RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Dave Cowens)

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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#21 » by Joao Saraiva » Wed Dec 27, 2023 4:34 pm

Vote Pau Gasol

Truly a great big man. He changed the course of the Lakers in the post Shaq era. Since he came the Lakers stopped being pretenders and became real contenders.

We voted KG early on, and even tough it was after the 09 injury I'm still amazed that Pau Gasol had an excelent series in the 10 finals against Garnett. I think that is probably the biggest series of his career.

I also think he was Spain's best player when they competed with the redeem team in 12, and that tells a lot about his game. I know it doesn't count here since we're evaluating the NBA, but I can't separate my perception of a player that much.

Gasol also was good with Memphis, I just think he didn't have a real chance to go further as a leader, even tough I think he wasn't that great of a player to win a ring as the #1 option.

I think he was called soft underservedly and believe he was one of the most complete big guys ever. Scoring, passing, rebounding, defending... there was not aspect I felt Gasol wasn't good on.

Alternate Thomas

Nomination Billups
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#22 » by Samurai » Wed Dec 27, 2023 7:20 pm

Vote for #57: Dave Cowens. Terrific all-around big who could score (averaged around 20 ppg in his prime), rebound (5 years in the top ten in trb%), pass (averaged around 4.5 assists/game in his prime), and defend (three-time All Defensive Team, one on the first team). Two rings. Named MVP in 73 and while I do not at all feel this was the correct vote, being in the top 4 four times shows how highly regarded he was in his own time. While he wasn't a great pure shooter, he had 4 seasons with a TS+ over 100 so he wasn't really inefficient. While some may have had more sheer talent, no one, in any era, would ever out-hustle Big Red when he was on the court.

Alternate vote: George Gervin. Outstanding scorer who led the league in scoring 4 times (only Jordan, Wilt and KD have more scoring titles and tied with Kobe and Harden). Named All NBA/ABA nine times (5 of them to the First Team), played in 12 straight All Star games, and scored double figures in 407 consecutive games. Not a very good defender although he was a very good defensive rebounder and shot blocker for a guard. And the eye test tells me that he had the best floating finger roll off a drive that I've ever seen (Wilt's was off a post-up, not a drive!).

Nomination: Bobby Jones. Part of me keeps thinking this is too early for him given his lack of longevity and durability. But I'm pretty sure that I would take Jones and his reduced minutes over Draymond if I were drafting a team, so seeing Green get selected convinced me to consider him. Gotta admit that there is bias here since Jones is one of my favorite players of all time. Despite averaging less than 30 minutes/game during his NBA career, he still has ten All Defensive First Team awards and one Second Team selection (in his second to last season averaging only 20 minutes/game). He was nicknamed The Secretary of Defense for good reason. He didn't shoot much but he was highly efficient, leading the league in FG% three times and finishing in the top 20 in TS% nine times. But as good as he was at playing basketball, how he conducted himself may have been even more admirable. He was always a gentleman with honor; he didn't drink, smoke or use profanity, always raised his hand when called for a foul - even telling a ref who mistakenly called a foul on a teammate that he was the one who actually committed the foul, even though that was his fifth foul! When teammates tried to show him ways to "cheat" by grabbing an opponent's jersey or committing a foul when the ref wasn't looking, he adamantly refused to do so. He would reply "if I have to play defense by holding on, that's when I quit." Teammate Dr J described Jones as "a player who's totally selfless, who runs like a deer, jumps like a gazelle, plays with his head and heart each night, and then walks away from the court as if nothing happened." And former teammate Charles Barkley said "if everyone in the world was like Bobby Jones, the world wouldn't have any problems."

Alternate nomination: Willis Reed. MVP, two-time Finals MVP, and five-time All NBA team member (one first team, four second teams). While not a shot blocker, he was still and otherwise excellent defender (All NBA Defensive First Team in 1970). Finished in the top 20 in points/game six times and in rebounds/game seven times. His primary drawback is a lack of longevity and in that regards, I think he may be a victim of his era; with better training and medical/surgical knowledge, he could have had better longevity.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#23 » by AEnigma » Wed Dec 27, 2023 7:24 pm

penbeast0 wrote:
AEnigma wrote:I am very excited to see Kiki Vandeweghe in our top hundred.

