Do we consider variance in eras’ draft strength enough?

[lessthanjake]

Do we consider enough the idiosyncratic strength of the top-tier players in different players’ draft generations? I think it is generally safe to say that talent in the NBA is virtually always going up in general, as the league becomes more international, more popular, and more lucrative. But talent at the very top end of the league really won’t necessarily fit that trend—there’s a lot of randomness when you’re inherently talking about players that are in the extreme right tail of talent. And, in fact, I think we have seen there be spans where a bunch of MVP-level players come into the league, and other spans where there’s very few people who will become MVP-level. And the more I think about it, the more I think that this actually genuinely has a huge effect on players’ careers, by making it easier or harder for them to stand out in certain time periods.

I’ll use the following players as examples: Jordan, LeBron, Duncan, and Shaq, and analyze things a bit in this regard.

Case Studies

- Michael Jordan

Jordan’s own generation was strong in MVP-level talent. In the draft classes in the years surrounding his draft class, you had Jordan, Hakeem, Barkley, Karl Malone, and David Robinson all as genuine MVP-level players (as well as other great players, of course, but those are the true top-tier guys IMO). This is a strong era in that regard. The result of having a bunch of all-time players in your era of drafts is that these guys are basically always around when you are and are generally in their prime at the same time. That makes it harder to be the clear standout of the era, and I think it’s a real testament to Jordan that he was able to be the clear standout regardless.

However, the era after Jordan’s was definitely weak. From the 1988 draft through at least the 1993 draft, you basically had no MVP-level player come into the league, besides Shaq. That weakness probably didn’t matter that much for Jordan in his first stint with the Bulls, since that generation mostly wouldn’t really have been in their prime during that period anyways. But I think it was a major factor in the second-three-peat years. Those were years where the people from Jordan’s era would be expected to be declining (and, indeed, Jordan himself had declined), while the guys in those weak draft classes would be expected to be around their prime. I think the fact that there was basically no one consequential besides Shaq in that later generation helped allow a somewhat-declined Jordan to still be the league’s clear best player.

- LeBron James

LeBron has a bit of a flip-side from Jordan. LeBron’s actual draft-class era was pretty weak. In the lengthy span from the 2000 draft all the way through the 2006 draft (same is true of 1999 but I think that’s a bit far back to go for LeBron’s generation), the only MVP-level talent you had was LeBron, Wade, and arguably Chris Paul and/or Dwight Howard (personally I at least wouldn’t include Dwight). I think this relative dearth of MVP-level talent in his actual generation made it easier for LeBron to stand out in his very peak years, because those are the years where the rest of his generation would be the ones in their prime (while surrounding generations were young or old) but there wasn’t a whole lot of top-tier talent in his generation to compete with (and, of course, he spent a lot of his peak years playing with one of the only MVP-level players of his draft generation).

At the same time, though, I think there’s a good argument that the eras surrounding LeBron’s were strong. In particular, the pretty short span from the 1995 to 1998 draft included Garnett, Kobe, Nash, Dirk, and Duncan. That was a good generation of top-tier players, and the result was that it was a lot harder for LeBron to distinguish himself from the pack in his earlier years (even though I think his actual level as a player in those years was fairly close to his peak years). Towards the very end of the 2000’s, those guys were largely older and declined some, and suddenly LeBron was the clear best (note: I think this partly explains the conundrum of why so many people believe LeBron’s peak year was also the first year of his prime—that doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, but it makes more sense as a premise when we consider that LeBron making marginal improvements was compounded by the other best players in the league declining). Meanwhile, I also think the era after LeBron’s was strong. You had guys like Curry, Durant, Harden, and to a lesser extent Westbrook and Kawhi coming out within a few short years of each other. That was a strong generation, and those guys were getting into their primes in the latter half of LeBron’s prime. LeBron was ultimately still better than those guys in those years (at least in the playoffs), but I think it’s unsurprising that the gap seemed a lot smaller (including, for instance, with impact data generally not having LeBron on top anymore in that latter half-ish of his prime). As for LeBron’s very late years, I personally think the current generation is strong, but I’ll refrain from applying this sort of analysis to this era, since we don’t have full hindsight yet.

- Tim Duncan

I’ve touched on the relevant eras here in the above, so I won’t repeat myself much. As I’ve noted, Duncan’s own draft era was strong. However, the other strong guys of that era (Garnett, Kobe, Nash, Dirk) did take some time to get going for various reasons, and the draft era before Duncan’s basically just had Shaq and that’s it. I think that left Duncan with a solid window for success early in his career—where there wasn’t much top-end talent in their prime in the league but him and Shaq. This left him as a clear top 2 player. Once the rest of his era matured though, Duncan himself naturally fell off a bit in stature in the league, because there was more competition. His team still was incredible and he still won a couple more titles in 2005 and 2007, but he didn’t so much stand out as a top 1-2 player, even though he himself probably hadn’t really declined yet. Then, as mentioned, the next draft era was fairly weak (with LeBron obviously being a big caveat to that), and I do think that that helped Duncan and his Spurs stay relevant and strong into Duncan’s very old years.

- Shaquille O’Neal

Like all of these other guys, Shaq was very good quite young. But in his earliest years, the league had the Jordan-era guys still in their primes, and Shaq couldn’t really stand out despite already being great. But, as discussed, Shaq’s own draft era was *very* weak with MVP-level talent. This allowed Shaq to stand out a ton once that older generation declined and/or were gone. But then the generation after Shaq’s was good, and I think that that contributed to Shaq having a pretty quick decline in stature in the league—with his own individual decline being compounded by the competition at the league’s highest end becoming better.

__________________________

Anyways, these are just examples of a few of recent history’s very best players. I think we could apply this sort of thought process to plenty of other players. The general upshot, though, is that I think we can generally track all-time great players’ stature in the league by looking at their age (i.e. where in the general expected career curve they were) and the quality of the top-tier players in the draft era that generally should’ve been peaking at the time. The trajectory of how much these guys did or didn’t stand out from the rest of the league seems to largely fall into place when taking those two factors into account. Of course, this isn’t to say that these players are equal players and this draft-era stuff is the only variable in how much they stood out. For instance, I think we’d virtually all agree that Jordan and LeBron were better than Shaq and Duncan. So this isn’t a thread meant for direct player comparison (so please don’t make it one). It’s more that I think this is a useful insight into the trajectory of great players’ careers.

[Colbinii]

I'm not sure this is more relevant than simply looking at how a player played against what competition.

Duncan played against Malone, KG/Kobe/Nash/Dirk, Durant/Westbrook, CP3 and LeBron all in their primes.

Shaq played against Jordan, Pippen, end of Prime Malone, Hakeem, Duncan and KG all in their primes.

LeBron played against Duncan, KG, Dirk, Dwight, Durant/Westbrook, Curry/Draymond, Durant and Jokic all in their primes.

Jordan played against Bird, Barkley, Magic, Shaq and Malone all in their primes.

What's funny is that with Jordan, he never even played against Hakeem Olajuwon or David Robinson in the post-season. I don't understand how their level of player directly affects a comparison of GOAT level players.

[lessthanjake]

I'm not sure this is more relevant than simply looking at how a player played against what competition.

