f4p wrote:OhayoKD wrote:And why are you assuming I don't? The problem here is kareem was not "consistently" losing as a +4.7 favorite.
but he was. this is the list of people i have tracked for playoff SRS differential purposes:
Yeah, and "lost the most as x"(over the second longest career) =/ "consistently losing". A total of 3 series(without any sort of specific comparison) does not prohibit Kareem at his best to being worth more than Jordan at his best in the playoffs
As I outlined in my first post on this thread, the Bucks got better in 71 and 72 using sans's psrs.
is that the sans list that had the 2018 rockets as the 95th best team of all time? either way, as an aside, i think (and will maybe make a thread) postseason SRS needs to be calculated slightly differently. as far as i can tell (maybe i am wrong), it traditionally it gets calculated for a given series as:
Postseason SRS = Opp SRS + Series MOV
this assumes your opponent has played at their normal level (and you overperformed/underperformed them), with no possibility for the idea that you played at your normal level and your opponent overperformed/underperformed you. as such, it produces different results for the 2 teams in a series depending on which team is your reference team.
From what I recall San's is rolling and heavily playoff-weighted(3/4). Unsure about the specifics beyond that. Feel free to suggest alternate calculations. I'm looking at the standard deviations and then the rs, psrs, and full-season srs as well as full-strength ratings per what Ben provides.
All three of the 71, 72, and 74 Bucks were better than the 91 and 90 Bulls(compared to the latter 2) respectively. The 77 Lakers were on-par with the 88 Bulls after a better regular season. And I have Jordan having more help all those postseasons. Moreover you seem inclined to give Jordan all the credit for his "lift", but in 1990 do you know what increased from the regular season? The Bulls defensive rating. Do you know who purely by box-aggregations(which miss a bunch of things Jordan was helped with) like BPM saw the biggest rise? Pippen.
the 71 and 72 bucks are excellent, i agree. one of the few +10 SRS teams to ever lose, but only because they ran into an even bigger juggernaut. kareem certainly shot out of the gates quickly and dominantly. then he started losing +4 series, missing the playoffs, having 44.7 TS% series, getting outplayed by moses twice (losing to a 40-42 team one of those times), and picking up most of his titles while not being the best player on his team any more.
His first "+4 loss" is literally a comparably competitive performance to a better opponent than who Jordan faced in 1990(no you do not need to use the prior year if you dont want to) with
both his co-stars further diminished from what he had in 1972 which you agree was "great". Do you see the issue here? This is a
2009 analogue, except losing to the magic is actually a worse result(relative to 90) and the bucks performance is a better one. The Bucks were the best regular season team by a margin when they had no-buisness being that, and then fall to a stronger opponent than who consensus and statistical peak jordan kept getting felled by before they broke down...
with weaker help than the year you call great. If you really want to criticize, you can point out this is where the ABA had peaked and talent was most diluted, but strictly league-relative, marking this as a negative for Kareem relative to Jordan makes no sense. Also, fwiw 71/72 and 77 do not really have that same asterix.
You also need to tell me what seasons you're specifically comparing for Kareem to Jordan. I am not interested in uneven comparisons or "disappointment". I specifically chose what should be high-marks for Mike(and even artificially inflated those marks) when I made the "lift" comparisons considering
both the regular season and the postseason and for the 71/72 vs 90/91 comp I also looked at what was going on at a granular level for the co-stars and Kareem and Jordan. You can dispute it if you want, but I've got
4 separate years within a 8-year span where Kareem led similar or better
playoff-teams with what I would consider less help than 88, 90 or 91(so the likely stat peak and the two years everyone likes the most). That is a big gap to make up prime to prime and unless you can establish it is
likely that prime Kareem folds, I am still taking his peaks(where he did the opposite).
if you're telling me his prime was more valuable(Anenigma cares more about the "accomplishment" bit, I just want the "goodness") because of "playoff elevation" then haphazardly chucking Kareem's "dirt" at me isn't going to work. On top of those 4 separate seasons, there's also the 3-years he was just way better at basketball pre-nba. There are years where he missed the playoffs due to injury or teammate injuries putting jordan+ floor-raising(1975 ~ (juiced)1988, 1976>1986), and there is his obviously far stronger rookie campaign. 1980 is also great for a "late-prime" year leaving not many seasons for Jordan to make up the gap unless we are disingenuously counting Kareem's post-prime.
