Is Pau Gasol a top 50 player all-time?

[G35]

Overall 2008 was not a good series for Gasol and Kobe...But in 2010,Gasol destroyed the Celtics frontcourt with so many offensive rebounds (35 in 7 games, including 9 huge offensive rebounds in the crucial game 7 in a 4 point win)

I don't understand why Kobe fans don't give the credit Gasol deserves, Kobe was the reason but without Gasol's trade, the Lakers aren't close to having the success they had between 2008 to 2010.Only the celtics had a better second option that the lakers during the 2008 to 2010 period in the NBA

I think this is somewhat of a disingenuous argument.

I don't think any Laker fans or Kobe fans are saying Pau was not valuable or a good player. He clearly was.

What I would say is Pau did not reach his potential and that cost the Lakers at times. He had his shortcomings.

Let me ask you, do we talk about Kobe's shortcomings, or do we just praise him for what he did well?

Lets go in a different direction:

- are people who call out Zion for being overweight "Zion-haters" and not giving him the credit he deserves

- are there Harden-haters because they call out his flopping and being out of shape

- are there Kyrie-haters because he talks about flat earth and conspiracies

- are there AD-haters because people call him "street clothes"

Sometimes...just sometimes...people can critique something without being a hater. It does not always have to be a love-fest over players.....

What do you mean by thatin bold...I hope you're talking just after 2010, because 2008 to 2010, it was difficult for the Lakers,Kobe,Pau,Phil,etc to do better...

For the criticisms, the criticisms that are justified, I understand that and that doesn't make you a hater and I didn't say that you were someone who was a Gasol hater, even if you could give more credit for the period from 2008 to 2010....But in other situations sometimes when someone criticizes a player even when he played very well and he is stubborn about it, no matter what and you don't give credit in his accomplishment,that's a hater

When the Lakers acquired Pau, I was as happy as any other Laker fan and no one expected that Pau would work so well within the Lakers offense and style. They were phenomenal. The way Kobe and Pau blended together is one of the things that I point to that makes Kobe better able to work with elite talent than Lebron.

But Pau did not play up to his ability in that 2008 series. The Lakers could have three-peated easily. They should have won G1 and then they blew that big lead in G4. I forget the exact lead they had but it was over 20 points I think in the 2nd half. I put a lot of blame for that on Kobe. He should have done something to stem that run but it happened. But I still think if Gasol played just to his normal standards the Lakers would have won that series.

So for all the Celtics fans that point to injuries to KG and Perkins, I counter that with injuries to Bynum and Ariza. Those Lakers should have threepeated, that's why I feel they underperformed....

[dhsilv2]

KG was the best defender in the game by a margin and his impact was seen all over that series, such as Pau's poor performance indicates. Why doc kept going to KG in the post when that isn't his strength is beyond me, but that's a coaching decision...and I'm pretty vocal in my view that Doc's a crappy basketball coach, maybe he's great in the locker room but everything he does in game is awful.

None the less even if you're low on KG and think he's like the 20th best player and high on Gasol and think he's 50th...that's as HUGE 30 spots. The two shouldn't be compared. Right now however we're discussing Pau in more the context of if he's a top 75 player, 55 spots down from 20th. By about 30-35 you're no longer talking about MVP level guys. By 50 you're looking at guys who either had stats that look better than impact or guys who had impact without the stats. You're holding Gasol to a level it feels like, that isn't really fair give where he'd rank.

Gasol was a highly skilled guy who was pretty good at everything a big man should or could be good at and not really great at anything. A flaw or two here and there and a few exceptional skills for a big man. Maybe a bit slow footed but with better hands/passing than all but the most elite bigs. That makes you a top 75 guy... But getting bullied or pushed around by KG doesn't make you soft. We're talking about a guy even Kobe would have looked at and been like "bro, basketball is my life, but it's still a game!".

I disagree with this point.

Because you think KG is so much greater than Pau, then Pau should not be able to play a good series vs KG?

So then what happened with Dirk vs KG in 2002? KG was a seven year veteran, so no experience mismatch and Dirk completely obliterated KG. The Mavericks swept the Wolves and it was a 4-5 matchup, so nothing egregious and Dirk put up all time numbers vs KG. This is prime vs prime.

In the 2008 KG vs Pau matchup, KG had been in the league 12 years...I think this was the last year of his prime years. But Pau was in the middle of his prime, KG was 31 and Pau was 27. Pau didn't get much better than he was then, he was at his best. The problem wasn't his physical ability but how he plays the game. He played soft against KG in the 2008 series, he learned over the next two years he had to play a little more aggressively. But that was always how Pau played. I know the rest of the Lakers always had to tell him to take more shots, be more aggressive getting his own shot.

But as far as top 50, I don't think the top 35 players is where the MVP level players end. Some players who were MVP level did not actually get an MVP but ranked high in the voting several times....for example Paul Pierce and you can make that case for several other players:

Look at the all time MVP shares leaders and you can see many who never won the award:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/nba_mvp_shares.html
Chris Paul
Patrick Ewing
Joel Embiid
Dwight Howard
Kawhi Leonard
Alonzo Mourning
Billy Cunningham
Jason Kidd
George Gervin
Tracy McGrady
Dominique Wilkins
Gary Payton
Dwyane Wade
Clyde Drexler
Scottie Pippen
Sidney Moncrief
Anthony Davis
Wes Unseld
Chris Webber
Elvin Hayes
Grant Hill
Bob Lanier
Carmelo Anthony - ranked 80th

Stopping a Carmelo and if you keep going down the list and you see a lot of names that did receive MVP votes that I mentioned:

Chris Bosh - 161
Elton Brand - 149
Kevin Love - 128
Draymond - 153
Lamarcus Aldridge - 169
Al Jefferson - 178

So while RGM does not respect the opinions of pretty much anyone outside of the Players Comparison board, there are others who voted that these were MVP level players. It is fascinating to come up with reasons why no one ever voted for Pau as MVP level, whether in Memphis, LA, or Chicago.....

