less far into his career, and therefore inherently less proven in this regard. For me, I’ve seen enough to rank Jokic based on how I see him, but I think taking a different position on that (as you have here) is totally valid.

Lebron had the highest per-possession impact ever in Pre-Tracking RAPTOR in 2009 (pre-tracking RAPTOR has more compressed values). This RAPTOR goes back to 1977. If you count high minutes guys of at least 2,500 minutes, Lebron also lead the league in RAPTOR in 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

*Edit, the minutes threshold should be 3,000 minutes, not 2,500 minutes.

https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor

You said Lebron "only," lead in the LEBRON metric 4 times, but mind you the stat only goes back to 2010, and thus missed some potential years he might have been #1.

Also, considering this is an offensive discussing, in the hybrid-metrics you mentioned where we have the exact same data for both of them, Lebron peaks higher in both of them.

EPM
Lebron-8.3

Jokic-7.7


LEBRON Metric

Lebron-7.31

Jokic-6.19


I've already been over the 1997-2024 RAPM issue with you so I won't rehash it, although I will just mention for the edification of other viewers again that age adjusted RAPM has Lebron higher on offense and overall.

Also, considering some posters, do value the PS so much, I could see why handwaving PS samples isn't satisfying enough conclusion to some. We are talking about the best PS players ever, and therefore the onus will be put on the PS. It's not wrong to say we need to see larger sample sizes to evaluate a player, but when you say you need more evidence for certain specifics to reflect what you are seeing, this in it of itself is probably enough evidence to argue someone isn't on the same level.


To reiterate, what this means is the error bands around someone's peak are much larger, because we don't know how strongly to take the sample at face value. That is maybe enough for disqualification at this level, depending on philosophy.

[lessthanjake]

Jokic isn't quite in this tier for me yet. He's great, clear MVP level, might be top 10 offensive guy ever, but he's unproven for a top 5 type guy. No RS team result to really hang his hat on (this is their best result and they're a 57 win, #5 offense, #4 SRS squad, great, but not historically great).

I actually think there’s a pretty major RS team result offensively that people don’t realize: No star player has ever had their team score as many points per 100 possessions with them on the floor as the Nuggets scored with Jokic on the floor in the 2022-2023 season (and no one is even all that close). The Nuggets were only 5th in offensive rating overall, but that’s just because they were an awful offense with Jokic off the floor. No offense in NBA history has scored as efficiently with their star on the floor as the Nuggets did last season with Jokic on the floor. Of course, the league-wide explosion in offense is a huge factor here and it’d be perfectly reasonable to look at league-relative terms and say that something like the 2005 Suns with Nash on the floor was actually the best. But I do think that the fact that no player has ever ran an offense more efficiently than Jokic did last season qualifies as a “RS team result to really hang his hat on” offensively.

He has one great playoff run, but it's 1 run and the competition was underwhelming. His impact stats are great, top of the league level, but don't seem to be at the level of outlier that Nash/LeBron/Steph all reached.

He’s been dominant in impact metrics in general. Since his true prime began, he’s usually led the league in measures like EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, etc. And, of course, offense is the main thing driving those numbers. I think when people label players outliers, they forget that these stats are noisy enough that no one is truly dominating them constantly—even the past players they’re saying were outliers. LeBron did not have a 5-year span where he led the league in NBAShotCharts RAPM (though that started in 2011, so it’s quite possible he would’ve led in an earlier 5-year span if they had it). LeBron only led the league in EPM three times (2006, 2010, and 2013), and two of them were by a pretty small margin. He led the league in LEBRON four times (2010, 2012, 2013, and 2016), and all but one of them was by a small margin. LeBron never led the league in RAPTOR (though, of course, the stat only started in 2013-2014). On a year-by-year basis, we have not actually seen anyone that just dominates every year across all measures. There’s too much variance for that to happen. The best players lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of virtually every measure. Over larger sample sizes of seasons, that consistency makes them look incredible, but if you look holistically they’re not typically year-to-year outliers overall. Jokic is very consistent with that IMO. And, unsurprisingly, larger sample sizes of seasons make him look incredible too—with Jokic having the highest RAPM in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM, including having the highest ORAPM (ahead of Steph, who has the 2nd highest ORAPM). Of course, impact data is not definitive at all. There’s lots of additional nuance, as well as potential methodological flaws and biases, statistical noise, etc. But I don’t see impact data as a thing that can be used against Jokic in any meaningful way, if we actually take a holistic look at the data (rather than cherry-picking out the best and worst measures for given players—not saying you’ve done that, of course).

That said, I definitely agree on the Nash shout, and I do actually lean towards Nash being the better offensive player than Jokic, at least in era-relative terms. Some of Nash’s greatness at the time was being significantly ahead of the curve in terms of general basketball strategy, so I’m not *sure* he’d be nearly as good in era-relative terms now (where he wouldn’t have that advantage), but at the time he was just outrageously effective.

EDIT: Also, as I said in my first post on this thread, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to keep Jokic at or near the bottom of this list, just on the basis of him being much less far into his career, and therefore inherently less proven in this regard. For me, I’ve seen enough to rank Jokic based on how I see him, but I think taking a different position on that (as you have here) is totally valid.

