Thinking Basketball Top25 Single Year Peaks of the Millennium

[TheNG]

The thread title doesn't match the content.
It's not Thinking Basketball top25.
Most people argue about the top14 selected by the OP.

[Perishable517]

You saying this invalidates your opinions on basketball to me.

Take peak Dray and put him on ANY team that's doesn't have Curry and what is his career? He's an all time defender but strangely not many other dpoys on there.

What is his peak, dpoy on 10/7/8 on 52% TS while playing on roster with Kevin Durant and Curry BOTH SHOOTING 50/40/90? Breh I'm not joking when I say half the posters on this board could average 7 apg on a roster with Curry and KD.

Yeah, comparable season to Luka's peak, really...

Sharing a court with two top 20 players all time should factor into looking at advanced stats arguments but yall don't have that kind of comprehension. But look at his plus minus when the team has two ATGs on the court alongside him! A lot of it must come from _____ cuz he's out there too!

Peak Dray didn't have KD on the team.

14/9.5/7.4/1.5/1.4 while being second in DPOY voting.

Then in the playoffs
15.4/9.9/6.0/1.6/1.8

AT least get the years right...

You can build a team around that.

Sent from my CPH2417 using RealGM mobile app

[Ryoga Hibiki]

The thread title doesn't match the content.
It's not Thinking Basketball top25.
Most people argue about the top14 selected by the OP.

that not my selection, but my prediction of TB's selection

[dhsilv2]

Well I'm not going to insist any of this stuff is beyond debate. Perfectly fine to disagree.

Re: Contribute to a contender at 35% of the cap. I get why some folks put it in these terms but it doesn't really resonate for me because to me value is value regardless of salary. Was GS quite fortunate that Curry & Green weren't making as much as they deserved when they acquired Durant, and that means we're at risk of winning bias in the evaluation of the players, but to the extent my evaluation is accurate, I wouldn't separately factor in salary.

Worth adding when they won in 2022, Sure Green was at about 20% but Klay was at a stupid percentage and was contributing at the level of a 5th or 6th man. Sorta offsets his "discount" salary in that context imo. But to each their own on that one.

still they had wiggins at the 25% max, that was a very expensive team.

And to be fair Wiggins should give 85% of his salary to Draymond for Carrying him that year!

[Ryoga Hibiki]

While understand the idea that a championship team with Green is going to need to pay for scoring talent, and that takes money, I chafe for two reasons:

1) I don’t think the 2015 or 2022 teams had any scorers aside from Steph who were really that great. I’d basically consider peak Klay and Wiggins to be fringe all-star level guys.

2) I can understand a perspective where the demand for scorers being so out of whack compared to value that you simply have to pay more for point of value for scoring than anything else… but this is then essentially penalizing players with skills that are underrated by NBA teams, which strikes me as backwards from a team building perspective.

Fine to not pay Green up to his value because you can get away with it, but getting that value at that price is only a positive, right? I get the value of the player and I get to underpay him? Yay!

Meanwhile, if everyone else is paying fringe all-star scorers more than money per point of impact than other players are getting, cool, let’em. Keep paying those running backs tons of money, and I’ll find cheap replacements and spend my money on a quality left tackle.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't want to repeat the same things, but to me it's important to define what we are trying to measure here.
There's no "absolute" value a player brings, it's always in the context of certain team. The more potential teams with you in are a contender, the better you are as a player. More or less (I could express it with a better formula, but not now).
It's a bit crude, but the salary is a decent proxy to how important a certain player is and how rare his skillset it.
Players in this list, the best of the best, must be worth the max, and then we can see how easy it is to complement them, with a realistic budget. To not get too stuck into one specific situation they have been in, optimal or not.

About your point that scoring is overvalued... is it? What's really worth a lot is scoring+playmaking, and rightfully so, imo The question would be, to justfy Draymond in this list: can he elevate enough those second and third tier scorers, with his playmaking? So that you don't need Steph and Klay but you can work it out with, say, Alllen and Sexton, in a contender? If the answer is no, I think we are overcelebrating Dray.
To be clear, I don't have an answer to that. But I am more and more leaning into Dray being more in the HM category.

