Aleco wrote:Wow, Lebron dominates every list except wowyr. Simply incredible, consensus goat without a doubt.
Hey Aleco -- I definitely agree LeBron has one of the best GOAT career arguments. I will say though, I think a lot of this unanimity among the stats comes from the methodology (/underlying criteria of the methodology). Different methodologies might have a slightly more diverse set of people at #1.
Almost all of these lists here are just (linear) sums of player volume in a stat across their whole career, either with equal or extra playoff weighting. In other words, you take all their value in a stat in the RS and PS and add it together (perhaps with extra PS weighting).
This focus on Career Value (adding up value over time) linearly (so no extra weighting for peak/primes, see e.g.
https://thinkingbasketball.net/2018/04/13/goat-meta-thoughts-and-longevity/) puts maximum emphasis on raw longevity.
Let's take minutes as a proxy for career time-volume/longevity (in truth we should use possessions, but minutes are more accessible and they are roughly proportional
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/player-in-nba-history-with-the-most-minutes-in-the-regular-season-and-playoffs).
-LeBron is 1st all time in RS+PS minute.
-He's 3% ahead of Kareem so far
-9% ahead of Karl Malone
-19.5% ahead of Kobe and Dirk
-Over 20% ahead of every other player.
If we look at playoff-only minutes, he's 26.6% ahead of Duncan who's 2nd, so adding extra weighting to the playoffs would only increase LeBron's minute advantage.
So in order for someone to eclipse LeBron in some sort of linear career value like this, their career average performance in a stat would need to be a greater advantage (by %) than LeBron's minute advantage. Given how much worse Karl Malone is than LeBron and how much fewer minutes everyone else has played, it's really only Kareem who has a chance to beat LeBron, and even then primarily just in stats in Era 1. Shot Clock Era (we can project for Era 2. NBA Merger Era, but we don't have any plus minus data for prime Kareem so Era 3 is obviously out.).
Of course, that's absolutely credit to LeBron. If we take a linear (maximum longevity weighting) approach to the GOAT, and don't do any era-relative correction, I would argue LeBron certainly does have the best case. But it's with noting that's far from the only criteria people have. Even if we just consider era-relative longevity, things start to get a lot less unanimous.
The modern era is perhaps best of any era to boost raw longevity. For example:
1. College: Modern players play minimal years in college, and often go right into the NBA. LeBron certainly did. This was unheard of in prior years.
-Bill Russell went to college for 4 years (3 years of varsity)
-Wilt had 3 years of college, and 1 year of the Harlem Globetrotters
-Kareem had 4 years of college
-Magic had 2 years in college
-Bird had 5 years after high school before the NBA
-Jordan had 3 years in college
etc.
The youngest players were actually not allowed to join the NBA until they were older than they would be in their senior year of college. Kareem is particularly noteworthy, given how close in minutes he is to LeBron, and how much he might rise if he had been allowed to spend those college years in the NBA. He was already a top 5 player in the NBA in his rookie year, and he likely had multiple college years where he was a top 10 player in the world. Russell, Wilt, and Bird also would have likely gained a lot of career longevity, if they had played in the NBA younger. Taking a linear approach to 'raw longevity' (not era-relative) punishes these players for not playing in the NBA younger, even when they weren't allowed to.
2. Retirement year: More recently in NBA history, players are expected and encouraged to retire at a much later year. There were people during LeBron's Miami years saying he could play until he was 40, and LeBron himself set the goal to play with his son in the NBA back in 2018 (age 33). Again, that's crazy! LeBron absolutely deserves credit for his longevity achievements. But he also played in an era that enabled this: much better sports medicine, sports science, science-informed development and practices, better equipment and weight training, more money available to spend on nutritionists and personal trainers, load management (which limits possessions per season but allows for more seasons / better health / more energy for playoffs), changing expectations on how long athletes can play, etc.
-Russell retired at age 34, when he was still a top 5 player
-Wilt retired at age 36, when he was still a top 5 player
-Bird had a major injury at age 32 (before which he was a top 5 player), then retired at 35 (when he was still an all-star)
-Magic retired at age 31, when he was still a top 5 player (with a brief return at age 36)
-Jordan retired from ages 30-31, again from ages 35-37 when he was still a top 5 player, and again at age 39.
Many of these retirements were considered normal, or expected. Would Russell really have retired at only age 34 if he played later? Would Bird and Magic have had better health and thus better longevity if they played later? Would Jordan's father have been murdered (causing his retirement for 1.5 years from ages 30–31) or would he have been retired when he was 'still on top' at age 35 if he had played in a later era?
Comparing across eras can be very difficult. There's all manner of contexts that can be hard to adjust for. Different play styles, different rules, different on and off-court factors, all of which could affect a players career value. Pace is another major example: although Russell and Wilt started later and retired earlier than they likely would have in a later era, they got to play in perhaps the fastest paced era ever, which helps mitigate (but not entirely negate) how much more career value they might have had in a later era.
