#17 Highest Peak of All Time (Wade '09 wins)

[GrangerDanger]

Don't forget Walt Frazier. He's up there with the next group of PGs as well. His 72 and 73 seasons were beast. I'll try to post some video/articles in the next couple of topics

[MisterWestside]

therealbig3, you're a great poster and I respect your contributions to these threads. Just don't agree with some of the voting processes I read around here.

In 95, the Suns played 8 games with KJ and without Barkley, and in those games, they had a 110.2 ORating vs an average DRating of 107.9 (+2.3). Again, a very talented supporting cast that could certainly play strong offense with Barkley on the bench.

This again begs the question: how is this Barkley's fault? Who's backing up KJ some of these seasons? Why should Barkley be punished for doing his job on the floor, while being surrounded by players/system that can keep it going without him (which, by the way, coaches want on their teams?) Let's use some other on-off numbers for reference:

111 ortg on
108 ortg off (still over +3 compared to average offense, would rank in league's top 5)

A "measly" +3 compared to other superstars....but that's Kevin Durant in 2012.

Seems that some posters are more interested in awarding the players that either land themselves on better fitting teams, or play on teams that aren't as capable at bringing depth/players behind the said star. Didn't some of you vote LeBron in 2012 for best player? Why didn't you vote for Dirk then, whose team gained +8 points per 100 possesions ("adjusted") when he's on the floor?

[postertag]

What do you guys think about '97 or '96 Penny? IMO He seems to be as good as Wade or Kobe.

What would be his case over similar wings like T-Mac, Drexler, Hill, Pippen, Barry, or Hondo? I don't think he should be in play yet.

[MisterWestside]

See, the issue is that you are implying the coaches would have just used Barkley wrong, while I say that the coaches used Barkley in order to achieve maximum team success. A player like Barkley, with his skillset and height, makes it really difficult to find fitting teammates to build a really, really good team.

Well for one thing, the first statement is an assumption that doesn't always hold true. Not saying coaches don't look to win games, but players can be (and have been) used on their squads in a less than optimal manner. You think Lyham impresses you as an offensive guru compared to Westphal?

For another, it still seems that you're want to award fir/depth over anything else. You want to knock Barkley for his height/skillset, but he when he was on the floor, he used it well. If you as the coach can do a solid job of "replacing that", is the player at fault? If Cuban drafted the sweet-shooting 7 foot Birk Mowitzki and brought him in to back up Dirk, you clearly shouldn't vote Dirk for POY awards because his "impact" will go down -- even if Dirk still plays at the ridiculous clip we've watched him play at since being drafted into the league.

[mysticbb]

For another, it still seems that you're want to award fir/depth over anything else.

No, I'm not.

You want to knock Barkley for his height/skillset, but he when he was on the floor, he used it well.

It doesn't really matter, how well he used it. If that puts his teammates into worse positions and thus does not lead to much more team success. They replaced Barkley with a guy who had a 10 percentage points lower TS%, having 9 ppg less and 3.2 rpg less in the starts, and yet, the 76ers are losing much less than that. Why? Because the rest of the team is shifting into BETTER positions for them to succeed. If Barkley's higher production and efficiency would have been always easily been fitting in, the teams would have seen a bigger increase. You can talk about depth and fit all you want, but you can't just look at that from one direction, from the perspective as if all players around the supposed to be great player were just not fitting well with him while the coaches were dumb. It is much more likely that a individual player has not a great fitting skillset in such a case, and that's what I see with Barkley. Yeah, he can produce a lot, but at the end of the day some of his production just comes at the expense of his teammates getting worse on the court with him.

If you as the coach can do a solid job of "replacing that", is the player at fault? If Cuban drafted the sweet-shooting 7 foot Birk Mowitzki and brought him in to back up Dirk, you clearly shouldn't vote Dirk for POY awards because his "impact" will go down -- even if Dirk still plays at the ridiculous clip we've watched him play at since being drafted into the league.

See, there are only two ways to explain such statement by you: You either think I'm an idiot for not getting an easy point or you just missed an important point I made. Well, let me give you a hint, changing the backup for Nowitzki will NOT change the playing level of the team with him. Maybe, just maybe that hint will help you to understand the previously made points by me regarding Barkley and the playing level of the 76ers.