And even if Kareem is Icarus, when Icarus can get closer to the sun than you can 4 times in 8-years, it's hard for me to care. I do not treat champions and non-champions as fundamentally different (unless you are someone who actually always wins regardless of context(russell) in which case I have to start asking if you transcend mortal proxies like "srs"). Lebron did not have to win in 2009 to be better than champion! MJ to me. From an era-relative perspective, I'd say 1974, 1977 and 1972 have decent cases of being as good or stronger than 09(assuming you compare teams relative to the league). I'm not gonna automatically put a guy with 3 potential 2009's lower because he didn't win just because your metric doesn't differentiate between a 2009 and a 1990/1988.
you can't play with magic (and then worthy) and win 5 out of 9 years and then say playing with scottie pippen is unfair on the way to 6 out of 7.
Do rosters have 2 players? Kareem was obviously much worse on the Lakers and as is, he ended up the more successful player. And I still don't see why this stops Kareem from having a higher peak.
Do you know what the 94 Bulls did in the playoffs while their best players were at each other's throats?
played well but still lost? i have them with 0.668 expected series win and they got 1, for a 2.0 SRS rise.
They got
better and one of the series they overperformed in doesn't count to your calculation at all because it was a loss. Just like in 90 the defense went up by 2-points from the regular season, and then by 5 points for the knicks and pistons series. I know where you "have them", but a calculation that does not see any difference in losses or wins beyond "srs gap" is not very useful to me, and is especially not that useful with a player when comparing seasons where players both lose or both win. If Kareem is not being credited for when his team plays better against better opponents, I don't really care what "you have it" at.
In 74 with even weaker help, the Bucks did just as well against a better opponent after being by far the best regular season team. As far as I'm concerned, Kareem was flat-out better, regular season and playoffs, and consequently achieved comparable or better playoff results against better opponents without a system equivalent to the triangle(refer back to blackmill's notes on suboptimal deployment), or a team so good they could **** off with all the chemistry and still conceivably win by themselves. Even if I gave jordan all the credit for the team-wide elevation(obviously undeserved), he still looks like a worse riser than Hakeem(who we're just nominating) and Lebron(who you dont have at #1 even though the Cavs playoff lineups which were better lebron and stars, lebron and no stars, and worse with stars and no lebron)
jordan is certainly a worse playoff riser than hakeem. no one except healthy kawhi compares to hakeem. and you tend to give a lot of credit to the triangle. but when jordan left after '93, the bulls rORtg fell by 7. then, perfectly balanced, it went up by +7 when he returned.
It did not fall by
7-points when you compare full-strength lineups(pippen and grant barely missed time during the first-three peat).
In 1994, Pippen assumed the lead dog role and upped his scoring and creation with essentially no loss in efficiency. Given the makeup of Chicago’s roster and its implementation of the triangle, this was probably Pippen’s maximum offensive output, as he peaked in offensive load at 43 (96th percentile) while the Bulls posted a respectable +2.2 rORtg when healthy, better than any offense Michael Jordan led before Phil Jackson arrived.
In 1995, with key cog Horace Grant lost to Orlando (and Ron Harper aboard), a healthy Bulls team still played at a 52-win pace (3.8 SRS) with an rORtg of +1.1 before Michael Jordan returned.
Hell we can very generously compare the Bulls
best offensive rating(1992) to what the Bulls were doing
without Grant and it does not hit
7-points:
In 1992, Chicago peaked at +7.4, the 12th-best offense ever, and one of three attacks in history with a raw efficiency above 115.5 points per 100. After three consecutive top-100 offensive seasons, Jordan took a baseball sabbatical and the Bulls scoring efficiency dropped to 2 points above league average. In 1995, before his return, Chicago chugged along at +1.2 for 63 games (playing at a 52-win pace)
Moreover,
7-points would not be some unprecedented offensive drop-off. Presumably you have Jordan as the best offensive player ever but that does not bear out in the results. Cleveland's offenses were average(net rating, worse if we used wowy) without Lebron and still hit higher playoff highs. Oscar turned the worst offense into the best offense as a rookie. Per usual there is no real comparison when it's time to do something other than churn out conventional box-aggregations.
Lazy or not lazy, he is shooting guard who never outputted significant defensive impact(at least by "lift) as shooting guards do not do. He also was not a lebron/magic/nash type guy who could monopolize team-wide offense to excellent success, and while his biggest advantage was ball-handling, he only achieved impressive offenses as a secondary ball-handler.
i feel like this is part of the issue with your jordan comments. you give him credit for almost literally nothing.