Duncan played against Malone, KG/Kobe/Nash/Dirk, Durant/Westbrook, CP3 and LeBron all in their primes.

Shaq played against Jordan, Pippen, end of Prime Malone, Hakeem, Duncan and KG all in their primes.

LeBron played against Duncan, KG, Dirk, Dwight, Durant/Westbrook, Curry/Draymond, Durant and Jokic all in their primes.

Jordan played against Bird, Barkley, Magic, Shaq and Malone all in their primes.

What's funny is that with Jordan, he never even played against Hakeem Olajuwon or David Robinson in the post-season. I don't understand how their level of player directly affects a comparison of GOAT level players.

I’m talking about a broader sense of how much a guy did or didn’t stand out from the rest of the league at various times in their career (with an aim of talking about how draft-era strength affects the trajectory of players’ stature in the league during different eras of their career), not specifically about postseason matchups between particular players. I don’t think simply listing great players that guys faced in the playoffs over the course of their entire career really gets to what I’m talking about. Of course, this doesn’t mean that talking about postseason matchups is irrelevant to assessing or making comparisons between players. But I’m wanting to discuss something different here.

Please also note that my OP said “this isn’t a thread meant for direct player comparison (so please don’t make it one).”

[Colbinii]

To put another spin on it, here are the players LeBron played in the post-season on the current RealGM Top 100 Project who were in/near their primes.


5. Tim Duncan (Once, twice Post-Prime)
9. Kevin Garnett (Once, 3-times Post-Prime)
11. Steph Curry (5 times)
18. Dirk Nowitzki (Once)
22. Kevin Durant (Twice)
26. Nikola Jokic (3 times)
29. James Harden (Once)
38. Jason Kidd (Once)
39. Manu Ginobili (Once, twice Post-Prime)
46. Russell Westbrook (Once)
47. Paul Pierce (3 times, once Post-Prime)
49. Dwight Howard (Once)
51. Draymond Green (5 times)
52. Jimmy Butler (Twice)
54. Ray Allen (Once, 3 times post-prime)
66. Chauncey Billups (Twice)
68. Ben Wallace (Twice)
72. Paul George (Twice)
74. Rasheed Wallace (Twice)
75. Damian Lillard
76. Kyle Lowry (3 times)
86. Tony Parker (3 times)
89. Al Horford (5 times)

48 Instances

Here are the players Jordan faced on the list.

8. Shaquille O'Neal (Twice)
10. Magic Johnson (Once)
12. Larry Bird (Twice)
19. Karl Malone (Twice)
28. Charles Barkley (3 times)
30. Patrick Ewing (5 times)
33. John Stockton (Twice)
36. Reggie Miller (Once)
45. Clyde Drexler (Once)
48. Kevin McHale (Twice)
53. Gary Payton (Once)
58. Isiah Thomas (4 times)
60. Alonzo Mourning (3 Times)
64. Dikembe Mutombo (Once)
65. Robert Parish (Twice)
78. Dennis Rodman (4 times)
81. Adrian Dantley (Once)
83. Larry Nance (4 times)
84. Sidney Moncrief (Once)
85. Kevin Johnson (Once)
92. Horace Grant (Twice)

45 Instances

[Colbinii]

I'm not sure this is more relevant than simply looking at how a player played against what competition.

Duncan played against Malone, KG/Kobe/Nash/Dirk, Durant/Westbrook, CP3 and LeBron all in their primes.

Shaq played against Jordan, Pippen, end of Prime Malone, Hakeem, Duncan and KG all in their primes.

LeBron played against Duncan, KG, Dirk, Dwight, Durant/Westbrook, Curry/Draymond, Durant and Jokic all in their primes.

Jordan played against Bird, Barkley, Magic, Shaq and Malone all in their primes.

What's funny is that with Jordan, he never even played against Hakeem Olajuwon or David Robinson in the post-season. I don't understand how their level of player directly affects a comparison of GOAT level players.

I’m talking about a broader sense of how much a guy did or didn’t stand out from the rest of the league at various times in their career (with an aim of talking about how draft-era strength affects the trajectory of players’ stature in the league during different eras of their career), not specifically about postseason matchups between particular players.

LeBron was better than Steph Curry in 4 consecutive series while Curry is a Top 12 player of all-time.

So I think it is fair to say LeBron standing out in his "generation", which you seem to define as +/- 3 years from draft, and then in the generation after him, is exceptional.

Worth noting, LeBron is really only 3 years older than Steph Curry. Which puts them in the same time frame by age. Durant is 3.5 years younger than LeBron.

What's interesting is LeBron is better this year than the best players from the 2008-2012 Classes, which includes players like Durant, Harden, Westbrook, Curry, Kawhi, Butler and Kyrie. Players who were drafted 5-9 years AFTER LeBron--ALL OF THEM--are now surpassed by LeBron James.

[DraymondGold]

To me, this relates to something I've been thinking about recently, which is how the perception of the top players' rank in given season affects their perceived peak/career greatness later on.

For example, I remember a post by DoctorMJ where he listed his GOAT list based on cumulative Player of the Year shares. Which is actually a pretty interesting way to add things up! But one limitation of this approach is that it can be a bit over-sensitive to the small sample of all-time level stars who happen to have their primes aligned or unaligned. For example, if a player's pretty consistently 2nd in the NBA behind a GOAT candidate, that could artificially drop their POY shares down compared to someone whose prime came when there wasn't a GOAT candidate in their prime in the league.

(Note this isn't a critique of DoctorMJ's list by any means -- any single methodology has its flaws, and he was pretty open about the pros and cons of using POY shares as a ballpark metric for a GOAT list). Getting more broad, even if we don't actually use POY Shares consciously in our GOAT list, I think factors like this could still influence our thinking subconsciously.

Some other players that come to mind:
-Kareem: Russell retired right before Kareem's first year, Wilt got a major injury which sped up his decline during Kareem's first year, numerous Top 5/10 level stars were playing in a different league (Dr. J is the obvious pick, but there's also Gervin, Artis Gilmore, etc.), and Walton (who looked to be on pace for a Top 20 career and a rival for Kareem) got injured just as he was entering his prime/peak. How do all these contexts affect our perception of Kareem's dominance? Some people try to mark Kareem down for playing in an easier era, others don't, but either way it's a difficult calculus to make.

-Moses: I imagine you might not agree with the one jake But Moses played right as Kareem and Dr J's peak/prime were winding down, but before Bird/Magic had fully ascended to their peak. How much does this help boost our perception of Moses, compared to if he had been born a few years later/earlier?

-Hakeem: How much does our perception of Hakeem's peak in 1994-1995 get boosted by our perception of him being the best in the league, given Jordan (the GOAT candidate of the time) was off playing baseball or out of shape? For that matter, Magic retiring early probably also helps Hakeem (he would have been 33/34 in 93/94), as well as Jordan. Plus Robinson (one of the few other candidates for best in the league) was playing for a poorly fitted team that was unable to help cover his flaws (resilient scoring) in the playoffs, while Hakeem was playing for a team that did a great job covering his (passing).

-Garnett: how much does playing at the same time as multiple other Top 10 big men in Shaq and Duncan limit how much he stood out?

