RealGM Top 100 List #17

[SactoKingsFan]

I'm leaning towards Karl Malone due to his impressive peak/prime, longevity and iron man durability.

I think most of us recognize how good peak Walton was, however, he only played 144 games (4997 mins) in the RS+ PS during his peak/prime. Don't think I'll be voting for Walton any time soon.

[Doctor MJ]

So I voted for Malone, but seeing someone bring up Malone vs Stockton reminds me that I'd love to see discussion along these lines.

As someone was arguing, if you take RAPM by face value, Stockton seems like he should rank higher than Malone, which is a pretty interesting acid test for just how far you take the results.

The fundamental issue with this as I see is Stockton was playing reduced minutes, which in general means he's probably getting an advantage of playing when it best suits him. But what exactly does that mean? If part of what we're talking about is that he basically always got to play with Malone and hence his role is basically defined in terms of how nicely he can play with Malone compared to other guys, then clearly I think Malone should be ranked higher. It's not proof that Stockton couldn't do great things without Malone, but there's clearly no basis for saying that all perception of the time giving Malone the MVP candidacy was off.

On the other hand, if we can see data showing that Stockton isn't showing any particular dependency on Malone in terms of team success, that starts giving us grounds to swing the comparison.

Thoughts of others?

[Doctor MJ]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

-The Moses Malone peak things continues to weird me out. It's not like it's some mystery whether people though peak Moses was better than peak Kareem, Bird, or Magic. He's always been considered weaker by most. Hence the whole "domination" argument for Moses just dies right from the start.

None of this means you can't argue for Moses based on you just thinking he's better, but his MVP/POY shares are an inflated way to look at him as a player if your actual assessment of him aligns with any consensus analysis I've ever seen.

[penbeast0]

Spoiler:

Back after a few days of vacation.


I'm very big on peak, so I am going to have to go with Bill Walton here. Walton's lack of consistency health wise is why I haven't voted for him sooner over some of the other folks from the 10-15 area, but I think here there is a clear gap between him and everyone else left.

Bill Walton is right up there with the top tier centers. He is a lot like Russell in that you cannot see how dominant he is just by looking at his boxscore stats. He is a team player in every sense of the word, high iq, high skill, good motor and he is large on top of all of that.

While he only had maybe 2 seasons that you could say he played the bulk of the season, he was still able to get a championship in that short window. That's pretty impressive. With modern medicine there is still no reason to assume his career would have been much different, but who knows, an extra season of health with that guy can equate to a lot of success.


Karl Malone is the polar opposite, many years of excellence. But I don't rate players based on who has a more valuable career, I rate players based on who I think is the best out there when they're on the court.

For me, Walton is a more reliable offensive player than Malone. Malone kills him in boxscore numbers, but Walton seems like he can fit in more systems while also producing franchise level impact. Perhaps he is a bit like Kevin Garnett in those regards. Walton's isolation/post game is good, I don't know if he is really that much inferior to Malone when it comes to shot creation. Walton can initiate for his offense with his high post game, while Malone is more of a finisher, though he is certainly a very good passer considering his style of play.

Defensively Walton kills Malone. Was a better rebounder, a better player in the post, way better rim protector, good help defender, he was a true anchor, an all time one at that. Malone is a complimentary defensive player, one who is good for guarding other power forwards man to man, but he doesn't seem like he an anchor a great defense.

I think it is saying something that Walton could accomplish more than Malone despite so few opportunities. While it says that it was just a strange turn of events that Malone ended up ringless, or didn't appear in the finals until very late in his career, I think it also says a lot about how dominant Walton has. Even if Walton can barely string together 3 or 4 seasons of 50 games+, I think that is 3 or 4 seasons where you have a significant chance of getting a title, about a tier higher than Malone in those regards, and I think that makes him a better player in general.

My vote goes to Bill Walton.

It's not even 468 games (90 as a reserve) or 5000 minutes for Walton; it's worse than that. He has ONE season in which he stayed healthy enough to make it to the playoffs. That' means everything has to come together in a perfect storm that one time; one injury, one bad break, one labor dispute, and you've lost your entire championship window.