[Doctor MJ]

While understand the idea that a championship team with Green is going to need to pay for scoring talent, and that takes money, I chafe for two reasons:

1) I don’t think the 2015 or 2022 teams had any scorers aside from Steph who were really that great. I’d basically consider peak Klay and Wiggins to be fringe all-star level guys.

2) I can understand a perspective where the demand for scorers being so out of whack compared to value that you simply have to pay more for point of value for scoring than anything else… but this is then essentially penalizing players with skills that are underrated by NBA teams, which strikes me as backwards from a team building perspective.

Fine to not pay Green up to his value because you can get away with it, but getting that value at that price is only a positive, right? I get the value of the player and I get to underpay him? Yay!

Meanwhile, if everyone else is paying fringe all-star scorers more than money per point of impact than other players are getting, cool, let’em. Keep paying those running backs tons of money, and I’ll find cheap replacements and spend my money on a quality left tackle.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't want to repeat the same things, but to me it's important to define what we are trying to measure here.
There's no "absolute" value a player brings, it's always in the context of certain team. The more potential teams with you in are a contender, the better you are as a player. More or less (I could express it with a better formula, but not now).
It's a bit crude, but the salary is a decent proxy to how important a certain player is and how rare his skillset it.
Players in this list, the best of the best, must be worth the max, and then we can see how easy it is to complement them, with a realistic budget. To not get too stuck into one specific situation they have been in, optimal or not.

About your point that scoring is overvalued... is it? What's really worth a lot is scoring+playmaking, and rightfully so, imo The question would be, to justfy Draymond in this list: can he elevate enough those second and third tier scorers, with his playmaking? So that you don't need Steph and Klay but you can work it out with, say, Alllen and Sexton, in a contender? If the answer is no, I think we are overcelebrating Dray.
To be clear, I don't have an answer to that. But I am more and more leaning into Dray being more in the HM category.

I would say salary is a decent proxy for how front offices perceive a player's skillset rarity, but the fact that these things can change over time for reasons that aren't actually about changes to rules let's us know the dangers of going by that perception instead of our own analysis.

I'm not sure if the football example made sense to you but the essence of it is:

Running backs were once paid more than left tackles because NFL front offices thought running backs were harder to replace than left tackles, and then NFL front offices got a lot smarter and that got flipped.

I would suggest not only that the same can happen in basketball, but that being a "smart front office" in the 21st century has in many ways been about recognizing what the other front offices don't understand yet, and relying on that proxy as your ground truth would literally have us bashing the smart front offices as being bad at their job.

All of this goes back to the broader thing I'm sure you've seen me post about before:

In a paradigm shift, the previous conventional thought is gradually revealed to be wrong-headed.

Re: Is scoring overvalued...Sexton? Sexton is the perfect example of how scoring is overrated. If just look at his scoring volume and efficiency you'd think he was great, but he isn't, because everything else in his game is a problem.

Re: if you don't need Steph & Klay, can you make it work with Allen & Sexton? So I'm not entirely sure why you're talking about Allen here given that he's not a perimeter player, but focusing on the perimeter guys here:

1. Steph is in a league of his own, and Dray is clearly very lucky to play with him. Steph doesn't need Dray's offense in order for Steph to be an amazing offensive player, just as Dray doesn't need Steph's defense in order to be an amazing defensive player. There's never a time where I'm looking to dismiss either of these guys.

2. Could you replace Klay with X? For plenty of X's, the answer is 'Yes'. I mean, when the Warriors won in 2022, there's absolutely no reason to see Klay as anything but a role player. He continues to get play over a guy like Jordan Poole not because he's a better offensive player than Poole, but because he was decent on defense while Poole was terrible.

And to be clear, I know full well how Poole has fallen on his face after GS. I'm not championing Poole at all here, just noting whatever level his offense was, it's problematic to think Klay was tiers better than that.

