My top 15 of all time

Moderators: Clyde Frazier, Doctor MJ, trex_8063, penbeast0, PaulieWal

User avatar
cupcakesnake
Senior Mod- WNBA
Senior Mod- WNBA
Posts: 15,188
And1: 31,334
Joined: Jul 21, 2016
 

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#81 » by cupcakesnake » Tue Dec 24, 2024 2:08 pm

One_and_Done wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:
cupcakesnake wrote:
What those 2002 Spurs really had was an elite defense, with Tim Duncan, Bruce Bowen, and old man David Robinson (who got injured in the playoffs, and then the Spurs lost to the Lakers... but I'm aware you are lower than most on old man Admiral). Rookie Tony also flashed his potential come playoff time.

What those 2010 Cavs really had was... playing in the Eastern Conference.


Conference strength has minimal effect on regular-season record

That's often not true, but for those Cavs teams it did not. Conference strength had a huge effect on say, the 02 Pistons. They were 38-16 vs the Least, and 12-16 vs the West. Invert those percentages and they go from 50 wins to 43, which in the West that year means you're the 10 seed.


I was more talking about the 2010 Cavs winning a playoff series vs. the 2002 timberwolves having very little shot at that. The 2002 West had 4x team that won 57 games or more. Right below Minnesota was the Jailblazers, a very capable playoff opponent as well. Let's say the Terrell Brandon injury doesn't happen (or we get a full season of starter Billups, either way) and the T-Wolves win a few more regular season games. Their absolute ceiling was the 4 seed, and then they'd still have to play the Mavs.

2010 East isn't awful. Dwight Magic, and a 50-win post prime KG Celtics. But then it's like...the Joe Johnson Hawks and the pre-Heatles Heat. The West wasn't very strong that year either. Lakers were good, but each of the Spurs/Mavs/Suns were in different kind of down year, and the other teams were like the D.Will Jazz and Carmelo Nuggets. Pretty deep year for the West, but not a conference filled with juggernaut contenders like it was in the early 2000s.

I know it's hard to compare different leagues, but I'd just be very surprised if anyone feels the the context is similar for success between these teams. I don't see a scenario where the Wolves are likely to win a 1st round series, not because KG sucks, but just because that was not a year you win a playoff series with a meh team. 2010 East was.
"Being in my home. I was watching pokemon for 5 hours."

Co-hosting with Harry Garris at The Underhand Freethrow Podcast
User avatar
cupcakesnake
Senior Mod- WNBA
Senior Mod- WNBA
Posts: 15,188
And1: 31,334
Joined: Jul 21, 2016
 

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#82 » by cupcakesnake » Tue Dec 24, 2024 2:31 pm

One_and_Done wrote:
cupcakesnake wrote:
One_and_Done wrote:So I think you’ve almost got it. Yes, I think Duncan or Lebron would have done better with the 2002 Wolves. I know that because when those 2 guys had even worse support casts (e.g. 01-03 Spurs, 09-10 Cavs), they did indeed do better.

That is why I have focussed so much on 2002 for KG, even though there are other years I could point to, because it’s the cleanest example. KG’s most hardcore fans insist that he had a Duncan or Lebron like lift, but that his support cast was just so bad he couldn’t do it for this year or that year. Then you have 2002, where there’s really no excuses at all. What KG had wasn’t optimal in that year obviously, but it was indisputably better than what Duncan had in 01-03, or what Lebron had in 09 or 10. The results were very different though.

You ask “could KG really beat the 02 Spurs!?”. Well no, because they had Tim Duncan. Other than Duncan though, that Spurs team was almost bereft of talent. That might be the worst support cast Duncan ever played on, even moreso than 01 with their awful guard rotation, or 03 when they needed to turn to journeyman point guard Speedy Claxton in the finals. Yet the Spurs won 58, made the 2nd round, and put up a good showing against the Lakers. D.Rob was injured, and yet Duncan guarded Shaq 1 on 1 and outplayed him.


