sp6r=underrated wrote:Cavsfansince84 wrote:Whether
Insert Old Player Here
could be the best player on a title team today without elaborating at all if he's being born in the year 2000 or just being magically time traveled forward 20 years from 2002 then joining a team
Table Kidd vs Tatum this is a chronic frustration of mine with cross-generation, player comparisons. Proper player comparison across generations involves figure out what the players would look like if they were born at the same time. You have to try to figure out what players would look like given the natural abilities they showed if they had been born at a certain time. This involves statistical and video analysis.
By contrast, the time machine method involves a ton of dubious assumptions that stack the deck against the player being transported magically to a different era.
One_and_Done wrote:As I said, it's too speculative. . . I have never, NEVER, said Bill Russell would fail today due to his not knowing the rules and getting ejected every other game for elbowing people
You assume players would adapt to refereeing but not coaches and trainers. Assuming players would adapt to refereeing is just as speculative as assuming players would adapt to coaches, training, etc. You are of course free to do so but the rest of us are free to ignore your rule.
Take an old player currently in the finals, Al Horford. From 2008 to 2014 he attempted 29 three pointers hitting them at a 34% clip. In the last 5 playoff games he has attempted 33 threes hitting them at a 39% clip. After a season he attempted 4 3PA per game at a 42% clip.
You can assume 2013 Al Horford would refuse to shoot threes if he replaced 2024 Al Horford. 26 year old Al Horford is a worse player than 37 year old Al Horford. He would make the 2024 Celtics a worse team if you consistently apply your rule. If a rule tells me a 37 year old is better than a 26 year old I'm going to assume the rule is very flawed.
In the case of Horford, I'm almost certain he didn't shoot 3s early on because his coaches didn't emphasize working on the shot. When he was in the NBA he and the teams he played for saw they were wrong to tell bigs not to shoot 3s and had him start working on it. He eventually became a great shooting big and the 26 year old Al Horford would have been one too if he had been born later.
I advocate, and have always advocated, that we can only rate guys on the skillset they actually had.
I mean, I obviously disagree with your approach, for reasons I've provided both here and in numerous other threads.
Horford is an example of a guy who developed 3pt shooting, but others like DeRozan never could even though Demar is an incredible midrange shooter. It should translate easier than Horford, but for whatever reason it never did. Why did AD forget how to shoot 3s after 2020? We have no idea, and may never know. The only reasonable thing to do is take guys based off what they actually did.
I also think that's the 'fairer' approach too, though I don't really care if it is or not because I'm only interested in who demonstrated the best impact/skillset (and as I said, consistency is a skill too).
Why is it fairer? Well, there is a more lengthy commentary in the pre-top 100 criteria thread, but to start with we're imagining a player who never existed. That's far more subjective. It also favours older players in a way, because we get to imagine them not only having a modern skillset, but deploying it consistently. If AD died after 2020, many would have assumed he could shoot 3s forever, bit he couldn't. Older players also benefited from alot of things we never talk about, like playing in a trash league they could dominate, or not getting polio.
Speculating if older players had different skills is just as problematic if not moreso as granting Shaq a 3pt shot, or Sheed a better attitude, or Len Bias living, or Walton having modern medicine, etc. Maybe none of those things (e.g. being born today) would have mattered much, but in the imaginary version they always do. That's extremely unfair.