-Recently: Curry barely snuck ahead of Giannis in their recent greatest peaks project, although I would have them clearly separated. How much does Curry having to go up against a GOAT candidate in the heart of his prime lower our opinion of him, while Giannis having a peak that fits snugly between one GOAT candidate (LeBron)'s prime, one Top 10 candidate (Curry)'s peak, and another potential Top 10 candidate (Jokic)'s peak help him stand out?

[eminence]

I attempt to avoid this by focusing on a players difference from the average player instead of their distance from the top.

Eg: Dolph Schayes is my pick for best player in the world in ‘55, but on a corp scale I would grade him similarly to a current 2nd team all league sort.

[OhayoKD]

So there's a pretty common logical jump that happens here when people make these "era strength comparisons" when people use era-accomplishment as justification for calling one period or set of players stronger or weaker. Not saying you are but...

Do we consider enough the idiosyncratic strength of the top-tier players in different players’ draft generations? I think it is generally safe to say that talent in the NBA is virtually always going up in general, as the league becomes more international, more popular, and more lucrative.

But talent at the very top end of the league really won’t necessarily fit that trend—there’s a lot of randomness when you’re inherently talking about players that are in the extreme right tail of talent. And, in fact, I think we have seen there be spans where a bunch of MVP-level players come into the league

Are you determining "mvp-level" based on quality relative to the rest of the league or in a vacuum/projected performace across eras? Because the former is basically a variation of circular reasoning and doesn't really mean anything(on it's own at least) in terms of how "weak" or "strong" a draft-class is in a vacuum.

For example...

Dwight Howard (personally I at least wouldn’t include Dwight).

I'm not really seeing much reason to take Barkley or Malone over Dwight as a talent, In fact, I'd prefer Dwight to Barkley in nearly any era as a two-way big with unusual mobility, hops, and reach over a defensive liability who doesn't really have the physical gifts, passing/decision making, or the scoring versatility of modern top-end non-big offensive talents.

Barkley and Malone are both more accomplished players, but that mean much for the quality of the draft classes over the 4-year span they were drafted.

Chris Paul is similarly accomplished to Malone, but I'd say he's ahead in terms of talent(though the roles are distinct enough there's more grey area I guess).

KD was a top 2 player for a bit in Lebron's league, but I doubt he would be that in todays' league. Bird was even arguably top 1 player in MJ's league, but I'm doubtful he'd ever be top 3 in this era.

Going to avoid the full spheal on why for these specific comparisons as the point here is broader:

Whatever your thoughts on those comps are, direct comparisons need to factor in some way for this line of reasoning to function logically. Unless we assume the field is equal, draft-class fluctuating in terms of accomplishment/in-era impact can just be a product of a weaker field. Hence, any non-relative claims about strength, require non-relative justifications to be well-supported.

To put another spin on it, here are the players LeBron played in the post-season on the current RealGM Top 100 Project who were in/near their primes.

Yeah, same issue here. The REALGM top 100 is largely informed by opinions of indirect, relative-to-era goodness. Not really meaningful in a discussion centered around directly comparing the quality of players.

[OhayoKD]

I attempt to avoid this by focusing on a players difference from the average player instead of their distance from the top.

Eg: Dolph Schayes is my pick for best player in the world in ‘55, but on a corp scale I would grade him similarly to a current 2nd team all league sort.

Both factor into true CORP though

[lessthanjake]

So there's a pretty common logical jump that happens here when people make these "era strength comparisons" when people use era-accomplishment as justification for calling one period or set of players stronger or weaker. Not saying you are but...

Do we consider enough the idiosyncratic strength of the top-tier players in different players’ draft generations? I think it is generally safe to say that talent in the NBA is virtually always going up in general, as the league becomes more international, more popular, and more lucrative.

But talent at the very top end of the league really won’t necessarily fit that trend—there’s a lot of randomness when you’re inherently talking about players that are in the extreme right tail of talent. And, in fact, I think we have seen there be spans where a bunch of MVP-level players come into the league

Are you determining "mvp-level" based on quality relative to the rest of the league or in a vacuum/projected performace across eras? Because the former is basically a variation of circular reasoning and doesn't really mean anything(on it's own at least) in terms of how "weak" or "strong" a draft-class is in a vacuum.

For example...

Dwight Howard (personally I at least wouldn’t include Dwight).

I'm not really seeing much reason to take Barkley or Malone over Dwight as a talent, In fact, I'd prefer Dwight to Barkley in nearly any era as a two-way big with unusual mobility, hops, and reach over a defensive liability who doesn't really have the physical gifts, passing/decision making, or the scoring versatility of modern top-end non-big offensive talents.

Barkley and Malone are both more accomplished players, but that mean much for the quality of the draft classes over the 4-year span they were drafted.

Chris Paul is similarly accomplished to Malone, but I'd say he's ahead in terms of talent(though the roles are distinct enough there's more grey area I guess).

KD was a top 2 player for a bit in Lebron's league, but I doubt he would be that in todays' league. Bird was even arguably top 1 player in MJ's league, but I'm doubtful he'd ever be top 3 in this era.

Going to avoid the full spheal on why for these specific comparisons as the point here is broader:

Whatever your thoughts on those comps are, direct comparisons need to factor in some way for this line of reasoning to function logically. Unless we assume the field is equal, draft-class fluctuating in terms of accomplishment/in-era impact can just be a product of a weaker field. Hence, any non-relative claims about strength, require non-relative justifications to be well-supported.

To put another spin on it, here are the players LeBron played in the post-season on the current RealGM Top 100 Project who were in/near their primes.

Yeah, same issue here. The REALGM top 100 is largely informed by opinions of indirect, relative-to-era goodness. Not really meaningful in a discussion centered around directly comparing the quality of players.

I think this is a fair critique. Obviously our perception of whether a player was MVP-level is dependent in part on how they stacked up relative to their own era, so that makes it a little weird to compare draft eras by looking at the number of MVP-level players in an era. It’s tricky, though, because you mention “non-relative justifications” but those don’t really exist—everything any of these players did on a basketball court was inherently relative to the era they were playing in (not to mention their specific context). In any event, I think one could argue at the margins about specific players in this sort of analysis. You bring up Barkley and Dwight Howard, for instance. I definitely don’t agree with you on that, and I don’t think most people would, but I don’t think it’s worth arguing over (and, note that I did mention Dwight in my post, so he actually got treated better in my OP than a guy like Ewing—who I think, with your particular preferences, you might prefer over Barkley too). Overall, though, even though I totally get your point, I don’t really think we need to overthink it too much here. I think it’s pretty clear that there are strong and weak draft eras and that that’s not just a mirage caused by the fact that we obviously only see everyone in era-relative context. There’s not really a lot of actual edge cases here, and the weak drafts are often *very* weak.