Hey, it's your choice, your criteria.

Guess it depends on how much I feel like indexing on TS Add.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#24 » by penbeast0 » Wed Dec 27, 2023 10:16 pm

Looked up Kiki, only 6 seasons over 100 TS Add, none over 300. Only 3 years in the league top 5, Walt Bellamy, to use another unlikely top 100 nominee, has 6. Adrian Dantley's career TS Add is more than double Kiki's. I think you need to make a stronger case than that.

You want to be serious, make a list of the top 20 TS Add careers in NBA history and see how many of them haven't been voted in yet. I'd do it but I'm both incompetent with spreadsheets and don't care enough.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#25 » by penbeast0 » Wed Dec 27, 2023 10:58 pm

Was looking to see if anyone had done this and couldn't find it, but for everyone who averaged over 20ppg in their career, here is a list of the top points per shot taken leaders (NOT adjusted for era or minutes played).

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/528231-ray-allen-and-the-most-efficient-scores-per-shot-taken-in-nba-history

1. Kareem
2. Ray Allen (surprised me!)
3. Larry Bird
4. Adrian Dantley
5. George Gervin
. . . (just putting those we haven't put in after this)
7. Alex English
9. Marques Johnson
... (10 Michael Jordan)
11. Michael Redd
12. Amare Stoudamire
13. Bernard King
14. Mitch Richmond (surprised)
17. Dan Issel
18. David Thompson
19. Bob McAdoo
20. Lou Hudson
... (List is from 2010)
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#26 » by Owly » Wed Dec 27, 2023 11:04 pm

penbeast0 wrote:Looked up Kiki, only 6 seasons over 100 TS Add, none over 300. Only 3 years in the league top 5, Walt Bellamy, to use another unlikely top 100 nominee, has 6. Adrian Dantley's career TS Add is more than double Kiki's. I think you need to make a stronger case than that.

You want to be serious, make a list of the top 20 TS Add careers in NBA history and see how many of them haven't been voted in yet. I'd do it but I'm both incompetent with spreadsheets and don't care enough.

As you asked (checked the TS add list and Moobeam's earlier version) this is from circa 2020 so not perfectly up to date

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Artis Gilmore
Wilt Chamberlain
Oscar Robertson
Reggie Miller
Adrian Dantley
Charles Barkley
Karl Malone
Shaquille O'Neal
Jerry West
LeBron James
Kevin Durant
John Stockton
Walt Bellamy
Dirk Nowitzki
James Harden
Ray Allen
Steve Nash
Magic Johnson
Steph Curry

Obviously correlation and causation aren't the same thing. This measure is one measure of one aspect of the game. Mind you even if one doesn't entirely agree on the merits of the measure it's not as though you said nothing regarding other aspects of the game in comparing Wilkins, Dantley. That said

Eyeballing I think Dantley and Bellamy are the guys in that list not in yet. Dantley is significantly higher on this list. Bellamy is at or near the epitome of players regarded as less than their boxscore.


FWIW Dantley has a slightly lower prime (1977-1989) WOWYR than his on the board teammate here (4.6 to 4.1), stronger for career (3.3 to 0.8) though this is an inherently noisy, uneven sampled measure and some here don't seem to trust either the method or it's application so take with whatever salt one seems necessary. Fwiw Bellamy's numbers are, perhaps better than I'd expected -without looking at when he was absent, his backups etc- but with 200 players higher on each list not something that would particularly catapult him into contention.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#27 » by penbeast0 » Wed Dec 27, 2023 11:10 pm

Thanks, that's about what I expected.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#28 » by AEnigma » Wed Dec 27, 2023 11:47 pm

penbeast0 wrote:Looked up Kiki, only 6 seasons over 100 TS Add, none over 300. Only 3 years in the league top 5, Adrian Dantley's career TS Add is more than double Kiki's. I think you need to make a stronger case than that.

You want to be serious, make a list of the top 20 TS Add careers in NBA history and see how many of them haven't been voted in yet. I'd do it but I'm both incompetent with spreadsheets and don't care enough.

I was not being especially serious, because I do not think just glancing at TS Add is a productive means of assessing a top 100 case. Kiki and his six seasons over 100 TS Add — and his career 1500 TS Add — puts him well ahead of project mainstays like Dominique, English, Carter, Sam Jones, and Hal Greer, and it is certainly conceivable to me that someone’s eye test could assess Kiki similarly to all or most of them on defence, so why not start arguing him around here too?