Lebron had the high per-possession impact ever in Pre-Tracking RAPTOR in 2009 (pre-tracking RAPTOR has more compressed values). This RAPTOR goes back to 1977. If you count high minutes guys of at least 2,500 minutes, Lebron also lead the league in RAPTOR in 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

You said Lebron "only," lead in the LEBRON metric 4 times, but mind you the stat only goes back to 2010, and thus missed some potential years he might have been #1.

Pre-Tracking RAPTOR isn’t really the same metric at all (it uses different inputs, and that’s why they actually called it “Approximate RAPTOR”), so I think my statement was accurate. In any event, it’s worth noting that in that Approximate RAPTOR stat, LeBron led the league 4 times, with 2nd place being quite close in 3 of those years (including in that 2009 year you mention). So if you actually want to combine RAPTOR and Approximate RAPTOR together, it is quite consistent with what I recounted for the other measures. (Minor Note: LeBron did not lead the league in Approximate RAPTOR in 2007, even just among players with 2,500+ minutes. Ginobili was above him and had 2,662 minutes).

And yes, LeBron might’ve potentially led the league in LEBRON in pre-2010 years if the stat existed in those years (2009 being the most likely one). But that’s really not all that important to the overarching point here. The point is that no one has just dominated impact metrics virtually every year across virtually all measures. LeBron simply did not do that, as I think my post showed. As I said, the best players generally lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of the league in virtually every measure. That is an accurate description for prime LeBron, and it is also an accurate description for prime Jokic so far (as well as one or two others, IMO). I suspect these measures are just too noisy for something beyond that to even be realistically possible. Of course, over large sample sizes players with this kind of consistency ends up looking really great, but I don’t see how one could argue that Jokic isn’t top-tier in that regard when we see Jokic literally being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoff RAPM. I just don’t see some real impact-data distinction to be made between Jokic and anyone else.

[LukaTheGOAT]

I actually think there’s a pretty major RS team result offensively that people don’t realize: No star player has ever had their team score as many points per 100 possessions with them on the floor as the Nuggets scored with Jokic on the floor in the 2022-2023 season (and no one is even all that close). The Nuggets were only 5th in offensive rating overall, but that’s just because they were an awful offense with Jokic off the floor. No offense in NBA history has scored as efficiently with their star on the floor as the Nuggets did last season with Jokic on the floor. Of course, the league-wide explosion in offense is a huge factor here and it’d be perfectly reasonable to look at league-relative terms and say that something like the 2005 Suns with Nash on the floor was actually the best. But I do think that the fact that no player has ever ran an offense more efficiently than Jokic did last season qualifies as a “RS team result to really hang his hat on” offensively.



He’s been dominant in impact metrics in general. Since his true prime began, he’s usually led the league in measures like EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, etc. And, of course, offense is the main thing driving those numbers. I think when people label players outliers, they forget that these stats are noisy enough that no one is truly dominating them constantly—even the past players they’re saying were outliers. LeBron did not have a 5-year span where he led the league in NBAShotCharts RAPM (though that started in 2011, so it’s quite possible he would’ve led in an earlier 5-year span if they had it). LeBron only led the league in EPM three times (2006, 2010, and 2013), and two of them were by a pretty small margin. He led the league in LEBRON four times (2010, 2012, 2013, and 2016), and all but one of them was by a small margin. LeBron never led the league in RAPTOR (though, of course, the stat only started in 2013-2014). On a year-by-year basis, we have not actually seen anyone that just dominates every year across all measures. There’s too much variance for that to happen. The best players lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of virtually every measure. Over larger sample sizes of seasons, that consistency makes them look incredible, but if you look holistically they’re not typically year-to-year outliers overall. Jokic is very consistent with that IMO. And, unsurprisingly, larger sample sizes of seasons make him look incredible too—with Jokic having the highest RAPM in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM, including having the highest ORAPM (ahead of Steph, who has the 2nd highest ORAPM). Of course, impact data is not definitive at all. There’s lots of additional nuance, as well as potential methodological flaws and biases, statistical noise, etc. But I don’t see impact data as a thing that can be used against Jokic in any meaningful way, if we actually take a holistic look at the data (rather than cherry-picking out the best and worst measures for given players—not saying you’ve done that, of course).

That said, I definitely agree on the Nash shout, and I do actually lean towards Nash being the better offensive player than Jokic, at least in era-relative terms. Some of Nash’s greatness at the time was being significantly ahead of the curve in terms of general basketball strategy, so I’m not *sure* he’d be nearly as good in era-relative terms now (where he wouldn’t have that advantage), but at the time he was just outrageously effective.

EDIT: Also, as I said in my first post on this thread, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to keep Jokic at or near the bottom of this list, just on the basis of him being much less far into his career, and therefore inherently less proven in this regard. For me, I’ve seen enough to rank Jokic based on how I see him, but I think taking a different position on that (as you have here) is totally valid.

Lebron had the high per-possession impact ever in Pre-Tracking RAPTOR in 2009 (pre-tracking RAPTOR has more compressed values). This RAPTOR goes back to 1977. If you count high minutes guys of at least 2,500 minutes, Lebron also lead the league in RAPTOR in 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

You said Lebron "only," lead in the LEBRON metric 4 times, but mind you the stat only goes back to 2010, and thus missed some potential years he might have been #1.

