RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Julius Erving)

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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#101 » by OhayoKD » Mon Sep 4, 2023 2:30 pm

70sFan wrote:
f4p wrote:erving has playoff issues and only won when moses was easily the best player in the playoffs for philly in 1983.

1. Julius won two titles in the ABA, beating very formidable competition.

2. I don't see Julius playoff issues as any bigger than Durant's.

Julius was probably ABA, Lebron. Not sure how you can take Durant's one arguable best player title on a 73-win team so seriously and pretend what Julius did in the aba didn't matter
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#102 » by Doctor MJ » Mon Sep 4, 2023 4:07 pm

Before I tally 2 reminders:

1. I need to see some logic from you in your voting post to count it. Further, I really encourage you copy and paste repeated votes rather than just saying "same as before" type things, because I want these threads to be as easy as possible for people to learn from. I'll still count it as long as there's some logic written in the post, but ideally every 1st/2nd vote you do should give some insight into your process.

2. All you need for your vote to count is to beat the vote tallier (typically me).

Induction - Vote 1:

Durant - 7 (OaD, beast, trelos, trex, cupcake, f4p, DGold)
Julius - 9 (Samurai, HBK, Clyde, Dr P, OSNB, Doc, Ohayo, Joao, Gibson)
Moses - 1 (ltj)
Giannis - 1(iggy)
none - 2 (rk, AEnigma)

No majority. Going to Vote 2:

Durant - 0 ()
Julius - 0 ()
neither - 4 (rk, Aenigma, ltj, iggy)

Erving 9, Durant 7.

Julius Erving is Inducted at #21.

Image

Nomination - Vote 1:

Nash - 6 (OaD, rk, Samurai, trelos, cupcake, AEnigma)
Jokic - 6 (ltj, beast, HBK, iggy, Dr P, OSNB)
Pettit - 2 (Clyde, Gibson)
Stockton - 3 (trex, Joao, DGold)
Wade - 1 (Doc)
Harden - 2 (f4p, Ohayo)

No majority. Going to 2nd vote between Nash & Jokic:

Nash - 2 (Doc, DGold)
Jokic - 0 (none)
neither - 6 (Clyde, Gibson, trex, Joao, f4p, Ohayo)

Nash 8, Jokic 6. Nash is added to Nominee list.

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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#103 » by Doctor MJ » Mon Sep 4, 2023 5:37 pm

OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Well, you're giving me a lot to think about.

I will say, re:Colangelo - if he was behind both the removal of illegal defense and the Suns' acquisition of Nash, then it would be reasonable to think that he thought he needed that rule change in order to do what he wanted to do with Nash.

In any event, whether causal or not, one can clearly see a trend towards 3PT-heavy offenses starting from the early/mid-00s, at least in philosophy if not actual volume of 3PA. You see Nelson's Mavs rise from 01-04, you see 7SOL, you see the Spurs offense go from the inside-out offense of 99 and 03 to the offenses of 05/07/beyond that were much more dependent on Manu/Parker's perimeter offense and the shooting of others(Bowen was known for that corner three), you see the 09/10 Lakers play lineups with Gasol at C and Odom at PF next to Ariza/Artest/Kobe/Fisher(that would've worked better if Odom was actually a better shooter), and more.

You see the Heatles make the adjustment in 2011-12 of moving Bosh to center and using him as a stretch 5 while putting another wing with range next to LeBron at forward(mainly Battier, but also Rashard Lewis, Mike Miller, and Ray Allen in 13/14 too), as opposed to Bosh at PF and Joel Anthony at C like they'd done in 2010-11, which opened their whole offense up.

You see the KD/Harden/Westbrook Thunder, which was a very perimeter-oriented offense.

And finally the Warriors and everything beyond.

To be fair, there were teams in the years before the rule changes that had unusually high 3PA for the time, but they were mostly teams that generated their 3PA from inside out offenses built around transcendent big men...I'm thinking specifically of 94/95 Rockets, 95/96 Magic, 00-02 Lakers. On the other side...there's the second-threepeat Bulls and Payton/Kemp Sonics...both had unusually high 3PA, but theirs were probably generated from high-level defenses enabling fastbreak offense.