[ardee]

I'm not sure if I already did, but...

Vote: 1966 Jerry West

[C-izMe]

RE: Penny Hardaway

Great job bringing him up because unlike others I rank 96 Penny very high (maybe top 25). Personally I see him as a guy who can lead a mediocre supporting cast to 50-60 wins. 21/4/7 on 60TS is amazing and he played better without Shaq. He held his own in the PS too until he was guarded by the greatest perimeter defender ever. With the remaining wings I'll probably rank them:
TMac, West, Scottie, Penny, Hill, Carter.

With PGs I'll rank him probably under Nash and about tied with Paul:
Nash, Penny/Paul, Payton, KJ.

[C-izMe]

Wade was a legitimate MVP candidate in 2009 while in 2010, Wade wasn't even top 4 in the MVP voting. I remember there were people saying Durant and Dwight surpassed Wade and it wasn't until the playoffs when people were convinced Wade was still the same.

They were completely wrong though. Lebron and Wade were still the best two players by a distance (I personally rank 10 and 11 Wade over Lebron).


And another thing I have to bring up with Wade is when was the last time a superstar with NO OTHER legitimate options won a PS series. KG 03 (who I look back on now and think he should had a chance in the vote), TMac 03, Kobe 06/07, Wade 09/10, and even Jordan 86. They always lose so can you blame Wade or just say for now it seems impossible.

[MisterWestside]

It doesn't really matter, how well he used it. If that puts his teammates into worse positions and thus does not lead to much more team success.

So what do you want him to do then? Run his own team and put players around himself as well as produce? Don't teams have personnel who are responsible for, you know, building the proper teams? And coaching them?

Well, let me give you a hint, changing the backup for Nowitzki will NOT change the playing level of the team with him. Maybe, just maybe that hint will help you to understand the previously made points by me regarding Barkley and the playing level of the 76ers.

Well I was talking about "impact" (the key word of the day in these threads), and you cannot escape the fact that Dirk wouldn't have the same "impact" with Birk in the lineup. But I wouldn't punish Dirk for that like it seems other posters are doing with some players here.

Why do you want to now focus on playing level "with" a star now? If you play on a crappy team or a team that's not designed well, that team doesn't play at a high level/SRS. You want to punish a player for that, too?

[nikomCH]

Wade needs to get in like...now. I love Kobe but he can't go too far ahead of Wade in this thing.

[Doctor MJ]

The one thing I don't like in regards to voting a season like 10 Wade, is that he was relieved of the opportunity to fail. For example I voted 10 Wade 1st in the RPOY that year over Lebron mainly because of that G5 disaster. But is that really fair when Wade didn't even have to play the 2nd rd? At the same time it doesn't feel right to me to punish a player strictly because his team wasn't good enough to make it past Rd 1. So evaluating 1st rd loss years in a project like this is a tough thing in general. It's hard to punish 11 Wade for being bad in the CHI series when 10 Wade didn't have to play that long... OTOH it's hard to give 11 Wade more credit strictly for having the team to play longer

You're going through a good process here. I particularly like when you talk about how to deal with the good & bad extremes that a guy who plays longer can hit. Tough questions.

With that said, regarding "punishing" a guy because his team didn't go further, no you shouldn't be punishing the guy, but you also can't treat a 1 series run as if it's as impressive as a guy who did it over 4 series. I see it less as punishment, and more of what you actually proved. The guy who exits in the first should have a disadvantage in voting based on the fact that we aren't as sure of what he really accomplished, on the other hand the guy who played 4 series had to fight through more tough games and had more opportunity to hit a rough stretch.

This all gets back to what I've said before for me: The less a guy plays in the post-season, the less I count what he did, either for good or for ill. Others have a chance to surpass him or fall beneath him based on their longer post-seasons, but my own assessment of the 1st round loser guy probably stays about the same unless he was a monumental dissapointment.

[ardee]

Wade needs to get in like...now. I love Kobe but he can't go too far ahead of Wade in this thing.

Why exactly? Kobe was a better offensive player, playoff performer and far more versatile at his peak. Wade was a better defender, but not by much. He also had horrible portability, and his impact would be lessened on a team with another superstar, while Kobe flourished with good players.