The other factor about Walton is that he was a player that demanded max money from both the Blazers and the Clippers for about 8 years. Except for that one year, that means you've tied up max money in Greg Oden in terms of winning a ring.

It's not even clear that his peak is superior to David Robinson's. Robinson has better numbers and an equivalent defensive rep.

[ElGee]

To the Walton voters:

Do you realize he only played 14447 minutes in his entire nba career (regular season + playoffs)? David Robinson played almost 3 times as many minutes and Karl Malone played more than 4 times as many. Walton had exactly ONE season between ages 24-29 (the age range of most players' prime) where he was healthy for the playoffs! He played over 2000 minutes (rs + playoffs) exactly once in his career! What he actually did is probably close to his ceiling (one title as the man, one title as a bench player), and that took some serious strokes of luck.

I understand why people would disagree, but to me, this list should be "who was the best basketball player?", and how long you played has nothing to do with how good a basketball player you actually were.

Robinson would be my runoff vote.

If we were to do a project about peaks again, we'd have to get a lot of stuff done ahead of time- mostly determining what year was each player's peak. It might also make life easier if we broke things down by position instead of trying to compare the impact of guards to centers, especially concerning older guys whom we have a lot less film and data on.

Quoting you and I realize others have a similar thought though...

How do you determine who the best basketball player was in a single game? Does it matter if one guy played 5 great minutes and another 40 solid minutes? What about best player in a series? Reggie Miller or Steve Smith in 1996?

[Notanoob]

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I totally understand why it's weird to go by this, but I decided to go with peak play for a few reasons.

Compare the cases of Jordan vs. Kareem to that of Karl vs. Chuck.

The general consensus would have Jordan over Kareem and Karl ahead of Chuck, but the reasoning is opposite for both.

Both Jordan and Chuck had incredible peaks but played less than they really should have- Jordan because he wanted to play baseball, Chuck because he wanted to party. Both Karl and Kareem were excellent players but are considered to have inferior peaks to Jordan and Chuck. However, Jordan is consistently ahead of Kareem and Karl is consistently ahead of Chuck. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of people don't have this down to a science- I believe that for the most part, Jordan and Karl go ahead of Kareem and Chuck because it "feels right" ie not for objective, consistent reasons, and I don't trust myself to evaluate players in a consistent, objective fashion when it comes to this. If I'm doing total career value I'll have Stockton well ahead of guys who are better players than him and Kareem ahead of Jordan and it'll feel wrong, while just going by peaks I'll have Walton way ahead of where it feels 'right' to place him, same with guys like Durant or McGrady.

The second case that helped my decision was the comparison between Duncan and KG. Duncan has the longevity advantage on KG- while both have been playing forever, KG is practically washed-up, just a small-minutes defensive roll player. Duncan is still going to give us probably two more seasons as a very solid starting PF on a contender. Yet I don't feel that it's fair to put Duncan to have the longevity advantage when both are total iron men, just because Duncan has had a smaller load to carry and has had his minutes managed, while KG has had to do a lot more work on garbage. It's similar to rating players on team success-it's really not fair to judge a player based on what his management is doing.

So I decided that the most logical way to rank these players and still be objective and consistent would be to do it by peaks and not by longevity.

[HeartBreakKid]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I would draft him in an all time draft high as I believe in BPA, and you are pretty much passive-aggressively saying that the people who voted for Walton are wrong.

[D Nice]

Interesting take on that Ronny. I guess you side with Dirk over KG then as well? Because just like Robinson more of his worth stems from the defensive side, but like David in the first half of his career he was asked to carry the load offensively and often failed to so in the postseason and when he matched Dirk, Dirk dominated him.

I think the forum was able to take a wider view of KG and thus he ended up pretty high. Im curious if you think that was a mistake or why you don't want to look broader at Admiral?

And I only compared their RS H2H numbers to see how they compared since you were stressing the playoff match so much. If I look at their entire RS performance, Admiral's peak and prime pretty clearly exceed that of Malone. He compares very favorably offensively despite that being the worse aspect of his game and dominates what Malone brings defensively.