Friend, you literally tried to use Duncan winning regular season games against him. I am not giving him the degree of credit
you want me to, and when the rubber meets the road, you don't offer much for me to give him that credit beyond vaguely arguing i'm unfair, appealing to consensus, and then acting like he's actually as much of a winner as bill russell before citing subjectively filtered "production" which is the biggest source of that aforementioned consensus in the first place.
Here's an idea. You want Jordan to be ranked higher? Then instead of telling everyone it's a "bad look", argue for it. Because right now you're basically throwing out seasons on the basis of "rings" while also voting for 6 over 11, and then acting like health is a piece of context we can't and shouldn't adjust for.
I have Jordan as a top-10/possibly best of his era level player. That is what "lift" suggests he is, and as this discussion illustrates that doesn't change in the playoffs unless you assume players who lose cannot be compared to players who win(72,74). If I used PER maybe he would be higher, but of course if I used "goat-points" or the stupid rodman stat from the 90's, he'd be lower. Jordan is not entitled to be ranked higher because people say he is. And if you really felt this strongly about "missing chances", would you really be voting him above someone who basically never missed(even when his help "wasn't" what you seem to think is neccesary for contention), and kept not missing without the "contend-without-him" superteam he started winning with?
You said it's not fair to rank curry higher by putting him in the 90's. And yet when the rubber meets the road, your push vs the likely more dominant(indivodually and team-wide) candidate is "weak league". I'm sure you've seen the graphs. The 90's were not the peak of basketball. Pick a lane and stick with it.
"the bulls offense didn't pick up until the triangle and then the bulls defense didn't fall off when jordan retired"
No. I said Jordan never led a great offense without the triangle, just like Steph Curry never led a great offense without Kerr's system. I quite like Curry(you've even called me one of his fanboys), but I am
consistent. And if you're going to +1 me when I call-out Steph for never proving he could lead great offenses outside of that system, then I'm not sure why you argue that me pointing out the same with Jordan is unfair.
. the obvious implication being that jordan had no impact on offense or defense.
The implication is he does not have the offensive impact of goat-tier offensive players, yes. And as I have said he has "potentially game-changing, but not season-definding" defensive lift which in a scale with the likes of Lebron and Kareem who can spike season-wide d-ratings by multiple points(on occasion closer to 10) respectively, that can rightly be called "not significant", even dpoy voters disagree. And even with that, in-spite of "impact" consistently disagreeing, I still place Jordan ahead of a better offensive player in Magic because of his defense. I give credit where I think it's due. But when you have to conjure up something like "Duncan won too much", I am not going to be moved.
i mean maybe if this board had put forth a great "scottie pippen is top 10" argument over the years, i could see it. but even here he's in the 30's.
How is "scottie pipen top 10" more relevant than "the bulls contended without Jordan". I'd say the latter is quite strong given the grounds for dismissal are...
-> ignore 1995
-> focusing on healthy lineups(for on and off) is unfair
-> the +5.8 net-rating rotation(below average comp tbf) was "injury ravaged"
-> Outscoring the knicks was a fluke
Mind you I wanted to put that last one in all-caps but I have been told to not be so boisterous when disagreeing
In the year you see as his peak, he was mostly shooting over single coverage while a "unpolished" offensive player like say 2009 Bron was mantaining similar "end-of-possession" efficiency while doing more through the duration of possessions against significantly more defensive coverage.
illegal defense certainly helped jordan's offense, though i do think it limited his defensive impact as he was never allowed to roam the way a modern player can. but then bill russell's interior defense in a league that can't shoot is almost inarguably a better era boost and kareem playing in by far the most watered down, expanded league in nba history was also a huge boost he took very little advantage of.
That was not a time-machine case. The point was that before the triangle he had to deal with doubles alot more frequently and crucially his "not lebron, nash, or magic-level decision-making" was far more of a factor. Jackson and Pippen(much like kerr and draymond) also were also the primary and secondary decision-makers for the team over the duration of each offensive and defensive possession. Again, for a player who isn't lebron that's can be a very nice boost(see: 2014 steph vs 2015 steph).