Pre-Tracking RAPTOR isn’t really the same metric at all (it uses different inputs, and that’s why they actually called it “Approximate RAPTOR”), so I think my statement was accurate. In any event, it’s worth noting that in that Approximate RAPTOR stat, LeBron led the league 4 times, with 2nd place being quite close in 3 of those years (including in that 2009 year you mention). So if you actually want to combine RAPTOR and Approximate RAPTOR together, it is quite consistent with what I recounted for the other measures. (Minor Note: LeBron did not lead the league in Approximate RAPTOR in 2007, even just among players with 2,500+ minutes. Ginobili was above him and had 2,662 minutes).

And yes, LeBron might’ve potentially led the league in LEBRON in pre-2010 years if the stat existed in those years (2009 being the most likely one). But that’s really not all that important to the overarching point here. The point is that no one has just dominated impact metrics virtually every year across virtually all measures. LeBron simply did not do that, as I think my post showed. As I said, the best players generally lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of the league in virtually every measure. That is an accurate description for prime LeBron, and it is also an accurate description for prime Jokic so far (as well as one or two others, IMO). I suspect these measures are just too noisy for something beyond that to even be realistically possible. Of course, over large sample sizes players with this kind of consistency ends up looking really great, but I don’t see how one could argue that Jokic isn’t top-tier in that regard when we see Jokic literally being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoff RAPM. I just don’t see some real impact-data distinction to be made between Jokic and anyone else.

Good correction on the Ginobli point, it should be 3000 minutes.

I don't really see the point of mentioning the separation between Lebron and the rest of the pack in 2009. It is the #1 season ever for the pre-track RAPTOR metric, he just so happened to be in the same year as another ATG season. If you put that 2009 season in almost any other year, it would be #1 by a significant margin. Lebron peaked higher in LEBRON and EPM, does it really matter the margins in those seasons between him and other guys. Jokic didn't have someone like CP3 that put up such good numbers in EPM for instance, as for example CP3 peaked higher than Jokic too by EPM.

The Chris Paul point kind of leads to my next point which is that, what someone considers good evidence, might be considered lacking to others. You mentioned Lebron never lead a 5-year period in NBA Shot Charts RAPM. I am pretty sure CP3 did, if I recall correctly and maybe multiple times. While this is a notable data point, this still hasn't yielded Paul in any GOAT talks, as there are other statistical indicators that Paul falls in (particularly PS plus-minus, which is probably a gripe some people have with Jokic's profile). Jokic's case for offensive GOAT/GOAT is MUCH MUCH stronger but the point being is what might be considered sufficient evidence to you to put Jokic in such a tier, might be more heavily scrutinized by others.

An example is, some might find Lebron having two of the top 3, 2-year RAPM stretches in Englemann RAPM, 7 years apart from each other a more impressive/stronger datapoint for his argument over Jokic being #1 in ShorCharts 5-year data set. How you weigh these factors will vary who ends up in your tier 1A.

The 1997-2024 RS+PS Playoff RAPM point has been explained before. Not everyone will interpret the impact data the same but considering Jokic is in the heart of his prime, it would make sense that he rates out the highest, as he has experienced pre-prime, and post-prime impact years like the guys in front of him.

Also 1997-2024 Playoff RAPM is available, and dependent on a person's views, it could be rather damning for the case for Jokic here. I know you don't like looking PS only-samples for a lot of guys, but not everyone holds this viewpoint, and this might be reason for others to hold different views in terms of what tier Jokic is in, which was my point.

[AEnigma]

Just so difficult to imagine someone consistently dominating any given five-year stretch.

[Peregrine01]

Lebron had the high per-possession impact ever in Pre-Tracking RAPTOR in 2009 (pre-tracking RAPTOR has more compressed values). This RAPTOR goes back to 1977. If you count high minutes guys of at least 2,500 minutes, Lebron also lead the league in RAPTOR in 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

You said Lebron "only," lead in the LEBRON metric 4 times, but mind you the stat only goes back to 2010, and thus missed some potential years he might have been #1.

Pre-Tracking RAPTOR isn’t really the same metric at all (it uses different inputs, and that’s why they actually called it “Approximate RAPTOR”), so I think my statement was accurate. In any event, it’s worth noting that in that Approximate RAPTOR stat, LeBron led the league 4 times, with 2nd place being quite close in 3 of those years (including in that 2009 year you mention). So if you actually want to combine RAPTOR and Approximate RAPTOR together, it is quite consistent with what I recounted for the other measures. (Minor Note: LeBron did not lead the league in Approximate RAPTOR in 2007, even just among players with 2,500+ minutes. Ginobili was above him and had 2,662 minutes).

And yes, LeBron might’ve potentially led the league in LEBRON in pre-2010 years if the stat existed in those years (2009 being the most likely one). But that’s really not all that important to the overarching point here. The point is that no one has just dominated impact metrics virtually every year across virtually all measures. LeBron simply did not do that, as I think my post showed. As I said, the best players generally lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of the league in virtually every measure. That is an accurate description for prime LeBron, and it is also an accurate description for prime Jokic so far (as well as one or two others, IMO). I suspect these measures are just too noisy for something beyond that to even be realistically possible. Of course, over large sample sizes players with this kind of consistency ends up looking really great, but I don’t see how one could argue that Jokic isn’t top-tier in that regard when we see Jokic literally being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoff RAPM. I just don’t see some real impact-data distinction to be made between Jokic and anyone else.