I hate having to be an Admiral apologist here when Im not yet sure I'd take him over Malone, but Im confused a little by what you are emphazing in this particular comparison. But I have lots of respect for you so Im engaging in an attempt to better understand it.

It really isn't all that similar though. Garnett and Dirk have functionally equivalent longevity, and Garnett, while flawed, is not as flawed as D-Rob as an offensive hub for reasons that have been posted with such frequency (in this thread and especially others) that they do not bear repeating. Also unlike Dirk Malone is a very good defender, one of the best at his era for his position, while Dirk would merely measure out as "above average," which isn't a knock, but recognition of what Malone was able to accomplish on that end of the floor.

Conversely Malone's career has literally almost 2x the longevity value D-Rob's does. And while (unlike Dirk) Karl has his post-season offensive failings, they aren't as pronounced or significant as David's (again a point that has been covered ad-naseum).

And answering your question, yes, Garnett went too high, but only by 1 or 2 spots IMO (have him #13 and Dirk #14).

It's a very very different comparison outside of the fact that, head-to-head, the one perceived as the "ofensive" guy clearly got the better of the defense-first player. I find Nash/Stockton ~ Barkley/Malone to be much more similar comparison.

I'm also getting super-tired of the "this guy's primary value came from offense, this guy's primary value came from defense." There is no point to these distinctions when you need to turn around and aggregate them to come to a conclusion about an individual player's value. It's a complete disservice, for example, to KG to refer to him as a "primarily defense guy" or Jordan as "offense-first guy" when they were absolutely terrific on the other end of the floor as well. It's a way of compartmentalizing, and I get it, but people do it and develop a hyper-focus on the end of the floor they believe a guy derives his "primary value" from when this should already be taken into account and balanced. Instead, people seem to want to throw away one end of the floor entirely unless it's a player like Scottie Pippen or Jason Kidd or Gary Payton, who are perceived as having almost symmetrical value on offense & defense.

[trex_8063]

Well this is getting redundant, but I once again cast my vote for Karl Malone.

Impressive combo of high peak, tier 1 longevity, ironman durability and consistency.

#2 all-time in career rs points.
#6 all-time in career playoff points.
#6 all-time in career rs rebounds.
#6 all-time in career playoff rebounds.
#10 all-time in career rs steals.
#13 all-time in career playoff steals.
#3 all-time in career rs WS.
#13 all-time in career playoff WS.
The ONLY player in NBA history with 30,000+ pts, 10,000+ reb, 5,000+ ast, and 2,000+ stl.
The ONLY player in NBA history with 4,500+ pts, 2,000+ reb, 600+ ast, and 250+ steals in the playoffs.
#15 all-time in career rs PER (despite monster 37.2 career mpg avg---that mpg avg is #25 all-time, #10 of all players to come into the league since the merger----and this in spite of a even more monster 19-year career).
Best player on team that twice made the finals, FIVE times made as far as conference finals (plus one other year as a starter/role player on a team that made the finals).
#11 in RealGM PoY shares........

Really doesn't seem like too much to ask to get this guy voted in by #17.

[john248]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I would draft him in an all time draft high as I believe in BPA, and you are pretty much passive-aggressively saying that the people who voted for Walton are wrong.

That's interesting. Basically if you're drafting for a franchise, you'll roll with Walton's single season versus multiple seasons another player can give you. Just curious, will you be voting for someone like Penny Hardaway soon?

[Notanoob]

Quoting you and I realize others have a similar thought though...

How do you determine who the best basketball player was in a single game? Does it matter if one guy played 5 great minutes and another 40 solid minutes? What about best player in a series? Reggie Miller or Steve Smith in 1996?

I see where you're going with this- a guy who couldn't play more than 5 minutes isn't going to be the better player in an individual game than a guy who plays 40. But it's really down to how you're defining best.

If on the 09 Cavs LeBron pulls a hammy 5 minutes in and Mo Williams carries the team to a victory with some hot shooting while playing 40+ minutes, Mo Williams won them the game, but you wouldn't tell me that Mo Williams was a better basketball player than LeBron James.

