RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #66 (Chauncey Billups)

[Owly]

Yup, that's the case, and it's a decent one, but it's also not like it's necessarily clear cut that his non-Detroit time makes the difference.

If we go by WS, Billups has the career lead between the 3 in both the regular and post-season, Sheed's regular season advantage over Ben is small, and Ben gains the advantage in the playoffs.

If we go by simple +/-, Sheed has the career regular season advantage...but again falls to the bottom in the playoffs.

These things don't prove that Sheed shouldn't rank ahead of the other two, but they do push back against the idea that the Portland years push Sheed way beyond the other two.

And then I go personally go back to something that matters to me and looms large when comparisons are other things are close:
Who do I trust to build a culture with?

Just to be clear - I don't think having Billups and Ben ahead of Sheed is wrong or even that controversial, it's just that I think he has a legitimate case over these two if we take a look at their careers and it seems that I am quite a bit higher on Portland Sheed than you are.

If we ask ourselves who was the most important Pistons player, that's actually a hard question but O always came down to Ben in this discussion. Ben to me was the player who peaked the highest and was the most valuable in the playoffs. The problem with him ahead of Sheed all-time is that outside of his brief prime, he wasn't very relevant and longevity is a very key factor to me.

Billups doesn't have longevity problems, but during working on my CORP evaluation I was shocked how little juice Billups career actually has. He was a late boomer and his prime basically ended in 2011. That's a solid longevity, as I said before, but I don't think he has a significant advantage over Rasheed in this regard.

Now, if you think that Billups was the best player out of these three, I think it's reasonable to put him higher. I personally don't think that's true, I would put his peak the lowest out of the three and his prime isn't stronger than Sheed's either in my opinion.

Of course, I try to keep off-court things away from my evaluations, unless they heavily influence the results but even though Sheed was a headache, he managed to put himself into a contending position twice and had a very successful career.

Coming from a different angle, what are your thoughts about Hal Greer and Sam Jones?

Reasonable thoughts in general, and I'll respond to your last question, but first another super-simple approach that on its own is certainly not as good as a good CORP:

If we look at the number of years with solid minutes (say >1000) and a positive On/Off, here are the count for the 3 guys in question:

Billups has 8 such seasons.
Sheed has 12.
Ben has 11.

Now, an extreme situation where this would diverge from normal definitions of longevity would be DeMar DeRozan, who has only 2 such seasons to his name. I think it's fine to conclude that my approach here shouldn't be called "longevity", but from a perspective of actually having many impactful seasons like we'd expect from someone in a Top 100 project with good longevity, well, this is in a nutshell why DeRozan has no business being brought up here.

The 3 Pistons by contrast do deserve to be here, but in terms of which guys were really making their teams better for many, many years, I'd say Billups lags behind the other two.

That's going to depend a fair bit on where one draws some arbitrary lines though.

If one picked 2000 minutes and required +5 (random, roundish numbers)
CB 4
RW 7
BW 3

That arrangement sees a significant reversal of fortunes in relative position for Big Ben.

[Doctor MJ]

Coming from a different angle, what are your thoughts about Hal Greer and Sam Jones?

So I struggle with the 76ers of this era in particular. My gut is to be low on Greer and higher on a teammate like Chet, but the way the team swore by Greer as the primary scorer at their very best makes it tricky. I've often said that I consider Hannum's work in '66-67 to be the GOAT single season for an NBA coach, and it's weird to think in those terms but say he was dead wrong in how highly he held Greer.

Coming back to the conversation here:

My gut is definitely to favor Jones. His efficiency was quite impressive for a Celtic, he scaled his volume at times quite effectively, and he worked well enough within the defensive scheme to be a vital part of the towering success that the Celtics alone achieved.

Greer by contrast seems like the kind of guy who was kind of a short combo guard without extreme efficiency even when Wilt was acting as an effective decoy...but that '66-67 team really played Wilt & Greer every meaningful minute and basically platooned the rest. If it worked that well, that's a dependence on Greer for team greatness that I'm not sure Jones can touch.

[Owly]

Coming from a different angle, what are your thoughts about Hal Greer and Sam Jones?

So I struggle with the 76ers of this era in particular. My gut is to be low on Greer and higher on a teammate like Chet, but the way the team swore by Greer as the primary scorer at their very best makes it tricky. I've often said that I consider Hannum's work in '66-67 to be the GOAT single season for an NBA coach, and it's weird to think in those terms but say he was dead wrong in how highly he held Greer.

