RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #50 (Bob Lanier)

[Clyde Frazier]

Not really a fan of Butler making a mockery of the regular season in recent years. Has only cracked 70 games played or equivalent in *one season* since his second year in the league (10 seasons). He didn't even crack 60 games played in 4 of those 10 seasons. Does he have a case for top 100? Sure, but not really close to top 50 for me.

One tiny nit: he failed to crack the 60-game "equivalent" just THREE times in the last 10 seasons [and just barely in each]: '18 [59 games], '21 [59.2 games, pro-rated to full season], and '22 [57 games].


Look at the question of his placement this way: where would you rank Scottie Pippen with lesser longevity?

Pippen feels like one of Butler's closer historic comparisons. One can say Pippen was better and more versatile defensively, though Butler's obviously no slouch; one of the better defenders at his position for several years.
And I would say Butler is the BETTER offensive player: notably superior turnover economy (GOAT-tier among wings), with generally better shooting efficiency, and more playoff resilient too.

Pippen played five more seasons (and >400 more games), although Butler has arguably already had a longer prime (at least in terms of years); Pippen's prime is really only '91-'98, imo (and he missed almost half the year in '98, though he was never significantly injured in any other year of his prime; and yes: Pippen has a number of highly-valuable non-prime years [whereas Jimmy really only has one]).
But a potentially useful question is to ask where you'd rank Pippen all-time if his career simply ended after '98? Might it not be somewhere around 50? And if so, is Jimmy Butler in the mid-50s really that unusual or unjustified?

Thanks, edited my post. Lack of availability in the regular season is the main reason I don't have him in this range. Pippen is a decent mention, but again his durability was better than butler's even if we just look at their first 10 seasons (since you mentioned pippen's career hypothetically ending after '98). Not to mention pippen was the perfect running mate for Jordan, so butler wasn't in the same role throughout his prime. A bit tougher to make an apples to apples comparison.

I haven't voted yet but I've narrowed it down to Payton and Lanier for my 2 votes. I know he isn't on the ballot, but I'd be voting for someone like Ray Allen over Butler for example.

[Clyde Frazier]

Not really a fan of Butler making a mockery of the regular season in recent years. Has only cracked 70 games played or equivalent in *one season* since his second year in the league (10 seasons). He didn't even crack 60 games played in 4 of those 10 seasons. Does he have a case for top 100? Sure, but not really close to top 50 for me.

So, saying up front that I try not to think about Top X so much as "who is next?", I think it's worth asking a question like:

Among active players, who has the highest career VORP that's not voted in?

The Top 5:

Lillard 49.36
Butler 44.84
Lowry 43.12
George 41.05
Horford 41.04

And then other guys mentioned so far:

Embiid 28.66
Green 25.12
Tatum 21.17

Now, I'm the furthest thing from a big VORP guy - as you can tell from the fact that I've been championing Green - but the idea that Butler hasn't done much in the regular season doesn't seem right to me unless you're talking about comparisons with specific players from the past.

I think it makes sense for someone to champion Lillard who was on the list last time when Butler was not. There it's the playoffs that make the difference to me.

When looking at Butler vs Embiid, well, I'd say Butler has done considerably more for his teams over the regular season of his career than Embiid, and come playoff time, well, Butler's been the star leading his team to many series victories...while Embiid has not.

I can frame this pretty easily then: if we were doing an active player career ranking project instead, I'd certainly be considering him vs the other current players on the ballot. But I'm a total career value guy, and he just isn't there for me yet vs the entire field in this project.

To be clear, when I said "making a mockery of the regular season in recent years" I didn't mean from an on court/production standpoint. He obviously puts great effort into games. But it seems like his mindset is "let's just get to the playoffs and go from there" vs being available to help his team win more games.

Anything can happen in the playoffs as we saw with the heat last season, but over the course of a career I just don't like that mentality. And while that's obviously more common these days, it isn't the case with all current star players.

[WintaSoldier1]

I think it’s
4-3( Bob Lanier Over GP)

Joel Embidd and Butler are both are 2, Also to be considered lots of individuals who voted for Bob have GP as the alternative and vice Versa. Could see a push for Jimmy late here but it really looks like Bob or GP is taking this spot.

[Doctor MJ]

Not really a fan of Butler making a mockery of the regular season in recent years. Has only cracked 70 games played or equivalent in *one season* since his second year in the league (10 seasons). He didn't even crack 60 games played in 4 of those 10 seasons. Does he have a case for top 100? Sure, but not really close to top 50 for me.

So, saying up front that I try not to think about Top X so much as "who is next?", I think it's worth asking a question like:

Among active players, who has the highest career VORP that's not voted in?

The Top 5:

Lillard 49.36
Butler 44.84
Lowry 43.12
George 41.05
Horford 41.04

And then other guys mentioned so far:

Embiid 28.66
Green 25.12
Tatum 21.17

Now, I'm the furthest thing from a big VORP guy - as you can tell from the fact that I've been championing Green - but the idea that Butler hasn't done much in the regular season doesn't seem right to me unless you're talking about comparisons with specific players from the past.

I think it makes sense for someone to champion Lillard who was on the list last time when Butler was not. There it's the playoffs that make the difference to me.

When looking at Butler vs Embiid, well, I'd say Butler has done considerably more for his teams over the regular season of his career than Embiid, and come playoff time, well, Butler's been the star leading his team to many series victories...while Embiid has not.

I can frame this pretty easily then: if we were doing an active player career ranking project instead, I'd certainly be considering him vs the other current players on the ballot. But I'm a total career value guy, and he just isn't there for me yet vs the entire field in this project.