None of those factor into the box-score, but they do manifest in results where Jordan is peaking(at his stat peak) at a +4 offense(+2.9 if i use bens' derivation but I'm counting 30-games post trade to give Jordan the best score) while a merely "comparable" offensive player like Lebron posts a +6.5(56-win overall) offense at 21 and is still more valuable than a prime mj-analog on nearly 65k minutes(in the regular-season where he only played a few games on a torn tendon) and **** spacing alongside players like Westbrook. lebron and jordan by box are the same offensively, but lebron does way more before the end of a possession, and hence is the more impactful offensive player. I do not have Jordan at that top-level because the results do not justify it. That is all there is to it.
If you want to see the effects on tape, pull up a 90 or 91 pistons game vs an 88 or 89 pistons game and count how often MJ is doubled(and look at how often said doubles arrive). I think there's actually some tracking for that lying around I can find, but maybe you should look for yourself.
kareem presumably was better comparing only their first 6 years. but i don't see how jordan fell of quicker. as someone pointed out, jordan got a POY win at age 34, with kareem only getting one at 32. and by the time the 1998 playoffs rolled around, jordan was 35 because his birthday is just after the BBRef cut-off. kareem was not dominating at 35 like jordan, even if he kept playing past 40.
Fair enough. Even by season-count jordan holds up better later though I will again note Kareem never took a break(and I'd point to hakeem here as an example of how hard that can be). I'd still say Kareem's last prime-mj level year was 1980 which is still a couple seasons short. Would bet on the bigger player with better defense lasting long beyond that, but I can't confidently extrapolate that from the Wizards stint. Do not really care about POY voting though(where Jordan apparently got 2 top 2 dpoy finishes...), I have Hakeem supplanting Mike as "best player" by 1993 and better or in contention till 1989 with Magic in contention until 1991.
Kareem should be better, and the results tell me he is better, so why do I care about what the "expected championship differential" is when he's leading better or comparable regular season and playoff teams with less help over and over and over again?
he's not leading comparable playoff teams, though.
He is relative to three of jordans four consensus best years. And the other year 1989, would just look worse with how I'm doing things because for 1988 I literally gave Micheal all the credit for the team improvement. 1993 does not look good. A reasonable extrap for 1996(taking from 94 where they had a rodman-like player) looks good, but not better than 1988-1984. You can say 'Jordan won more", but Kareem led a team on the level and to me looked more valuable, he floor-raised another team higher or on par with the 88 bulls and looked more valuable and led multiple teams to higher rs and playoff heights than the 90 bulls and look smore valuable with plenty of regular season corraboration(i acknowledge he fluctuates more in the playoffs, but again, I quite like Icarus). Do you have some reason to assume Jordan was better or more situationally valuable in 97, 98, or 92? Or to think when I do **** like "hey lets give jordan all the credit for the bulls post 84 improvement", that actually undersells him. Because if not, then the "playoffs" do not help Jordan beyond "he won more".
Doesn't seem unreasonable, especially since that included 84-87 MJ who probably wasn't as good at basketball as pre-nba Kareem. For the "peaks", 72 and 71 saw improvement per San's calc. Compare that to 90/91 and I think the playoffs significantly bolster Kareem's case. Also M.O.V here allows for us to compare losses. 1972 may not have ended in a win, but i'd say in terms of "lift" that playoff outcome is more impressive than anything from Jordan. Ditto with 1974 where the help was weaker than 1972.
MOV obscures the actual winning and losing though. especially give the small sample of a playoff series. did kareem really win the 1973 warriors series since his team had a +2.5 MOV? of course not. he played horribly and lost to a lesser team, even if both victories by his team were blowouts to swing the MOV to his team. this goes back to my "jordan never gets any credit" thing. even by MOV, 1974 is kareem losing by almost 5 ppg to a team he had a +4 SRS advantage over. that seems like a lot of underperformance by winning or MOV.
There are trade-offs, but I'm pretty sure the Warriors series would be seen as an underperformance anyway in something that
adjusts for competition. And I do not see much justification for equating 73 with 74 where he ran into a better opponent than the guys who beat Micheal, went the **** off, had worse help in the series you think was "great" in 1972, was similarly competitive as the Bulls, was not being optimized schematically, but his team won too many regular season games so "choke!"
Maybe if Kareem had never won, I might ask if there is something there. But he hit the "best team ever" note in his 2nd-year, so I know Kareem can win. And just like I wouldn't say 2017 Lebron can't win championships, I'm not going to let strong performances against stronger opponents be construed as things that "call that into question" Kareem's chops as a winner. 1973 is a choke. But it is not the trend and lumping 1974 with 1973 doesn't make sense. If Jordan had a 1974 it would be hard for me to argue he doesn't have a decent GOAT(era-relative) peak case, even against someone like 2009 Lebron.