Coming back to the conversation here:

My gut is definitely to favor Jones. His efficiency was quite impressive for a Celtic, he scaled his volume at times quite effectively, and he worked well enough within the defensive scheme to be a vital part of the towering success that the Celtics alone achieved.

Greer by contrast seems like the kind of guy who was kind of a short combo guard without extreme efficiency even when Wilt was acting as an effective decoy...but that '66-67 team really played Wilt & Greer every meaningful minute and basically platooned the rest. If it worked that well, that's a dependence on Greer for team greatness that I'm not sure Jones can touch.

For me ...

Greer being closer to Walker than Chamberlain in mpg perhaps shouldn't be in the Chamberlain bin if we are drawing lines here. You could (reasonably, I think) draw a line between Greer and the pack without invoking Chamberlain if inclined to do so.

It could just be me but Walker playing forward, and in particular small forward - with Cunningham as direct positional backup and Greer playing guard, and in particular shooting guard with rookie Matt Guokas Jr as direct positional backup ... I don't think there's necessarily a reason to dig too much further for reasons Greer might play an extra 5mpg.

Edit: On the first point, I guess this was playoffs orientated (though then the box suggests Walker was the one actually playing better for that run).

[Doctor MJ]

We have seen a discussion about Jones vs Hayes, but what do you think about Jones vs Unseld?

I think Unseld used to be slightly overrated historically, but now I almost feel like he became completely forgotten. I get that he's an unusual type of player, but the voting panel didn't mind put unusual players quite high (Manu, Green, Jones nominated) and I don't believe it's just a matter of plus/minus numbers.

I think Unseld deserves a longer conversation at this point. For anyone unfamiliar with his style, I can provide his games from various seasons.

I have them right next to each other. Very close debate.

[Doctor MJ]

Just to be clear - I don't think having Billups and Ben ahead of Sheed is wrong or even that controversial, it's just that I think he has a legitimate case over these two if we take a look at their careers and it seems that I am quite a bit higher on Portland Sheed than you are.

If we ask ourselves who was the most important Pistons player, that's actually a hard question but O always came down to Ben in this discussion. Ben to me was the player who peaked the highest and was the most valuable in the playoffs. The problem with him ahead of Sheed all-time is that outside of his brief prime, he wasn't very relevant and longevity is a very key factor to me.

Billups doesn't have longevity problems, but during working on my CORP evaluation I was shocked how little juice Billups career actually has. He was a late boomer and his prime basically ended in 2011. That's a solid longevity, as I said before, but I don't think he has a significant advantage over Rasheed in this regard.

Now, if you think that Billups was the best player out of these three, I think it's reasonable to put him higher. I personally don't think that's true, I would put his peak the lowest out of the three and his prime isn't stronger than Sheed's either in my opinion.

Of course, I try to keep off-court things away from my evaluations, unless they heavily influence the results but even though Sheed was a headache, he managed to put himself into a contending position twice and had a very successful career.

Coming from a different angle, what are your thoughts about Hal Greer and Sam Jones?

Reasonable thoughts in general, and I'll respond to your last question, but first another super-simple approach that on its own is certainly not as good as a good CORP:

If we look at the number of years with solid minutes (say >1000) and a positive On/Off, here are the count for the 3 guys in question:

Billups has 8 such seasons.
Sheed has 12.
Ben has 11.

Now, an extreme situation where this would diverge from normal definitions of longevity would be DeMar DeRozan, who has only 2 such seasons to his name. I think it's fine to conclude that my approach here shouldn't be called "longevity", but from a perspective of actually having many impactful seasons like we'd expect from someone in a Top 100 project with good longevity, well, this is in a nutshell why DeRozan has no business being brought up here.

The 3 Pistons by contrast do deserve to be here, but in terms of which guys were really making their teams better for many, many years, I'd say Billups lags behind the other two.

That's going to depend a fair bit on where one draws some arbitrary lines though.

If one picked 2000 minutes and required +5 (random, roundish numbers)
CB 4
RW 7
BW 3

That arrangement sees a significant reversal of fortunes in relative position for Big Ben.

Eh, well I'll first acknowledge that the thing I'm pointing out really doesn't carry much weight, so it's very appropriate to critique it.

In terms of 2000 vs 1000, I often use 2000 as a simple threshold so that makes a lot of sense. I do tend to use 2000 when I'm looking at elite performers rather than looking for longevity. 1000+ minutes to me paints a pretty good sample of a guy's ability to add value.