Also, you mention KD, so I’ll note that I think he’s another good example to me of this kind of thing being at play. We think of KD as having been the #2 guy in the NBA in some pretty early years of his. And I think that’s largely a product of the fact that the era of players who were in their peak years during Durant’s early years was pretty thin. LeBron was obviously better, but even a relatively young Durant was able to be generally considered 2nd. Then once his generation (including the few draft years after him) started getting going, suddenly Durant really wasn’t #2 anymore (though obviously he had some talk in that regard when at GSW—I know you and I both think he wasn’t the 2nd best player at that point though, and I think most would agree with that assessment in hindsight). So, in a sense, his trajectory in league stature kind of trended downwards during his prime years, even though I don’t personally think he got worse (in fact, I think he likely got better!). I think that happened because of this sort of draft-era variance over the course of his career. And yeah, I agree with you that this current era is strong enough that prime Durant wouldn’t be top 2 in today’s league either. The thing that spurred me to think about this was actually a discussion in another thread where someone said this current era (with draft classes between 2012-2017) is weak with top-end talent, and I thought that that was definitely wrong.

[OhayoKD]

So there's a pretty common logical jump that happens here when people make these "era strength comparisons" when people use era-accomplishment as justification for calling one period or set of players stronger or weaker. Not saying you are but...

Do we consider enough the idiosyncratic strength of the top-tier players in different players’ draft generations? I think it is generally safe to say that talent in the NBA is virtually always going up in general, as the league becomes more international, more popular, and more lucrative.

But talent at the very top end of the league really won’t necessarily fit that trend—there’s a lot of randomness when you’re inherently talking about players that are in the extreme right tail of talent. And, in fact, I think we have seen there be spans where a bunch of MVP-level players come into the league

Are you determining "mvp-level" based on quality relative to the rest of the league or in a vacuum/projected performace across eras? Because the former is basically a variation of circular reasoning and doesn't really mean anything(on it's own at least) in terms of how "weak" or "strong" a draft-class is in a vacuum.

For example...

Dwight Howard (personally I at least wouldn’t include Dwight).

I'm not really seeing much reason to take Barkley or Malone over Dwight as a talent, In fact, I'd prefer Dwight to Barkley in nearly any era as a two-way big with unusual mobility, hops, and reach over a defensive liability who doesn't really have the physical gifts, passing/decision making, or the scoring versatility of modern top-end non-big offensive talents.

Barkley and Malone are both more accomplished players, but that mean much for the quality of the draft classes over the 4-year span they were drafted.

Chris Paul is similarly accomplished to Malone, but I'd say he's ahead in terms of talent(though the roles are distinct enough there's more grey area I guess).

KD was a top 2 player for a bit in Lebron's league, but I doubt he would be that in todays' league. Bird was even arguably top 1 player in MJ's league, but I'm doubtful he'd ever be top 3 in this era.

Going to avoid the full spheal on why for these specific comparisons as the point here is broader:

Whatever your thoughts on those comps are, direct comparisons need to factor in some way for this line of reasoning to function logically. Unless we assume the field is equal, draft-class fluctuating in terms of accomplishment/in-era impact can just be a product of a weaker field. Hence, any non-relative claims about strength, require non-relative justifications to be well-supported.

To put another spin on it, here are the players LeBron played in the post-season on the current RealGM Top 100 Project who were in/near their primes.

Yeah, same issue here. The REALGM top 100 is largely informed by opinions of indirect, relative-to-era goodness. Not really meaningful in a discussion centered around directly comparing the quality of players.

I think this is a fair critique. Obviously our perception of whether a player was MVP-level is dependent in part on how they stacked up relative to their own era, so that makes it a little weird to compare draft eras by looking at the number of MVP-level players in an era. It’s tricky, though, because you mention “non-relative justifications” but those don’t really exist—everything any of these players did on a basketball court was inherently relative to their era they were playing in (not to mention their specific context).

They exist, but they require more work.

A good starting point is looking at skillsets, not based on just granulars(box-score) but also on what they put on tape in terms of capability(how fast do they make reads, what angles can they hit and not hit, what are they actually tracking and reacting to defensively, ect) and then you look at how effective they generally are during various time periods or when a player is comparable in a bunch of ways and add clear improvements(Jokic -> Bird, Jordan -> West, and Curry -> Reggie are pretty textbook examples).

Barkley's primary advantage over Dwight is his passing, but his passing(and this is generally applicable for good passers of that period) has him taking longer to make generally simpler reads(illegal defense greatly hindered hedges) players from Dwight's era do. Dwight also is an example of the most valuable archetype in nba history and has distinct advantages over the vast majority of his predecessors which also correlate well(namely his athleticism/inside-scoring and ability to cover ground).

Because those advantages are largely produced by a physical advantage, they are harder to take away with era-context. Barkley on the other hand is pretty much resting everything on an offensive skillset that has progressively gotten less and less remarkable over time and has not lead to better results than what we've seen from top one-way defensive specialists before him.

A perimeter player who is horrible from deep on much more open looks, struggles to stay ahead of his man when the offenses are much close together, and has a bunch of what he does offensively built on the threat of what he can do inside at 6'5 is just not an MVP-calibre player without illegal defense or in later periods.

In any event, I think one could argue at the margins about specific players in this sort of analysis. You bring up Barkley and Dwight Howard, for instance. I definitely don’t agree with you on that, and I don’t think most people would, but I don’t think it’s worth arguing over (and, note that I did mention Dwight in my post, so he actually got treated better in my OP than a guy like Ewing—who I think, with your particular preferences, you might prefer over Barkley too).

Probably would, but he also drops like a rock the more you teleport him forward. The main advantage he has over Barkley is that he cleanly improves the more you teleport him back. Not hard to see him making a fringe bitw push some year in the 70's.

To the larger point, I don't think we should assume the disparities between in-era and cross-era top out at marginal. Bird was a defensive genius almost exclusively reacting to what was directly in front of him and getting backdoored for layups to start pivotal playoff games. What is he now in a league with several players who actively map-out the other team's offense?

Overall, though, even though I totally get your point, I don’t really think we need to overthink it too much here. I think it’s pretty clear that there are strong and weak draft eras and that that’s not just a mirage caused by the fact that we obviously only see everyone in era-relative context. There’s not really a lot of actual edge cases here, and the weak drafts are often *very* weak.

There are certainly fluctuations in weak and strong, but "weaker" drafts from some periods can probably beat out "stronger" drafts from other periods which, ontop of the fact top-end primes tend to last longer than just a couple years, greatly dull the effect a "weak"(with an accomplishment lens) draft-period actually has on an nba career.

Also, you mention KD, so I’ll note that I think he’s another good example to me of this kind of thing being at play. We think of KD as having been the #2 guy in the NBA in some pretty early years of his. And I think that’s largely a product of the fact that the era of players who were in their peak years during Durant’s early years was pretty thin.

Will start by noting I think the immediacy(and how long) KD was crowned as #2 is partially a product of people gravitating towards scoring and scoring titles over everything else. 2012-2014 are the only years I think KD top 2 is a serious take and I don't see a solid case for him being top 3 in 2011 with dwight, dirk, and wade not yet injured. Rose and Kobe also deserve some consideration I guess. That said...

Thin in comparison to the 20's I agree. Thin compared to what came before it? Eh. I would expect KD's passing and ball-handling turn into relative strengths as opposed to relative weaknesses at any period pre-2000 which turns him from an on-paper unstoppable dude to an actually unstoppable one. KD is a textbook example of a player I think looks more and more outliery in one direction and less and less outlierly in the other with the competition obscuring how unusually good his "guard skills" are for a player of that height. The main reason I don't view KD in the same light now is we have a whole bunch of guard-skilled bigs now who can obviously exert alot more defensive impact ontop of those guard skills.