To be clear, when I said "making a mockery of the regular season in recent years" I didn't mean from an on court/production standpoint. He obviously puts great effort into games. But it seems like his mindset is "let's just get to the playoffs and go from there" vs being available to help his team win more games.

Anything can happen in the playoffs as we saw with the heat last season, but over the course of a career I just don't like that mentality. And while that's obviously more common these days, it isn't the case with all current star players.

Totally makes sense to me that Jimmy would top someone's active-remaining player list but still behind other retired players. I'm in the boat too.

Re: anything can happen in the playoffs. So, I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment here. It's certainly true that there's more noise in the small sample of the playoffs than the regular season, and I don't want to claim the best team always wins the series because that's not true...but 7-game series make the NBA playoffs have drastically less luck than college basketball's March Madness, and among sports that have 7-game series as their playoffs, basketball has far less effective noise than baseball or hockey.

So while acknowledging that there is some luck involved and going with the premise that Butler's gotten a bit lucky there, I do think we should keep perspective what the extent of the luck is. Questions:

Butler's Heat have won 8 playoff series in the past 4 years. Do we really think that a team that wins that many series is getting lucky enough we shouldn't see it as a major accomplishment?

Butler's Heat have achieved 6 playoff upsets - based on seed - in that time frame. Is this really something we see as common enough to simply chalk up to luck?

Key point here is that there's a difference between a "rounding down" of achievement relative to superficial milestones and an outright dismissal.

At the very least what we've seen from Butler is evidence that he can be the lead star on a team that is a deep playoff contender that is consistently a tough out for the other teams who are themselves deep playoff contenders, and that's no small thing. I think we should be cautious championing anyone over Butler who hasn't shown comparable playoff success.

[WintaSoldier1]

So, saying up front that I try not to think about Top X so much as "who is next?", I think it's worth asking a question like:

Among active players, who has the highest career VORP that's not voted in?

The Top 5:

Lillard 49.36
Butler 44.84
Lowry 43.12
George 41.05
Horford 41.04

And then other guys mentioned so far:

Embiid 28.66
Green 25.12
Tatum 21.17

Now, I'm the furthest thing from a big VORP guy - as you can tell from the fact that I've been championing Green - but the idea that Butler hasn't done much in the regular season doesn't seem right to me unless you're talking about comparisons with specific players from the past.

I think it makes sense for someone to champion Lillard who was on the list last time when Butler was not. There it's the playoffs that make the difference to me.

When looking at Butler vs Embiid, well, I'd say Butler has done considerably more for his teams over the regular season of his career than Embiid, and come playoff time, well, Butler's been the star leading his team to many series victories...while Embiid has not.

I can frame this pretty easily then: if we were doing an active player career ranking project instead, I'd certainly be considering him vs the other current players on the ballot. But I'm a total career value guy, and he just isn't there for me yet vs the entire field in this project.

To be clear, when I said "making a mockery of the regular season in recent years" I didn't mean from an on court/production standpoint. He obviously puts great effort into games. But it seems like his mindset is "let's just get to the playoffs and go from there" vs being available to help his team win more games.

Anything can happen in the playoffs as we saw with the heat last season, but over the course of a career I just don't like that mentality. And while that's obviously more common these days, it isn't the case with all current star players.

Totally makes sense to me that Jimmy would top someone's active-remaining player list but still behind other retired players. I'm in the boat too.

Re: anything can happen in the playoffs. So, I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment here. It's certainly true that there's more noise in the small sample of the playoffs than the regular season, and I don't want to claim the best team always wins the series because that's not true...but 7-game series make the NBA playoffs have drastically less luck than college basketball's March Madness, and among sports that have 7-game series as their playoffs, basketball has far less effective noise than baseball or hockey.

So while acknowledging that there is some luck involved and going with the premise that Butler's gotten a bit lucky there, I do think we should keep perspective what the extent of the luck is. Questions:

Butler's Heat have won 8 playoff series in the past 4 years. Do we really think that a team that wins that many series is getting lucky enough we shouldn't see it as a major accomplishment?

Butler's Heat have achieved 6 playoff upsets - based on seed - in that time frame. Is this really something we see as common enough to simply chalk up to luck?

Key point here is that there's a difference between a "rounding down" of achievement relative to superficial milestones and an outright dismissal.

At the very least what we've seen from Butler is evidence that he can be the lead star on a team that is a deep playoff contender that is consistently a tough out for the other teams who are themselves deep playoff contenders, and that's no small thing. I think we should be cautious championing anyone over Butler who hasn't shown comparable playoff success.

My response to that would be “Just because one fighter has characteristics that make him harder to beat then other fighters does not make him a superior fighter than he should be considered”

I think you’re correct about a lot of the ability Jimmy has when it comes to being the star of a deep playoff team consistently and being a “overachiever” relative to the teams capacity.

But the other side of the coin is why isn’t Jimmy considered to be good enough in the first place that the overachieving warrants are just apart of expectations? It’s easy to be dangerous when you have nothing to lose as an individual but it’s an entirely different story when expectations weigh on your team.

I think there’s a lot of characteristics about Jimmy’s game his games resilience and toughness( He basically mobilized bully ball to anywhere 18 feet and below and paired it with some finesse in the mid post area), and it’s a skillset that people and teams are unprepared in a lot of cases. But just because his skillset is unique and thus can pose a challenge teams aren’t prepared for. But personally that doesn’t make him someone who has more “ability” then the contemporaries we’re comparing him to. And I think that’s where the extra-credit I feel like being given to Jimmy is coming from, it’s from a traditional lack of understanding of Jimmy and his ability so we’re overcompensating by showering him with more praise then is warranted.