[drza]

David Robinson and Karl Malone: impact

I'm coming to the realization that I may just not have time to finish my long Robinson vs Karl Malone analysis before tomorrow's deadline. Life has interfered tonight, and I've got work tomorrow. But there are still some things that I've been thinking about while reading arguments and working on this.

Here's one of my thoughts: the regular season counts too.

So many of the arguments against Robinson are tied to his postseason struggles, and for good reason. If Robinson is your best player, and you legitimately believe that his playing style does not allow him to have reliable superstar impact in the postseason, then that is worthy of some degree of censure. This has been a big reason (along with longevity) that Robinson has slid this far. For example, I suspect that Robinson in the regular season may have had more impact than Hakeem Olajuwon. But Hakeem is enough better as a postseason performer (in general, not just head-to-head) that I can understand why he gets the nod over Robinson in historical rankings.

But even with that said, Robinson's regular season impact should still be apportioned some amount of credit. It's not ONLY in the postseason that a player's contributions are valuable. RonnyMac's and Chuck Texas' exchange earlier in this thread was interesting. RonnyMac's stance seemed to be that since Malone seemed to outplay Robinson head-to-head in their primes, this was an indication that Malone was the better player at their primes. I thought Chuck's rebuttal had some value, though, in suggesting that perhaps Karl Malone and Hakeem were just bad postseason match-ups for Robinson. That a player can be better overall even if they have trouble in certain match-ups.

That's a counter-intuitive take in most NBA comparisons, especially in the post-Jordan era. The greatest players of the late 80s (led by Magic and Bird) were known more for team accomplishments. But Jordan was the greatest individual talent that the game had seen at least since Wilt, possibly ever. He played a style that my coaches had always taught me was ball-hogging. But he had immense individual determination, immense individual skill, and immense ego...and he seemingly FORCED the game to fall into line. He personally destroyed all competitors, and in doing so made himself a legend. His playing career almost played out like a gunslinger Western movie, where Clint Eastwood comes in and proves he's the best man by killing everyone lined up in front of him. And after Jordan was done, the entire basketball-playing and watching world seemed to want to be like Mike. As though that style is the only (or even the best) way to be great/the best.

That was a tangent, but it relates to why I think Chuck had a point. Because I don't think that you have to necessarily beat your 1-on-1 assignment to be having a big impact. I think that it certainly counts against Robinson that he could seemingly be beaten by individual peer competitors to such a large degree that it seemingly swung some playoff series. But I don't necessarily believe that this has to mean that those particular players were better.

Bring it back to Robinson and Karl Malone. We've talked about how Malone was a better offensive player than Robinson as he developed his passing/initiating/jumper abilities. That these things allowed Karl to continue to have bigger offensive impacts and carry his teams offensively more in the postseason, even when Malone's own shot wasn't falling. But if this is true, and I believe that it is, then that suggests that Malone's peak as a contributor really was during that late-90s run when he won a couple of MVPs and led his team to two Finals trips against the Bulls.

But. If that really is his peak, then that would suggest that the 1998 RAPM studies should represent some of the best that we would ever have seen from Karl Malone even if we had RAPM studies for the previous 15 years. Of course, we can't KNOW that. But I do strongly suspect that. As I've laid out before, offensive RAPM studies tend to be much kinder to offense initiator/distributors and jumper/space-creating bigs than to bigs that are primary finishers. And frankly, this fits my eye test...I believe that Malone WAS better in '97 and '98 than he was earlier in his career.

On the other hand, there's Robinson. By 1998, Robinson was focusing more on his defensive role while subsuming his offensive game. His minutes and role do have a lot of similarities to post-championship, Celtics Garnett. And like that version of Garnett, Robinson showed that he could maintain an elite overall impact almost purely with his defense. However, also like Garnett, Robinson showed much more ability and impact while in his prime. Someone (ShutUpAndJam?) earlier in this thread laid out some of the obvious monster impact Robinson was having in his career. Yeah, Robinson wasn't the ONLY new change in a Spurs team going from 20-something wins in '89 to 56 wins in '90...but he was the biggest change. Robinson's injury at the end of 1992 leading the Spurs to drop from about a +5 SRS to about a -5 SRS? The Robinson injury in 1997 helping turn a team winning in the mid-50s into a cellar dwellar (ok, some of it might have been tanking, but the difference was chasm-like).