Good correction on the Ginobli point.

I don't really see the point of mentioning the separation between Lebron and the rest of the pack in 2009. It is the #1 season ever for the pre-track RAPTOR metric, he just so happened to be in the same year as another ATG season. If you put that 2009 season in almost any other year, it would be #1 by a significant margin.

The 1997-2024 RS+PS Playoff RAPM point has been explained before. Not everyone will interpret the impact data the same but considering Jokic is in the heart of his prime, it would make sense that he rates out the highest, as he has experienced pre-prime, and post-prime impact years like the guys in front of him.

Also 1997-2024 Playoff RAPM is available, and dependent on a person's views, it could be rather damning for the case for Jokic here. I know you don't like looking PS only-samples for a lot of guys, but not everyone holds this viewpoint, and this might be reason for others to hold different views in terms of what tier Jokic is in, which was my point.

I don't think playoff RAPM means all that much because the star players play 40+ minutes a game so any meaningful bench minutes is mostly filler, noise or during complete blowouts. The sample sizes generated from on/off data just isn't meaningful.

Moreover, the on/off stuff in the playoffs is so match-up dependent. For example, Jokic's on/off and RAPM looks terrible during the 2022 Warriors series - but that was entirely because his minutes overlapped entirely with Steph and Draymond's. Cousins' had an excellent on/off in that series but he had almost no overlap with Steph and Draymond and was feasting on Bjelica and Otto Porter Jr. Cousins had a way better RAPM in that series but does it really mean anything?

[LukaTheGOAT]

Pre-Tracking RAPTOR isn’t really the same metric at all (it uses different inputs, and that’s why they actually called it “Approximate RAPTOR”), so I think my statement was accurate. In any event, it’s worth noting that in that Approximate RAPTOR stat, LeBron led the league 4 times, with 2nd place being quite close in 3 of those years (including in that 2009 year you mention). So if you actually want to combine RAPTOR and Approximate RAPTOR together, it is quite consistent with what I recounted for the other measures. (Minor Note: LeBron did not lead the league in Approximate RAPTOR in 2007, even just among players with 2,500+ minutes. Ginobili was above him and had 2,662 minutes).

And yes, LeBron might’ve potentially led the league in LEBRON in pre-2010 years if the stat existed in those years (2009 being the most likely one). But that’s really not all that important to the overarching point here. The point is that no one has just dominated impact metrics virtually every year across virtually all measures. LeBron simply did not do that, as I think my post showed. As I said, the best players generally lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of the league in virtually every measure. That is an accurate description for prime LeBron, and it is also an accurate description for prime Jokic so far (as well as one or two others, IMO). I suspect these measures are just too noisy for something beyond that to even be realistically possible. Of course, over large sample sizes players with this kind of consistency ends up looking really great, but I don’t see how one could argue that Jokic isn’t top-tier in that regard when we see Jokic literally being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoff RAPM. I just don’t see some real impact-data distinction to be made between Jokic and anyone else.

Good correction on the Ginobli point.

I don't really see the point of mentioning the separation between Lebron and the rest of the pack in 2009. It is the #1 season ever for the pre-track RAPTOR metric, he just so happened to be in the same year as another ATG season. If you put that 2009 season in almost any other year, it would be #1 by a significant margin.

The 1997-2024 RS+PS Playoff RAPM point has been explained before. Not everyone will interpret the impact data the same but considering Jokic is in the heart of his prime, it would make sense that he rates out the highest, as he has experienced pre-prime, and post-prime impact years like the guys in front of him.

Also 1997-2024 Playoff RAPM is available, and dependent on a person's views, it could be rather damning for the case for Jokic here. I know you don't like looking PS only-samples for a lot of guys, but not everyone holds this viewpoint, and this might be reason for others to hold different views in terms of what tier Jokic is in, which was my point.

I don't think playoff RAPM means all that much because the star players play 40+ minutes a game so any meaningful bench minutes is mostly filler, noise or during complete blowouts. The sample sizes generated from on/off data just isn't meaningful.

Moreover, the on/off stuff in the playoffs is so match-up dependent. For example, Jokic's on/off and RAPM looks terrible during the 2022 Warriors series - but that was entirely because his minutes overlapped entirely with Steph and Draymond's. Cousins' had an excellent on/off in that series but he had almost no overlap with Steph and Draymond and was feasting on Bjelica and Otto Porter Jr. Cousins had a way better RAPM in that series but does it really mean anything?

I mean this is fine, but considering some of the points made by people in these threads/people I've spoken to off of this form, they do find Jokic's PS plus-minus profile a bit eye-opening, which is why I was explaining how some could come to a different conclusion than lessthanjake. Embiid and Giannis are in a different tier from Jokic if you just look at the PS on/off numbers, and we all know that isn't true. Still it might be enough of a demerit where people would prefer to pause on giving the highest of titles until further notice.

Dirk also had a pretty underwhelming PS plus-minus profile in the beginning of his PS career but things improved over time.