Re: >5 rather than >0. Definitely reasonable to want to make a higher threshold along those lines, but 5 is a lot more arbitrary than 0 in my opinion. When I'm looking at guy's On/Off numbers and I'm not looking at MVP-type standards, I tend to look for the green and the red that bkref puts in.

And I'll acknowledge that all of this ties in to what I'm talking about with Billups: The dude lives in the red when he's having team after team give up on him, just like what we'd expect if the team were actually watching the team not function all that well with him on the court.

[Doctor MJ]

Coming from a different angle, what are your thoughts about Hal Greer and Sam Jones?

So I struggle with the 76ers of this era in particular. My gut is to be low on Greer and higher on a teammate like Chet, but the way the team swore by Greer as the primary scorer at their very best makes it tricky. I've often said that I consider Hannum's work in '66-67 to be the GOAT single season for an NBA coach, and it's weird to think in those terms but say he was dead wrong in how highly he held Greer.

Coming back to the conversation here:

My gut is definitely to favor Jones. His efficiency was quite impressive for a Celtic, he scaled his volume at times quite effectively, and he worked well enough within the defensive scheme to be a vital part of the towering success that the Celtics alone achieved.

Greer by contrast seems like the kind of guy who was kind of a short combo guard without extreme efficiency even when Wilt was acting as an effective decoy...but that '66-67 team really played Wilt & Greer every meaningful minute and basically platooned the rest. If it worked that well, that's a dependence on Greer for team greatness that I'm not sure Jones can touch.

For me ...

Greer being closer to Walker than Chamberlain in mpg perhaps shouldn't be in the Chamberlain bin if we are drawing lines here. You could (reasonably, I think) draw a line between Greer and the pack without invoking Chamberlain if inclined to do so.

It could just be me but Walker playing forward, and in particular small forward - with Cunningham as direct positional backup and Greer playing guard, and in particular shooting guard with rookie Matt Guokas Jr as direct positional backup ... I don't think there's necessarily a reason to dig too much further for reasons Greer might play an extra 5mpg.

Edit: On the first point, I guess this was playoffs orientated (though then the box suggests Walker was the one actually playing better for that run).

Ah, yes it was with an eye toward the playoffs so I think we understand each other.

I do want to be clear to people in general that the gap in value between Wilt and his teammates was quite a bit bigger than his minutes edge in my assessment. But just comparing the teammates to each other, the reliance on Greer is hard for me to dismiss.

Re: Cunningham positional back up. That might have been how things functioned, but I don't see any reason why it had to function that way. What makes Cunningham great is his playmaking not his scoring. I think it's reasonable to consider, for example, benching Greer and having Cunningham effectively play as your point guard...but that's not what they did.

[penbeast0]

I think you may be confusing young Billy C with later career. He didn't get many assists when Walker was still in Philly, but started taking on a bigger playmaking role in 71 then upped his assists again in 72. (Had to check it, I remembered him doing more playmaking in the ABA but it looks like it started a year or two earlier statistically.)

[Doctor MJ]

I think you may be confusing young Billy C with later career. He didn't get many assists when Walker was still in Philly, but started taking on a bigger playmaking role in 71 then upped his assists again in 72. (Had to check it, I remembered him doing more playmaking in the ABA but it looks like it started a year or two earlier statistically.)

Well, you're certainly right that he wasn't being utilized early like he would be later. Just a question of how much of this was about the role they thought he should be playing as opposed to the actual limits of skillset at that time.

[Doctor MJ]

Personal vote:

Induction Vote 1: Cliff Hagan

Continuing to champion Hagan. I understand feelings about Hagan's time being considerably inferior to today, and I don't fundamentally disagree, but I think that guys who seemed to do particular outlier things in any time are guys we shouldn't dismiss lightly.

As a fan of the truly deep past before the NBA, we eventually reach a point where everyone is so much shorter than we'd demand of someone in their role today that competitive comparisons just don't give us any actual room for holistic debate, but once you get to the place where you're talking about guys with acceptable size, I do think that those who display rare knack for the game would have a future in the modern game.

Induction Vote 2: Bobby Jones

Debating between Bobby & Billups here. I do think that Bobby was just a guy capable of pretty profound impact as a matter of course from the moment he arrived in the pros. The minutes issue holds him back, which is why I didn't champion him much earlier, but in a comparison with a guy whose impact was not such a given, I'm not sure how much I feel like it should give me pause.