That combo wasn't really there until very recently.


The mid 10's were relatively weak compared to the late 2000's and definitely qualify as a "lull" in the league's progression with Steph, Westbrook and Harden and Kawhi still getting their game together and injuries/age nuking Wade and Kobe, but is that lull really weaker than the 3 year period where Bird was at least top 2 every year and a solid #1 case once? (1986 would be him or hakeem).

I see Bird as a KD-level talent and frankly if I was just going off "in a vacuum" with no regard for what he accomplished in his own league, I'd probably view him as worse.

Additionally, the "weakness" of that period isn't that strong for your general point because, as you note, the years Lebron peaks statistically and people "oddly" gravitate towards are 2009/2010 where "top end" talent was flatly deeper with peak or peak-adjacent Kobe and Wade(both who I would classify as at least kd/bird level talents) having standout years(chris paul, dirk, and nash also in the peripheary).

Frankly Kobe to me is a big wrench in this because as a "talent" he's basically elite or good at every type of offensive play(by the standards of what we had seen at that point, not neccessarily by 2020's), is in the conversation for best tough-shot-maker/best shooter-over-doubles ever, and is also elite historically in terms of iq, and has much better physical tools than someone like Bird.

When that sort of talent grades out as "ehhhh maybe top 2 a couple times" statistically, hard for me to buy that the league's top-end was weaker at that point than it was when Bird was "definitely top 2" for at least 3 in a row.

Beyond that, the "KD top 2" period was Lebron's impact nadir as opposed to what came after and before which we agree was a deeper cast, so it seems more likely to be a roster thing(playing power-forward, staggering, another volume playmaker) than a "league talent" thing. Lebron was a clearer #1 during the Miami years with no prime Steph, Kobe or Wade, but he was not really more valuable to his team(and the statistical gap was bigger vs the #2 in 2009/2010 either way)

[lessthanjake]

They exist, but they require more work.

A good starting point is looking at skillsets, not based on just granulars(box-score) but also on what they put on tape in terms of capability(how fast do they make reads, what angles can they hit and not hit, what are they actually tracking and reacting to defensively, ect) and then you look at how effective they generally are during various time periods or when a player is comparable in a bunch of ways and add clear improvements(Jokic -> Bird, Jordan -> West, and Curry -> Reggie are pretty textbook examples).

This is getting a bit off topic on my own thread, but I’ll engage on this stuff a little bit.

I don’t think that things like “how fast do they make reads” are properly understood as attributes that can be directly compared across eras. The game is more sophisticated now, in terms of coaching and strategy and even the technology and data used to back those things up and teach players. Society’s knowledge of things naturally builds over time, and so players are taught the game at a higher level than in the past (with this getting more and more pronounced the further you go back). Thus, assessing the things you’re talking about here as if it’s some kind of era-neutral comparison is not a very good approach. If you put past players in today’s game, they’d be better at this stuff than they were back then (and vice versa). If we assessed who was “MVP-level” based on analysis like that, it’d just inherently put a finger on the scale against players from past eras. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s possible to look at things players did on the court outside of era-relative terms, since everything they did on the court was in the context of their era. Which makes the critique you initially raised in this thread an ever-present one, but I don’t think it’s avoidable (and, as I’ve said, I don’t think we need to overthink it on the subject of this particular thread).

Barkley's primary advantage over Dwight is his passing, but his passing(and this is generally applicable for good passers of that period) has him taking longer to make generally simpler reads(illegal defense greatly hindered hedges) players from Dwight's era do. Dwight also is an example of the most valuable archetype in nba history and has distinct advantages over the vast majority of his predecessors which also correlate well(namely his athleticism/inside-scoring and ability to cover ground).

Barkley does have a *huge* passing advantage over Dwight, and, as alluded to above, I think it’s likely that that passing advantage would be even larger if they played in the same era. But that’s very far from the only advantage Barkley had over Dwight. Barkley was a substantially better scorer. He was a fantastic post scorer in a way that Dwight never was, and he was an incredible player in transition. He was an extremely efficient volume scorer, while Dwight was not much of a volume scorer at all. Barkley was also a hugely superior ball-handler. Barkley was even a similar offensive rebounder—which turns into a notable advantage when we realize that Dwight played as a center and Barkley was a PF. Barkley also had much more range on his shot than Dwight (though that advantage is mitigated a bit by being a PF instead of C). Overall, Barkley was just a *massively* superior offensive player. Meanwhile, Dwight obviously has a significant defensive advantage, but Barkley’s advantage on offense cannot be overstated. To me, Barkley is definitely a tier or half-tier above Dwight and I think most would agree with me, but there’s subjectivity here and you’re free to disagree (and it’s quibbling anyways, since I mentioned him in the OP).

More generally, by the way, I’m not a huge fan of anchoring your analysis of a player to what “archetype” you think they are. I get the idea behind it, and I’m sure I have done some form of it on occasion too. But great players are different in subtle but incredibly significant ways that make anchoring your assessment of them to players you think are broadly-speaking similar just extremely simplistic and flawed. Two players that we think are of the same “archetype” could (and very often do) differ wildly in their impact and effectiveness due to hugely significant differences that the “archetype” analysis completely glosses over. And, indeed, it’s these sorts of subtle but highly significant differences that so often distinguish the best players from the rest. These differences are everywhere, because at the highest level of NBA player we’re really talking about guys that are all unicorns. Does “archetype” analysis tell us what rim protectors keep the ball in play more when they block the ball, or which one of them positions subtly better, or which ones stay on their feet more smartly, or which ones react the fastest, etc.? Does “archetype” analysis account for the effect of guys like Kawhi or Jordan having giant hands that allow them to do things other players of their “archetypes” could not do? There’s a million examples of this sort of thing. Ultimately, I think anchoring our assessment of players to other historical players that we think are broadly-speaking similar just completely glosses over extremely important things. If I think Player A and Players B, C, and D are of the same “archetype” but Player A did better and achieved more than Players B, C, and D, does this tell me that Player A simply had a favorable context and wouldn’t do as well in other contexts, or does it tell me that Player A was simply a meaningfully better player in various subtle but highly important ways? It’s probably the latter IMO, and at the very least I think it’s highly simplistic to assume it’s the former. The same would be true in reverse, if we said Player A didn’t do as well or achieve as much. The only way to actually assess players based on their own attributes (as opposed to based on the attributes of other players) is to assess them on their own terms. Of course, there’s no way to really do that without the assessment being inherently relative to the era they played in, so that gets us back to square one to some degree, but I definitely don’t think this “archetype” analysis is better.

Because those advantages are largely produced by a physical advantage, they are harder to take away with era-context. Barkley on the other hand is pretty much resting everything on an offensive skillset that has progressively gotten less and less remarkable over time and has not lead to better results than what we've seen from top one-way defensive specialists before him.

A perimeter player who is horrible from deep on much more open looks, struggles to stay ahead of his man when the offenses are much close together, and has a bunch of what he does offensively built on the threat of what he can do inside at 6'5 is just not an MVP-calibre player without illegal defense or in later periods.