[lessthanjake]

Lebron had the high per-possession impact ever in Pre-Tracking RAPTOR in 2009 (pre-tracking RAPTOR has more compressed values). This RAPTOR goes back to 1977. If you count high minutes guys of at least 2,500 minutes, Lebron also lead the league in RAPTOR in 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

You said Lebron "only," lead in the LEBRON metric 4 times, but mind you the stat only goes back to 2010, and thus missed some potential years he might have been #1.

Pre-Tracking RAPTOR isn’t really the same metric at all (it uses different inputs, and that’s why they actually called it “Approximate RAPTOR”), so I think my statement was accurate. In any event, it’s worth noting that in that Approximate RAPTOR stat, LeBron led the league 4 times, with 2nd place being quite close in 3 of those years (including in that 2009 year you mention). So if you actually want to combine RAPTOR and Approximate RAPTOR together, it is quite consistent with what I recounted for the other measures. (Minor Note: LeBron did not lead the league in Approximate RAPTOR in 2007, even just among players with 2,500+ minutes. Ginobili was above him and had 2,662 minutes).

And yes, LeBron might’ve potentially led the league in LEBRON in pre-2010 years if the stat existed in those years (2009 being the most likely one). But that’s really not all that important to the overarching point here. The point is that no one has just dominated impact metrics virtually every year across virtually all measures. LeBron simply did not do that, as I think my post showed. As I said, the best players generally lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of the league in virtually every measure. That is an accurate description for prime LeBron, and it is also an accurate description for prime Jokic so far (as well as one or two others, IMO). I suspect these measures are just too noisy for something beyond that to even be realistically possible. Of course, over large sample sizes players with this kind of consistency ends up looking really great, but I don’t see how one could argue that Jokic isn’t top-tier in that regard when we see Jokic literally being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoff RAPM. I just don’t see some real impact-data distinction to be made between Jokic and anyone else.

Good correction on the Ginobli point.

I don't really see the point of mentioning the separation between Lebron and the rest of the pack in 2009. It is the #1 season ever for the pre-track RAPTOR metric, he just so happened to be in the same year as another ATG season. If you put that 2009 season in almost any other year, it would be #1 by a significant margin.

The 1997-2024 RS+PS Playoff RAPM point has been explained before. Not everyone will interpret the impact data the same but considering Jokic is in the heart of his prime, it would make sense that he rates out the highest, as he has experienced pre-prime, and post-prime impact years like the guys in front of him.

Also 1997-2024 Playoff RAPM is available, and dependent on a person's views, it could be rather damning for the case for Jokic here. I know you don't like looking PS only-samples for a lot of guys, but not everyone holds this viewpoint, and this might be reason for others to hold different views in terms of what tier Jokic is in, which was my point.

The point of mentioning someone being close to him is that the discussion related to an assertion that Jokic isn’t an impact-data “outlier” like some others (LeBron, Steph, and Nash being mentioned). Part of my response was reminding people that no one is truly dominating these stats constantly, in some consistently outlier-like manner. And that’s where this comes in. If a player usually doesn’t lead the league in their prime and when they do lead the league there’s typically someone in the same season that is close to them, then that doesn’t exactly look like an outlier on a year-to-year basis. The consistency might start to look like an outlier with larger sample sizes, but the large-sample stuff we have has Jokic looking comparable to anyone (#1 in 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM), so that’s not an argument in favor of Jokic being in a second-tier in terms of impact.

As for the thing about Jokic perhaps being higher than he will end up in career RAPM, that *may* turn out right. We don’t know. He certainly has a smaller percent of his career being his prime right now than people whose whole career has finished or almost finished, so it’s quite plausible that his numbers won’t go down in the end (i.e. Jokic adding more prime years might end up having a stronger positive effect than the inevitable negative effect of later declined years). And, either way, if we’re at the point where we have to say “This guy is #1 but I think the data may be a bit biased in his favor, so I’m not convinced he’s really the best in this” then I think we’re clearly outside the realm of saying the guy isn’t “at the level” of other guys in impact data. Like, even if you can reason yourself into thinking that Jokic being #1 in career RAPM doesn’t really mean he’s the best in RAPM, him being #1 surely does at least put him in the top-tier level (which, honestly, is really all that matters when we’re talking about measures that should be understood to be flawed and to have significant confidence intervals).

As for the playoff-only RAPM, if someone wants to base their view of Jokic’s impact on raw RAPM in the playoffs, where the “off” sample is a grand total of 748 minutes (not to mention that the regression will be “correcting” for the effect of players for whom there’s even less playoff data), then that’s their prerogative but I think that’s plainly relying on noise. That’s significantly more noisy than even single-season raw RAPM—which is itself extremely noisy. For what it’s worth, measures that try to actually reduce the noise in small samples like this tend to indicate Jokic has high playoff impact. For instance, Jokic easily has the highest minutes-weighted playoff RAPTOR of any player (9.47, compared to 8.55 for Kawhi, 8.41 for LeBron, 8.25 for Steph, and 7.97 for Draymond). This is unsurprising, because we have all seen Jokic be a fantastic playoff performer.

[lessthanjake]

Just so difficult to imagine someone consistently dominating any given five-year stretch.