Everyone knows Dantley’s efficiency. We are also talking about a player who moved franchises on several occasions without leaving much of a footprint on any of them. It is not any sort of dead discussion simply because his career TS Add is something like twice all those names combined, and that is what you were heavily implying should be the case relative to Dominique. We are not talking about Reggie or Ray here; just because Dantley scored effectively does not mean he was a serious offensive engine, and while you may be higher on players like Doc Rivers or Kevin Willis than the majority, it seems worth considering how Dominique could be the clear minutes leader on so many strong offences despite this supposedly incomparable deficit in scoring value.

And I think some of the names on your list speak to that. Michael Redd was never going to be on my radar. Nor would someone like Dale Ellis, but both of them were efficient, and both had a shot profile which stretched defences farther than Dantley’s ever did.

(N.b. Any approach calling Glenn Robinson “one of the most efficient NBA scorers ever” seems to me to have taken a wrong turn somewhere, and while I respect Redd as a scorer, his placement there also raises quite a few questions.)
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#29 » by penbeast0 » Thu Dec 28, 2023 1:35 am

Bringing up franchise offensive ratings is a reasonable argument, the others were just straw men. How does a player who is significantly better at scoring than another lead significantly worse offenses? I do agree that Atlanta over Nique's tenure was a better offensive team than Utah over the course of Dantley's tenure (and Utah is Dantley's prime as an individual player).

It could be something else in his game like passing, offensive rebounding, time of possession that hurts his team in a relative sense.

It could be coaching.

It could be teammates.

I don't see anything in their individual stats that would lead to this result.

I think Mike Fratello is a very well respected coach and analyst; he did well for his talent in Cleveland and even in Memphis as well as Atlanta. Frank Layden coached the Jazz for the Dantley years then the first two NBA years of Stockton and Malone, no other coaching stints to compare. Funny guy, he won NBA coach of the year in 84 as Dantley led them to a top 10 offense.

Nique's teammates were certainly better but enough better to justify the difference between the teams even if the two were providing equivalent lift?

Like I said, it's a decent argument and one that should be taken into account.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#30 » by penbeast0 » Thu Dec 28, 2023 1:37 am

Btw, what impressed me about that list was how bad most of them were defensively, from Amare to Bird (at least SF Bird) to Dantley to Gervin, only Kareem looked like a strong defender on the whole list.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#31 » by OhayoKD » Thu Dec 28, 2023 4:54 am

penbeast0 wrote:Looked up Kiki, only 6 seasons over 100 TS Add, none over 300. Only 3 years in the league top 5, Walt Bellamy, to use another unlikely top 100 nominee, has 6. Adrian Dantley's career TS Add is more than double Kiki's. I think you need to make a stronger case than that.

You want to be serious, make a list of the top 20 TS Add careers in NBA history and see how many of them haven't been voted in yet. I'd do it but I'm both incompetent with spreadsheets and don't care enough.

Just keep in mind TS add assumes volume and effeciency scale up linearly.

penbeast0 wrote:Bringing up franchise offensive ratings is a reasonable argument, the others were just straw men. How does a player who is significantly better at scoring than another lead significantly worse offenses?


Don't have a strong opinion on any of this but theoretically, without a spike in the individual stats you are looking at, a less efficient scorer can generate better offense via

-> handling the ball more, doing more before a pass or shot
-> drawing more defensive attention(all else being equal a made shot from a double is worth more than one from a single is worth mroe than a made shot from open play)
-> drawing attention further away from teammates(this is where enigma's comment on range comes into play)

Unsure if any of that applies in this individual comparison, but I think that might be where one would start looking to see if the worse offenses are a result of dantley's weaknesses or just context/variance. "how often do they draw x defenders" is the first thing I'd look at if I was invested in the comparison.
 
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#32 » by OhayoKD » Thu Dec 28, 2023 4:57 am

Vote

1. Thurmond


-> Superstar impact based on what we have
-> Impressive postseason performances with and without Rick Barry
-> Best-in-league calibre defender


Alternate

2. Dave Cowens

-> arguably 2nd best player pre-russell
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#33 » by Doctor MJ » Thu Dec 28, 2023 6:07 am

Induction Vote 1: Dave Cowens

Image

Induction Vote 2: George Gervin

So, I feel like I should have more to say than I do at this time. At this point I see plenty of arguments for any one of the candidates over the others.