This pattern has been showcased multiple times especially with the growth of modern social media, where a player who is “unproven” is hated upon and negatively viewed because a lack of a traditional understanding of the players game. The most recent was Jokic Pre-Championship, the haters used his lack of defensive chops as a way to tear down his ability because of lack of a traditional understanding. (Then he won the championship and it’s like everyone forgot)This has occurred many times with players who showcase skill sets that are unique and hard to understand and I feel like in regards to Jimmy the individuals voting for him are giving him more credit then he deserves because of this phenomenon that happens in NBA discussions where players who aren’t understood from a traditional stance because of a unique skillset prove to be more then what’s expressed by the general NBA Community. I don’t feel like the pessimism from others should be a warrant for the high levels of optimism about Jimmy’s game and rob some of these other players from a spot.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Induction Vote #1: Bob Lanier

If this is between Lanier and Payton, I'm going to go with Lanier on the basis that he had a longer prime. I am skeptical of everyone on the current ballot, but between these two, I'll go with Lanier for that reason.

Nomination Vote #1: Paul Arizin

Nomination Vote #2: Pau Gasol

Arizin is one of the few arguable #1-on-a-title team guys left that hasn't been inducted(Bob Davies/Arnie Johnson, Cowens, Walton, Unseld, Isiah, Billups/Big Ben, I think, are the others...well, and Joe Fulks if you want to count pre-NBA), so he seems like a logical choice.

Though it seems to me, if you're going to put Arizin in, why not Neil Johnston? I'm guessing it's longevity, right?

As for Pau...Thurmond is in the lead and voting for Pau will tie him. He was one of the best championship #2s of the last 15 years, was a great teammate, put up consistently very solid individual numbers, has strong playoff on/off, good longevity, he's got a solid case here. His RAPM is not quite as high as I'd like to see, but there's enough other arguments to mitigate that.

[Doctor MJ]

Though it seems to me, if you're going to put Arizin in, why not Neil Johnston? I'm guessing it's longevity, right?

So, I went into this before:

1. The correlation with team success is considerably stronger for Arizin than Johnston.

2. The gap between the two got wider in the playoffs.

3. Arizin had a modern game. Johnston had a game designed for pre-Russell opponents.

This then to say that I don't see this as a situation where the two star teammates are close to each other.

[Doctor MJ]

I can frame this pretty easily then: if we were doing an active player career ranking project instead, I'd certainly be considering him vs the other current players on the ballot. But I'm a total career value guy, and he just isn't there for me yet vs the entire field in this project.

To be clear, when I said "making a mockery of the regular season in recent years" I didn't mean from an on court/production standpoint. He obviously puts great effort into games. But it seems like his mindset is "let's just get to the playoffs and go from there" vs being available to help his team win more games.

Anything can happen in the playoffs as we saw with the heat last season, but over the course of a career I just don't like that mentality. And while that's obviously more common these days, it isn't the case with all current star players.

Totally makes sense to me that Jimmy would top someone's active-remaining player list but still behind other retired players. I'm in the boat too.

Re: anything can happen in the playoffs. So, I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment here. It's certainly true that there's more noise in the small sample of the playoffs than the regular season, and I don't want to claim the best team always wins the series because that's not true...but 7-game series make the NBA playoffs have drastically less luck than college basketball's March Madness, and among sports that have 7-game series as their playoffs, basketball has far less effective noise than baseball or hockey.

So while acknowledging that there is some luck involved and going with the premise that Butler's gotten a bit lucky there, I do think we should keep perspective what the extent of the luck is. Questions:

Butler's Heat have won 8 playoff series in the past 4 years. Do we really think that a team that wins that many series is getting lucky enough we shouldn't see it as a major accomplishment?

Butler's Heat have achieved 6 playoff upsets - based on seed - in that time frame. Is this really something we see as common enough to simply chalk up to luck?

Key point here is that there's a difference between a "rounding down" of achievement relative to superficial milestones and an outright dismissal.

At the very least what we've seen from Butler is evidence that he can be the lead star on a team that is a deep playoff contender that is consistently a tough out for the other teams who are themselves deep playoff contenders, and that's no small thing. I think we should be cautious championing anyone over Butler who hasn't shown comparable playoff success.

My response to that would be “Just because one fighter has characteristics that make him harder to beat then other fighters does not make him a superior fighter than he should be considered”

I think you’re correct about a lot of the ability Jimmy has when it comes to being the star of a deep playoff team consistently and being a “overachiever” relative to the teams capacity.

But the other side of the coin is why isn’t Jimmy considered to be good enough in the first place that the overachieving warrants are just apart of expectations? It’s easy to be dangerous when you have nothing to lose as an individual but it’s an entirely different story when expectations weigh on your team.

I think there’s a lot of characteristics about Jimmy’s game his games resilience and toughness( He basically mobilized bully ball to anywhere 18 feet and below and paired it with some finesse in the mid post area), and it’s a skillset that people and teams are unprepared in a lot of cases. But just because his skillset is unique and thus can pose a challenge teams aren’t prepared for. But personally that doesn’t make him someone who has more “ability” then the contemporaries we’re comparing him to. And I think that’s where the extra-credit I feel like being given to Jimmy is coming from, it’s from a traditional lack of understanding of Jimmy and his ability so we’re overcompensating by showering him with more praise then is warranted.