I'm glad you're chewing on it OldSchool! Not going to push any further right now, but certainly we can talk more later.

Re: reasonable to think Colangelo needed rule change to do what he wanted with a Nash-like figure. It's a worthy hypothesis without question, but one thing I'll emphasize is this:

Even if Colangelo THOUGHT he needed the rule change to do what he wanted, that doesn't mean he was right. I'll flat out say that I don't think anyone thought there was this much untapped leverage in the game, and the scale of that actualized leverage is what makes much of the original points of debate close to moot. This was a case where play/training strategy was the immediate cause with greatest force, as evidenced by the fact that greatest acceleration occurs a decade removed from the relevant rule changes.

I'll also note that the father and son element makes things confusing. Circa 2001, the father Jerry Colangelo has a strong case for being the 2nd most powerful man in the NBA behind David Stern - in part because he was in Stern's ear. Jerry had a unique history at that time as someone who had been a scout, coach & GM who became an owner. This not only spoke to his outstanding ability to schmooze, but gave him a flexible ethos that he could turn in various ways depending on who he was talking to, and made him something of a one-stop shop for the lawyers who actually run the Association. But as a Phoenix Suns man, he was on his way out. He'd handed over the reins of GMship to his Sun in 1994, and sold his ownerships to the Suns, Mercury, Diamondbacks & Rattlers in 2004.

Meanwhile, Bryan was in the workaholic mode of his life, utterly dedicated to being the basketball boss of the Suns, and very much looking to prove himself as more than a nepotistic hire. The way he thought about basketball was heavily influenced by his father, but he wasn't just doing his father's bidding, and his father wanted that for his son too.

I think it's also important to consider things like how D'Antoni ended up in Phoenix. See, Bryan Colangelo and Mike D'Antoni met through their wives, because Bryan's wife Barbara Bottini - the one who would eventually cause his downfall in Philadelphia - had met working for Olimpia Milano back in the '80s. Bryan and Mike would meet in 2001 and really hit it off. Bryan would then hire Mike as an assistant coach in 2002 and promote him to head coach mid-season in 2023. Within the Suns' organization, Mike was specifically Bryan's guy. He was walking proof that Bryan knew what he was doing, and hence was not a walking avatar of nepotism.

Re: trend of 3's going up before 7SOL. Oh sure, 3's have been going up for most periods of NBA history, and that's a significant factor in the eventual paradigm shift.

I might draw the analogy to the rising sea temperature leading to me living through my first hurricane warning here on the Pacific coast. The gradual process of 3's slowly becoming more entrenched as as an essential part of a team's toolset is the sea temperature, and the shifts are the storms coming with greater likelihood hood than before.

I think it's important to credit all the storms along the way like what you're doing here.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#104 » by Doctor MJ » Mon Sep 4, 2023 5:58 pm

One_and_Done wrote:Let's not go crazy praising the Colangelos, who made plenty of dumb moves too. I think the degree of success Nash had came as a shock to them too.

Don Nelson strikes me as the more impressive basketball mind over his career.


I appreciate the push back here. Let me clarify something:

I think Bryan did extremely well in Phoenix.
I also think Bryan did poorly in his subsequent GMing stints in Toronto & Philadelphia.

I factor all of them in when evaluating him holistically as a GM, and I think about what he did well, and how he made the mistakes that he made. I try to do this with coaches and owners too. It's not something where I do it for every coach/GM/owner, it's something I do when a particular guy's place in my analysis becomes salient.

So, while the particular events I'm talking about represent a lot of pro-Colangelo statements, my aim here isn't to argue on there behalf, but just to tell what happened and how it happened as best as I can given various limitations.

I think it's important, for example, to keep in mind that when the NBA changes something, it's specific people who drive that are driving those changes, and while the man at the top of the pyramid is always part of the story, this doesn't mean that every change came out of him personally coming up with an idea. In fact, many CEOs want to task others to champion ideas, and they largely operate by giving thumbs up or down.