I’d mostly direct you to the above two responses for this. I’d just also add that I don’t really think we should assess who was and wasn’t an “MVP-level” player based on some time machine argument that says we don’t think they’d be an MVP-level player under the rule set of a different era. For purposes of this thread—which is focusing on how draft-era strength affects the trajectory of players’ standing in the league over the course of their career—all that matters is how strong other players were in the context of the rule set of the time. It may be the case that a guy was an MVP-level player with the way basketball was played in his era but that that wouldn’t translate to being an MVP-level player under the ruleset of some different time period he didn’t play in (I don’t agree that Barkley is an example of this, but that’s not important). However, that’s not really relevant to this thread, because the presence of these players was affecting the trajectory of other great players *in the time period they all played in* rather than some other hypothetical time period in which the players might not have been as good.

[Doctor MJ]

Do we consider enough the idiosyncratic strength of the top-tier players in different players’ draft generations? I think it is generally safe to say that talent in the NBA is virtually always going up in general, as the league becomes more international, more popular, and more lucrative. But talent at the very top end of the league really won’t necessarily fit that trend—there’s a lot of randomness when you’re inherently talking about players that are in the extreme right tail of talent. And, in fact, I think we have seen there be spans where a bunch of MVP-level players come into the league, and other spans where there’s very few people who will become MVP-level. And the more I think about it, the more I think that this actually genuinely has a huge effect on players’ careers, by making it easier or harder for them to stand out in certain time periods.

So I think this is all good stuff to think about.

I definitely agree that the sprinkling of superstars into the NBA isn't something that follows the general curve of talent growth, but rather something that comes in with a large amount of randomness.

Additionally, the sport I spend the 2nd most time analyzing historically is tennis, and there the equivalent of draft classes are absolutely HUGE and something many don't understand - I've seen people try to champion someone like Lleyton Hewitt over others with similar tournament performance because he was the best player in the world for a while...but people should be doing the opposite because Hewitt would have won less had he not managed to emerge at a moment where competition at the top was weak.

Of course the difference in basketball is that there's far less head-to-head matches determining legacy, so as long as you're judging players based on how they actually play rather than by annual rankings the impact of superstar randomness may not matter that much.

But for something like MVP/POY shares, yeah, it has a huge impact sometimes. And while I think we all know that such share counting shouldn't be the definitive thing we use for holistic ranking, it can bias that holistic assessment.

When I think about this, I tend to context in terms of my recollection of the disappointing drafts in the late '80s and early '90s, and how that allowed the NBA to stay dominated by the prior generation longer than we'd expect. Yeah, maybe Jordan leads those Bulls to another 3-peat no matter what, but when you're seeing back-to-back Chicago-Utah finals with both teams led by guys in their mid-30s, you can't help but think about the lack of presence of that next generation.

As I say all of this, I'm not sure how recognizing this phenomenon is actually affecting my GOAT list. in the case of Jordan, I tend to think about him less in terms of the 6 rings and more in terms of how overwhelming he was at his vey best, and how effectively he adapted his game as he aged while bullying his teammates toward extreme defensive attention. The fact they won titles influences my assessment certainly, but I'm not sure I'd see him much different if they lost those last 2 finals.

Considering Karl Malone is interesting because I do think he'd be seen pretty differently if the Jazz win those two finals, and losing to Jordan seems a harsh thing to criticize a guy for. When I think of what holds Malone back in my eyes other than pointing to chips, I tend to think of Sloan's extreme illegal-defense punishing scheme as something that makes me suspect of Malone with respect to the very best. I don't want to blow how big a deal this is out of proportion, but I will acknowledge that this hurts my assessment of Malone to some degree.

[Heej]

While I appreciate the point OP is trying to make with this post (intra-generational gaps in quality), realistically basketball is a sport where due to the nature of how long primes can last there's really too much overlap between preceding and succeeding generations for this particular way of looking at basketball to be more effective than the tried and true "how well did they produce with the hands they were dealt"

Especially considering how much stars can be buoyed or nerfed by circumstances entirely outside of their control with regards to their organizational contexts. Don't really see how this method of analysis would lead to any new conclusions considering guys like Jordan and LeBron were still going toe to toe with people like Magic and KD for MVPs who are supposed to be from different generations. Are we supposed to give Jordan the nod over someone like Timmy because he had Hakeem in his draft class? Hakeem had bottom tier luck for an all time great (alongside guys like West, Roberson, KG, and LeBron) while Jordan had top tier luck (alongside guys like Russell, Magic, Bird, Steph, and KD).

That in itself predisposes Jordan to standing out more because his organizational context was significantly more favorable, but according to this methodology that would give Jordan an outsized rating boost vs Timmy while serving as a bit of a black mark for Hakeem in the same comparison. Probably better off just tracking strike rates on reads and executions or overall quality of play/impact.

I appreciate the attempt to add a different wrinkle to discussions but I doubt it actually moves contextual analysis forward in any meaningful way compared to what already works, and actually makes comparisons even more reductive which is what ideally should be avoided.

Or even in a more recent sense, Jokic should get more of a boost because he's standing out in a more top heavy era. But at the same time we can't ignore that he's playing for what's by far and away the best organization out of all his contemporaries seeing as how the Nuggets have been among the class of the league since the Masai Ujiri days in all aspects of how excellently they run the ship there. When in doubt I just err towards "how well did they produce with the hand they were dealt" as being the simplest and most effective way of looking at things. This proposed method risks being unable to see the forest from the trees.

[lessthanjake]

Don't really see how this method of analysis would lead to any new conclusions considering guys like Jordan and LeBron were still going toe to toe with people like Magic and KD for MVPs who are supposed to be from different generations.

I don’t have much to say about the rest of your post. Obviously other things affect how much a player stands out, besides just this draft-era factor (though I often disagree with you on your assessment of other factors). I’m not positing that it’s the only thing going on—though I do think it’s a very significant factor worth talking about.

The one thing I’d specifically note is that I think you’re kind of missing the point I was making, when you make this point about “going toe to toe with people like Magic and KD for MVPs who are supposed to be from different generations.” There’s actually a pretty significant difference there, in terms of when this was happening in these players’ career trajectories. Jordan was mostly competing with Magic for MVPs in a time period where it was actually Magic’s generation that would be expected to be peaking, while Jordan was in his younger years (though I’d say that flipped by the end, or at the very least there was some peak-years overlap). With LeBron and Durant, the roles are reversed. When they were competing for MVPs, it was Durant who was in his early years, and LeBron who was more closely in the years a player generally peaks. These are two very different situations IMO, since the part of the trajectory these players were on compared to their rival was flipped. In both cases, a player whose generation was mostly in pre-peak years was competing for MVPs with a player whose generation was peaking or closer to peaking—it’s just that Jordan and LeBron had roles on the opposite side of that in these examples. Of interest for purposes of this thread, the fact that Durant was the one competing with LeBron for MVPs, even though Durant was young and not really peaking yet is, I think, precisely because there was a dearth of MVP-level players in LeBron’s own generation who might’ve been good enough to compete for that (even while in their peak years). It was a reflection of the weakness of the top-end of LeBron’s generation, and perhaps not coincidentally, Durant actually wasn’t really competing for MVPs once the guys in the next several draft classes after him got going. So I think we see the trajectory of Durant’s stature in the league be affected a lot by variance in different eras’ draft strength.