That is one RAPM measure, and we have another five-year RAPM measure that has LeBron never being 1st in any five-year time period (though the measure does only start at 2011). Furthermore, as should be clear from my posts, I was largely discussing single-year measures. As I said, the best players do consistently well year-to-year in impact measures, though they don’t just constantly dominate, and that consistency makes them look great in larger-sample data. Jokic’s single-year measures are consistent with that. Meanwhile, Jokic looks great in larger-sample impact data too—with a great example being him being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM (and, most relevantly for purposes of this thread, being #1 in ORAPM there, a bit ahead of Steph at #2).

[eminence]

.

Best on-court offensive rating is indeed a noteworthy accomplishment. Not something I'll normally think of, but worth noting for sure. Good pointing that out.

Some philosophy differences that may lead to different conclusions:

Generally for team accomplishment I tend to lean more heavily towards overall Net than Ortg/Drtg than most do, even when strictly speaking offense or defense. Really win% higher than Net, but they're close enough to equal in the RS to not make a fuss (in the playoffs/small sample this is less true).

Rough example, I'd probably say a +4/-6/+10 offense was better than a +5/-1/+6 offense (offense/defense/net).

Some degree of this for me in RAPM vs Orapm/Drapm as well, though lesser.

I don't consider all-in-ones (PIPM/RPM/Raptor/etc) to be impact stats, but that they use impact stats. Impact stats are stats with only scoreboard inputs for me - plus/minus, on/off, apm, rapm (yes yes, lambda decisions and whatnot). All-in-ones are notably more stable, but generally in samples of a couple of seasons I prefer the simpler variations.

Semi aside - LeBron's best regular season impact stats almost certainly come from 09/10.

I do not see a use case for huge sample apms (eg '97-'24). My preferred period is 3 years (4 is next, but nobody publishes that).

[lessthanjake]

.

Best on-court offensive rating is indeed a noteworthy accomplishment. Not something I'll normally think of, but worth noting for sure. Good pointing that out.

Some philosophy differences that may lead to different conclusions:

Generally for team accomplishment I tend to lean more heavily towards overall Net than Ortg/Drtg than most do, even when strictly speaking offense or defense. Really win% higher than Net, but they're close enough to equal in the RS to not make a fuss (in the playoffs/small sample this is less true).

Rough example, I'd probably say a +4/-6/+10 offense was better than a +5/-1/+6 offense (offense/defense/net).

Some degree of this for me in RAPM vs Orapm/Drapm as well, though lesser.

I don't consider all-in-ones (PIPM/RPM/Raptor/etc) to be impact stats, but that they use impact stats. Impact stats are stats with only scoreboard inputs for me - plus/minus, on/off, apm, rapm (yes yes, lambda decisions and whatnot). All-in-ones are notably more stable, but generally in samples of a couple of seasons I prefer the simpler variations.

Semi aside - LeBron's best regular season impact stats almost certainly come from 09/10.

I do not see a use case for huge sample apms (eg '97-'24). My preferred period is 3 years (4 is next, but nobody publishes that).

This is all reasonable, and I’ll note that I do actually tend to philosophically agree that looking at how good a team’s defense is is relevant to assessing how good their offense is. If you’ve got a great offense *and* defense, then you’ll very often get huge leads that’ll lead to the team not even needing to try very hard afterwards (and we know teams don’t do as well when they’ve got huge leads). So that’d suggest that if Team A and Team B have equal ORTG but Team A has a better DRTG, then Team A probably actually has a better offense. That said, there’s the countervailing factor that the team with the better DRTG gets more stops, and therefore their offense is facing a set defense less. That factor would suggest that Team B probably actually has the better offense, since they’ve achieved the same ORTG against a set defense more often. Given that these effects go in opposite directions, I’m not sure how this cuts overall, but it’s something I’ve thought about a lot (without getting to a concrete conclusion). Am definitely curious if you have any particular thoughts on the tradeoff between those two factors.

[eminence]

This is all reasonable, and I’ll note that I do actually tend to philosophically agree that looking at how good a team’s defense is is relevant to assessing how good their offense is. If you’ve got a great offense *and* defense, then you’ll very often get huge leads that’ll lead to the team not even needing to try very hard afterwards (and we know teams don’t do as well when they’ve got huge leads). So that’d suggest that if Team A and Team B have equal ORTG but Team A has a better DRTG, then Team A probably actually has a better offense. That said, there’s the countervailing factor that the team with the better DRTG gets more stops, and therefore their offense is facing a set defense less. That factor would suggest that Team B probably actually has the better offense, since they’ve achieved the same ORTG against a set defense more often. Given that these effects go in opposite directions, I’m not sure how this cuts overall, but it’s something I’ve thought about a lot (without getting to a concrete conclusion). Am definitely curious if you have any particular thoughts on the tradeoff between those two factors.

The second one would seem to be a strong consideration for halfcourt offense, but tougher to weigh for overall offense, I tend towards the first, but don't have data on it, nor am I sure what data I'd even want to look at to do more than consider the concept.

Somewhat the reverse of turnover avoidant players (eg Chris Paul) improving their teams defense by limiting opponents transition opportunities.