What those 2002 Spurs really had was an elite defense, with Tim Duncan, Bruce Bowen, and old man David Robinson (who got injured in the playoffs, and then the Spurs lost to the Lakers... but I'm aware you are lower than most on old man Admiral). Rookie Tony also flashed his potential come playoff time.

What those 2010 Cavs really had was... playing in the Eastern Conference. They weren't a high talent team, but they were deep with veterans who had functional fit. Shaq for bursts of offense, Mo Williams and Anthony Parker as spacers, tons of extra size to do the schtick of that era of Cavs (be massive if you're not good).

I'm not making the point that KG=Duncan=Lebron. I don't want to get caught up defending the supporting casts of those Spurs or Cavs team. I don't think they were good. My point has never been 2002 was an outlier awful roster, just that KG's supporting casts from 2000-2007 were outlier awful compared to any other prime of any other star.

I don't agree with you at all that 2002 was a good/normal supporting cast, but I can see how someone would argue it, especially someone who is really high on Rasho and Joe Smith. Do you think Lebron/Duncan beats those Mavs? I'm just not really clear on what your saying or equating. Each of these rosters faced different teams in different seasons. I get that you think Billups/Rasho/Wally/Joe is better than Tony/Bowen/Admiral or Shaq/Jamison/Mo/Parker/Varejao... I'm just not sure to what extent or what you think would happen if you moved these players around.

So, I completely disagree. Firstly, Bowen played only 59 games in 2002. D.Rob was also a shell of his former self. Duncan actually did a better job guarding Shaq in the 02 playoffs than D.Rob had ever done.

The rest of the Spurs cast was quite lamentable. Fringe bench player A.Daniels played 26.5 mpg. Borderline NBA player Charles Smith played 19mpg, and actually started 22 games. Steve Smith was washed. He could still hit open 3s, but that was it. After this season he was reduced to an end of the bench guy who gradually fell out of the league in a few years. The only reason he wasn’t that this year was because the Spurs were so desperate for bodies. Parker flashed promise, but a rookie point guard loses you games, and Parker was still so raw that even 1 year later he got his finals minutes stolen by a journeyman point named Speedy Claxton (and no, Speedy was not a secretly good player). Malik Rose was a below average player who the team mostly kept around because he was Duncan’s best friend.

That support cast was lamentable for a contender, yet Duncan carried them to 58 games and an SRS of 6.28. They were competitive against the Lakers in the 2nd round, despite missing D.Rob, losing games by 2, 6, 6, and 10 points respectively. In the first round, when Duncan’s father died, he actually missed a game. We got to see just what the support cast looked like without him in that game; they were down 57-31 at halftime, and then the Sonics took their foot off the gas because they were winning so easily. I don’t think the Spurs without Duncan would have even won 20 games this year.

Duncan had no all-star team mates in 02. In contrast, KG had Wally who actually made the all-star team that year. But of course, Wally wasn’t even the 2nd best Timberwolf. Whichever of Brandon/Billips was starting was, and either option was significantly better than Duncan’s 2nd best player. I see a starting line-up of Brandon/Billups, Wally, J.Smith and Rasho, and it’s so much better than what the Spurs had it’s not even funny. They’re better on D too. The Spurs were starting rookie Parker and washed out Steve Smith. Neither of those guys could defend. The Wolves had 1 guy who wasn’t great on D in Wally, but that was about it, and he was still much better than rookie Parker or creaky old Smith. KG played the 3 with Smith, but in that era that was fine defensively. Offensively the Wolves were clearly better than the Spurs too.

Would Duncan or Lebron have won the Wolves more games, and taken them out of the 1st round? You bet. You dismiss Lebron with “he played in the East”. That criticism has never held, because the Cavs record against West teams in 09 and 10 is even better than West teams. They were going to win about that many games whether they were in the East or West. This wasn’t like the early 00s East pretenders, who would be 500. against Western teams and then pad their totals against the Leastern Conference.