Most of these guys had very short peaks where they got some consideration. If you're a person who ranks with a VERY heavy hand on absolute peaks, take Zo for example. Then that's fine and maybe you then don't rank Gasol very highly. I don't have a problem if someone goes there. But be consistent with it as i think that would drastically move a number of players and would change how most people analyze nba careers. Case and point, I do agree to a point that Hill in 97 was at least someone worthy of MVP consideration, not sure about that ranking (3rd) but whatever. I don't think any of the years he got a few 4th or 5th place type votes should really matter much here. So do you rank Grant Hill higher?

For me Pau gave us about 13 allstar level years and 6-9 all nba level years. His accolades don't reflect that but I think that's a reasonable assessment here. I will seed your point that yes some of the guys in that zone had a year or two that maybe you could argue were MVP year or it was a down season at the top and they won MVP (unsel for example or Cowens imo).

[G35]

Most of these guys had very short peaks where they got some consideration. If you're a person who ranks with a VERY heavy hand on absolute peaks, take Zo for example. Then that's fine and maybe you then don't rank Gasol very highly. I don't have a problem if someone goes there. But be consistent with it as i think that would drastically move a number of players and would change how most people analyze nba careers. Case and point, I do agree to a point that Hill in 97 was at least someone worthy of MVP consideration, not sure about that ranking (3rd) but whatever. I don't think any of the years he got a few 4th or 5th place type votes should really matter much here. So do you rank Grant Hill higher?

For me Pau gave us about 13 allstar level years and 6-9 all nba level years. His accolades don't reflect that but I think that's a reasonable assessment here. I will seed your point that yes some of the guys in that zone had a year or two that maybe you could argue were MVP year or it was a down season at the top and they won MVP (unsel for example or Cowens imo).

The primary argument for Pau being higher is for what he did with the Lakers. With the addition of Pau, the Lakers went to three NBA finals and won two of them with him being a crucial piece for their success.

However, what did Pau do that was more impressive than a lot of other players with a similar resume. Pau got six All Star selections and four All NBA (Two 2nd's and two 3rd's). That is very very good. But what makes that any better than Chris Bosh?

I agree, we should be consistent with how we rate players but unfortunately we are not, sometimes a player's longevity holds the most weight, sometimes its their peak, sometimes its how many championships that won.

For example Moses Malone vs Kevin Garnett

Moses played just as long as KG, has three MVP awards during a time when Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem were all playing. He was the best player on the 1983 Sixers championship team who are considered one of the best teams all time. Why isn't Moses considered a top 15 player?

What about Magic and Bird's longevity; Magic played really 12 years and Bird played 13 years. That is not long at all compared to most of the greats, but nearly everyone has them solidly in the top 10 all time.

What about James Worthy? He seems to be forgotten at times, but he was a high level player, but we never really saw him have to lead a team. He only played 12 years, seven all star selections, but never made an All NBA team but was part of the top 50 and 75 all time greatest players.

We have to admit some things:

- winning has the biggest bias for getting on these teams, those Celtics greats, Lakers greats both are well represented because their teams won a lot

- everyone has some sort of bias, whether its recency, old school, efficiency, statistics, awards, peak, prime, longevity etc etc

How people mix all of those things and judge one player vs another player has no consistency.

I think Pau's career was fortunate to land on those Lakers teams. His playoff record as a #1 player was terrible, he was 0-9 in the playoffs. That tells me that he either did not have the temperament or ability to carry a team in the playoffs. Pau is more of a complementary player. So that means he has to really overperform as a complementary player. An example of this would be Scottie Pippen in 1994. Pippen is also a complementary player but he was able to lead a team to 50 wins and win a playoff series.

James Worthy overperformed in the playoffs, that is how he got the name, "Big Game James" and won FMVP.

That puts James and Pippen ahead of Gasol imo.

Regular season is good, but your reputation is made in the playoffs.....

[dhsilv2]

Most of these guys had very short peaks where they got some consideration. If you're a person who ranks with a VERY heavy hand on absolute peaks, take Zo for example. Then that's fine and maybe you then don't rank Gasol very highly. I don't have a problem if someone goes there. But be consistent with it as i think that would drastically move a number of players and would change how most people analyze nba careers. Case and point, I do agree to a point that Hill in 97 was at least someone worthy of MVP consideration, not sure about that ranking (3rd) but whatever. I don't think any of the years he got a few 4th or 5th place type votes should really matter much here. So do you rank Grant Hill higher?

For me Pau gave us about 13 allstar level years and 6-9 all nba level years. His accolades don't reflect that but I think that's a reasonable assessment here. I will seed your point that yes some of the guys in that zone had a year or two that maybe you could argue were MVP year or it was a down season at the top and they won MVP (unsel for example or Cowens imo).

The primary argument for Pau being higher is for what he did with the Lakers. With the addition of Pau, the Lakers went to three NBA finals and won two of them with him being a crucial piece for their success.

However, what did Pau do that was more impressive than a lot of other players with a similar resume. Pau got six All Star selections and four All NBA (Two 2nd's and two 3rd's). That is very very good. But what makes that any better than Chris Bosh?

I agree, we should be consistent with how we rate players but unfortunately we are not, sometimes a player's longevity holds the most weight, sometimes its their peak, sometimes its how many championships that won.

For example Moses Malone vs Kevin Garnett

Moses played just as long as KG, has three MVP awards during a time when Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem were all playing. He was the best player on the 1983 Sixers championship team who are considered one of the best teams all time. Why isn't Moses considered a top 15 player?

What about Magic and Bird's longevity; Magic played really 12 years and Bird played 13 years. That is not long at all compared to most of the greats, but nearly everyone has them solidly in the top 10 all time.

What about James Worthy? He seems to be forgotten at times, but he was a high level player, but we never really saw him have to lead a team. He only played 12 years, seven all star selections, but never made an All NBA team but was part of the top 50 and 75 all time greatest players.