Anyways, IMO, a better analogy to Jordan/Magic in this framework would probably be LeBron/Kobe. In both cases, those were the guys from a prior generation that young Jordan/LeBron were competing with for being considered the NBA’s best player. And I guess a better analogy to LeBron/Durant would probably have to be Jordan/Shaq (though the rest of Jordan’s generation gatekept young Shaq from being the biggest MVP competitor to Jordan).

Or even in a more recent sense, Jokic should get more of a boost because he's standing out in a more top heavy era. But at the same time we can't ignore that he's playing for what's by far and away the best organization out of all his contemporaries seeing as how the Nuggets have been among the class of the league since the Masai Ujiri days in all aspects of how excellently they run the ship there. When in doubt I just err towards "how well did they produce with the hand they were dealt."

This is getting off topic and I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole on this, but I definitely disagree with this. The Nuggets have certainly been a great organization because of the simple fact that they got Nikola Jokic in the second round—almost certainly the single greatest draft pick in history, from the perspective of value-over-expected. But otherwise, I don’t really see it. I know they dealt with major injuries in 2021 and 2022, but even leaving those aside (which isn’t even entirely fair, since one of the injured players was a guy that they knew was going to be injury-prone when they drafted him), the team they put around Jokic was a pathetic team filled almost entirely with players who barely belonged in the NBA. Obviously they’ve done better recently (for instance, adding KCP was a great move), but even then they’ve managed to completely fail to have a serviceable backup center, despite that being an obviously gaping issue. As with most organizations, the Nuggets have done some good things and some bad things. And I think there’s a real winners’ and losers’ bias with assessing things like this—when a team wins a title, we naturally think about the things the organization did well, and when they don’t win, we think about the things the organization did badly.

[Heej]

Don't really see how this method of analysis would lead to any new conclusions considering guys like Jordan and LeBron were still going toe to toe with people like Magic and KD for MVPs who are supposed to be from different generations.

I don’t have much to say about the rest of your post. Obviously other things affect how much a player stands out, besides just this draft-era factor (though I often disagree with you on your assessment of other factors). I’m not positing that it’s the only thing going on—though I do think it’s a very significant factor worth talking about.

The one thing I’d specifically note is that I think you’re kind of missing the point I was making, when you make this point about “going toe to toe with people like Magic and KD for MVPs who are supposed to be from different generations.” There’s actually a pretty significant difference there, in terms of when this was happening in these players’ career trajectories. Jordan was mostly competing with Magic for MVPs in a time period where it was actually Magic’s generation that would be expected to be peaking, while Jordan was in his younger years (though I’d say that flipped by the end, or at the very least there was some peak-years overlap). With LeBron and Durant, the roles are reversed. When they were competing for MVPs, it was Durant who was in his early years, and LeBron who was more closely in the years a player generally peaks. These are two very different situations IMO, since the part of the trajectory these players were on compared to their rival was flipped. In both cases, a player whose generation was mostly in pre-peak years was competing for MVPs with a player whose generation was peaking or closer to peaking—it’s just that Jordan and LeBron had roles on the opposite side of that in these examples. Of interest for purposes of this thread, the fact that Durant was the one competing with LeBron for MVPs, even though Durant was young and not really peaking yet is, I think, precisely because there was a dearth of MVP-level players in LeBron’s own generation who might’ve been good enough to compete for that (even while in their peak years). It was a reflection of the weakness of the top-end of LeBron’s generation, and perhaps not coincidentally, Durant actually wasn’t really competing for MVPs once the guys in the next several draft classes after him got going. So I think we see the trajectory of Durant’s stature in the league be affected a lot by variance in different eras’ draft strength.

Anyways, IMO, a better analogy to Jordan/Magic in this framework would probably be LeBron/Kobe. In both cases, those were the guys from a prior generation that young Jordan/LeBron were competing with for being considered the NBA’s best player.

Or even in a more recent sense, Jokic should get more of a boost because he's standing out in a more top heavy era. But at the same time we can't ignore that he's playing for what's by far and away the best organization out of all his contemporaries seeing as how the Nuggets have been among the class of the league since the Masai Ujiri days in all aspects of how excellently they run the ship there. When in doubt I just err towards "how well did they produce with the hand they were dealt."

This is getting off topic and I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole on this, but I definitely disagree with this. The Nuggets have certainly been a great organization because of the simple fact that they got Nikola Jokic in the second round—almost certainly the single greatest draft pick in history, from the perspective of value-over-expected. But otherwise, I don’t really see it. I know they dealt with major injuries in 2021 and 2022, but even leaving those aside, the team they put around Jokic was a pathetic team filled almost entirely with players who barely belonged in the NBA. Obviously they’ve done better recently (for instance, adding KCP was a great move), but even then they’ve managed to completely fail to have a serviceable backup center, despite that being an obviously gaping issue. As with most organizations, the Nuggets have done some good things and some bad things. And I think there’s a real winners’ and losers’ bias with assessing things like this—when a team wins a title, we naturally think about the things the organization did well, and when they don’t win, we think about the things the organization did badly.

Jordan competing for MVPs at age 25 isn't abnormal. That's what happens with all time greats. Just like how you see some still in the running at age 31 even though both years are removed from the commonly accepted age 27/28 Apex. I just don't see why honing in specifically on apex guys matters as much as looking at the people within MVP contention range and their holistic organizational contexts. Very much reductive and overly granular.

And I disagree about there not being other MVP level players when you had guys like Wade and CP3 putting up years that were arguably better than nearly any player ever at their position sans the GOAT PG and SG in Magic and Jordan. Those guys not competing for more speaks more to the quality of their organization contexts as opposed to how high quality they were as players, which is precisely what I mean by this method you're proposing being reductive and missing the forest from the trees.

In regards to Denver, that's just false. They've managed to develop a top tier coaching staff and have shown themselves to make adequate periphery moves as far back as the Melo and Iguodala iterations. And once again in the Jokic era being able to build a Finals level team by the time we got to the bubble (imo Denver was better than Miami despite the number of games it went to). Not only that but they were able to shrug off losing Grant and replace him with KCP and eventually Gordon.

Not to mention clear organizational superiority in terms of little things such as how the Nuggets have shown a consistent track record in tracking playcalling rates by their coaches and making a concerted effort in decking out their bench with high level assistants. Along with doing an excellent job rehabbing both Murray and Porter who have turned out to be critical pieces where many training staffs advised against drafting Porter because they didn't think they could deal with the back issues.

Denver is clearly a quality organization (for well over a decade now!) that invests highly in the periphery market inefficiencies that boost title odds and just so happened to strike gold with Jokic. Phoenix for example is another high quality organization that simply hasn't struck gold yet, but when they eventually do however many decades down the line I have zero doubt that whatever GOAT contending candidate they find will be furnished with top of the line support structure.

Meanwhile we have Jokic's contemporaries like Embiid and Luka mired by organizational instability in Philly both on the drafting and coaching side, or Giannis who has had it a bit easier but still dealt with an embarrassing coaching carousel this year.

When you're a generational player you're competing against other generational players who generally have longer and more consistent primes than regular NBA players. Just seems like an exercise in futility to hone in one specific selection of players around a player's draft class as opposed to simply looking at which players in the league as a whole they're competing with that have their own buffs or nerfs from organizational context that few understand or look to include in their analysis.