Nomination Vote 1: Ben Wallace

Continuing to champion Ben. As I've been saying, if you think Ben was a guy doing nothing before Detroit, look closer. Ben gaining entrance into the NBA based on being a prospect with the potential to be impactful, he got it by coming right in and being impactful. He continued that until eventually a place built their strategy and culture around him, and that team was a champion who could have easily won more than one title.

Nomination Vote 2: Wes Unseld

An absolute institution of a player, and someone whose impact I see surpassing any kind of box score measure as a matter of course. I'll take him over teammate Hayes tyvm.

It would be nice of course if Unseld had the shotblocking length of a defensive anchor, but being an all-around impactor who also had the physical strength to guard 5's in an era dominated by 5's is nothing to turn our noses up at.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Induction Vote #1: Cliff Hagan

Induction Vote #2: Chauncey Billups

As I've said before, I think Hagan has the highest era-relative peak on the current ballot, including a couple of playoff runs with some eye-popping box composites.

Here's the impact signal that finally sealed my #2 vote for me for Billups:

2007-08 Pistons(his last full season there): 6.67 SRS, +8.4 Net Rtg
2008-09 Pistons(he was traded to Denver for Iverson after two games): -0.36 SRS, -0.6 Net Rtg

Now, they also switched coaches from Flip Saunders to Michael Curry and lost just-about-done post-injury Webber, but the rest of the core pieces(Rasheed, Rip, Prince, post-injury McDyess, Stucky, etc) were still there, along with Iverson. It's a pretty massive drop and a pretty massive coincidence if it wasn't because of losing BIllups.

Nomination Vote #1: Wes Unseld

Nomination Vote #2: Adrian Dantley

Had a hard time deciding here, and my feelings aren't too strong, but as a Hayes-skeptic, I'm giving Unseld credit for a number of things that don't show up in the box(defense, outlet passes that aren't assists, leadership, etc), and I feel like he was the real leader of the 70s Bullets that went to the Finals four times and won a title. Also, we say his box numbers don't look great, but I mean, he was a monster rebounder, especially for a guy his size. His career TRB%, for example, is a bit higher than Shaq's, who had seven inches on him.

Finally, I take note of the impact signal when he joined the Bullets - they went from a -0.23 SRS/-0.3 Net Rtg in 67-68 before he joined to a 4.05 SRS/+3.5 Net Rtg in his rookie/MVP year, which much the same team otherwise(and the same coach). I realize that the Bullets' SRS fluctuated quite a bit in the 70s, but it's hard to ignore that Unseld arrived and then they became contenders.

I thought a lot about Big Ben for my #1 vote too, but I think Unseld impacted his team for a longer period of time - over a decade - and went to more Finals. Ben was in Detroit for six years, and declined quite a bit when he left. Doc has mentioned his impact numbers in his pre-Detroit years - and his RAPM does look solid in Washington and Orlando - but he was also playing considerably fewer minutes than he would in Detroit, so make of it what you will.

Also, it's getting harder to ignore Dantley's ridiculous TS Add numbers, particularly when being compared to Vince and T-Mac who aren't close in that respect. His relative lack of playoff success does give me pause.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Personal vote:

Induction Vote 1: Cliff Hagan

Continuing to champion Hagan. I understand feelings about Hagan's time being considerably inferior to today, and I don't fundamentally disagree, but I think that guys who seemed to do particular outlier things in any time are guys we shouldn't dismiss lightly.

As a fan of the truly deep past before the NBA, we eventually reach a point where everyone is so much shorter than we'd demand of someone in their role today that competitive comparisons just don't give us any actual room for holistic debate, but once you get to the place where you're talking about guys with acceptable size, I do think that those who display rare knack for the game would have a future in the modern game.

Just wanted to say(as a fellow Hagan voter), I hope you keep that in mind when we start to talk about Sharman more, because he was absolutely an outlier in his era in terms of his scoring efficiency, which seems particularly important on a defensive team that didn't many(maybe any other) consistently efficient scorers. You have been reticent about him, but I intend to keep pushing him.

Nomination Vote 1: Ben Wallace

Continuing to champion Ben. As I've been saying, if you think Ben was a guy doing nothing before Detroit, look closer. Ben gaining entrance into the NBA based on being a prospect with the potential to be impactful, he got it by coming right in and being impactful. He continued that until eventually a place built their strategy and culture around him, and that team was a champion who could have easily won more than one title.

I alluded to this in my voting post, but I'm a bit skeptical about this. His rookie year on the 97 Bullets, he barely played, and they made the playoffs where they lost to the Bulls(en route to title #5) in the first round(not in any way blaming that on Ben, like I said, he barely played).