We have to admit some things:

- winning has the biggest bias for getting on these teams, those Celtics greats, Lakers greats both are well represented because their teams won a lot

- everyone has some sort of bias, whether its recency, old school, efficiency, statistics, awards, peak, prime, longevity etc etc

How people mix all of those things and judge one player vs another player has no consistency.

I think Pau's career was fortunate to land on those Lakers teams. His playoff record as a #1 player was terrible, he was 0-9 in the playoffs. That tells me that he either did not have the temperament or ability to carry a team in the playoffs. Pau is more of a complementary player. So that means he has to really overperform as a complementary player. An example of this would be Scottie Pippen in 1994. Pippen is also a complementary player but he was able to lead a team to 50 wins and win a playoff series.

James Worthy overperformed in the playoffs, that is how he got the name, "Big Game James" and won FMVP.

That puts James and Pippen ahead of Gasol imo.

Regular season is good, but your reputation is made in the playoffs.....

The biggest argument for Gasol's ranking all time is how good a player he was and for how long he was such a good player. The titles are a secondary thing used to qualify that the stats, metrics, awards correlate with winning. Gasol is 32nd all time in Win Share, he's 30th in VORP. Gasol has 7 top 20 VORP seasons, 10 top 20 PER seasons, and 6 top 20 WS seasons. You asked to compare that to Bosh. Bosh is 77th in WS, nowhere to be seen in the top 100 in VORP, 2 top 20 VOP seasons (both 20th), 5 top 20 WS seasons, and 5 top 20 PER years. Yes, just box score data here as I'm lazy but the gap between the two in terms of stats and career play is absolutely massive and staggering.

Bird and Magic are actually NOT today in 2022 still consistently in everyone's top 10, top 12 yes. If I take the same basic box score stat sniff test what do we get? Bird is 15th in VORP and 29th in WS. Bird has 4 seasons leading the league in VORP and 2 in WS. 11 top 20 PER seasons and 2 where he was first. Just our box test and places bird in a completely different startaphere than Gasol who's night and day ahead of Bosh. Magic is 14th and 25th in VORP and WS, 11 top 20 WS seasons, 12 top 20 VORP years...again his box stats build a resume of an all time elite and dominate player, a profile you simply don't see out outside of about 15 players.

You ask about KG vs Malone, but again we see an instant gap when we just start looking at their career stats. KG is 5th in VORP and 10th in WS vs Moses at 40th in VORP and 15th in WS. I won't go on and on but from the very start when you're setting up that baseline for "how good was so and so, lets look at their stats", you're comparing widly different players here and in general the stats are painting a picture that matches roughly where most of these rankings tend to be. Or at least we can see that judging players by their play vs their peers is painting clear consistency within a lot of this.

Obviously, I would support ranking a guy based on the box score alone, that's just silly, but it has for as long as I've been a fan, been the first place most people looked when diving into players who we couldn't count their ring+ MVP's on one hand, let alone 2.

[LAL1947]

The biggest argument for Gasol's ranking all time is how good a player he was and for how long he was such a good player. The titles are a secondary thing used to qualify that the stats, metrics, awards correlate with winning. Gasol is 32nd all time in Win Share, he's 30th in VORP. Gasol has 7 top 20 VORP seasons, 10 top 20 PER seasons, and 6 top 20 WS seasons. You asked to compare that to Bosh. Bosh is 77th in WS, nowhere to be seen in the top 100 in VORP, 2 top 20 VOP seasons (both 20th), 5 top 20 WS seasons, and 5 top 20 PER years. Yes, just box score data here as I'm lazy but the gap between the two in terms of stats and career play is absolutely massive and staggering.

When you quote VORP and WS, I feel these stats should not used as totals but as averages. If necessary, years may be omitted where less games were played due to injury or for other reasons, you could even limit sample size to 10-12 year primes. Otherwise, they may give a wrong picture of who performed better by favoring longevity (where centers and bigs can have an advantage over other guards and wings).

[G35]

Most of these guys had very short peaks where they got some consideration. If you're a person who ranks with a VERY heavy hand on absolute peaks, take Zo for example. Then that's fine and maybe you then don't rank Gasol very highly. I don't have a problem if someone goes there. But be consistent with it as i think that would drastically move a number of players and would change how most people analyze nba careers. Case and point, I do agree to a point that Hill in 97 was at least someone worthy of MVP consideration, not sure about that ranking (3rd) but whatever. I don't think any of the years he got a few 4th or 5th place type votes should really matter much here. So do you rank Grant Hill higher?

For me Pau gave us about 13 allstar level years and 6-9 all nba level years. His accolades don't reflect that but I think that's a reasonable assessment here. I will seed your point that yes some of the guys in that zone had a year or two that maybe you could argue were MVP year or it was a down season at the top and they won MVP (unsel for example or Cowens imo).

The primary argument for Pau being higher is for what he did with the Lakers. With the addition of Pau, the Lakers went to three NBA finals and won two of them with him being a crucial piece for their success.

However, what did Pau do that was more impressive than a lot of other players with a similar resume. Pau got six All Star selections and four All NBA (Two 2nd's and two 3rd's). That is very very good. But what makes that any better than Chris Bosh?

I agree, we should be consistent with how we rate players but unfortunately we are not, sometimes a player's longevity holds the most weight, sometimes its their peak, sometimes its how many championships that won.

For example Moses Malone vs Kevin Garnett

Moses played just as long as KG, has three MVP awards during a time when Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem were all playing. He was the best player on the 1983 Sixers championship team who are considered one of the best teams all time. Why isn't Moses considered a top 15 player?

What about Magic and Bird's longevity; Magic played really 12 years and Bird played 13 years. That is not long at all compared to most of the greats, but nearly everyone has them solidly in the top 10 all time.

What about James Worthy? He seems to be forgotten at times, but he was a high level player, but we never really saw him have to lead a team. He only played 12 years, seven all star selections, but never made an All NBA team but was part of the top 50 and 75 all time greatest players.