As for sample size, again, I think the regular-season stuff is very strongly in Kareem's favor so...
and it's hard to do kareem in the 80's because of the conflation with magic being the signal, but for jordan from 91-98, even including 95:
jordan's regular season SRS said he should win 20.3 playoff series, or 78.0%. he won 25, or 96.2%. that's a shift of 4.8 SRS points, or 13 wins. jordan is just massively outperforming what it seems like his team should have done.
The Bulls are, yes, but again, they didnt even need Jordan to do that. And like I said, using "converting chances" instead of mov forces us to reduce the sample
once again, jordan's team has the best playoff winning percentage over a sustained stretch, improved by 13 wins, but it was really the others (and i only have the '94 bulls as +2 SRS compared to +4.8).
[/quote]
Cool. That is not the same thing as "lift" which is what you're telling me gets cooked if I look at the playoffs. You can say Jordan won more frequently, but if the help is good enough(or the competition weak enough), that does not necessitate that Jordan was more valuable than Kareem because he won. By a more inclusive method, the Bulls srs in 1994 increased to +8 from +4.7, and I've outlined why I think it was cast-improvement that played the larger factor in 90. I think Jordan is a playoff elevator(again, I have him ahead of Magic), but I do not support equating team with best player in this case. With Lebron, we can look at the star and no star lineups and isolate for what teammates were doing before. I did a cruder version of that for 72 Kareem. If you want to say Jordan elevates more frequently, sure. But i see no playoff-outcomes that match the four-years I've highlighted as far as "Lift" is concerned and I have Jordan starting from a lower base instead of value, so just throwing out "winning percentages" where being pressed by outmatched teams like the Knicks
boosts Jordan's score isn't going to sway me much. I would rather just more directly compare team success to help/context for the regular season and then do the same for the playoffs while using "production"/context to internally scale where the elevation/drops are coming from.
and since we may never agree, why are you so low on converting chances into titles? the nba is maybe the most predictable league in the world. the winning team has the best player or 2nd best player, a lot. the best players tend to win even more than things like SRS suggest. i don't value these things just to help jordan, i value them because they seem some of the clearest signals from nba history. here is the SRS favorite record i posted in one of my earlier duncan posts (with curry updated for 3 losses now):
Because it reduces what can be used as evidence. Again, by this metric 1972 and 1974 and 1977 are all "negatives" when if we compare opponent and m.o.v(curve for proportionality) they are outright better or more impressive than what peak Jordan did. I would need to see what specifically you're comparing for the Lakers because beyond 80(another team that rose in the playoffs), Jordan
should look better.
what do you mean by "comparing for the lakers"? before magic or after? in his 3 playoffs before magic, he had 2.33 expected series wins and got 2, so give or take pretty close to expected. maybe 1 SRS off.
[/quote]
After. But specifically I would like to see what Jordan seasons you think are analogous.
and i'll go back to my question. you seem to focus a lot on jordan in his early days, constructing a case he wasn't really valuable. but i'll ask again, what else could he have done from 1991-98?
Match the 71 Bucks? Outperform the Best Spurs sides more than once? Not get pushed by a worse variant of the 2012 Thunder b2b? Not get pushed by the Reggie's Pacers? Win with a loaded deck in 94? Replicate even late Lebron or late Kareem performance in 1995?. Jordan did not have the most dominant 6-year stretch. That was obviously bill. As 70's pointed out, even Magic has a case. What about Jordan here is special?
how did he not match the 71 bucks? the 96 bulls have the same SRS and more win and a 15-3 playoffs.