In the late 90s next to Duncan, Robinson was putting up overall RAPM scores equivalent to Malone's '98 RAPM. But the thing is, I see almost NO way that these are the best RAPM scores that Robinson would have ever produced if we had the data. Again speculation, but again I feel that it's justified. Looking at the situations, I wouldn't be surprised at all if peak Robinson's RAPM scores were up in the stratosphere with some of the best values that we've seen.

So, where does that leave them? Well, if Robinson really did have SIGNIFICANTLY more impact than Malone at their peaks...which I suspect that he did. Then even before we get to their perceived postseason performance, I would argue that Robinson was providing a lift to his team on an order that the Mailman couldn't replicate.

I think about some of the work that ElGee has done with estimating championship probabilities. Ironically, this work leads ElGee to promote Malone as more valuable than Robinson for their careers (which isn't where I'm going at the moment). But another one of ElGee's logic trains is that we can measure how much lift a player has in a poor situation...and we can also look at how much they can lift an already good team. And that while it's cool for a player to be able to lift a bad team to solid, that it's more valuable for a player to be able to lift a good team to elite.

In this case, though, I wonder if Robinson isn't better at both. He demonstrated in the early/mid-90s that he could take an average supporting cast and put them into consistent regular season contention with some postseaosn success as well. And whatever you think of Robinson's postseason efforts, most would admit that it would be unlikley to see pretty much anyone winning titles with those casts. As I laid out in the impact discussion above, I suspect that Robinson's impact was significantly larger in this role than any that Malone showed in his career.

However, on the other end of the spectrum. Robinson was able to modify his game to also provide an elite amount of list to a contending team with the late-90s/early 00s Spurs. And here's where skill-set works to Robinson's advantage in this comp. Because while Malone (especially later in his career) may have been a better offensive player than Robinson, and capable of elite offensive impact...his offensive skillset did not (IMO) scale upwards to provide similar impact on better offensive teams. Now let me be clear...I'm not saying that Malone wouldn't be extremely valuable on a team featuring Magic Johnson or LeBron James. What I'm saying is, that as you ramp up the offensive abilities of the rest of the team, the relative amount of lift that Karl could provide with his skillset diminishes. On the other hand, a team full of offense would still allow Robinson's Malone-level impact with his defense. No matter how it's built, if a team were to be "good" without Robinson, his game likely allows him to be able to provide his full measure of impact to help make that "good" team elite.


Bottom line
Even if Malone performed better than Robinson in their postseason match-ups...even if Malone's prime was clearly much longer than Robinson's. If I'm convinced that Robinson was the higher impact player in actuality, that he's better able to lift a poor team to good, AND that he's the better player to lift a good cast to great then I'm still hard-pressed to rank Malone higher on this list. I'm still reading, I'm still open to changing my mind. But right now, this is where I'm at.

[magicmerl]

10 Karl Malone -- FJS, Doctor MJ, rich316, penbeast0, ronnymac2, batmana, PCProductions, lukekarts, magicmerl, trex_8063
6 Moses Malone -- JordansBulls, Warspite, GC Pantalones, basketballefan, DQuinn1575, DannyNoonan1221
4 David Robinson -- shutupandjam, Owly, fpliii, lorak
2 Bill Walton -- HeartBreakKid, Notanoob
1 Steve Nash -- colts18
1 Charles Barkley -- ShaqAttack

Up to post #150

[Jim Naismith]

-The Moses Malone peak things continues to weird me out. It's not like it's some mystery whether people though peak Moses was better than peak Kareem, Bird, or Magic. He's always been considered weaker by most. Hence the whole "domination" argument for Moses just dies right from the start.

I'm not saying Moses is better than peak versions of Kareem, Bird, or Magic. I'm saying for two years Moses was better than prime (top-5) versions of these players.