We have to admit some things:

- winning has the biggest bias for getting on these teams, those Celtics greats, Lakers greats both are well represented because their teams won a lot

- everyone has some sort of bias, whether its recency, old school, efficiency, statistics, awards, peak, prime, longevity etc etc

How people mix all of those things and judge one player vs another player has no consistency.

I think Pau's career was fortunate to land on those Lakers teams. His playoff record as a #1 player was terrible, he was 0-9 in the playoffs. That tells me that he either did not have the temperament or ability to carry a team in the playoffs. Pau is more of a complementary player. So that means he has to really overperform as a complementary player. An example of this would be Scottie Pippen in 1994. Pippen is also a complementary player but he was able to lead a team to 50 wins and win a playoff series.

James Worthy overperformed in the playoffs, that is how he got the name, "Big Game James" and won FMVP.

That puts James and Pippen ahead of Gasol imo.

Regular season is good, but your reputation is made in the playoffs.....

The biggest argument for Gasol's ranking all time is how good a player he was and for how long he was such a good player. The titles are a secondary thing used to qualify that the stats, metrics, awards correlate with winning. Gasol is 32nd all time in Win Share, he's 30th in VORP. Gasol has 7 top 20 VORP seasons, 10 top 20 PER seasons, and 6 top 20 WS seasons. You asked to compare that to Bosh. Bosh is 77th in WS, nowhere to be seen in the top 100 in VORP, 2 top 20 VOP seasons (both 20th), 5 top 20 WS seasons, and 5 top 20 PER years. Yes, just box score data here as I'm lazy but the gap between the two in terms of stats and career play is absolutely massive and staggering.

Bird and Magic are actually NOT today in 2022 still consistently in everyone's top 10, top 12 yes. If I take the same basic box score stat sniff test what do we get? Bird is 15th in VORP and 29th in WS. Bird has 4 seasons leading the league in VORP and 2 in WS. 11 top 20 PER seasons and 2 where he was first. Just our box test and places bird in a completely different startaphere than Gasol who's night and day ahead of Bosh. Magic is 14th and 25th in VORP and WS, 11 top 20 WS seasons, 12 top 20 VORP years...again his box stats build a resume of an all time elite and dominate player, a profile you simply don't see out outside of about 15 players.

You ask about KG vs Malone, but again we see an instant gap when we just start looking at their career stats. KG is 5th in VORP and 10th in WS vs Moses at 40th in VORP and 15th in WS. I won't go on and on but from the very start when you're setting up that baseline for "how good was so and so, lets look at their stats", you're comparing widly different players here and in general the stats are painting a picture that matches roughly where most of these rankings tend to be. Or at least we can see that judging players by their play vs their peers is painting clear consistency within a lot of this.

Obviously, I would support ranking a guy based on the box score alone, that's just silly, but it has for as long as I've been a fan, been the first place most people looked when diving into players who we couldn't count their ring+ MVP's on one hand, let alone 2.

You said that the biggest argument for Pau is how good a player he was (that is a vague and subjective) and for how long he was a good player.

First anything to do with "WinShares" has to do with winning, not how a player is individually.

PER is also an efficiency stat, not a goodness stat, it does not rate how good you are as a player. There are a lot of players that have a low PER but are considered great players and possibly better than Pau. For example Draymond does not have any 20 PER seasons and his career average is 14.9. Bruce Bowen has a career PER of 8.2...Dennis Rodman's is 14.6.

Then Rudy Gobert has seven seasons of 20+ PER and he's probably going to get plenty more. Does that make him better than Pau? What about Blake Griffin who has nine seasons of 20+ PER and he has more All NBA selections. The biggest thing separating these players from is that he won two titles.

KG and Moses are not wildly different players, they are both bigs, Moses was 6'10 and KG is 7 ft. Their styles are wildly different but isn't Dirk wildly different from KG...isn't Duncan wildly different from KG and we have endless comparisons about them.

Also a top 50 is relative to position, John Stockton has a career PER of 21.8 and a career TS% of .608, their PER's are similar but Stockton blows KG's efficiency out of the water. So it really comes down to individual preference.

I can think of a lot of players that have better box scores or advanced stats than Pau, I don't think that is a path those who are pro-Gasol want to go down......

[dhsilv2]

The biggest argument for Gasol's ranking all time is how good a player he was and for how long he was such a good player. The titles are a secondary thing used to qualify that the stats, metrics, awards correlate with winning. Gasol is 32nd all time in Win Share, he's 30th in VORP. Gasol has 7 top 20 VORP seasons, 10 top 20 PER seasons, and 6 top 20 WS seasons. You asked to compare that to Bosh. Bosh is 77th in WS, nowhere to be seen in the top 100 in VORP, 2 top 20 VOP seasons (both 20th), 5 top 20 WS seasons, and 5 top 20 PER years. Yes, just box score data here as I'm lazy but the gap between the two in terms of stats and career play is absolutely massive and staggering.

When you quote VORP and WS, I feel these stats should not used as totals but as averages. If necessary, years may be omitted where less games were played due to injury or for other reasons, you could even limit sample size to 10-12 year primes. Otherwise, they may give a wrong picture of who performed better by favoring longevity (where centers and bigs can have an advantage over other guards and wings).

Except longevity is the biggest reason Gasol is so well thought of here, and it's really important. VORP is a metric where if you're not good, it doesn't really care that you even played. Kobe's last 3 season were worth 0.8 VORP. Melo's last 5 seasons (284 games) generated 0.3 VORP. Derick Fisher and his near 1,300 career games generated 8.9 total VORP. WS is much more forgiving which is why both are useful and get looked at together. Remember, Magic and Bird are 14th and 15th in career VORP.

And at the end of the day 10 allstar level seasons isn't better than 15. Why average it for each player? Gasol had way more quality seasons than Bosh. He gets ranked high in part because of that and I don't see any logical reason to ignore that.

