how many years of barkley over peak Kevin Mchale?

[falcolombardi]

i thought after the recent mchale discussion how similar his scoring profile actually is to someone like barkley in a bit less volume

mchale is probably a significstively better defender too although barkley was a strong passer i have been impressed with at times and a better rebounder (full disclaimer i have watched a fair amount of barkley but not so much attention to mchale who i am going off stats here)

how many barkley years do you have above the best of mchale?

[70sFan]

For me 1989-83. I think a case could be made for 1988 and 1994-96, but I probably wouldn't do that.

The thing is that Barkley was significantly better offensive player and significantly worse defensive player. I don't think 1994-96 was good enough on offense anymore to be ranked ahead of peak McHale overall with the regression of already questionable defense. At his peak, Barkley was top tier offensive force though.

[prolific passer]

87-93.

[migya]

Peak Mchale was 26pts and great defense, Barkley at his best wasn't much better than that. Michael did benefit from being on a great team and Bird, but Barkley in 1993 had a great team too and KJ was a great playmaker, not Bird but not too far off, and he got mvp but wasn't really a better season than Mchale's best.

[Owly]

This will depend a lot on how one rates peaks.

McHale's semi-outlier RS rate productivity peak is 1987. It's also, by a fair way, his most minutes 3070 (from 2876, then one in 2700s, one in 2600s, one in 2500s, then three in the 2300s).

The fly in the ointment is his playoffs, which may relate to the foot injury, but regardless are more or less across the board (apart from on the boards) worse than the surrounding years.

If one is taking the player concept and don't think he's fragile on a higher minute load or generally give a low weighting to playoffs and/or playoff injuries, it's possible to see a high peak McHale. Otherwise ... the next best box numbers (and better playoffs) might be the surrounding years but both times he's in the 2300-2400 RS minutes range, then maybe '90 with more RS minutes but less mobility and defense and a short, somewhat pedestrian, injury-hit [torn thumb ligament, G5] playoffs ... in effect McHale is going to have to take a hit somewhere (or else be some mental composite of different versions).

[No-more-rings]

I think a strong case can be made for every prime year of Barkley which would be roughly 87-93 or so. I wouldn’t go that far though since Mchale’s scoring and post game was pretty impressive and his defense was considerably better than Barkley’s. I think 70sfan’s answer of 89-93 is probably the correct one.

[Cavsfansince84]

The issue as mentioned above is that McHale reached a peak in 87 that got derailed by a foot injury which sort of ruined it and his career to some degree. Had McHale stayed healthy I think 87 stands up to a lot of Barkley's seasons but it didn't so I think at least 89-93 is the answer. The other issue is that McHale even in 87 wasn't playing as a #1 option in that other teams were game planning just for him. He still had a goat level player to draw attention who was also a goat level passer. McHale usually got the ball in good position and the idea was he should shoot it. Which is why the black hole criticism doesn't really hold to me since he was the most efficient scorer in the entire league. He did sometimes get passes to Parish for easy dunks if his man left him also.