Never mind 2002 though. Here is what Duncan’s 01 wing rotation did in the Lakers series that year. I am not making these numbers up, these are actual, real stats.

- Derek Anderson, only able to play 2 games because he was so hurt, put up 2ppg and 2rpg on 170. TS%, with an Ortg of 39. That is not a typo. Played 20mpg, and his Drtg of 126 undersells how bad his D was.
- Post Kidney disease Sean Elliot, able to play 3 games, averaged 1.3ppg, 1.7rpg, on 202. TS%. Also an Ortg of 39. Played 19mpg.
- Age 35 Avery Johnson, not that he was ever good, was playing 22mpg and putting up 6.3ppg, 2.3apg on 383 TS%. Ortg of 77.
- Terry Porter, too old to play D or do much of anything except throw a good inbounds pass, was playing 24.4mpg, and scored 6.3ppg on a FG% of 345. And a 3pt% of 167.
- Old man Dan Ferry, who started 2 games and played 26mpg, scored 3.5ppg on 467 TS%. He was one of their better wing contributors, except he couldn’t play any D and could do nothing but shoot open 3s. Ortg of 88.

That’s 5 of their top 8 guys in mpg. The others were D.Rob (shot 440 TS% this series, while only playing 29mpg), Duncan, and Antonio Daniels who played an absurd 42mpg, that’s how desperate they were for bodies (ADs Drtg of 121 was the worst of every rotation player except Derek Anderson). That is the worst wing rotation I have ever seen on a modern contender. EVER. Not only trash on O, but every one of their Drtg’s was horrible (as was their D in reality). Duncan and D.Rob were at 105 and 108, and every other Spur I just named was in the 113-126 range (mostly around 117).


A lot of this is getting pretty subjective and based on what you think of certain players. It feels a little rose tinted in one direction, where every KG teammate is sneaky good to you and every TD teammate is way worse than anyone will admit. 2002 Chauncey Billups gets 2 inches taller every time you post about him and now also breathes fire and shoots lasers out of his eyes. (Also, I never said anything about 2001 Spurs and don't have any pushback).

I think what gets lost in the stacking up of individual player perceptions is the fit and style of the team. Defense is the biggest, most obvious one. There's defensive talent and then there's coaching a having the right guys in the right role. The T-Wolves never tried the strategy of trying to build a defensive team around KG, so we don't know how that might have worked. Going big on defense in the early 2000s was a pretty successful strategy. You can say Joe Smith and Rasho and "going big" was the Wolves doing that, and maybe it could have been possible with another coach. Flip Saunders always tried to focus on maximzing offense (look at his work taking over for Larry Brown in Detroit). The 2002 Wolves had very little point of attack defense, ranked near the bottom of the league in turnovers and giving up 3-point attempts. The frontcourt was good defensively, all the numbers agree (elite defense with all 3 on the floor). The perimeter defense was bad and there were zero wing defenders. Playing Wally and Peeler at the same time was impossible. Brandon struggled to move for the 30 games he tried to play. Billups was fine but the numbers don't like him defensively.

There's a whole D.Rob vs. KG thread on the GB now, so I wont further derail this thread here. Happy to continue the discussion further over there if it's desired.
"Being in my home. I was watching pokemon for 5 hours."

Co-hosting with Harry Garris at The Underhand Freethrow Podcast
One_and_Done
General Manager
Posts: 8,726
And1: 5,461
Joined: Jun 03, 2023

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#83 » by One_and_Done » Tue Dec 24, 2024 7:01 pm

cupcakesnake wrote:
One_and_Done wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:
Conference strength has minimal effect on regular-season record

That's often not true, but for those Cavs teams it did not. Conference strength had a huge effect on say, the 02 Pistons. They were 38-16 vs the Least, and 12-16 vs the West. Invert those percentages and they go from 50 wins to 43, which in the West that year means you're the 10 seed.