So then, when I talk in terms of the Colangelos here, I'm trying to help put us in the shoes of the people who made this stuff happen so as to better understand causally the chain of events that followed.

And as I say all of this: The story I present is surely wrong to some degree. I wasn't there with these guys. No way I can truly know how the spread of ideas played out in these particular smoke-filled rooms. So by all means take what I say with a grain of salt. It's surely oversimplistic at the very least, but hopefully it can help some folks better embed themselves into events.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#105 » by One_and_Done » Mon Sep 4, 2023 7:23 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:Before I tally 2 reminders:

1. I need to see some logic from you in your voting post to count it. Further, I really encourage you copy and paste repeated votes rather than just saying "same as before" type things, because I want these threads to be as easy as possible for people to learn from. I'll still count it as long as there's some logic written in the post, but ideally every 1st/2nd vote you do should give some insight into your process.

2. All you need for your vote to count is to beat the vote tallier (typically me).

Induction - Vote 1:

Durant - 6 (OaD, beast, trelos, trex, cupcake, f4p)
Julius - 9 (Samurai, HBK, Clyde, Dr P, OSNB, Doc, Ohayo, Joao, Gibson)
Moses - 1 (ltj)
Giannis - 1(iggy)
none - 2 (rk, AEnigma)

Julius wins majority 9-8.

Julius Erving is Inducted at #21.

Image

Nomination - Vote 1:

Nash - 6 (OaD, rk, Samurai, trelos, cupcake, AEnigma)
Jokic - 6 (ltj, beast, HBK, iggy, Dr P, OSNB)
Pettit - 2 (Clyde, Gibson)
Stockton - 2 (trex, Joao)
Wade - 1 (Doc)
Harden - 2 (f4p, Ohayo)

No majority. Going to 2nd vote between Nash & Jokic:

Nash - 1 (Doc)
Jokic - 0 (none)
neither - 6 (Clyde, Gibson, trex, Joao, f4p, Ohayo)

Nash 7, Jokic 6. Nash is added to Nominee list.

Image

You miseed Draymond Gold's vote for KD. I didn't count the prefs, but you might need to scrub the new thread for #22 as while Nash has been nominated I'm not sure Dr J won.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#106 » by Doctor MJ » Mon Sep 4, 2023 7:43 pm

One_and_Done wrote:You miseed Draymond Gold's vote for KD. I didn't count the prefs, but you might need to scrub the new thread for #22 as while Nash has been nominated I'm not sure Dr J won.


Thank you for catching that. Didn't change the result, but it could have.

One further request: If you can identify whose vote I missed, I'd appreciate link/directions to where there post is. Thanks!
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#107 » by One_and_Done » Mon Sep 4, 2023 8:07 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
One_and_Done wrote:You miseed Draymond Gold's vote for KD. I didn't count the prefs, but you might need to scrub the new thread for #22 as while Nash has been nominated I'm not sure Dr J won.


Thank you for catching that. Didn't change the result, but it could have.

One further request: If you can identify whose vote I missed, I'd appreciate link/directions to where there post is. Thanks!

One of the benefits of people of people doing vote counts during the thread is mistakes don't happen as much.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #21 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 9/4/23) 

Post#108 » by tsherkin » Tue Sep 5, 2023 10:43 am

OldSchoolNoBull wrote:
To be fair, there were teams in the years before the rule changes that had unusually high 3PA for the time, but they were mostly teams that generated their 3PA from inside out offenses built around transcendent big men...I'm thinking specifically of 94/95 Rockets, 95/96 Magic, 00-02 Lakers. On the other side...there's the second-threepeat Bulls and Payton/Kemp Sonics...both had unusually high 3PA, but theirs were probably generated from high-level defenses enabling fastbreak offense.


Really good post overall. Don't forget to consider with the 95/96 Magic, second three-peat Bulls and those Sonics that you had the pulled-in line turning loads of their usual long twos into threes, though.

EDIT: Granted, Phil was explicitly looking to leverage the corner with Kerr as he had with Hodges/Paxson, and of course Kukoc was brought in to provide range as well. But still, 95-97 has a specific impact, rules-wise.

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