2b. Let me emphasize that the combination of Klay's offense & defense in his prime, particularly with the off-ball specialization which was undervalued by the consensus (aka, backward thinking) of other front offices, allow him to be more valuable than he would otherwise be, and I'd certainly take the full two-way play of him over the Pooles of the world, but his scoring ability in and of itself is not some irreplaceable thing the way Steph's is.

3. Build a contender with Green, Curry & Sexton? If by that we mean featuring Sexton as the 2nd scoring star, then we have to talk about what's actually problematic about Sexton's game. In a nutshell, he's a zero guard. How he likes to play is to be ball dominant, but he's not a good playmaker for others, so that means if you have Curry & Green, you'd rather not play Sexton than let him do his thing. It's not a limitation about anyone other than Sexton in the conversation: You can't make someone good by your own playmaking when he's the one with the ball.

It's possible I'm too harsh about what Sexton can be come to be clear, but the key point is really that Sexton needs to change his role in the NBA if he wants to fit in with talent, and the reason for that is precisely because his scoring - which he can do with above average efficiency at volume in the NBA - is too easily replaceable by other available players to justify building your team around him given the weaknesses that dominate the rest of his game.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

While understand the idea that a championship team with Green is going to need to pay for scoring talent, and that takes money, I chafe for two reasons:

1) I don’t think the 2015 or 2022 teams had any scorers aside from Steph who were really that great. I’d basically consider peak Klay and Wiggins to be fringe all-star level guys.

2) I can understand a perspective where the demand for scorers being so out of whack compared to value that you simply have to pay more for point of value for scoring than anything else… but this is then essentially penalizing players with skills that are underrated by NBA teams, which strikes me as backwards from a team building perspective.

Fine to not pay Green up to his value because you can get away with it, but getting that value at that price is only a positive, right? I get the value of the player and I get to underpay him? Yay!

Meanwhile, if everyone else is paying fringe all-star scorers more than money per point of impact than other players are getting, cool, let’em. Keep paying those running backs tons of money, and I’ll find cheap replacements and spend my money on a quality left tackle.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't want to repeat the same things, but to me it's important to define what we are trying to measure here.
There's no "absolute" value a player brings, it's always in the context of certain team. The more potential teams with you in are a contender, the better you are as a player. More or less (I could express it with a better formula, but not now).
It's a bit crude, but the salary is a decent proxy to how important a certain player is and how rare his skillset it.
Players in this list, the best of the best, must be worth the max, and then we can see how easy it is to complement them, with a realistic budget. To not get too stuck into one specific situation they have been in, optimal or not.

About your point that scoring is overvalued... is it? What's really worth a lot is scoring+playmaking, and rightfully so, imo The question would be, to justfy Draymond in this list: can he elevate enough those second and third tier scorers, with his playmaking? So that you don't need Steph and Klay but you can work it out with, say, Alllen and Sexton, in a contender? If the answer is no, I think we are overcelebrating Dray.
To be clear, I don't have an answer to that. But I am more and more leaning into Dray being more in the HM category.

I would say salary is a decent proxy for how front offices perceive a player's skillset rarity, but the fact that these things can change over time for reasons that aren't actually about changes to rules let's us know the dangers of going by that perception instead of our own analysis.

I'm not sure if the football example made sense to you but the essence of it is:

Running backs were once paid more than left tackles because NFL front offices thought running backs were harder to replace than left tackles, and then NFL front offices got a lot smarter and that got flipped.

I would suggest not only that the same can happen in basketball, but that being a "smart front office" in the 21st century has in many ways been about recognizing what the other front offices don't understand yet, and relying on that proxy as your ground truth would literally have us bashing the smart front offices as being bad at their job.

All of this goes back to the broader thing I'm sure you've seen me post about before:

In a paradigm shift, the previous conventional thought is gradually revealed to be wrong-headed.

Re: Is scoring overvalued...Sexton? Sexton is the perfect example of how scoring is overrated. If just look at his scoring volume and efficiency you'd think he was great, but he isn't, because everything else in his game is a problem.