[dhsilv2]

The primary argument for Pau being higher is for what he did with the Lakers. With the addition of Pau, the Lakers went to three NBA finals and won two of them with him being a crucial piece for their success.

However, what did Pau do that was more impressive than a lot of other players with a similar resume. Pau got six All Star selections and four All NBA (Two 2nd's and two 3rd's). That is very very good. But what makes that any better than Chris Bosh?

I agree, we should be consistent with how we rate players but unfortunately we are not, sometimes a player's longevity holds the most weight, sometimes its their peak, sometimes its how many championships that won.

For example Moses Malone vs Kevin Garnett

Moses played just as long as KG, has three MVP awards during a time when Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem were all playing. He was the best player on the 1983 Sixers championship team who are considered one of the best teams all time. Why isn't Moses considered a top 15 player?

What about Magic and Bird's longevity; Magic played really 12 years and Bird played 13 years. That is not long at all compared to most of the greats, but nearly everyone has them solidly in the top 10 all time.

What about James Worthy? He seems to be forgotten at times, but he was a high level player, but we never really saw him have to lead a team. He only played 12 years, seven all star selections, but never made an All NBA team but was part of the top 50 and 75 all time greatest players.

We have to admit some things:

- winning has the biggest bias for getting on these teams, those Celtics greats, Lakers greats both are well represented because their teams won a lot

- everyone has some sort of bias, whether its recency, old school, efficiency, statistics, awards, peak, prime, longevity etc etc

How people mix all of those things and judge one player vs another player has no consistency.

I think Pau's career was fortunate to land on those Lakers teams. His playoff record as a #1 player was terrible, he was 0-9 in the playoffs. That tells me that he either did not have the temperament or ability to carry a team in the playoffs. Pau is more of a complementary player. So that means he has to really overperform as a complementary player. An example of this would be Scottie Pippen in 1994. Pippen is also a complementary player but he was able to lead a team to 50 wins and win a playoff series.

James Worthy overperformed in the playoffs, that is how he got the name, "Big Game James" and won FMVP.

That puts James and Pippen ahead of Gasol imo.

Regular season is good, but your reputation is made in the playoffs.....

The biggest argument for Gasol's ranking all time is how good a player he was and for how long he was such a good player. The titles are a secondary thing used to qualify that the stats, metrics, awards correlate with winning. Gasol is 32nd all time in Win Share, he's 30th in VORP. Gasol has 7 top 20 VORP seasons, 10 top 20 PER seasons, and 6 top 20 WS seasons. You asked to compare that to Bosh. Bosh is 77th in WS, nowhere to be seen in the top 100 in VORP, 2 top 20 VOP seasons (both 20th), 5 top 20 WS seasons, and 5 top 20 PER years. Yes, just box score data here as I'm lazy but the gap between the two in terms of stats and career play is absolutely massive and staggering.

Bird and Magic are actually NOT today in 2022 still consistently in everyone's top 10, top 12 yes. If I take the same basic box score stat sniff test what do we get? Bird is 15th in VORP and 29th in WS. Bird has 4 seasons leading the league in VORP and 2 in WS. 11 top 20 PER seasons and 2 where he was first. Just our box test and places bird in a completely different startaphere than Gasol who's night and day ahead of Bosh. Magic is 14th and 25th in VORP and WS, 11 top 20 WS seasons, 12 top 20 VORP years...again his box stats build a resume of an all time elite and dominate player, a profile you simply don't see out outside of about 15 players.

You ask about KG vs Malone, but again we see an instant gap when we just start looking at their career stats. KG is 5th in VORP and 10th in WS vs Moses at 40th in VORP and 15th in WS. I won't go on and on but from the very start when you're setting up that baseline for "how good was so and so, lets look at their stats", you're comparing widly different players here and in general the stats are painting a picture that matches roughly where most of these rankings tend to be. Or at least we can see that judging players by their play vs their peers is painting clear consistency within a lot of this.

Obviously, I would support ranking a guy based on the box score alone, that's just silly, but it has for as long as I've been a fan, been the first place most people looked when diving into players who we couldn't count their ring+ MVP's on one hand, let alone 2.

You said that the biggest argument for Pau is how good a player he was (that is a vague and subjective) and for how long he was a good player.

First anything to do with "WinShares" has to do with winning, not how a player is individually.

PER is also an efficiency stat, not a goodness stat, it does not rate how good you are as a player. There are a lot of players that have a low PER but are considered great players and possibly better than Pau. For example Draymond does not have any 20 PER seasons and his career average is 14.9. Bruce Bowen has a career PER of 8.2...Dennis Rodman's is 14.6.

Then Rudy Gobert has seven seasons of 20+ PER and he's probably going to get plenty more. Does that make him better than Pau? What about Blake Griffin who has nine seasons of 20+ PER and he has more All NBA selections. The biggest thing separating these players from is that he won two titles.

KG and Moses are not wildly different players, they are both bigs, Moses was 6'10 and KG is 7 ft. Their styles are wildly different but isn't Dirk wildly different from KG...isn't Duncan wildly different from KG and we have endless comparisons about them.

Also a top 50 is relative to position, John Stockton has a career PER of 21.8 and a career TS% of .608, their PER's are similar but Stockton blows KG's efficiency out of the water. So it really comes down to individual preference.

I can think of a lot of players that have better box scores or advanced stats than Pau, I don't think that is a path those who are pro-Gasol want to go down......

Winshare has to do with how your individual contributions as measured by the box score helped your team win, which is how we measure how good you are. If you make your team win more through your individual contribution then you're better. We all know how bad PER is as a stat, I simply used it to provide meaningful context. And obviously Gobert is better peak vs peak than Pau, not sure why you'd ask, though it has nothing at all to do with PER.

You would be extremely hard pressed to come up with 75 players with better career box stats than Gasol, because there aren't. That doesn't make him top 75, but it is the basis that most people start ranking player. Their stats. Those titles are WAY down from the stats.