[Djoker]

A poster above mentioned 2009 Lebron being first in RAPTOR and he is but RAPTOR is a rate stat. Taking into account minutes played, we get WAR which measures cumulative impact. Jordan has 7 seasons in the top 10 for what it's worth.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Pre-Tracking RAPTOR isn’t really the same metric at all (it uses different inputs, and that’s why they actually called it “Approximate RAPTOR”), so I think my statement was accurate. In any event, it’s worth noting that in that Approximate RAPTOR stat, LeBron led the league 4 times, with 2nd place being quite close in 3 of those years (including in that 2009 year you mention). So if you actually want to combine RAPTOR and Approximate RAPTOR together, it is quite consistent with what I recounted for the other measures. (Minor Note: LeBron did not lead the league in Approximate RAPTOR in 2007, even just among players with 2,500+ minutes. Ginobili was above him and had 2,662 minutes).

And yes, LeBron might’ve potentially led the league in LEBRON in pre-2010 years if the stat existed in those years (2009 being the most likely one). But that’s really not all that important to the overarching point here. The point is that no one has just dominated impact metrics virtually every year across virtually all measures. LeBron simply did not do that, as I think my post showed. As I said, the best players generally lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of the league in virtually every measure. That is an accurate description for prime LeBron, and it is also an accurate description for prime Jokic so far (as well as one or two others, IMO). I suspect these measures are just too noisy for something beyond that to even be realistically possible. Of course, over large sample sizes players with this kind of consistency ends up looking really great, but I don’t see how one could argue that Jokic isn’t top-tier in that regard when we see Jokic literally being #1 in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoff RAPM. I just don’t see some real impact-data distinction to be made between Jokic and anyone else.

Good correction on the Ginobli point.

I don't really see the point of mentioning the separation between Lebron and the rest of the pack in 2009. It is the #1 season ever for the pre-track RAPTOR metric, he just so happened to be in the same year as another ATG season. If you put that 2009 season in almost any other year, it would be #1 by a significant margin.

The 1997-2024 RS+PS Playoff RAPM point has been explained before. Not everyone will interpret the impact data the same but considering Jokic is in the heart of his prime, it would make sense that he rates out the highest, as he has experienced pre-prime, and post-prime impact years like the guys in front of him.

Also 1997-2024 Playoff RAPM is available, and dependent on a person's views, it could be rather damning for the case for Jokic here. I know you don't like looking PS only-samples for a lot of guys, but not everyone holds this viewpoint, and this might be reason for others to hold different views in terms of what tier Jokic is in, which was my point.

The point of mentioning someone being close to him is that the discussion related to an assertion that Jokic isn’t an impact-data “outlier” like some others (LeBron, Steph, and Nash being mentioned). Part of my response was reminding people that no one is truly dominating these stats constantly, in some consistently outlier-like manner. And that’s where this comes in. If a player usually doesn’t lead the league in their prime and when they do lead the league there’s typically someone in the same season that is close to them, then that doesn’t exactly look like an outlier on a year-to-year basis. The consistency might start to look like an outlier with larger sample sizes, but the large-sample stuff we have has Jokic looking comparable to anyone (#1 in 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM), so that’s not an argument in favor of Jokic being in a second-tier in terms of impact.

As for the thing about Jokic perhaps being higher than he will end up in career RAPM, that *may* turn out right. We don’t know. He certainly has a smaller percent of his career being his prime right now than people whose whole career has finished or almost finished, so it’s quite plausible that his numbers won’t go down in the end (i.e. Jokic adding more prime years might end up having a stronger positive effect than the inevitable negative effect of later declined years). And, either way, if we’re at the point where we have to say “This guy is #1 but I think the data may be a bit biased in his favor, so I’m not convinced he’s really the best in this” then I think we’re clearly outside the realm of saying the guy isn’t “at the level” of other guys in impact data. Like, even if you can reason yourself into thinking that Jokic being #1 in career RAPM doesn’t really mean he’s the best in RAPM, him being #1 surely does at least put him in the top-tier level (which, honestly, is really all that matters when we’re talking about measures that should be understood to be flawed and to have significant confidence intervals).

As for the playoff-only RAPM, if someone wants to base their view of Jokic’s impact on raw RAPM in the playoffs, where the “off” sample is a grand total of 748 minutes (not to mention that the regression will be “correcting” for the effect of players for whom there’s even less playoff data), then that’s their prerogative but I think that’s plainly relying on noise. That’s significantly more noisy than even single-season raw RAPM—which is itself extremely noisy. For what it’s worth, measures that try to actually reduce the noise in small samples like this tend to indicate Jokic has high playoff impact. For instance, Jokic easily has the highest minutes-weighted playoff RAPTOR of any player (9.47, compared to 8.55 for Kawhi, 8.41 for LeBron, 8.25 for Steph, and 7.97 for Draymond). This is unsurprising, because we have all seen Jokic be a fantastic playoff performer.

My point is that not all people just look at the raw one-number metrics, take an an account of how many metrics has 1 guy above another, and use that as heavy insight into if someone is in a certain tier of impact. Eminence/mine comment doesn't disagree that Jokic is #1 in a variety of impact metrics. But how people interpret these numbers will vary. Eminence's comment was more focused on team strength on offense and overall. I used it as a jumping off point, to explain that this is the way a lot of people go about analyzing numbers, instead at looking one numbers that attempt to capture everything. Jokic could very well end his career #1 in RAPM. How people assign the credit for that number, based on offense and defense splits will vary.