[C-izMe]

One issue I keep forgetting with Positivitiy's logic on Wade being the same in 10 as 09 is playing time. Per 36 pre all star 09 was the same as 10 but he played more time. One averaged 26/4.5/6.5 and the other averaged 28/5/7. I personally don't think 10 Wade COULD play 38-39 minutes a night and keep up production. Wade's never been a high stamina player.

[Doctor MJ]

Wade needs to get in like...now. I love Kobe but he can't go too far ahead of Wade in this thing.

Why exactly? Kobe was a better offensive player, playoff performer and far more versatile at his peak. Wade was a better defender, but not by much. He also had horrible portability, and his impact would be lessened on a team with another superstar, while Kobe flourished with good players.

Wait, what? You're making all sorts of assertions here that if people agreed with you on them there'd be no debate.

My perspective:

-I prefer Wade's offense. To my mind it's a much smarter way of playing if you're trying to win a game (though not the best for preserving longevity). Drives me nuts when I see Kobe take impossibly difficult shots. Yes, he hits them better than you'd expect anyone to be able to do, but efficiency is an issue for him.

-Playoff performer? Wade took the playoffs by storm in both '05 and '06, put up huge numbers in '10 (albeit for one series), and was more impressive in the '11 Finals than anyone I've ever seen except Shaq & Jordan.

-Versatile? Portability? In theory, yes, but he's also stubborn and prone to breaking out of the offense. The role Wade's playing in Miami where he's had some signs of struggling, I don't know if Kobe would even attempt. Wade recruited LeBron specifically saying, "I want to win, I don't care if I'm the man, I'll adapt to you." - we know that Kobe hasn't done that despite the fact it would have made a lot of sense with Howard like a year ago.

So yeah, I'd rate Wade ahead of Kobe in peak. Not by much mind you, but gun to my head, peak Wade impresses me more.

[Doctor MJ]

One issue I keep forgetting with Positivitiy's logic on Wade being the same in 10 as 09 is playing time. Per 36 pre all star 09 was the same as 10 but he played more time. One averaged 26/4.5/6.5 and the other averaged 28/5/7. I personally don't think 10 Wade COULD play 38-39 minutes a night and keep up production. Wade's never been a high stamina player.

Agreed.

It seems horribly simplistic to assert as I did that Wade was essentially deciding at what point in time he was going to "spend" his burst of energy, but that's sure how it feels to me.

[mysticbb]

So what do you want him to do then? Run his own team and put players around himself as well as produce? Don't teams have personnel who are responsible for, you know, building the proper teams? And coaching them?

So, let me get that straight, it is on the FO when a player has a skillset which is not that easy to integrate into an average team? In no way or shape should we make the player responsible for that as long as he is putting up great boxscore numbers? To make it clear to you, if we remove the best player from each team, we get in average from 2003 to 2012 a -2.5 team, that's what the 76ers had without Barkley in 1987 and 1991, they were merely above average with Barkley. He had an average supporting cast, while his skillset didn't allow to make his teammates look better while he produced at the same rate.

There is a reason that the 76ers had a tough time to build a really, really good team around Barkley, because Barkley's skillset required players who are less likely to get, because there are not that many of them.

To make that more clear: I have Barkley with +5.7 for 1991 and Anderson with -0.4. Overall a 6.1 difference. Given Barkley's playing time (37mpg) and the pace of the 76ers (95.7) we can expect a drop by 4.5 points by replacing Barkley's minutes with Anderson. Well, that's what the 76ers did and yet, the difference was 2.5 points. What does that mean? In order to explain the difference, we have to see that the rest of the teams just performed in average better without Barkley than with him in. Meaning, when Barkley was in, the rest of the team was shifted into worse positions with less touches, while Barkley was allowed to thrive, Barkley basically stole the ppg and rpg from his teammates, making them look worse.

What I want from Barkley? Being more versatile and having the ability to adapt to his teammates, making them look better while the overall team performs better. That's what I want to see, otherwise I must assume that Barkley's whole value is at best determined by the boxscore stats. And that boxscore stats is still worse than for other players, if we put that into the context of the league averages.
You want to know how he could have achieved that? By being a better outside shooter and being a better defender. If you shift some of his post skills and his focus on rebounds to those other attributes, you get a better fitting player who can still produce at a high rate while it makes it easier to build a good team around him.