And yes, KG has clearly better stats than Moses! You can make a case to argue against KG and for Moses, but you'll have to make it by explaining why his stats are worse. And people do that all the time, stats aren't black and white deciders on who's a better player. They're just a starting point to remove our bias and allow us to start doing the real work.

You asked me about consistency and I simply provided you career stats that support the rough rankings we traditional see of all these players. This is the basis that I started with to begin the discussion on if people are or are not consistent. Your attempt to poke holes in players rankings based on consistency simply doesn't hold true even just doing a VERY quick dive.

[D3ko]

Garnett was better than Gasol in Being american Black, playing for stats, getting the fake loyal guy treatment , and shouting and being the fake tough guy. Thats it.

KG need Pierce Allen Rondo to Win a Ring.

No more accolates. Apart of Westbrook kind of Mvp.

Pf better than Gasol in his era.
Without any question.

Duncan
.
Dirk
.
.
Thats it.

Kg is was and will be very overrated.

Elton Brand offense with lite draymond green defense.

[LAL1947]

The biggest argument for Gasol's ranking all time is how good a player he was and for how long he was such a good player. The titles are a secondary thing used to qualify that the stats, metrics, awards correlate with winning. Gasol is 32nd all time in Win Share, he's 30th in VORP. Gasol has 7 top 20 VORP seasons, 10 top 20 PER seasons, and 6 top 20 WS seasons. You asked to compare that to Bosh. Bosh is 77th in WS, nowhere to be seen in the top 100 in VORP, 2 top 20 VOP seasons (both 20th), 5 top 20 WS seasons, and 5 top 20 PER years. Yes, just box score data here as I'm lazy but the gap between the two in terms of stats and career play is absolutely massive and staggering.

When you quote VORP and WS, I feel these stats should not used as totals but as averages. If necessary, years may be omitted where less games were played due to injury or for other reasons, you could even limit sample size to 10-12 year primes. Otherwise, they may give a wrong picture of who performed better by favoring longevity (where centers and bigs can have an advantage over other guards and wings).

Except longevity is the biggest reason Gasol is so well thought of here, and it's really important. VORP is a metric where if you're not good, it doesn't really care that you even played. Kobe's last 3 season were worth 0.8 VORP. Melo's last 5 seasons (284 games) generated 0.3 VORP. Derick Fisher and his near 1,300 career games generated 8.9 total VORP. WS is much more forgiving which is why both are useful and get looked at together. Remember, Magic and Bird are 14th and 15th in career VORP.

And at the end of the day 10 allstar level seasons isn't better than 15. Why average it for each player? Gasol had way more quality seasons than Bosh. He gets ranked high in part because of that and I don't see any logical reason to ignore that.

The way you're using it doesn't reflect who was the better player, even though they were playing at the same time... but tries to pass off a person who had a longer career as the better player. Averaging it out gives a clearer picture of how good each was in each of their seasons. Even better than averaging, is to limit its use to an equivalent period, such as between age 22-32 or 34, if it's possible.

That being said, I'm not a fan of using stats like WS/48 and VORP to determine who were better players. Both are highly dependent on circumstance. Are you a fan of using them? If you are, I guess you must be willing to concede that Rudy Gobert is a better player than Tim Duncan, since Gobert is 9th and Duncan is 18th in WS/48.

[dhsilv2]

When you quote VORP and WS, I feel these stats should not used as totals but as averages. If necessary, years may be omitted where less games were played due to injury or for other reasons, you could even limit sample size to 10-12 year primes. Otherwise, they may give a wrong picture of who performed better by favoring longevity (where centers and bigs can have an advantage over other guards and wings).

Except longevity is the biggest reason Gasol is so well thought of here, and it's really important. VORP is a metric where if you're not good, it doesn't really care that you even played. Kobe's last 3 season were worth 0.8 VORP. Melo's last 5 seasons (284 games) generated 0.3 VORP. Derick Fisher and his near 1,300 career games generated 8.9 total VORP. WS is much more forgiving which is why both are useful and get looked at together. Remember, Magic and Bird are 14th and 15th in career VORP.

And at the end of the day 10 allstar level seasons isn't better than 15. Why average it for each player? Gasol had way more quality seasons than Bosh. He gets ranked high in part because of that and I don't see any logical reason to ignore that.

The way you're using it doesn't reflect who was the better player, even though they were playing at the same time... but tries to pass off a person who had a longer career as the better player. Averaging it out gives a clearer picture of how good each was in each of their seasons. Even better than averaging, is to limit its use to an equivalent period, such as between age 22-32 or 34, if it's possible.

That being said, I'm not a fan of using stats like WS/48 and VORP to determine who were better players. Both are highly dependent on circumstance. Are you a fan of using them? If you are, I guess you must be willing to concede that Rudy Gobert is a better player than Tim Duncan, since Gobert is 9th and Duncan is 18th in WS/48.

If you rank a player on who was their best at their best, that is a different list than what most people generally are doing. If you want to have a best peaks discussion it's a very different discussion. Same with best 5 or 10 years. But taking away multiple allstar or all nba level years because one player didn't play as many is stupid. Being a high level role player who impacts titles absolutely is part of what we should look for if we want to rank a player higher or less than another as well. If we did things your way Gobert would rank head of Duncan on career WS/48 (which is their average or rate measure) which seems stupid. But that's where your method would take us.

As I already covered, stats are the basis for how you start building a ranking of players. You don't just blindly put together a list based on it and call it a day. Basketball stats are better than ever before, but they're hardly perfect.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Garnett was better than Gasol in Being american Black, playing for stats, getting the fake loyal guy treatment , and shouting and being the fake tough guy. Thats it.

KG need Pierce Allen Rondo to Win a Ring.

No more accolates. Apart of Westbrook kind of Mvp.

Pf better than Gasol in his era.
Without any question.

Duncan
.
Dirk
.
.
Thats it.

Kg is was and will be very overrated.