With Cowens in comparison to guys like Gervin & Thurmond, it resonates with me that he was such a critical part of a 2-time champion. High motor with bad decision making isn't a good thing and Cowens' efficiency gives me pause, what Cowens did he did in the context of an overall scheme that really worked. Combine that with his heady reputation and I'm not willing to really stand fast as a skeptic.

But of course there's also the extreme scoring prowess of Gervin to consider, and part of me feels like I've been dragging my heels on him without any great reason.

Nomination Vote 1: Willis Reed

Image

Reed moves up to top of my un-Nominated list. Longevity hurts the man's career to be sure, and I think that relative to teammate Frazier, Reed was always a bit overrated. But I can't say I'm actually skeptical that he was a phenomenal player who could stand up against the toughest competition.

A number of other bigs are being mentioned at this stage and I think a number of them have serious cases, but aside from the whole tough competition thing, I'd tend to see Reed as someone who was more of a force on both sides of the ball than most other bigs in this territory

Nomination Vote 2: Bobby Jones

So, picking based on the other candidates I'm seeing getting love right now, I prefer Bobby. I think Jones was just an astonishing player having tremendous impact per minute on great teams. The minutes are the rub of course, and the reason why I find Jones so hard to place. Of course I'm also the guy who championed Ginobili, so such things don't necessarily scare me off.

I think it's frankly reasonable to suggest that I should have championed Bobby as hard as I did Manu, and there I'd say that a key word is confidence. I was able to really think through peak Manu and cross off possible "he's not really that impressive" arguments until I had nothing left. Can't quite do that for Jones.

What I'll also say about Ginobili & Reed relative to Jones is that they seem to me to be guys who can really carry their team what that's what's necessary, while Jones in the end was more of an outlier role player. I don't necessarily elevate the former over the latter categorically but again, it does give me confidence in my assessment of the guy.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#34 » by Clyde Frazier » Thu Dec 28, 2023 8:37 am

Vote 1 - George Gervin
Vote 2 - Pau Gasol
Nomination 1 - Willis Reed


Even though Gervin's 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.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#35 » by OldSchoolNoBull » Thu Dec 28, 2023 9:05 am

Induction Vote #1: Isiah Thomas

Induction Vote #2: Dave Cowens

Not feeling particularly strongly for any of the candidates for my #1 vote, but Isiah seems like a logical pick here. In his rookie season, the Pistons' rel ORtg jumped from -7.4 to -1.1. For the nine seasons that followed, from 82-83 thru 90-91, the Pistons always had a positive rel ORtg. When Isiah was in decline in his last three seasons, it was -0.7, -0.6, and then a plummet to -3.6 in his final year. The Pistons' offense was good when Isiah was good. It was a stacked team, but he drove that offense as a playmaker. Add to that he was also a tenacious defender and a great leader, he appears to have been the heart and soul of a team that went to five consecutive ECFs, three consecutive Finals, and won back-to-back titles(and were perhaps a foul call away from a threepeat).

This round seems to be coming down to Cowens and Thurmond and so I'll use my second vote as a potential tiebreaker. It's tough. They're both inefficient mid-volume scorers who claim most of their value as defenders and rebounders. Thurmond has those impressive WOWY records from when he missed time. Cowens didn't miss nearly as much time in his prime years. We can look at 76-77, when he played in 50 games - the Celtics were 29-21 with him, and 15-17 without, so a very decent showing for him there.

While both were inefficient scorers, Cowens was marginally less inefficient, so I'm also taking that into consideration.

Cowens has a hardware advantage - an MVP and two rings. Maybe that's just a result of playing on better teams, and playing against better teams in the playoffs, but Thurmond had Barry for a bunch of years and Wilt for a couple of years and never got it done. This feels very close to me, so I am cautiously going to give the hardware the benefit of the doubt as a tiebreaker here, though like I said before, I don't feel especially strongly about it.