His second and third years with the Bullets, he had RAPMs of 2.53 and 2.37. In his fourth season - his lone year in Orlando - his RAPM was 1.47. His +/- also looks good, with +12 in 98, +9.9 in 99, and +1.4 in 00.

But like I said before, he played fewer minutes too - 16.8mpg in 98, 26.8mpg in 99, and 24.2mpg in 00. And none of those teams made the playoffs. It's not like there wasn't talent next to him in Washington - Webber in 98, Richmond in 99, plus Juwon Howard and Rod Strickland, even Calbert Cheaney.

I'm really not criticizing these pre-Detroit years at all - they certainly don't hurt Ben's case in any way. I'm just not entirely convinced that they add that much either, though, and I feel like we wouldn't be talking about them if Ben had had a longer prime.

[trex_8063]

.

I will say though that it's pretty dang reasonable to point out that Billups was basically a major-prospect-turned-bust for the first half decade of his career, and that is a knock on him compared to the vast majority of guys we discuss in this project, including the Wallaces.

Billups was the big time prospect who failed on his 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th teams, but landed in the right spot for his 5th team, and from there had a great career.

idk, this feels like a little bit of a reach [to have something to criticize him for]. From my point of view, I don't see how it matters whether a guy isn't any good until his 4th or 5th season, then has a normal/respectable length prime and a career that lasts 17 total seasons.......compared a guy who's good by his 2nd year, has a normal/respectable length prime, and a career than ends after 13-14 total seasons. Basically the same value both ways.

Further, I note that Chauncey was miscast in his 2nd-4th years. If you look at the line-ups/rotations on those teams, Billups was being played primarily as a SG for at least three seasons. Such considerations were used in Willis Reed's defense. I've heard this in defense of Steve Nash, who also seemingly took several years to get going (in part because he was originally miscast as more of a SG next to Kidd).
Is this suddenly an invalid suggestion where Billups is concerned? Is it somehow his fault he was miscast?

Where the on/off figures you cited (different post, I believe) are concerned, Owly already pointed out we can come away with different impressions depending on what arbitrary thresholds we decide upon. You'd chosen seasons with 1000+ minutes and positive on/off, noting Billups has fewer of these than either of the Wallace's. Owly countered with using 2000+ minutes and >+5 on/off (wherein Ben falls substantially behind Billups).
I could also look at 2000+ minute seasons with >+10, where Billups has 2, Ben Wallace only 1 (though he would have 2 if I lowered the minute threshold to 1000).

You'd said the 1000-minute threshold was chosen because it's large enough that we can lend some trust to the metric.
Though harkening back to the aforementioned Steve Nash, I note he's got one year well into his prime [in Dallas], where he's playing his proper position [PG], and yet he has a negative on/off, even in a relatively robust >2600 minutes.
Was he just not good that year? I would say no; this is more just speaking a cautiounary tale regarding the noise inherent in this metric (even in a sample >2k minutes, and certainly in a those nearer to 1k).


But further, let's look at the guy you're championing above all others: Cliff Hagan. What do we have to suggest his impact was special?

You've noted Hagan was the top performer in a title run. While perhaps not the case for the full playoffs, Chauncey was the apparent best Piston specifically in the Finals of his own title run (more competitive era).
You've been complementary of Hagan's ability to scale his scoring in the playoffs and maintain his efficiency. Same can basically be said of Billups, whose career playoff box-based metrics are very similar to Hagan's. As I noted in my vote post, Chauncey is aheaad of Hagan in WS Above Good, in both rs and playoffs.
Like Cliff, Chauncey once led the entire league in playoff TS% during a deep playoff run (larger sample of games than with Hagan's).
You've commented that you think Hagan's game has a modern slant, that he could have been a lethal scorer in a modern context. Maybe; it's speculative though. If this is a relevant consideration, I may as well point out that we don't have to speculate in Chauncey's case; we saw it happen.

So far, I'm not seeing anything that warrants distinguishing Hagan [from Billups] in an all-time sense. So maybe he's got some indication of massive impact (which exceeds what you view to be lacking in Billups' case).

Well let's look at some with/without; I'll colour-code red when the team had a higher win% without him, green when better with him.....