This pattern has been showcased multiple times especially with the growth of modern social media, where a player who is “unproven” is hated upon and negatively viewed because a lack of a traditional understanding of the players game. The most recent was Jokic Pre-Championship, the haters used his lack of defensive chops as a way to tear down his ability because of lack of a traditional understanding. (Then he won the championship and it’s like everyone forgot)This has occurred many times with players who showcase skill sets that are unique and hard to understand and I feel like in regards to Jimmy the individuals voting for him are giving him more credit then he deserves because of this phenomenon that happens in NBA discussions where players who aren’t understood from a traditional stance because of a unique skillset prove to be more then what’s expressed by the general NBA Community. I don’t feel like the pessimism from others should be a warrant for the high levels of optimism about Jimmy’s game and rob some of these other players from a spot.

So you're pretty abstract here. To just hit a few things:

1. Interesting thoughts.

2. I'm not suggesting that Butler's career should be considered more impressive because his team's regular seasons were less impressive than you'd expect given the playoff performance. I'm saying that we should be careful chalking up the playoffs as mere luck.

3. Re: opponents unprepared for his resilience. I would see a key aspect of resilience is the difficulty for an opponent to prepare to take away what makes you you.

4. Re: just because skillset unique. I wouldn't say that of Butler. What is it you see as unique?

5. Re: Jokic skepticism. There's a difference between knocking a guy because you think his ceiling is low with his approach and not giving a guy career achievement credit for what he hasn't done.

6. Re: pessimism toward X should not lead to Y over Z. Agree with the principle and would note that I'm just picking between the candidates we have.

[Doctor MJ]

Induction Vote 1: Draymond Green



Repeating vote:

Spoiler:

Saying something relevant to the direction things have taken to start the '23-24 season:

I think Draymond makes it really clear why it's so hard to draw the line between on-court and off-court impact when we see him get violent on the court. There's good and bad to green, and figuring out how to reconcile all of that makes ranking even harder than it already is evaluating a guy impact really isn't well-captured by the box score.

What I'm most firm on is that Draymond is a generational-level defender, and being the anchor of a defense that was critical in enabling a dynastic run means a lot to me regardless of everything else.

I don't think there's any doubt that Draymond's level of achievement in the NBA would vary drastically depending on where he ended up. Now, I think that's mostly about a) coaches not recognizing how impactful he can be, and b) the good fortune of being part of a lightning-in-a-bottle situation. The former is something I try not to count against the player. The latter is something that means different things to me depending on what I'm evaluating. When I'm looking at total career achievement, well, the phrase "it is what it is" comes to mind.

I think Draymond's also typically been a positive on the offensive side of the ball too, and I think his force of personality has often helped galvanize his teams.

But the negatives are there, it's just a question of what they mean. I'll certainly say they hurt Draymond, but how to quantify how much? No objective way. I tend to ask questions like:

"Could I build a dynastic core with him being him and being critical to the core?"

I ask this partially with respect to how good the player is of course, but I'm also thinking about the warts of a guy's professionalism. Some guys are prone to losing motivation, some guys want things that are unreasonable, some guys are prone to self-annihilating jealousy. And so on that front, a thing that gets in the way of using a guys for a many-year core can hurt a lot.

And while we could imagine a career path where we something that Green's attitude would make it impossible to do this, since we actually saw this, I don't really have the same doubts as I do for some other guys.

Induction Vote 2: Bob Lanier

Still agonizing about Butler vs Lanier, but it looks like Lanier's the only one of the two getting serious play right now.

I'll say I have concerns over Lanier not having more playoff success, but I can't make the case that he was "exposed" in the playoffs, and all the regular season data we have - box score, RWOWY, etc - seems to agree he's legit despite the defensive concerns.

Nomination Vote 1: Paul Arizin



Repeating vote:

Spoiler:

Okay I'm going to just add on to what I was saying before because I want to address some of the things others brought up.

Previous post:
I'm really sold on Arizin as a player. I think at his best he was the best non-big the NBA ever saw until Oscar & West showed up, and I'd say arguably he was the most modern player the NBA saw until them also. This was a guy who was known for his one-handed jump shot at a time when this was not yet the norm, and he was also known for slashing his way to the basket.

For the early to mid stages of his career, he was also someone who seemed to correlate greatly with his team's success. Now, by moonbeam's RWOWY he comes off more mild here in favor of teammate Tom Gola, and I'm willing to have that conversation given that Gola was supposed to be a best-in-world candidate coming out of college, but my guess is that what we're seeing here is that Gola's arrival on the team coincided with Arizin really getting his sea legs back after the military service, and since that took a year, that prior year gets effectively held against him.

I will say there are considerable longevity concerns with Arizin, and frankly that's why I didn't vote for him earlier.
There are also concerns about why the later years with Wilt didn't feel like a team with overwhelming talent, and there while my answer would be the style of play the Warriors chose to play around Wilt, it doesn't change the fact that Arizin's impact didn't age as well as we'd like in practice.

Am I saying Arizin had poor impact?

Definitely not saying that. I'm acknowledging that Moonbeam's RWOWY did not show Arizin as that impressive and bringing up the teammate (Gola) who came off looking better. I'm giving brief explanation for how I take that for data. Happy to talk about it in more detail, just a question of what would be helpful to communicate.

The essence of the situation is that RWOWY is going to hold a Player A's improvement against him if Player B's arrival coincides with that improvement. Arizin improved his second year back in the NBA much like you'd hope give that he had been much better previously, and I don't think it's reasonable to say something like "That was Gola's impact on Arizin!".

Why champion Arizin when he doesn't stand out that much within his own era?

Arizin does stand out to me though. I have him as my OPOY in '51-52, '55-56 & '56-57, and he qualifies as an Offensive Player of the Decade (OPOD) for me taking over from George Mikan, preceding Bob Pettit.