I was more talking about the 2010 Cavs winning a playoff series vs. the 2002 timberwolves having very little shot at that. The 2002 West had 4x team that won 57 games or more. Right below Minnesota was the Jailblazers, a very capable playoff opponent as well. Let's say the Terrell Brandon injury doesn't happen (or we get a full season of starter Billups, either way) and the T-Wolves win a few more regular season games. Their absolute ceiling was the 4 seed, and then they'd still have to play the Mavs.

2010 East isn't awful. Dwight Magic, and a 50-win post prime KG Celtics. But then it's like...the Joe Johnson Hawks and the pre-Heatles Heat. The West wasn't very strong that year either. Lakers were good, but each of the Spurs/Mavs/Suns were in different kind of down year, and the other teams were like the D.Will Jazz and Carmelo Nuggets. Pretty deep year for the West, but not a conference filled with juggernaut contenders like it was in the early 2000s.

I know it's hard to compare different leagues, but I'd just be very surprised if anyone feels the the context is similar for success between these teams. I don't see a scenario where the Wolves are likely to win a 1st round series, not because KG sucks, but just because that was not a year you win a playoff series with a meh team. 2010 East was.

I don't give excuses for a guy losing to tough opposition in the 1st round because he failed to win enough in the RS. If it was prime Duncan or Lebron, they'd have won more games and had easier 1st round opponents to begin with. They'd also have beaten the 02 Mavs with KGs support cast.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
iggymcfrack
RealGM
Posts: 11,697
And1: 9,192
Joined: Sep 26, 2017

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#84 » by iggymcfrack » Wed Dec 25, 2024 6:43 am

Gibson22 wrote:1) Lebron
2) Jordan
3) Kareem
4) Russell
5) Shaq
6) Hakeem
7) Duncan
8) Wilt
9) West
10) Robertson
11) Magic
12) Bird
13) Curry
14) Kobe
15) David Robinson


How does your top 10 have 4 players from one decade where the talent pool was about 1/4 what it is now, but only one player who peaked in the last 20 years? You don’t think that’s a little unbalanced?
lessthanjake
Analyst
Posts: 3,047
And1: 2,772
Joined: Apr 13, 2013

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#85 » by lessthanjake » Wed Dec 25, 2024 1:41 pm

iggymcfrack wrote:
Gibson22 wrote:1) Lebron
2) Jordan
3) Kareem
4) Russell
5) Shaq
6) Hakeem
7) Duncan
8) Wilt
9) West
10) Robertson
11) Magic
12) Bird
13) Curry
14) Kobe
15) David Robinson


How does your top 10 have 4 players from one decade where the talent pool was about 1/4 what it is now, but only one player who peaked in the last 20 years? You don’t think that’s a little unbalanced?


LeBron and Curry definitely both peaked in the last 20 years, so it’s not one player. And I think most people would say Kobe peaked in the last 20 years too, so I’d personally say the above list has three such people. I also think there’s a good chance this person just doesn’t include active players still in their prime (i.e. guys like Jokic and Giannis who definitely ultimately might make a list like this) because of the difficulty of ranking still-active players whose will very likely keep racking up achievements, or at least that they rank players actively in their primes lower for now. If that’s the case, then players who peaked in the last handful of years are effectively not eligible yet. So the objection here would mostly just be that there are 4 players who peaked in the 1960s and only three players who peaked from 2005 to like 2018 or so (after 2018 we start getting into the zone where someone might argue still-active greats like Giannis started peaking). That still seems like a reasonable critique (and I don’t think I personally would have that skew) but it doesn’t sound all that egregious. All things being equal, we’d generally expect newer eras to have more top-tier all-time greats, since the game is more popular and the standard of play is higher. But there’s also just a lot of randomness involved with extremely small groups of players at the very far right-tail of the skill distribution, so I don’t think a result like this is inherently indefensible.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
capfan33
Pro Prospect
Posts: 866
And1: 749
Joined: May 21, 2022
 