Well I was talking about "impact" (the key word of the day in these threads), and you cannot escape the fact that Dirk wouldn't have the same "impact" with Birk in the lineup. But I wouldn't punish Dirk for that like it seems other posters are doing with some players here.

You are shifting goalposts here, first you wanted to have Birk as backup, now you want him as player next to Nowitzki. And then again, what makes you so sure that they both wouldn't fit and thus the impact would be reduced? Having two big skilled players worked awesome for the Mavericks when they had Raef LaFrentz and Nowitzki, now we assume that two Nowitzki's would be worse than that?

Why do you want to now focus on playing level "with" a star now? If you play on a crappy team or a team that's not designed well, that team doesn't play at a high level/SRS. You want to punish a player for that, too?

What the hell are you talking about? I always looked at the playing level with the player, because we have to put the on/off into context. It is easier to improve a really weak team to be average than improving an average team to be a really good team, you should know that. And seriously, stop inviting strawmen. Did I ever punish Garnett for playing with bad teammates? It is getting tiresome. As I said, if you think I'm just too stupid to get something which is easy to understand for you, than just say so, at least it would contain some honesty.

[ElGee]

Am I understanding the theory here correctly:

-09 Wade's situation dictated that he played harder down the stretch which made him more fragile and thus the situation was the cause of his small injury (back spasms) in the Atl series?

-10 Wade's situation did not necessitate such effort, thus he was ready for the PS (and "bursted" just fine against Boston).

-And, therefore, 09 Wade could have done what 10 Wade did but 10 could not do what 09 Wade did?

Is this correct?

I'm very much sympathetic to this, as I'm trying to find the *best* basketball player, as defined by the guy that gives me the best ODDS to win on a team that someone can build around. Not sure I agree with this specifically about Wade in this case, but I like the argument.

This line of analysis is of course relevant to all players in regards to their RS v PS play. It's not simply a constant "weighting" that should be taking place, but the question of "based on what I've seen, who gives me the best chance to win?"

[thizznation]

The '10 burst seems like more of a statistical anomaly when compared to the consistency of the '09 season.

[mysticbb]

I don't think that the difference between 2009 and 2010 Wade in terms of stats is actually big. If we look at my SPM and convert that 0.4 difference into wins, I get 0.5 wins over a 82 games season for a 38mpg player. WS/48 gives basically the same. The difference in terms of RAPM is related to the prior. In 2009 the prior was 2.6, in 2010 it was 6.4. His non-prior informed was basically the same for both seasons! The only logical argument I accept is the minutes per game, he played more in 2009 than 2010. Thus, it might be reasonable to assume that he could sustain his higher level longer in 2009. In terms of playing level, I don't think that there is a difference, and both years are somewhat ahead of 2006 here as well, but even here is the difference not that big. I think for Wade it comes down to the personal beliefs of the voters much more than to actual differences in terms of playing level.

[Doctor MJ]

Am I understanding the theory here correctly:

-09 Wade's situation dictated that he played harder down the stretch which made him more fragile and thus the situation was the cause of his small injury (back spasms) in the Atl series?

-10 Wade's situation did not necessitate such effort, thus he was ready for the PS (and "bursted" just fine against Boston).

-And, therefore, 09 Wade could have done what 10 Wade did but 10 could not do what 09 Wade did?

Is this correct?

I'm very much sympathetic to this, as I'm trying to find the *best* basketball player, as defined by the guy that gives me the best ODDS to win on a team that someone can build around. Not sure I agree with this specifically about Wade in this case, but I like the argument.

This line of analysis is of course relevant to all players in regards to their RS v PS play. It's not simply a constant "weighting" that should be taking place, but the question of "based on what I've seen, who gives me the best chance to win?"

Pretty much. It's funny because it's a simplistic way to look at things, and yet still makes clear how much more complicated this is than I think some want to admit.

After all, it hardly makes sense to say "I go by who was better in the playoffs" when we're talking about maybe the exact same guy and he had to expend his energy in the regular season to even get his team to the playoffs in the year where his playoff performance disappointed.