'57: 30-37 with, 4-1 without
'58: 39-31 with, 2-0 without
'59: did not miss games (49-23 record)
'60: did not miss games (46-29 record)
'61: 50-27 with, 1-1 without
'62: 27-50 with, 2-1 without
'63: 47-32 with, 1-0 without
'64: 44-33 with, 2-1 without
'65: 43-34 with, 2-1 without
'66: 33-41 with, 3-3 without
'68 [ABA]: 32-24 with, 14-8 without
'69: 16-19 with, 25-18 without
'70: 2-1 with, 43-38 without

That's a lot of red.
Overall, his NBA teams were 408-337 [.548] with him, 17-8 [.680] without him.
His ABA teams were 50-44 [.532] with him, 81-64 [.559] without him.

NBA and ABA combined, his teams were 458-381 [.546] with him, 99-72 [.579] without him: that is, they averaged a +.033 win% edge without (translates to a little over 2 additional wins in 82-game season).

Looking at Ben Taylor's WOWYR, his prime WOWYR is a fairly underwhelming +1.4 (+1.3 for career). Chauncey's is a +5.7 (and +4.2 for career).

jsia....

[Doctor MJ]

Tally:

Induction Vote 1:

Hagan - 3 (HBK, Doc, OSNB)
Hayes - 1 (AEnigma)
Bobby - 1 (beast)
Billups - 3 (trelos, Samurai, trex)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Hagan & Billups:

Hagan - 0 (none)
Billups - 2 (AEnigma, beast)

Billups 5, Hagan 3

Chauncey Billups is Inducted at #66.



Nomination Vote 1:

McGrady - 2 (HBK, trex)
Unseld - 2 (AEnigma, OSNB)
Dantley - 1 (beast)
Ben - 2 (trelos, Doc)
Sam - 1 (Samurai)

No majority, but also going to Vote 2 won't make a difference.

With a 3-way tie, McGrady, Unseld & Ben will all be added to Nominee list.
No Nomination vote will be held for the next two threads.

[trex_8063]

With a 3-way tie, McGrady, Unseld & Ben will all be added to Nominee list.
No Nomination vote will be held for the next two threads.

Just pitching this idea again: what if we allowed more than 5 nominees here through the back-third of the project? It's so much more wide open, it might be worthwhile.
Even just expanding to 6 (which again: isn't without precedent, as we've had previous threads with six nominees).

Merely spit-ballin'.....

[Doctor MJ]

With a 3-way tie, McGrady, Unseld & Ben will all be added to Nominee list.
No Nomination vote will be held for the next two threads.

Just pitching this idea again: what if we allowed more than 5 nominees here through the back-third of the project? It's so much more wide open, it might be worthwhile.
Even just expanding to 6 (which again: isn't without precedent, as we've had previous threads with six nominees).

Merely spit-ballin'.....

Honestly, I missed this before. People can discuss what we should do going forward, but we'll proceed as before for right now.

[Samurai]

So I struggle with the 76ers of this era in particular. My gut is to be low on Greer and higher on a teammate like Chet, but the way the team swore by Greer as the primary scorer at their very best makes it tricky. I've often said that I consider Hannum's work in '66-67 to be the GOAT single season for an NBA coach, and it's weird to think in those terms but say he was dead wrong in how highly he held Greer.

Coming back to the conversation here:

My gut is definitely to favor Jones. His efficiency was quite impressive for a Celtic, he scaled his volume at times quite effectively, and he worked well enough within the defensive scheme to be a vital part of the towering success that the Celtics alone achieved.

Greer by contrast seems like the kind of guy who was kind of a short combo guard without extreme efficiency even when Wilt was acting as an effective decoy...but that '66-67 team really played Wilt & Greer every meaningful minute and basically platooned the rest. If it worked that well, that's a dependence on Greer for team greatness that I'm not sure Jones can touch.

For me ...

Greer being closer to Walker than Chamberlain in mpg perhaps shouldn't be in the Chamberlain bin if we are drawing lines here. You could (reasonably, I think) draw a line between Greer and the pack without invoking Chamberlain if inclined to do so.

It could just be me but Walker playing forward, and in particular small forward - with Cunningham as direct positional backup and Greer playing guard, and in particular shooting guard with rookie Matt Guokas Jr as direct positional backup ... I don't think there's necessarily a reason to dig too much further for reasons Greer might play an extra 5mpg.

Edit: On the first point, I guess this was playoffs orientated (though then the box suggests Walker was the one actually playing better for that run).

Ah, yes it was with an eye toward the playoffs so I think we understand each other.

I do want to be clear to people in general that the gap in value between Wilt and his teammates was quite a bit bigger than his minutes edge in my assessment. But just comparing the teammates to each other, the reliance on Greer is hard for me to dismiss.