Elton Brand offense with lite draymond green defense.

KG is a far superior player than Pau. You are vastly undervaluing his on court impact.

[G35]

Except longevity is the biggest reason Gasol is so well thought of here, and it's really important. VORP is a metric where if you're not good, it doesn't really care that you even played. Kobe's last 3 season were worth 0.8 VORP. Melo's last 5 seasons (284 games) generated 0.3 VORP. Derick Fisher and his near 1,300 career games generated 8.9 total VORP. WS is much more forgiving which is why both are useful and get looked at together. Remember, Magic and Bird are 14th and 15th in career VORP.

And at the end of the day 10 allstar level seasons isn't better than 15. Why average it for each player? Gasol had way more quality seasons than Bosh. He gets ranked high in part because of that and I don't see any logical reason to ignore that.

The way you're using it doesn't reflect who was the better player, even though they were playing at the same time... but tries to pass off a person who had a longer career as the better player. Averaging it out gives a clearer picture of how good each was in each of their seasons. Even better than averaging, is to limit its use to an equivalent period, such as between age 22-32 or 34, if it's possible.

That being said, I'm not a fan of using stats like WS/48 and VORP to determine who were better players. Both are highly dependent on circumstance. Are you a fan of using them? If you are, I guess you must be willing to concede that Rudy Gobert is a better player than Tim Duncan, since Gobert is 9th and Duncan is 18th in WS/48.

If you rank a player on who was their best at their best, that is a different list than what most people generally are doing. If you want to have a best peaks discussion it's a very different discussion. Same with best 5 or 10 years. But taking away multiple allstar or all nba level years because one player didn't play as many is stupid. Being a high level role player who impacts titles absolutely is part of what we should look for if we want to rank a player higher or less than another as well. If we did things your way Gobert would rank head of Duncan on career WS/48 (which is their average or rate measure) which seems stupid. But that's where your method would take us.

As I already covered, stats are the basis for how you start building a ranking of players. You don't just blindly put together a list based on it and call it a day. Basketball stats are better than ever before, but they're hardly perfect.

But you are cherry picking stats and when someone points out an inconsistency you move the goalposts. You are mentally applying your own assessment of what awards and how Pau's career should be judged, instead of how it actually happened:

For me Pau gave us about 13 allstar level years and 6-9 all nba level years. His accolades don't reflect that but I think that's a reasonable assessment here. I will seed your point that yes some of the guys in that zone had a year or two that maybe you could argue were MVP year or it was a down season at the top and they won MVP (unsel for example or Cowens imo).

You cannot apply your own standards to what you think Pau should have been awarded. He did not make 13 All-Star teams, he made 6. That is like people who think Lamar Odom was an All-Star player, but he never made an All Star team. That is living in your own echo chamber.

Most of these guys had very short peaks where they got some consideration. If you're a person who ranks with a VERY heavy hand on absolute peaks, take Zo for example. Then that's fine and maybe you then don't rank Gasol very highly. I don't have a problem if someone goes there. But be consistent with it as i think that would drastically move a number of players and would change how most people analyze nba careers.

This is another inexplicable assessment. What "peak" did Pau have? He didn't even have a peak, that is why he was never in the MVP consideration. He was a good player for a long time, that does not make you all time great. There are a lot of players that were good for a long time. I have been making the comparison of Lamarcus Aldridge several times. He is very similar to Pau:

Pau Gasol
PPG - 17.0
REB - 9.2
AST - 3.2
BLK - 1.6
STL - 0.5
PER - 21.4
20 Years played

Lamarcus Aldridge
PPG - 19.1
REB - 8.1
AST - 1.9
BLK - 1.1
STL - 0.7
PER 20.7
18 Years played

They both have played a long time, they both have similar All Star selections, both have similar All-NBA selections. what is the major difference between these two players. One won two titles and one did not.

Obviously, I would support ranking a guy based on the box score alone, that's just silly, but it has for as long as I've been a fan, been the first place most people looked when diving into players who we couldn't count their ring+ MVP's on one hand, let alone 2.

No one is ranking on just box score alone, there is a reason why we keep score in games. If basketball was only about how efficiently someone can pass or shoot, then this would be a very simple exercise. Winning matters. A lot. Being good for a long time doesn't move the needle as much, a lot of players have been good for a long time.

Jason Tatum just said it, whether you want to label a person a superstar or not, that is up to the individual, but when you win a championship, they can't take that away......

[dhsilv2]

The way you're using it doesn't reflect who was the better player, even though they were playing at the same time... but tries to pass off a person who had a longer career as the better player. Averaging it out gives a clearer picture of how good each was in each of their seasons. Even better than averaging, is to limit its use to an equivalent period, such as between age 22-32 or 34, if it's possible.

That being said, I'm not a fan of using stats like WS/48 and VORP to determine who were better players. Both are highly dependent on circumstance. Are you a fan of using them? If you are, I guess you must be willing to concede that Rudy Gobert is a better player than Tim Duncan, since Gobert is 9th and Duncan is 18th in WS/48.

If you rank a player on who was their best at their best, that is a different list than what most people generally are doing. If you want to have a best peaks discussion it's a very different discussion. Same with best 5 or 10 years. But taking away multiple allstar or all nba level years because one player didn't play as many is stupid. Being a high level role player who impacts titles absolutely is part of what we should look for if we want to rank a player higher or less than another as well. If we did things your way Gobert would rank head of Duncan on career WS/48 (which is their average or rate measure) which seems stupid. But that's where your method would take us.

As I already covered, stats are the basis for how you start building a ranking of players. You don't just blindly put together a list based on it and call it a day. Basketball stats are better than ever before, but they're hardly perfect.

But you are cherry picking stats and when someone points out an inconsistency you move the goalposts. You are mentally applying your own assessment of what awards and how Pau's career should be judged, instead of how it actually happened:

For me Pau gave us about 13 allstar level years and 6-9 all nba level years. His accolades don't reflect that but I think that's a reasonable assessment here. I will seed your point that yes some of the guys in that zone had a year or two that maybe you could argue were MVP year or it was a down season at the top and they won MVP (unsel for example or Cowens imo).