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#86 » by capfan33 » Wed Dec 25, 2024 3:42 pm

iggymcfrack wrote:
Gibson22 wrote:1) Lebron
2) Jordan
3) Kareem
4) Russell
5) Shaq
6) Hakeem
7) Duncan
8) Wilt
9) West
10) Robertson
11) Magic
12) Bird
13) Curry
14) Kobe
15) David Robinson


How does your top 10 have 4 players from one decade where the talent pool was about 1/4 what it is now, but only one player who peaked in the last 20 years? You don’t think that’s a little unbalanced?


I mean maybe because that’s not his criteria. If I were ranking players based on drafting a team today my list would look very different and heavily skewed towards modern players.
scrabbarista
RealGM
Posts: 20,257
And1: 17,961
Joined: May 31, 2015

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#87 » by scrabbarista » Fri Dec 27, 2024 6:30 pm

1. J-dran
2. JaBron
3. Kareem Jabdul-Jabber
4. Dunkin'
5. Rustle
6. Majick
7. Bjrd
8. Chamberlax
9. Hadreem
10. Shack
11. Joke Itch
12. Curly
13. Nojitsu
14. K-Garn
15. Museum of Modern Art (MoMa)

Giannis will break in barring major injury. KD may have a shot, but probably not, as he'd have to pass either two of these guys or one plus Giannis.
All human life on the earth is like grass, and all human glory is like a flower in a field. The grass dries up and its flower falls off, but the Lord’s word endures forever.
ceiling raiser
Lead Assistant
Posts: 4,531
And1: 3,754
Joined: Jan 27, 2013

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#88 » by ceiling raiser » Fri Dec 27, 2024 8:05 pm

This is not a normal "GOAT" list. Not looking for shock value or to be a contrarian, this is just where my head is currently at.

LeBron
---
Duncan
Kareem
---
Curry
Hakeem
Garnett
Jordan
---
Jokic
Nowitzki
Shaq
---
Nash
Giannis
Harden
Magic
Robinson

This will probably turn a bunch of heads, but this is probably my current list.

Notes:

(1) Goal is to win in today's league. I believe S-tier seasons are significantly more valuable than A-tier, which are more valuable than B-tier.
(2) Unless you can anchor a top defense, you need to be able to hit a three. Magic and Jordan take a hit, but both guys, as they attempted more shots, got better at shooting, so I think they belong in the top 15.
(3) I don't believe that showing some basic signs is enough (so I've dropped Russell, even though he was somewhat mobile, since it isn't enough of a known; same with West and shooting).
(4) Least confident about Jokic (maybe he should be 1-2 tiers higher) and Harden (should perhaps be lower).
Now that's the difference between first and last place.
Top10alltime
Sophomore
Posts: 150
And1: 72
Joined: Jan 04, 2025
 

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#89 » by Top10alltime » Mon Mar 17, 2025 4:37 pm

1. Lebron
2. Jordan
3. Wilt
4. Kareem
5. Russell
6. Bird
7. Magic
8. Duncan
9. Shaq
10. Hakeem
11. Kobe
12. Curry
13. West
14. Oscar
15. Durant
User avatar
TheGOATRises007
RealGM
Posts: 21,415
And1: 20,072
Joined: Oct 05, 2013
         

Re: My top 15 of all time 

Post#90 » by TheGOATRises007 » Mon Mar 17, 2025 10:17 pm

Top10alltime wrote:1. Lebron
2. Jordan
3. Wilt
4. Kareem
5. Russell
6. Bird
7. Magic
8. Duncan
9. Shaq
10. Hakeem
11. Kobe
12. Curry
13. West
14. Oscar
15. Durant


Why Wilt over Kareem?

And why Bird over Magic? What's the criteria?

Return to Player Comparisons