[Doctor MJ]

Or even in a more recent sense, Jokic should get more of a boost because he's standing out in a more top heavy era. But at the same time we can't ignore that he's playing for what's by far and away the best organization out of all his contemporaries seeing as how the Nuggets have been among the class of the league since the Masai Ujiri days in all aspects of how excellently they run the ship there. When in doubt I just err towards "how well did they produce with the hand they were dealt" as being the simplest and most effective way of looking at things. This proposed method risks being unable to see the forest from the trees.

So, looking to adjust for organization is a tricky thing because at its heart this is about trying to normalize for opportunity, and we don't have a perfect ability to do that.

I tend to think about this stuff in terms of Garnett & Duncan, particularly on defense.

A player can be more capable as a defensive player (Garnett), but if he's surrounded by incompetence then offenses exploit the weaknesses around him then the defense may be exploitable no matter how good he is, and thus his achievement for his team may be less than the lesser player (Duncan) who is in a perfect situation.

This is true in any walk of life. Einstein was the greatest physicist of the 20th century because of what he achieved...but maybe there was someone else who had all of his talents and attributes to even greater extent but just didn't get the opportunity.

[OhayoKD]

Okay so this bit of framing makes little sense.

Don't really see how this method of analysis would lead to any new conclusions considering guys like Jordan and LeBron were still going toe to toe with people like Magic and KD for MVPs who are supposed to be from different generations.

Jordan was mostly competing with Magic for MVPs in a time period where it was actually Magic’s generation that would be expected to be peaking, while Jordan was in his younger years (though I’d say that flipped by the end, or at the very least there was some peak-years overlap)...23-27

1. Lebron won 3 of his MVP's within the age-range you're calling "pre-peak" and a 4th in the season that started when he was 27.
2. Players typically win their MVP's in their mid-20's, not their late 20's/early 30's.

Magic winning MVPs in 89 and 90 (aged 29 and 30) is actually what's unusual here.  

[Heej]

Or even in a more recent sense, Jokic should get more of a boost because he's standing out in a more top heavy era. But at the same time we can't ignore that he's playing for what's by far and away the best organization out of all his contemporaries seeing as how the Nuggets have been among the class of the league since the Masai Ujiri days in all aspects of how excellently they run the ship there. When in doubt I just err towards "how well did they produce with the hand they were dealt" as being the simplest and most effective way of looking at things. This proposed method risks being unable to see the forest from the trees.

So, looking to adjust for organization is a tricky thing because at its heart this is about trying to normalize for opportunity, and we don't have a perfect ability to do that.

I tend to think about this stuff in terms of Garnett & Duncan, particularly on defense.

A player can be more capable as a defensive player (Garnett), but if he's surrounded by incompetence then offenses exploit the weaknesses around him then the defense may be exploitable no matter how good he is, and thus his achievement for his team may be less than the lesser player (Duncan) who is in a perfect situation.

This is true in any walk of life. Einstein was the greatest physicist of the 20th century because of what he achieved...but maybe there was someone else who had all of his talents and attributes to even greater extent but just didn't get the opportunity.

Oh I know it's inexact. But I just think there's a lot more that gets lost in the shuffle when we look at players' careers. You know as well as any of us as a teacher (which I'm sympathetic to as my wife is a teacher at a chaotic charter school in NYC) that in many cases in real life that organizations are a reflection of who's in charge from the top down and that a company's culture can be influenced whether positively or negatively in myriad compounding subtle ways depending on who's making the high level decisions on what to invest resources in.

We only look at players in a vacuum most of the time but there's a lot of stuff out of their control that have outsized effects on their careers that stems from the executive level. Can we perfectly account for it? No. But are we better off acknowledging the effects of organizational context and building that into our analysis of individual career outcomes? I think so.

In regards to the KG/Timmy comparison I agree. Especially with how much of a feedback loop/synergy there is on the court in basketball. Part of my basketball journey over the years has been recognizing there's a similar synergy/feedback loop on the executive level that affects things like coaching, drafting, development, training, etc. And most of it is based on how much and how intelligently that team's owner wants to invest in winning. Some owners are simply better than others but we never really account for the players who get the good end of the stick vs the bad one.

Back to the topic though, I think I look at it as: Does this method of analysis improve or reduce my ability to contextualize and understand someone's career? I think looking purely at draft classes is just somewhere in the middle. Doesn't really tell you much. Why should I care that Hakeem didn't compete for MVPs in his prime if we have good reason to suspect that he got boned by injury luck and a bad organization (plus his own understandable ornery attitude about it all). And why should that make me think Jordan was so much more superior when he had an incredible coaching staff and supporting cast. We all know Wade and LeBron were neck and neck at their apex, why should I look at MVP contention when LeBron clearly had an advantage in teammates during their apex years.

[Doctor MJ]

Or even in a more recent sense, Jokic should get more of a boost because he's standing out in a more top heavy era. But at the same time we can't ignore that he's playing for what's by far and away the best organization out of all his contemporaries seeing as how the Nuggets have been among the class of the league since the Masai Ujiri days in all aspects of how excellently they run the ship there. When in doubt I just err towards "how well did they produce with the hand they were dealt" as being the simplest and most effective way of looking at things. This proposed method risks being unable to see the forest from the trees.

So, looking to adjust for organization is a tricky thing because at its heart this is about trying to normalize for opportunity, and we don't have a perfect ability to do that.

I tend to think about this stuff in terms of Garnett & Duncan, particularly on defense.

A player can be more capable as a defensive player (Garnett), but if he's surrounded by incompetence then offenses exploit the weaknesses around him then the defense may be exploitable no matter how good he is, and thus his achievement for his team may be less than the lesser player (Duncan) who is in a perfect situation.

This is true in any walk of life. Einstein was the greatest physicist of the 20th century because of what he achieved...but maybe there was someone else who had all of his talents and attributes to even greater extent but just didn't get the opportunity.

Oh I know it's inexact. But I just think there's a lot more that gets lost in the shuffle when we look at players' careers. You know as well as any of us as a teacher (which I'm sympathetic to as my wife is a teacher at a chaotic charter school in NYC) that in many cases in real life that organizations are a reflection of who's in charge from the top down and that a company's culture can be influenced whether positively or negatively in myriad compounding subtle ways depending on who's making the high level decisions on what to invest resources in.

We only look at players in a vacuum most of the time but there's a lot of stuff out of their control that have outsized effects on their careers that stems from the executive level. Can we perfectly account for it? No. But are we better off acknowledging the effects of organizational context and building that into our analysis of individual career outcomes? I think so.

I think it's always a question of which question we're looking to answer. Subtle changes to the question, with each variant being a good question, lead to different answers.

Perfectly fine to want to promote a question to top importance that normalizes for all things unfair to the players of course, but if you can't do it well enough, you might be better off prioritizing the questions you can answer more consistently.

And of course that's what I'm doing right now with the approach I'm personally using in the Top 100. I'm trying to use an approach that lets me be as consistent as possible going into the deep past, and in doing so it means I tend to focus on guys playing big roles on highly effective teams and may well be missing out on the Garnetts of the past.