Is it fair to take a linear (no extra weighting for peak/prime) raw (non-era relative) longevity-focused approach to career value? Sure. But other methods might be fair too! There's no right answer.
-Some people (almost all) do not value longevity linearly: almost everyone values peaks/prime years a little more.
-Some people are comfortable doing more a more era-relative approach.
-Some people are comfortable focusing more on player 'goodness' (independent of team context), others focus more on 'value' (in the team context they had).
-Some people are okay taking a 'goodness over time' (so they don't punish players for late starts or early retirements if they were driven more by historical and personal context than a limitation of the player, see e.g. Djoker's durability emphasis).
Any of these changes might shift the rankings around compared to a 'linear non-era-relative career value' approach.
Like I said above, LeBron definitely has one of the best cases for GOAT career. But I do think it's worth emphasizing that different criteria can produce different rankings, there's no clear 'right criteria' or 'right methodology' (although some criteria may be inconsistent and some methodologies may be less accurate for what they aim to measure). These statistical GOAT lists I gathered almost all share the same criteria and a highly similar methodology, so it makes sense there would be some similarities in their rankings. But that doesn't mean everyone has to share the same criteria/methodology!
Speaking of different methodologies...
Djoker wrote:A lot of the stats in the OP are accumulated totals so for me who doesn't have (situational) longevity as a criteria, none of those stats are frankly very close to my career GOAT list. I also don't think any of these stats even ones like RAPM or PIPM are very good at making a GOAT list on their own considering we see the likes of Karl Malone and Chris Paul near the top of almost every list. Virtually no one has those two ranked in the top 15 all time and some have them much lower. Also a huge issue with using stats that aren't available for most of NBA history.
My career GOAT list is mainly driven by three factors: peak level of play, durability (as opposed to longevity) and accolades.
Interesting criteria Djoker!
I'm interested in hearing more about why you have these criteria (e.g. how you came up with these 3, what you're trying to "measure" if you aren't doing 'cumulative value over career', etc.).
For 1) Why peak as opposed to prime? Are you just weighing peak years > prime years > longevity (non-prime) years when evaluating how great someone is, or do you actually truncate e.g. non-prime years and not really consider them at all?
For 2) By emphasizing durability instead of longevity, would you say my summary above is accurate? I described this as measuring 'goodness over time'. If my interpretation of your criteria is right, then in your ranking....
a. you wouldn't punish Russell for retiring at the early age 34, which is earlier than a lot of other players. He wasn't injured and would still have been quite good if he had kept playing at age 35; the retirement age was 'situational' / based on historical context (it wasn't considered early at the time), and so Russell shouldn't be punished for it. You can use the years he did play to project how good he would have been when comparing players, or just compare how good he was in the years he did play to the other top 10 candidates at the same ages, etc. Likewise,
b., you don't punish Jordan for his mid-career retirements. He could have been just as 'good' if kept playing through 1994–1995 -- It's not like he suddenly forgot how to play basketball. He happened to retire due to personal situational context (his father was murdered), and his 2nd retirement was due also to situational context: he had just finished a 2nd 3-peat, was largely considered the GOAT at the time, "he had no more worlds to conquer", his team was about to go through a tank/rebuild phase, and it was more acceptable at the time to retire when you were still near the height of your power (e.g. Russell, Wilt, Magic/Bird) instead of playing until you couldn't any more.
Let me know if I understand your criteria right here, or if I'm misinterpreting something!
For 3), Why do you value accolades, and which accolades do you consider? Personal awards like MVP/DPOY/All-nba, team awards like rings, statistical records like most points in a career, all of the above / none of the above?
If the goal is to measure something like 'goodness over time', do you not have concerns that accolades might introduce some bias / error (that's certainly a common opinion round these parts)?
Shaq's "Ringz Erneh" apporach has certainly been argued to have some limitations /biases (see e.g. someone like Garnett, who's one of the most valuable players ever but was stuck on an outlier-bad team for an all-time great player for much of his prime). There are also examples of personal accolades where the voters probably got it wrong (e.g. Curry's lack of FMVP from 2015-2019, having Cedric Maxwell get FMVP over Bird in 1981, having Duncan never get a DPOY, etc.), or examples when personal accolades were unavailable (e.g. Russell has no DPOY lol).
Do you hold it against these players for having fewer rings/accolades? Or do you try to apply accolades+context (e.g. use accolades as another measure of a player, a tangential way to measure the greatness of a player other than stats/film study, but one that requires context to apply just like stats/film-study does)? Or perhaps there's some third option for how you apply accolades into your GOAT list?
This kind of discussion of people's criteria (especially when it agrees/differs with the basic statistical methods people have used) is just the kind of thing I was interested in discussing in this thread, so thank you for bringing this up!