I would also consider Arizin to have the best offensive peak of the '50s, and would name him my POY in his championship season.

I am curious who else people think stands out as much as Arizin from his own era, but I have seen another name mentioned here from the era that intrigues me.

Might it be that Cliff Hagan should rank higher than Arizin?

So, I like that Hagan's emerged as such a strong contender over time. I think it does make sense to ask whether Hagan could have set the world on fire with big numbers all season long if he were simply unleashed, but when it comes to achievement, I think there's a pretty basic bump you have to get over:

Based on regular season accolades, Hagan just isn't a guy getting much love. Only 6 all-star appearances to Arizin's 10 for example.

So, Hagan's almost certainly getting the nod over Arizin and a bunch of others based on his playoff performances. Makes sense, but I think we need to be very careful when looking at stats from the entire post-season to assert things like Hagan was the true MVP of the Hawks' chip. When we look at the finals, it really seems crystal clear that Pettit would have won that Finals MVP by a landslide and deservedly so.

I previously said that George Gervin has more POY Shares by my personal votes than Arizin, so why vote for Arizin over Gervin?

So, one of the things here is that the period where Gervin was racking up his shares was a really weird period. I literally have Gervin as my POY in '77-78, but it wasn't exactly the most satisfying of seasons with both Walton & Kareem's seasons disrupted, and Gervin's Spurs getting upset in their first playoff series. Getting upset in the playoffs was a thing for those Spurs and while that doesn't necessarily say anything concretely about Gervin, it leaves some doubts at the least.

I see Arizin as the guy with championship belt in his era among perimeter players for being best able to take it to opposing defenses all the way through the deep end of the playoffs...and I just can't say I see Gervin the same way.

Now, as we've talked about many times before, I'm not evaluating players for this project by considering them in other eras. I can definitely see the argument that Gervin's era was better than Arizin's so that should make up for the difference, but I'm cautious.

Does a player really "stand out" if he doesn't show up as massively on PER, WS/48/ BPM as another guy from another era?

So, I do see the logic of this thought. If we're talking about stats that are already normalized for era, and a more modern guy looks better by them, what exactly is the reasoning for picking the guy from the past?

Let's first acknowledge that this general argument stands even if we find specific reasons why a particular guy is better or worse than these simple metrics say. All other things equal though, is there a basis for which we could say that the guy with the worse-normalized numbers in the weaker league somehow might be seen as more impressive by those numbers?

Big thing here I think is that in general alphas are claiming more of the box score stats (per minute) of their team more and more as we embrace more star-optimized systems. In some cases this is happening beyond what's actually best for the team, but even if we expect that it's mostly a good thing if the team is choosing to do it, there's a question of whether we want to do cross-era lists that ended up getting dominated by guys from ultra-high-alpha-primacy eras simply because they are ultra-high-alpha-primacy eras.

Incidentally statistically, the thing worth determining are the standard deviations of these stats over the years.

Nomination Vote 2: Dave Cowens

I think it's time for Cowens. I don't think he should have won MVP...but I don't think he was far from it. He really came in and his arrival re-opened the championship window for the post-Russell Celtics. Playing with extreme motor which seems to be respected as high on the BBIQ scale (despite the shooting efficiency), this is an impressive thing to me.

[LA Bird]

Vote 1: Bob Lanier
Vote 2: Jimmy Butler
Nom 1: Nate Thurmond
Nom 2: Ray Allen

Comments on other candidates:
• Seeing a few nomination votes for Pau Gasol and I am not sure why he should be going above Ray Allen from the same era.
• I think Payton's longevity is a little overrated. Yes, his career minute totals are huge but he really only has a 5 year run (96-00) where he was a clear positive in on/offs and had great playoff performances. He is kind of like Vince Carter in that they have very good single season peaks and very long careers but many of their middle prime seasons are relatively underwhelming.
• Wouldn't nominate Arizin just yet unless we are extrapolating for his 2 missed military years. But that being said, I do see his case and see him as the highest ranked SF yet to be nominated. Neil Johnston on the other hand wouldn't be on my radar for a long time. As I posted before in my Schayes writeup, he is one of the worst ever when it comes to playoffs resiliency in terms of WS/48.

Watch on YouTube

Lanier is usually highly regarded offensively but I think he is still underrated on that end. He is one of the most well-rounded center on offense - hook shot from the low post and mid range jumper up to 20 ft, he is a great passer from the high post, and he is both mobile enough to drive from the perimeter and strong enough to establish deep post position in mismatches. And if you are wondering if his skillset translates to actual results, here are Lanier's numbers in his playoff series in Detroit:

26/15/3 on +4.3 rTS% vs 74 Bulls (#1 defense)
20/11/6 on +4.1 rTS% vs 75 Sonics
29/12/4 on +12.9 rTS% vs 76 Bucks
25/13/3 on +10.9 rTS% vs 76 Warriors (#1 defense)
28/17/2 on +15.9 rTS% vs 77 Warriors

That's a multi-year postseason average of 26/14/4 on +9 rTS%, with over half the games against the best defense in the league. Some might say the sample size is too small but you can cherry pick the best 5 consecutive series from any center ever and there aren't a handful who can put up comparable numbers. Lanier is a better first option on offense in the playoffs than Robinson/Ewing and is very arguable against Moses depending on how much you value offensive rebounding vs passing and scoring efficiency. Also, all his monstrous 10+ rTS series came after Dave Bing was traded so the teammate argument can't even be used (not that Bing was particularly good in the first place...)