Re: if you don't need Steph & Klay, can you make it work with Allen & Sexton? So I'm not entirely sure why you're talking about Allen here given that he's not a perimeter player, but focusing on the perimeter guys here:

1. Steph is in a league of his own, and Dray is clearly very lucky to play with him. Steph doesn't need Dray's offense in order for Steph to be an amazing offensive player, just as Dray doesn't need Steph's defense in order to be an amazing defensive player. There's never a time where I'm looking to dismiss either of these guys.

2. Could you replace Klay with X? For plenty of X's, the answer is 'Yes'. I mean, when the Warriors won in 2022, there's absolutely no reason to see Klay as anything but a role player. He continues to get play over a guy like Jordan Poole not because he's a better offensive player than Poole, but because he was decent on defense while Poole was terrible.

And to be clear, I know full well how Poole has fallen on his face after GS. I'm not championing Poole at all here, just noting whatever level his offense was, it's problematic to think Klay was tiers better than that.

2b. Let me emphasize that the combination of Klay's offense & defense in his prime, particularly with the off-ball specialization which was undervalued by the consensus (aka, backward thinking) of other front offices, allow him to be more valuable than he would otherwise be, and I'd certainly take the full two-way play of him over the Pooles of the world, but his scoring ability in and of itself is not some irreplaceable thing the way Steph's is.

3. Build a contender with Green, Curry & Sexton? If by that we mean featuring Sexton as the 2nd scoring star, then we have to talk about what's actually problematic about Sexton's game. In a nutshell, he's a zero guard. How he likes to play is to be ball dominant, but he's not a good playmaker for others, so that means if you have Curry & Green, you'd rather not play Sexton than let him do his thing. It's not a limitation about anyone other than Sexton in the conversation: You can't make someone good by your own playmaking when he's the one with the ball.

It's possible I'm too harsh about what Sexton can be come to be clear, but the key point is really that Sexton needs to change his role in the NBA if he wants to fit in with talent, and the reason for that is precisely because his scoring - which he can do with above average efficiency at volume in the NBA - is too easily replaceable by other available players to justify building your team around him given the weaknesses that dominate the rest of his game.

First of all, I have basically zero NFL knowledge, but I understand what you are saying.
Another misunderstanding, with Allen I meant Ray Allen, to pick up a borderline all nba player who could somewhat be a (much) lesser Steph. Too lazy to think about a modern alternative!
I also think you are too harsh about Sexton. First because he's not paid max money, more starter/sixth man level, so expectations must be adjusted. Second because he's not really that much of a ball stopper. Just he's too small and with too much of a tunnel vision for his game. But my point was not Sexton himself, but rather a scorer in that price range. Could be Powel, White, Simons, Herro...

Back to the key part. I am fully aware that the markets can be inefficient, and there can be archetypes that are overvalued or undervalued. Or whose value changes over time because scarcity changes. But we need a metric to identify how difficult to find a certain player is, for the purpose of my argument. It can be wrong and reflect existing bias, but once you make some adjustments you can have an idea of what's the value of certain player, in the market.
Back to Green, my point is that a realistic way to build nowadays is to have two players in the 30-35% max, another two in the 15-20% range, then midlevel guys, on rookie scale, minimums. I would just be curious to understand who good a team with Green in one of the two max spots, a guy who's not an ATG in the one, and then the rest of the roster as you wish, can be. That's the sane approach I have with everybody, just it's very interesting for Dray.
To me the key is how much Dray can actually create advantages like Kidd in HC, to stay at the comparison TB made. I think they are stretching it a bit too much, he's more distributing and taking advantage of the defensive mistakes reacting to Steph. Can he play like Sabonis, a guy who I think got very underrated recently? He never had that ability to finish out of all those DHO actions.
I really don't know, I have a really wide range on Dray, from where Ben had him to out of the HM, even.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I have seen many comments here and there, but I wanted to create a thread to discuss the full list.
This is where were right now:
HM: Russell Westbrook, Allen Iverson, Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, Paul Pierce, Pau Gasol, Ray Allen, Paul George, Deron Williams, Damian Lillard
25) Jason Kidd
24) Jayson Tatum
23) Dwight Howard
22) Draymond Green
21) Manu Ginobili
20) James Harden
19) Tracy McGrady
18) Luka Doncic
17) Joel Embiid
16) Anthony Davis
15) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