Nomination Vote #1: Alonzo Mourning

Reed and Mourning are in a tight race here, and I just think they're really, really close. I've been agonizing over it, and I truly can't decide yet. Right now, Reed has a one-vote lead(after secondary votes), so I'm going to vote for Mourning in the hopes that they finish tied and both end up on the ballot.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#36 » by HeartBreakKid » Thu Dec 28, 2023 9:06 am

OhayoKD wrote:
Alternate

2. Dave Cowens

-> arguably 2nd best player pre-russell

What do you mean by this?
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#37 » by AEnigma » Thu Dec 28, 2023 4:57 pm

HeartBreakKid wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:Alternate

2. Dave Cowens

-> arguably 2nd best player pre-russell

What do you mean by this?

He is lazily copying and pasting old votes, so guessing that one was being applied to Paul Arizin (and/or Bob Davies back when that was inexplicably his alternate nomination for like ten rounds).
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#38 » by DSMok1 » Thu Dec 28, 2023 5:42 pm

OhayoKD wrote:
penbeast0 wrote:Looked up Kiki, only 6 seasons over 100 TS Add, none over 300. Only 3 years in the league top 5, Walt Bellamy, to use another unlikely top 100 nominee, has 6. Adrian Dantley's career TS Add is more than double Kiki's. I think you need to make a stronger case than that.

You want to be serious, make a list of the top 20 TS Add careers in NBA history and see how many of them haven't been voted in yet. I'd do it but I'm both incompetent with spreadsheets and don't care enough.

Just keep in mind TS add assumes volume and effeciency scale up linearly.

penbeast0 wrote:Bringing up franchise offensive ratings is a reasonable argument, the others were just straw men. How does a player who is significantly better at scoring than another lead significantly worse offenses?


Don't have a strong opinion on any of this but theoretically, without a spike in the individual stats you are looking at, a less efficient scorer can generate better offense via

-> handling the ball more, doing more before a pass or shot
-> drawing more defensive attention(all else being equal a made shot from a double is worth more than one from a single is worth mroe than a made shot from open play)
-> drawing attention further away from teammates(this is where enigma's comment on range comes into play)

Unsure if any of that applies in this individual comparison, but I think that might be where one would start looking to see if the worse offenses are a result of dantley's weaknesses or just context/variance. "how often do they draw x defenders" is the first thing I'd look at if I was invested in the comparison.
 


I just wanted to comment on TS ADD. I do not feel it is at all an accurate assessment of a player's scoring.

Through the development of BPM, I did a lot of research on what scoring profiles are positive or negative for a team.

A player who is exclusively a play finisher really needs to have a TS% above team or league average for the scoring profile to be beneficial. A player who is a creator can have a TS% significantly below league/team average and still be a benefit for the team. In other words--a player who is drawing attention and creating advantages (assists/hockey assists + gravity effect + unassisted shooting) doesn't have to shoot nearly as well as a non-creator (mostly assisted shots) in order to be a positive scoring. BPM includes this effect.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #57 (Deadline ~5am PST, 12/28/2023) 

Post#39 » by Doctor MJ » Thu Dec 28, 2023 5:51 pm

Induction Vote 1:

Thurmond - 3 (LA Bird, hcl, Ohayo)
Gervin - 3 (beast, Winta, Clyde)
Isiah - 2 (trelos, OSNB)
Cowens - 4 (AEnigma, HBK, Samurai, Doc)
Gasol - 2 (trex, Joao)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Thurmond, Gervin & Cowens:

Thurmond - 0 (none)
Gervin - 0 (none)
Cowens - 1 (OSNB)
none - 3 (trelos, trex, Joao)

Cowens 5, Thurmond 3, Gervin 3

Dave Cowens is Inducted at #57.

Image

Nomination Vote 1:

Zo - 4 (LA Bird, AEnigma, hcl, OSNB)
Bobby - 2 (beast, Samurai)
Reed - 4 (trelos, HBK, Doc, Clyde)
Parish - 1 (trex)
Billups - 1 (Joao)
none - 2 (Winta, Ohayo)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Zo & Reed:

Zo - 1 (beast)
Reed - 1 (Samurai)
neither - 0 (trex, Joao, Winta, Ohayo)

Zo 5, Reed 5. Tie.

Alonzo Mourning & Willis Reed will both be added to Nominee list.
No Nomination vote next thread.


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