Re: Cunningham positional back up. That might have been how things functioned, but I don't see any reason why it had to function that way. What makes Cunningham great is his playmaking not his scoring. I think it's reasonable to consider, for example, benching Greer and having Cunningham effectively play as your point guard...but that's not what they did.

One reason why Cunningham didn't play PG is his (lack of) handles. They actually did try him as a PG very early in his career, in an exhibition game in his rookie season. As a PG, he was defended by KC Jones, an elite and tenacious defender. During his HOF speech, Cunningham remarked that "KC stole the ball from me five straight times and that was the last time I was at the guard position!" Teammate Wali Jones, watching Billy "attempt" to bring the ball up against KC told a veteran "Nah, that's not gonna work" and teammate Matt Goukas added "that was the end of his backcourt days". As a forward, Cunningham realized that with his length and crazy hops, he only needed to bounce the ball once or twice and he could drive all the way to the rim, thus minimizing any issues with dribbling. But while dribbling wasn't his strength, he clearly had a distributor mindset. Goukas recalled that Billy enjoyed playing in garbage time, not to score but to distribute the ball to the other bench guys who were eager to shoot. Goukas said Billy was a very good playmaker, particularly at driving to the rim and kicking it out to open guys on the perimeter. Nobody talked about triple-doubles then but if it were a "thing" and if Billy wanted it, Goukas felt Billy could have had his share.

My guess is he probably could have been a solid PG if they just had someone else bring the ball up instead of him but back then it was expected that PG's bring the ball up.

[falcolombardi]

For me ...

Greer being closer to Walker than Chamberlain in mpg perhaps shouldn't be in the Chamberlain bin if we are drawing lines here. You could (reasonably, I think) draw a line between Greer and the pack without invoking Chamberlain if inclined to do so.

It could just be me but Walker playing forward, and in particular small forward - with Cunningham as direct positional backup and Greer playing guard, and in particular shooting guard with rookie Matt Guokas Jr as direct positional backup ... I don't think there's necessarily a reason to dig too much further for reasons Greer might play an extra 5mpg.

Edit: On the first point, I guess this was playoffs orientated (though then the box suggests Walker was the one actually playing better for that run).

Ah, yes it was with an eye toward the playoffs so I think we understand each other.

I do want to be clear to people in general that the gap in value between Wilt and his teammates was quite a bit bigger than his minutes edge in my assessment. But just comparing the teammates to each other, the reliance on Greer is hard for me to dismiss.

Re: Cunningham positional back up. That might have been how things functioned, but I don't see any reason why it had to function that way. What makes Cunningham great is his playmaking not his scoring. I think it's reasonable to consider, for example, benching Greer and having Cunningham effectively play as your point guard...but that's not what they did.

One reason why Cunningham didn't play PG is his (lack of) handles. They actually did try him as a PG very early in his career, in an exhibition game in his rookie season. As a PG, he was defended by KC Jones, an elite and tenacious defender. During his HOF speech, Cunningham remarked that "KC stole the ball from me five straight times and that was the last time I was at the guard position!" Teammate Wali Jones, watching Billy "attempt" to bring the ball up against KC told a veteran "Nah, that's not gonna work" and teammate Matt Goukas added "that was the end of his backcourt days". As a forward, Cunningham realized that with his length and crazy hops, he only needed to bounce the ball once or twice and he could drive all the way to the rim, thus minimizing any issues with dribbling. But while dribbling wasn't his strength, he clearly had a distributor mindset. Goukas recalled that Billy enjoyed playing in garbage time, not to score but to distribute the ball to the other bench guys who were eager to shoot. Goukas said Billy was a very good playmaker, particularly at driving to the rim and kicking it out to open guys on the perimeter. Nobody talked about triple-doubles then but if it were a "thing" and if Billy wanted it, Goukas felt Billy could have had his share.

My guess is he probably could have been a solid PG if they just had someone else bring the ball up instead of him but back then it was expected that PG's bring the ball up.

If you dont have the handles to bring the ball up you prolly dont have the handles to run half court or even full court plays regularly either

And the ability to run a offense through someone without a good dribble is hard and requires exceptional skills as passer/off ball runner/post up threat that are even harder

[Doctor MJ]

Personal vote:

Induction Vote 1: Cliff Hagan

Continuing to champion Hagan. I understand feelings about Hagan's time being considerably inferior to today, and I don't fundamentally disagree, but I think that guys who seemed to do particular outlier things in any time are guys we shouldn't dismiss lightly.