You would be challenged and pretty much fail to find a single one-number metric that doesn't have Chris Paul over Kobe Bryant. Yet, very few people, take seriously the idea that Paul was a better peak or prime guy. That is my point. That people's evaluation of if someone is in another's person tier of impact, has more to do than one-numbers. So once again a long-term RAPM sample that might be sufficient for you ti put him in a certain tier of impact, does not necessarily apply to others, especially because we do have age-adjusted RAPM samples that suggest there could be some distance between them.

Regarding the Minutes-Weighted RAPTOR part, yes, Jokic is #1 since 2014. However, if we look at the Estimated RAPTOR values and or Modern RAPTOR values, Lebron has multiple runs on a per-possession basis better than 2023 Jokic. Our friend Chris Paul, also pops up again here, as he has the best minutes weighted PS RAPTOR over a 3-year sample and pretty sure 5-year Peak as well (would need to calculate the latter so don't quote me).

[lessthanjake]

My point is that not all people just look at the raw one-number metrics, take an an account of how many metrics has 1 guy above another, and use that as heavy insight into if someone is in a certain tier of impact. Eminence/mine comment doesn't disagree that Jokic is #1 in a variety of impact metrics. But how people interpret these numbers will vary. Eminence's comment was more focused on team strength on offense and overall. I used it as a jumping off point, to explain that this is the way a lot of people go about analyzing numbers, instead at looking one numbers that attempt to capture everything. Jokic could very well end his career #1 in RAPM. How people assign the credit for that number, based on offense and defense splits will vary.

You would be challenged and pretty much fail to find a single one-number metric that doesn't have Chris Paul over Kobe Bryant. Yet, very few people, take seriously the idea that Paul was a better peak or prime guy. That is my point. That people's evaluation of if someone is in another's person tier of impact, has more to do than one-numbers. So once again a long-term RAPM sample that might be sufficient for you ti put him in a certain tier of impact, does not necessarily apply to others, especially because we do have age-adjusted RAPM samples that suggest there could be some distance between them.

I think it’d be a perfectly fair assessment to say that Chris Paul is above Kobe Bryant in impact data. That’s just pretty clearly the case. But that doesn’t mean Chris Paul is actually a superior player to Kobe Bryant, because impact data isn’t perfect at all (and indeed is highly flawed). So, if someone told me that they think Kobe Bryant is better than Chris Paul because Chris Paul isn’t in Kobe’s tier in impact data, then I’d say that that’s really not correct because the reasoning is based on a premise I don’t think is supported. However, if someone told me that they think Kobe Bryant is better than Chris Paul because Kobe grades out as superior in their view in other measures or using other approaches, then I wouldn’t tell them they must be wrong because of impact data saying otherwise. Basically, I’m not *at all* arguing that impact metrics tell us everything. I very frequently talk about how they’re inherently flawed and noisy! So I don’t think someone needs to base their opinion of Jokic on impact metrics. In fact, that’s really not what my view of him is primarily based on (my biggest consideration is, first and foremost, the dreaded, unempirical eye test). It’s just that if the conversation is specifically about what impact metrics say, I don’t really think it’s fair to say impact metrics actually meaningfully weigh against Jokic in this kind of discussion. As I said in my initial post on this point, one can choose to weigh things in a way that gets to that conclusion, but I think a holistic look at impact data overall wouldn’t support that conclusion. I suppose you can disagree with that, and I’ve already made my point on this, so there’s not much more to say. Again, though, that whole discussion is leaving aside the question of the actual utility of impact data in the first place.

Regarding the Minutes-Weighted RAPTOR part, yes, Jokic is #1 since 2014. However, if we look at the Estimated RAPTOR values and or Modern RAPTOR values, Lebron has multiple runs on a per-possession basis better than 2023 Jokic. Our friend Chris Paul, also pops up again here, as he has the best minutes weighted PS RAPTOR over a 3-year sample and pretty sure 5-year Peak as well (would need to calculate the latter so don't quote me).

I think that trying to dig into smaller and smaller samples for playoff impact data is not a good approach. It’s just taking something that’s already incredibly noisy and making it even noisier and then relying on the results. And, at the very least, the fact that Jokic grades out really well over the course of his career in playoff RAPTOR suggests that relying on very small-sample playoff RAPM to put him in a lower tier is probably not well-founded (as does the fact that we can just have watched him in the playoffs and know he’s been a great playoff performer, which would suggest that making some big RS vs. Playoffs distinction for him is quite dubious). But again, if others want to use this sort of approach, that’s their prerogative, but I definitely think it’s a bad approach. And if your point is that others can use an approach that I think is bad, I’d agree with you and just add that I can also point out when I think an approach is bad and why. Other people can then make up their own minds.

[Peregrine01]

One thing that almost never gets mentioned in these conversations but is a a huge differentiator for Jokic is screen-setting. Jokic might be the greatest screen-setter ever. Not only is he always in position (I can't recall him ever being called for offensive fouls for setting screens), he sets brick wall screens that always gives his teammates a big step on their defenders. Combine that with the fact that he's effective scoring nearly everywhere on the floor so defenders are always attached to him and he just might be the best guy to ever play a two-man game with.