The bigger concern for Lanier has always been on the defensive end, namely that the Pistons were only an above average defense once during his time there. This is a fair criticism but it's worth keeping in mind that team defensive ratings are not necessarily an accurate measure of an individual player's defense and that the Pistons were a very poorly run franchise ("the worst management in the league" according to Gene Shue). DeBusschere was an all time great defender who was on the Pistons as close as two years before Lanier and despite that, they were still often a subpar defensive team. And the interesting similarity is how big of an impact they both had on their new teams after leaving Detroit:

Pistons traded DeBusschere mid season in 1969 to the Knicks who improved from 0.8 to 8.1 SRS
Pistons traded Lanier mid season in 1980 to the Bucks who improved from 0.9 to 8.8 SRS

I am not arguing Lanier is as good as DeBusschere on defense but the WOWY parallels are striking and it's hard to imagine Lanier being a bad defender for a decade and then making such a huge impact in Milwaukee instantly for no reason. And I don't think people realize how impactful the trade was - 80 Lanier had the highest single season WOWY score of all time behind only peak Walton in ElGee's spreadsheet. And this is despite WOWY being a per game metric and Lanier averaging only 28 mpg in the regular season (36 mpg in playoffs). To be fair, maybe Bucks Lanier's defensive impact was exaggerated because he could spend more energy on defense when he didn't have to carry the offensive load but that would theoretically be offset by a decline in offensive impact due to role too. And he also had strong WOWY in Detroit over multiple seasons so the Milwaukee impact numbers aren't just a fluke. There is a lot of uncertainty but I feel like the data points to him being a solid plus defender whose real value was only revealed when he finally played for a decent franchise. Combine this with his very strong offense and I think Lanier is overdue to being voted in, let alone being nominated.

[iggymcfrack]

Vote: Bob Lanier
Was thinking maybe Payton had a case on longevity, but after reading some posts here about how his top-level prime was actually shorter than Lanier’s, I looked over the numbers by year and I agree. Lanier’s career average playoff BPM beats every Payton year except one and honestly with Lanier being an underrated positive defender at a very important position and Payton being an overrated (still very positive) defender at an unimportant position, I think they’re probably actually pretty equal defensively. Lanier deserves this one.

[ShaqAttac]

i dont really know who to vote for but good args have been made for wb impact and he was maybe #1 on better teams than dwights and won an mvp. drexler teams also werent as good and the arg for him isnt that good. wb vs kobe is dumb but idt drexler is kobe so i guess ill go

VOTE

1. Draymond
his impact looks good and he wins a bunch. args for him bein able to carry teams are better than args against tbh

2. Embid

won an mvp and really good at d and o.

imma nom

Walton
chip and mvp and swept kareem and played more minutes than embid. also crazy impact

[WintaSoldier1]

Totally makes sense to me that Jimmy would top someone's active-remaining player list but still behind other retired players. I'm in the boat too.

Re: anything can happen in the playoffs. So, I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment here. It's certainly true that there's more noise in the small sample of the playoffs than the regular season, and I don't want to claim the best team always wins the series because that's not true...but 7-game series make the NBA playoffs have drastically less luck than college basketball's March Madness, and among sports that have 7-game series as their playoffs, basketball has far less effective noise than baseball or hockey.

So while acknowledging that there is some luck involved and going with the premise that Butler's gotten a bit lucky there, I do think we should keep perspective what the extent of the luck is. Questions:

Butler's Heat have won 8 playoff series in the past 4 years. Do we really think that a team that wins that many series is getting lucky enough we shouldn't see it as a major accomplishment?

Butler's Heat have achieved 6 playoff upsets - based on seed - in that time frame. Is this really something we see as common enough to simply chalk up to luck?

Key point here is that there's a difference between a "rounding down" of achievement relative to superficial milestones and an outright dismissal.

At the very least what we've seen from Butler is evidence that he can be the lead star on a team that is a deep playoff contender that is consistently a tough out for the other teams who are themselves deep playoff contenders, and that's no small thing. I think we should be cautious championing anyone over Butler who hasn't shown comparable playoff success.

My response to that would be “Just because one fighter has characteristics that make him harder to beat then other fighters does not make him a superior fighter than he should be considered”

I think you’re correct about a lot of the ability Jimmy has when it comes to being the star of a deep playoff team consistently and being a “overachiever” relative to the teams capacity.

But the other side of the coin is why isn’t Jimmy considered to be good enough in the first place that the overachieving warrants are just apart of expectations? It’s easy to be dangerous when you have nothing to lose as an individual but it’s an entirely different story when expectations weigh on your team.

I think there’s a lot of characteristics about Jimmy’s game his games resilience and toughness( He basically mobilized bully ball to anywhere 18 feet and below and paired it with some finesse in the mid post area), and it’s a skillset that people and teams are unprepared in a lot of cases. But just because his skillset is unique and thus can pose a challenge teams aren’t prepared for. But personally that doesn’t make him someone who has more “ability” then the contemporaries we’re comparing him to. And I think that’s where the extra-credit I feel like being given to Jimmy is coming from, it’s from a traditional lack of understanding of Jimmy and his ability so we’re overcompensating by showering him with more praise then is warranted.

This pattern has been showcased multiple times especially with the growth of modern social media, where a player who is “unproven” is hated upon and negatively viewed because a lack of a traditional understanding of the players game. The most recent was Jokic Pre-Championship, the haters used his lack of defensive chops as a way to tear down his ability because of lack of a traditional understanding. (Then he won the championship and it’s like everyone forgot)This has occurred many times with players who showcase skill sets that are unique and hard to understand and I feel like in regards to Jimmy the individuals voting for him are giving him more credit then he deserves because of this phenomenon that happens in NBA discussions where players who aren’t understood from a traditional stance because of a unique skillset prove to be more then what’s expressed by the general NBA Community. I don’t feel like the pessimism from others should be a warrant for the high levels of optimism about Jimmy’s game and rob some of these other players from a spot.

