How many players in this league are better than Miami Shaq?

[IdolW0rm]

Shaq 2005
23 / 10 / 3 / 0.5 / 2 ; 34mpg
+5.4 rTS
#4/5 in PI rs+ps RAPM (+4.31 / +2.07).

How many players today are you taking over this version of Shaq?

[cupcakesnake]

Some 2005 Shaq negatives:
- None of the top guys today have Shaq's free-throw problem (46% on 10.5 attempts per game)
- Neutral assist-to-turnover ratio. He wasn't the same level of passer that he was in his peak years in the triangle.
- Shaq wasn't a full-blown defensive liability yet, mostly because teams hadn't yet figured out to attack him in the pick & roll. But he was already showing signs that he was getting really creaky on defense. Miami was slightly better defensively with Shaq off the floor. Teams would hurt the Heat from 3 a lot when Shaq was on the floor. I don't want to overstate this though. Miami was the 6th ranked defense (-3.0 rDrtg) with Shaq playing minutes, and the bench units were only better by -1.7 points per 100 (while the offense collapsed on itself to the tune of -8.69)

Some 2005 Shaq positives:
- Still absolutely a transformative offensive force. +7.2 rOrtg with Shaq on the floor and -1.5 with him off. Shaq's offensive impact never really went away. Even when he was on life support in Boston he was still turning teams into dangerous offenses just by stepping on the floor (Boston's offense had a full 10 points per 100 swing in 2011 when Shaq was on vs. off!).
- Shaq did get in better shape this season and he was just dunking everything. This year was his career-high (of the tracking era so post 1997) in dunks with 255!
- Miami was built to be something of a 3-point bomber around Shaq and Wade (Damon and Eddie Jones, Rasual Butler) but they couldn't generate good looks from 3 without Shaq. This team was a 40% shooting team with Shaq on the floor. That number shrank to 35% with Wade as the solo star, and 31% overall with Shaq off the floor. In the regular season at least, Shaq was the key to everything on this roster.

Comparing 2005 Shaq to 2023 stars... I don't know. He's kind of a middle-class Jokic so I can't see him in the MVP conversation with the big 3. I'd probably opt for Curry or Luka as a transformation offensive player over Shaq, but maybe that could be close. Tatum has a clearly better all-around game at this point but he doesn't sniff Shaq's destructive offensive impact. I think that's where I'm drawing the line, with Shaq right above Tatum? So he'd be 6th on my fake MVP ballot. I have a hard time putting guys like Shai, Lillard, or Butler at peak Shaq levels. Durant, Kawhi and Lebron have been too injured in 2023. Anthony Davis is interesting but his whole forgetting how to shoot keeps me a little lower on him.

[70sFan]

I am a bit lower on Miami Shaq than cupcakesnake, but he bring up some interesting points.

For now, I think he's on the lower end of top 10 to me. I don't know how to evaluate some of these seasons yet (Doncic, Butler, Tatum, LeBron are hard).

[IdolW0rm]

It's interesting to me that 33% would rather have over 15 current players over 05 Shaq. Also, that the votes are currently so spread out.

[tsherkin]

He'd get roasted on defense in the current environment. He'd be a great finisher with a real primary star driving things from the wing and fantastic spacing. He blew chunks at the line and had no range to speak of. Not much of a reason to envision him scoring a lot MORE efficiently than he did in his own time to me, and I'm a huge Shaq fan.

He certainly wouldn't be the same +7 team ORTG guy in today's environment. He was efficient in his own time but he'd be a shade above league-average efficiency if he translated directly. You have to really stretch to look for reasons that he would shoot a TON better than that, and he'd need to be shooting more like 67% from the floor to really start pushing that into meaningful territory to overcome his FT%. Now, you can are argue the value of his foul pressure, the defensive draw of having him down there making it hard to help off of him, etc, etc. There are ways for guys who aren't hella efficient to exert impact, but it would not be the same as it was in his own time, IMHO.

All together, that looks like a top 15 type of player to me.

[rand]

The regular season/postseason splits are massive. There are probably less than 10 players today I would take (for today's game) over regular season 2005 Shaq. There are definitely more than 15 players I would take over postseason 2005 Shaq.

Shaq suffered what then seemed to be a minor injury late in the 2005 regular season, a deep thigh bruise that lingered through the entire playoffs, sapping him of explosiveness. One could see the injury as random misfortune but Shaq played more regular season minutes in 2005 than he played in 5 out of his 8 Lakers seasons due to playing more regular season games than in all but two Lakers seasons.

34 MPG and playing all B2Bs was way too large of a physical load for 33 year old Shaq. If he was playing today he would probably be load managed very conservatively. I would play him under 30 MPG and always sit one B2B end. This would help preserve his 2005 regular season level of impact through the entire season.

However I think hack-a-Shaq would be a bigger problem today than in 2005. I think coaches today would be more willing to consistently apply it as a strategy because of the rise of analytics and also because it's even more harmful to the opposing offense today than in 2005 because of the greater margin between team efficiency today and 2005 Shaq's FT%.

Hack-a-Shaq forces Shaq's team to accept 0.92 points per possession offense. In 2005, average team PPP was 1.06 while today it's 1.15. So in 2005 accepting Shaq's FTs in lieu of your normal offense only cost the average team 0.14 PPP while today it would cost the average team 0.23 PPP. The better your offense, the higher the damage from hack-a-Shaq.

[Jaivl]

Bottom of the top 10 I'd say.