My forecast for the final list (not my ranking)

14) Steve Nash
13) Chris Paul
12) Kawhi Leonard
11) Dwyane Wade
10) Dirk Nowitzki (high risk he might take Wade ahead, here)
9) Kevin Durant
8) Giannis Antetokounmpo
7) Kobe Bryant
6) Timmeh Duncan
5) Kevin Garnett
4) Steph Curry
3) Shaquille O'Neal
2) Nikola Jokic
1) LeBron James

What generated the most comment on line are Iverson's and Westbrooks's only HM, Harden too low, Dray in the list, Manu in the list.
To me, I was really not convinced by TMac at 19. I understand where he's coming from, but there's really no enough data to have that as a median outcome. I can see having a super high range, up to the top10, but I would have him at Tatum's level.

Update on the actual list:
25) Jason Kidd
24) Jayson Tatum
23) Dwight Howard
22) Draymond Green
21) Manu Ginobili
20) James Harden
19) Tracy McGrady
18) Luka Doncic
17) Joel Embiid
16) Anthony Davis
15) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
14) Dirk Nowitzki
13) Chris Paul
12) Steve Nash
11) Kawhi Leonard

My forecast for the rest:

10) Dwyane Wade
9) Kevin Durant
8) Giannis Antetokounmpo
7) Kobe Bryant
6) Timmeh Duncan
5) Kevin Garnett
4) Steph Curry
3) Shaquille O'Neal
2) Nikola Jokic
1) LeBron James

[Whopper_Sr]

Update on the actual list:
25) Jason Kidd
24) Jayson Tatum
23) Dwight Howard
22) Draymond Green
21) Manu Ginobili
20) James Harden
19) Tracy McGrady
18) Luka Doncic
17) Joel Embiid
16) Anthony Davis
15) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
14) Dirk Nowitzki
13) Chris Paul
12) Steve Nash
11) Kawhi Leonard

My forecast for the rest:

10) Dwyane Wade
9) Kevin Durant
8) Giannis Antetokounmpo
7) Kobe Bryant
6) Timmeh Duncan
5) Kevin Garnett
4) Steph Curry
3) Shaquille O'Neal
2) Nikola Jokic
1) LeBron James

Nash ended up ahead of CP3? Interesting. Durant/Kawhi/Wade over Dirk/Paul/Nash seems a bit off to me.

[picc]

Update on the actual list:
25) Jason Kidd
24) Jayson Tatum
23) Dwight Howard
22) Draymond Green
21) Manu Ginobili
20) James Harden
19) Tracy McGrady
18) Luka Doncic
17) Joel Embiid
16) Anthony Davis
15) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
14) Dirk Nowitzki
13) Chris Paul
12) Steve Nash
11) Kawhi Leonard

My forecast for the rest:

10) Dwyane Wade
9) Kevin Durant
8) Giannis Antetokounmpo
7) Kobe Bryant
6) Timmeh Duncan
5) Kevin Garnett
4) Steph Curry
3) Shaquille O'Neal
2) Nikola Jokic
1) LeBron James

Nash ended up ahead of CP3? Interesting. Durant/Kawhi/Wade over Dirk/Paul/Nash seems a bit off to me.

Not only is it accurate and makes perfect sense, it follows the paradigm of NBA history and aligns with how championships are actually won in the NBA.

Of course this is all subjective and opinionated. His rankings are his rankings and everyone's weighted criteria is different.

IIRC he had CP3 and Nash close with CP3 better if healthy, but docked him behind Nash for those same health reasons. Which makes sense, but then why wouldn't that dock him behind the others on the list too.

Like I think CP is theoretically a better player than Dirk was, but would I prefer him to start a postseason given his health (and choking) history? Absolutely not.

[Djoker]

My prediction for top 10:

10. Durant
9. Wade
8. Kobe
7. Giannis
6. Duncan
5. Jokic
4. Garnett
3. Steph
2. Shaq
1. Lebron

That's where I think the list ends up!