As a fan of the truly deep past before the NBA, we eventually reach a point where everyone is so much shorter than we'd demand of someone in their role today that competitive comparisons just don't give us any actual room for holistic debate, but once you get to the place where you're talking about guys with acceptable size, I do think that those who display rare knack for the game would have a future in the modern game.

Just wanted to say(as a fellow Hagan voter), I hope you keep that in mind when we start to talk about Sharman more, because he was absolutely an outlier in his era in terms of his scoring efficiency, which seems particularly important on a defensive team that didn't many(maybe any other) consistently efficient scorers. You have been reticent about him, but I intend to keep pushing him.

I like Sharman and certainly think he was more portable than, say, Cousy, but we're not talking about a guy was either a) the guy driving his team's offense with playmaking, or b) scoring at that high a volume. Additionally while we can imagine a guy who as simply "that good at shooting" scaling to the 3 with ease, the reality was that in the ABL he seemed more reluctant to shoot 3's than most. (Granted it was the end of his career and he was transitioning to coaching.)

If I saw major impact indicators that put him above other contemporaries, like Cousy, for example, it would be easier to champion him, but as is I feel like I'm projecting if I treat him like a guy capable of thriving as an alpha superstar.

Nomination Vote 1: Ben Wallace

Continuing to champion Ben. As I've been saying, if you think Ben was a guy doing nothing before Detroit, look closer. Ben gaining entrance into the NBA based on being a prospect with the potential to be impactful, he got it by coming right in and being impactful. He continued that until eventually a place built their strategy and culture around him, and that team was a champion who could have easily won more than one title.

I alluded to this in my voting post, but I'm a bit skeptical about this. His rookie year on the 97 Bullets, he barely played, and they made the playoffs where they lost to the Bulls(en route to title #5) in the first round(not in any way blaming that on Ben, like I said, he barely played).

His second and third years with the Bullets, he had RAPMs of 2.53 and 2.37. In his fourth season - his lone year in Orlando - his RAPM was 1.47. His +/- also looks good, with +12 in 98, +9.9 in 99, and +1.4 in 00.

But like I said before, he played fewer minutes too - 16.8mpg in 98, 26.8mpg in 99, and 24.2mpg in 00. And none of those teams made the playoffs. It's not like there wasn't talent next to him in Washington - Webber in 98, Richmond in 99, plus Juwon Howard and Rod Strickland, even Calbert Cheaney.

I'm really not criticizing these pre-Detroit years at all - they certainly don't hurt Ben's case in any way. I'm just not entirely convinced that they add that much either, though, and I feel like we wouldn't be talking about them if Ben had had a longer prime.

Makes sense to bring these things up. Here's my big picture thought before talking a bit about details:

It makes sense to be skeptical based on a guy playing smaller minutes when that's all you have for him, but when we then see a guy thrive in big minutes, we have to ask ourselves what is more likely:

a) That those smaller minutes were a sign of what was possible if you gave him more minutes.

or

b) That the apparent similarity between the earlier smaller minutes and later larger minutes was a coincidence.

In general, I think folks should think (a) is more likely. Does this make sense?

Getting into details:

First, I'm not trying to advocate for Ben's actual rookie season. When you're literally not playing most games, and when you do play it's for like 5 minutes, I don't think this tells us very much.

In the 2nd season though he goes from 197 minutes to 1124 minutes, and in a nutshell, that's some real minutes right there. Doesn't mean you can keep up what you're doing when playing 2000 minutes, but when you do start playing 2000 minutes and the trend continues, I don't think it make sense to dismiss the 1100 minute year as noise.

And now, you talk about the limited team success and that's true, and was a great reason to be skeptical in 1998, but as I've said, we have more information now.

But I'll say I think the data that really paints the picture pertaining to his teammates is to look specifically at defensive On/Off.

In '97-98:

Wallace -11.1
Webber +0.4
Strickland +0.4
Cheaney +3.8
Howard +4.1

Notice the defense gets better by a lot whenever Wallace is in, and worse whenever all of the "good teammates" are in. Makes sense that there's a big difference because Wallace is a bench player while the other guys are starters, so he's likely playing a lot in second unit situations. And of course being a bench guy in limited minutes, even the fact that Ben in those small minutes did enough to lead the entire team in total +/- isn't enough to make a 1998 observer a non-skeptic, but as a 2024 observer, it's hard for me to be skeptical that Wallace was "that good" at defense.