He did it in 96, he did not do it anywhere else despite having multiple "chances" to(91, 92, and 93 all were good enough help I think) while Kareem only really had 1 and actually "exceeded 1971" when his team was healthy despite a diminished co-star in 1972. It is not a big knock, but again, as I have it, Kareem is a more valuable rs and playoff player several times than the years you point out make up Jordan's "consensus peak". You are pulling up a bunch of years outside of that do not have similarly high "lift" compared to the inflated **** I marked 88 MJ at when he is by consensus worse and telling me he was more valuable those years because he won.
he didn't ever outperform the best spurs? by what measure is that?
point out
By standard deviation(which is what matters for championship winning) the 1999 and 2007 spurs were better than all but two Bulls teams and the 2003 Spurs were close behind. Not sure why I said one, but again(you can check the post i replied to you regarding duncan for justification). I'd guess Duncan had less help for 3 of his championships including 1999 based on what the Bulls did in 94 and 95. Did not look at 2007. 2005 and 2007 were tougher gauntlets and the 2005 suns>any of mj's wins per san's whatever. Before looking at san's thing I also felt the 2005 Pistons and the 2007 suns as better than any team Jordan beat but statistically(by san's method) that does not bear out(though personally I think it underrates the 05 pistons but I'm going to stay emperically grounded here) but the 2007 suns come closer to the 97 jazz than the 97 jazz do to the 2005 suns.
You assume the Bulls did not have a chance in 1990 or before that. I'd guess peak kareem or lebron with era-translation have the Bulls at 50 starting in 84 and potentially winning from 88-90.
many have 88-90 as park of MJ's absolute peak with 1991.
I actually have them
higher but in case you noticed, it is in comparisons regarding
those specific seasons where I am concluding Kareem was more valuable. 1988 is likely the situational value peak imo. Again, I juiced up 1988 and suppressed 77 and Kareem came up on top. 71 to 91 is much murkier but I stand by it being more likely that Jordan had more help than Kareem and 72 scales up very naturally both by impact(team improves(full-strength) despite teammate falling, team is still great without player(62 wins!), team elevates and outscores another all-time team when already diminished co-star has a second major drop-off because of injury).
and you have other guys who outperform him by so much that a 2nd round loss in 88, with the celtics/lakers/pistons still existing, gets you to a title.
I said potentially(90 I'd say is [b]likely[b]), but again, assuming era-translation? I wouldn't rule it out. The Bulls were not blown out by the Pistons, and if you beat the pistons, you have a shot. They're also probably going to have a higher-seed(potentially home court vs detroit) and easier early round competition. I'm more confident with Lebron than Kareem just on the availablity of data(and him basically just being a bigger, stronger, faster, more versatile and smarter jordan in 2009). Magic is injured in 89 so if you take the pistons you're probably champions. 1990, healthy opponent, but the east was the "real nba finals" arguably and by the 1990 playoffs Jordan had very good help. You might want to make a "fit" adjustment replacing pippen with someone like mark-price with Lebron but as I have it, Lebron already beat a pistons+ team in the 2013 Spurs with less and Kareem outscored a pistons+ team in the 72 Lakers(going by standard deviations too if you're worried about expansion) with less. Lebron anchored a -5 defense with his 2nd best defender missing half the season and put up better box-score stuff than Micheal while facing more defensive attention, running his team on both ends, and destroying "impact" as a concept. Put aside MJ's limited impact portfolio, what do you think Jordan was offering in terms of basketball to offset all that? Lebron even had similar turnover economy while handling the ball way more.
or so much they can boost a 6th seed in '89 to the title, with the bulls the only team that actually took a game off the pistons that year? keep in mind, kareem was capable of straight up missing the playoffs.
He was in seasons marred by injury. At full-strength though 75 Kareem "missing the playoffs" is offering comparable lift to a juiced 1988 MJ(And to be clear, I used "full-strength" for both players with the with and the without). That would also be an "off-year" not a "peak" by my book.
But I don't much like this framing as it gives(imo) undue preference for timing. What I do think is Kareem needed less to compete, less to win, and less to dominate(all things he actually proved imo). So if you add that to Kareem also being proven outside of specific circumstances and then you add him just being way better at basketball at the start, and you add him sustaining his excellence longer...
Yeah, very clear-cut to me who deserves to be ranked higher.
And again, whatever arguments Jordan does have, Russell's are better.
russell is certainly the jordan case on steriods. but the significantly weaker league, unrepeatable era boost, and the fact that one team in 8 having a coach/GM advantage with no free agency to break up a team makes repeated winning easier than in a 25-30 team league with free agency, is why i would ultimately hold him back, even behind kareem.
Sure, but then you should be fine with people glossing Steph and Duncan the same way. The "winning" gap is much smaller.
After all, his two most dominant MVP wins, best 2 regular-season teams, best overall team, and 3 championships comes with expansion. It is also in that watered down league(competition: Karl Malone) he looks like a league-best player by "impact". And within 6-years of 1998 the number of foreign nba-talent pool has already doubled.