You cannot apply your own standards to what you think Pau should have been awarded. He did not make 13 All-Star teams, he made 6. That is like people who think Lamar Odom was an All-Star player, but he never made an All Star team. That is living in your own echo chamber.

Most of these guys had very short peaks where they got some consideration. If you're a person who ranks with a VERY heavy hand on absolute peaks, take Zo for example. Then that's fine and maybe you then don't rank Gasol very highly. I don't have a problem if someone goes there. But be consistent with it as i think that would drastically move a number of players and would change how most people analyze nba careers.

This is another inexplicable assessment. What "peak" did Pau have? He didn't even have a peak, that is why he was never in the MVP consideration. He was a good player for a long time, that does not make you all time great. There are a lot of players that were good for a long time. I have been making the comparison of Lamarcus Aldridge several times. He is very similar to Pau:

Pau Gasol
PPG - 17.0
REB - 9.2
AST - 3.2
BLK - 1.6
STL - 0.5
PER - 21.4
20 Years played

Lamarcus Aldridge
PPG - 19.1
REB - 8.1
AST - 1.9
BLK - 1.1
STL - 0.7
PER 20.7
18 Years played

They both have played a long time, they both have similar All Star selections, both have similar All-NBA selections. what is the major difference between these two players. One won two titles and one did not.

Obviously, I would support ranking a guy based on the box score alone, that's just silly, but it has for as long as I've been a fan, been the first place most people looked when diving into players who we couldn't count their ring+ MVP's on one hand, let alone 2.

No one is ranking on just box score alone, there is a reason why we keep score in games. If basketball was only about how efficiently someone can pass or shoot, then this would be a very simple exercise. Winning matters. A lot. Being good for a long time doesn't move the needle as much, a lot of players have been good for a long time.

Jason Tatum just said it, whether you want to label a person a superstar or not, that is up to the individual, but when you win a championship, they can't take that away......

That was poor typing on my part - I was saying I wouldn't rank on box score alone.

Allstar and all nba have arbitrary cutoffs (and with allstar it can vary) in addition many selections are just bad. We as fans absolutely have to form a method for consistently judging level of play to what those standards on average mean.

And here you go AGAIN with another comp between two players who don't have similar stats. Gasol's career VORP is 30th all time. Aldridge is 89th all time.

You can't call me inconsistent by saying I start with stats to form the outline of rankings and then tell me I'm being inconsistent by showing me two wildly different careers and you keep doing it! If you compare two guys who have similar stats, the ranking from there will be completely based different on additional analysis. But Aldridge is going to start far down on the list vs Gasol when we do an analysis of their career and peak stats.

Peak VORP 6.0 vs 3.7 - Gasol with 6 years at or above Aldridge's peak VORP
Peak WS 14.7 vs 11.1 (3 seasons higher than peak aldridge)
PER - here Aldridge does peak the highest at 25 vs 24.1

We still see 13 seasons of a 20 PER (the general "allstar level" for that metric) vs 8 for Aldridge.

Nobody would look at these stats and think these are two guys we should have close when ranking them.

[DRBM]

Gasol's achievements:

REGULAR SEASON

40) 20894 points & 167) 17.04 points per game.
28) 11305 rebounds & 85) 9.22 rebounds per game.
21) 1941 blocks & 50) 1.58 blocks per game.
125) 3925 assists.
30) 41001 minutes & 133) 33.44 minutes per game.

39) 1226 games.
50) 21.37 PER.
29) 140.07 WS
29) 57.50 VORP

FINALS

63) 311 points.
18) 30 blocks.
36) 188 rebounds.
63) 57 assists.
98) 18 games.

Very good longevity, but without a strong peak.

Arguably he's been in the top 20-25 for 10 years and maybe close to the top 10 for a 2-3 years. He is far from being considered a great alpha male in the league. Arguably he's been in the top 20-25 for 10 years and maybe close to the top 10 for a couple of years. Far from being considered a great alpha male in the league, however, he has had a great collective impact on his teams.


Now comes the big question. What has more value? Being a great player for 15 years for the teams you play for or being an alpha male who doesn't achieve great collective successes or have a long career?

PS. And all of these are arguments that leave aside his contribution to FIBA basketball.

Conclusion. For me he is one of the 75 best basketball players (I don't just value the NBA) and with arguments to get closer to the TOP 50.

[sp6r=underrated]

Bird and Magic are actually NOT today in 2022 still consistently in everyone's top 10, top 12 yes.

I will say Magic lost quite a few elite years by timing. If he had been born ten years earlier, he never would have gotten HIV. If he had been born ten years later the treatments would have allowed him to keep playing.

In his final seasons only Mike was better. He came back with 4 years of rust and was still a decent player.

[sp6r=underrated]

Garnett was better than Gasol in Being american Black, playing for stats, getting the fake loyal guy treatment , and shouting and being the fake tough guy. Thats it.

KG need Pierce Allen Rondo to Win a Ring.

No more accolates. Apart of Westbrook kind of Mvp.

Pf better than Gasol in his era.
Without any question.

Duncan
.
Dirk
.
.
Thats it.

Kg is was and will be very overrated.

Elton Brand offense with lite draymond green defense.

KG is a far superior player than Pau. You are vastly undervaluing his on court impact.

Yeah even if you're super down on KG there is no way to put Pau above him. And consider the gross way he opened.

[Mirotic12]

This thread shows that Pau Gasol is very clearly one of the most underrated NBA players of all time. Although he gets too much credit for Spain's national team success, since the whole team was super stacked, and way better than every other team, except the USA. So he never really actually did anything but win against teams he should have and lost to USA all the time.

Very underrated for his NBA career though, as evidenced by this thread.

I can't even believe the Brook Lopez being better than Pau argument is real....

[DrCoach]

No