So you're pretty abstract here. To just hit a few things:

1. Interesting thoughts.

2. I'm not suggesting that Butler's career should be considered more impressive because his team's regular seasons were less impressive than you'd expect given the playoff performance. I'm saying that we should be careful chalking up the playoffs as mere luck.

3. Re: opponents unprepared for his resilience. I would see a key aspect of resilience is the difficulty for an opponent to prepare to take away what makes you you.

4. Re: just because skillset unique. I wouldn't say that of Butler. What is it you see as unique?

5. Re: Jokic skepticism. There's a difference between knocking a guy because you think his ceiling is low with his approach and not giving a guy career achievement credit for what he hasn't done.

6. Re: pessimism toward X should not lead to Y over Z. Agree with the principle and would note that I'm just picking between the candidates we have.

4. I think Butler has transformed the bully ball game into something that's rarely seen before(Mostly because of the space he has to work with compared to past bully-ball players). Unlike most other bully-baller mid post players, Jimmy actively moves around off the ball for better leverage opportunities... He's also 6'7, which is a good size to be "too quick" or "too big" for 95% of the NBA, in a era where defensive physicality is punished and the offense cannot contest post shots( There's a huger emphasis on going vertical then ever... Some post moves are flat out unstoppable to guard once you get position) It's less that Jimmy's game is not-seen before or unique and it's more just a rarified air about the way Jimmy play's relative to this Era, and it's difficult to guard a Bully-baller when the floor is more open then ever.

2/5/6: Unsure If I made it clear in my post but you've uttered some good principle's for understanding a player. What I was trying to say is that when players who are not understood take grace, most people usually are super low on them and force them to "prove it" before they get the respect they truly deserve as a player( Curry, Jokic, Nash) the idea I was suggesting is that you're taking the opposite extreme by giving Butler more credit than he deserves because usually players who are hard to understand have ascended to another level of greatness in NBA History( When speaking about All-Stars+), the most recent case is probably Haliburton in how people don't really understand his game but are now being forced to live with his production and the "prove it" will come during the playoffs.

I'm fairly certain you got the sentiment although. because I formatted kinda strange you chalked it up in a similar fashion

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote 1 - Gary Payton
Vote 2 - Bob Lanier
Nomination 1 - George Gervin
Nomination 2 - Willis Reed

Payton had a solid 9 year prime where he excelled on both ends of the floor. I don't think his average efficiency should bring him down that much as he ran some of the best offenses in the NBA during his prime, and he was an elite perimeter defender. His durability is also quite impressive: over his first 14 seasons, he only missed a total of 7 games, playing nearly 37 MPG (from '95-'03, he played 39.6 MPG).

This is pretty much a toss-up to me and I'd be happy to see either Payton or Lanier go in at 50.

Kinda feel like Gervin is slipping through the cracks at this point.

Even though his playoff success leaves something to be desired, he was still an impressive playoff performer, putting up the following from '75-'83 (65 games):

28.8 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 3 APG, 1.2 SPG, 1.1 BPG, 56% TS, 113 ORtg 

In '79, the spurs faced the defending champion bullets in the ECF, with a heartbreaking 2 pt game 7 loss. Gervin scored 42 pts in the game, including 24 in the 2nd half. The spurs and bullets ranked 1st and 2nd in SRS respectively that season.

In '82, the spurs made a mid season trade for talented scorer Mike Mitchell. He would only appear in 57 games for the spurs, and gervin still led the spurs to the 7th best SRS in the league. For context as owly mentioned, Ron brewer was pretty productive that season before being traded for Mitchell: https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SAS/1982.html. They would fall to the eventual NBA champion lakers (4th in SRS) in the WCF.

In '83, the spurs (6th in SRS) would again fall to the lakers (3rd in SRS) in the WCF. Gervin and Mitchell both had solid performances in the post season that year, but simply weren't enough for a deep lakers roster that featured magic, kareem, nixon, wilkes, mcadoo and cooper.

Had gervin and gilmore had more time together during each other's primes, i'm sure both would have helped each other to further playoff success.

[homecourtloss]

Vote: Draymond Green
Alt vote: Bob Lanier
Nominate: Dave Cowens


Draymond’s Case

We have too many pieces of data, including RAPM with confidence levels, playoffs only RAPM, effect on win probability, etc., to not seriously consider Draymond here.

Regular Season



1. Lebron, 5.54, 274K Poss
2. KG, 5.1, 206K Poss
3. CP3, 4.8, 181K Poss
4. Steph, 4.7, 142K Poss
5. Duncan, 4.7, 241K Poss
6. Manu, 4.3, 131K Poss
7. Draymond, 4.25, 110K Poss
8. PG, 4.05, 126K Poss
9. Dirk, 3.89, 238K Poss
10, Lillard, 3.87, 112K Poss
HM: Harden, Shaq, Lowry

Playoffs



1. Lebron, 5.9, 41K Poss
2. Draymond, 5.5, 18K Poss
3. Manu, 5.2, 23K Poss
4. KG, 4.8, 19K Poss
5. Duncan, 4.3, 34K Poss
6. Curry, 4.2, 17K Poss
7. Harden, 4.1, 22k Poss
8. Shaq, 3.9, 24K Poss
9. KD, 3.7, 24K Poss
10. PG, 3.2, 16K Poss
HM: Allen, Danny Green, Westbrook

Biggest Risers (Using graph 2 RS)

1. Draymond, +1.2
2. Rondo, +.9
3. Manu, +.8
4. Billups, +.7
5. Prince, +.7
6. Horry, +.6
7. Danny Green, +.6
8. Lebron, +.3
9. Harden, +.3
10. Westbrook, +3
HM: Allen, Wade, Shaq

Notes

-> Lebron, Manu, and Draymond are the only players with a top-10 rs score to see an increase in their playoffs. That increase would have been higher for all 3 if I'd used graph 1 instead of graph 2.

2015, 2016, and 2017 Draymond in the playoffs:


In JE’s RS+PS 1997-2022 RAPM set, there is tiny set of players who are -4 career defense impact players and the majority of them are negatives on offense, or are basically neutral. A player who can be a monster defensive impact player, and be a positive impact offensive player is a unicorn, a unicorn who is going to give your team a chance to win over a long stretch of time.

In JE’s set, we have nearly 2,500 player careers and out of these players, only TWO have a +2.0 or better ORAPM, and a -4 or better DRAPM, i.e., KG and Duncan. We only have three who are +1.5 or better ORAPM, and a -4 or better DRAPM, i.e., KG, Tim, and Draymond.



And of course his overall impact



Often people bring up that he is not a “rim protecting specialist,” but Draymond’s does provide a paint presence and rim protection, while also being one of the greatest defensive communicators of the past 25 years, allowing him to quarterback defenses.



If you go through the seasons from 2015 through 2023, you see some elite tracking numbers for how much worse opponents shot against Draymond vs. everyone else for shots under 6 feet and under 10 feet from the rim. Pick any of the seasons at random; those numbers on the far right over there:







[/quote]

We saw this in the 2022 finals versus the Boston Celtics:

Nobody was making anything against Draymond these playoffs, especially in the paint or near the rim:



And the Celtics didn’t do much better:



Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown hated going up against him:




Earlier in the 2022 playoffs, Draymond was the only one who could slow down Jokić in a little bit, shooting 67% against everybody else:



I could go on, but one last thing is JE’s study a player’s effect on win probability
[/quote][/quote]

[eminence]

Arizin is one of the few arguable #1-on-a-title team guys left that hasn't been inducted(Bob Davies/Arnie Johnson, Cowens, Walton, Unseld, Isiah, Billups/Big Ben, I think, are the others...well, and Joe Fulks if you want to count pre-NBA), so he seems like a logical choice.

Brief note, but wrong Arnie imo. Arnie Risen was the one who should be seen as the other potential #1 on that Royals squad.

Arnie Johnson was a lower volume scorer on high efficiency (on the floor and got to the line a lot), and wasn't terrible in other areas, but also no standout. Kind of like an ancient forward version of DeAndre Jordan?

[Doctor MJ]

Induction Vote 1:

Jimmy - 2 (beast, falco)
Lanier - 6 (AEnigma, Samurai, Winta, OSNB, LA Bird, iggy)
Payton - 4 (trex, Rishkar, Joao, Clyde)
Green - 4 (Ohayo, Doc, ShaqA, hcl)
Embiid - 2 (HBK, trelos)
none - 1 (ty)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Lanier, Payton & Green:

Lanier - 0 (none)
Payton - 1 (HBK)
Green - 2 (falco, trelos)
none - 2 (ty, beast)

Lanier 6, Green 6, Payton 5. Eliminating Payton

Lanier - 3 (trex, Rishkar, Clyde)
Green - 0 (none)
neither - 1 (Joao)

Bob Lanier 9, Draymond Green 6.

Bob Lanier is Inducted at #50.

Nomination Vote 1:

Bobby - 1 (beast)
Allen - 1 (falco)
Cowens - 2 (AEnigma, hcl)
Gasol - 2 (trex, Joao)
Thurmond - 3 (ty, Ohayo, LA Bird)
Billups - 1 (Rishkar)
Walton - 2 (HBK, ShaqA)
Arizin - 3 (Samurai, OSNB, Doc)
Gervin - 2 (Winta, Clyde)
Mutombo - 1 (trelos)
none - 1 (iggy)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Thurmond & Arizin.

Thurmond - 3 (falco, AEnigma, Rishkar)
Arizin - 0 (none)
neither - 10 (beast, trex, HBK, Joao, Winta, trelos, iggy, ShaqA, Clyde, hcl)

Thurmond 6, Arizin 3

Nate Thurmond is added to Nominee list.

[AEnigma]

[trex_8063]

Pretty sure I saw this commercial on TV while watching an old game on YouTube . There's some awesome[ly bad] commercials in the late 70s/early-mid 80s; watching some of those old games on YT is almost as much fun just for the commercials as for the game itself.

I even saw Burt Lancaster in an AT&T commercial.

[Clyde Frazier]

Spoiler:

Pretty sure I saw this commercial on TV while watching an old game on YouTube . There's some awesome[ly bad] commercials in the late 70s/early-mid 80s; watching some of those old games on YT is almost as much fun just for the commercials as for the game itself.

I even saw Burt Lancaster in an AT&T commercial.

Had some fun with my dad over thanksgiving. He has tons of taped games from the 80s and still has a VCR, so we watched one of the old timers games (I'm not sure of the year, but it was mid 80s). I'm sure they're on YouTube but I had never seen one. It wasn't as depressing as I thought it'd be. Slick Watts and Maravich really stuck out due to great conditioning. The fascinating thing was seeing guys like Oscar, Jerry Lucas and even Cousy on a basketball court in the 80s! It messed with my head, but in a good way lol... and yeah the commercials in between were great.