Moses is in the conversation for #1 from 1979-83, a span where he won 3 MVPs. In 1982, he was the near-unanimous #1. In 1983, he was the unanimous #1.

Karl Malone was never #1 in the league. David Robinson was never #1 in the league.

The relevant comparison is not Moses against Kareem, Bird, Magic.

The relevant comparison is Moses against Karl Malone and David Robinson.

If domination is the benchmark, Moses wins the comparison.

[ElGee]

So I voted for Malone, but seeing someone bring up Malone vs Stockton reminds me that I'd love to see discussion along these lines.

As someone was arguing, if you take RAPM by face value, Stockton seems like he should rank higher than Malone, which is a pretty interesting acid test for just how far you take the results.

The fundamental issue with this as I see is Stockton was playing reduced minutes, which in general means he's probably getting an advantage of playing when it best suits him. But what exactly does that mean? If part of what we're talking about is that he basically always got to play with Malone and hence his role is basically defined in terms of how nicely he can play with Malone compared to other guys, then clearly I think Malone should be ranked higher. It's not proof that Stockton couldn't do great things without Malone, but there's clearly no basis for saying that all perception of the time giving Malone the MVP candidacy was off.

On the other hand, if we can see data showing that Stockton isn't showing any particular dependency on Malone in terms of team success, that starts giving us grounds to swing the comparison.

Thoughts of others?

Well I've said earlier in this project that people need to realize what RAPM is actually "saying." It does not say Collison and Johnson are among the best players in the world. It also does not say they are imparting the most impact. It says that they are very impactful in their given role...which is for a short period of time, i.e. is specialized.

This really stands out to me when it comes to players like old Stockton, old Robinson, old Garnett, etc. It's not that I don't think they were good, it's just that even if the stat is "accurate" it still only says what these players were able to do in the right spots. This not only includes minute allocation for their rest/energy but also the lineup-roles they have. RAPM tries to detect when you have good/bad teammates, but it doesn't know if you only get put out there in lineups that cater to your strengths.

This really isn't an issue at all when a player is forced to play with a diversity of lineups, i.e. play big minutes. But when you get into Stockton's 27-29 mpg territory, I see the results as much more specialized. An indicator of value, no doubt, but of overall goodness? I don't see how the metric is measuring that given the circumstances. I'd say the same thing about Robinson to a degree.

Stockton interests me on a psychological level more than anything. He was revered but never crowned. Like Havlicek before him. Or Ripken in baseball. Everyone "respected" him and "the way he played," but no one really ever thought he was a high-peak guy. Then Nash came along, and from an "eye test" point of view I just kept saying "Stockton on Steroids. Stockton on Steroids." And it really almost literally was taking Stockton's mastery of the pick and roll and making it look almost passive. Nash would just look to burry defenses on every play.

In Stockton, we're talking about a player who scored over 30 points 11 times in his prime (34-point best) out of 880 games. That's 1.2% of the time. This is someone in the 14-15 pts/36 range. He took over 20 true shot attempts in a game 21 times in that period (2.4% of games).

What's worse is what happens in the playoffs. He had six games with over 20 TSA (4.7% of PS games). Against sub-103 defenses in the playoffs, he averaged 12.7 pts/36, 8.5 sat/36 2.7 tov/36 on 52.8% TS. This is a drop from 14.4 pts/10.5 ast on 61.5% TS in the regular season. His sub-105 numbers show the same trend: in 87 games, 13.5 pts/36, 10.2 ast/36 on 57% TS, down 5% from the RS along with a 2 point drop in volume.

This was someone who not only failed to ramp up his game, but his absolute metrics make him look more pedestrian than all-nba (or all-timer). This is a major problem for me, not because it exists on paper, but precisely because it reinforces what I saw when I re-watched all those Jazz games a few years ago -- where the heck was John Stockton?? That Utah's offenses were so successful in the postseason says borderline wondrous things to Malone for me since he was the anchor, the rock, the constant, etc. I understand his variance (stemming from jump-shooting), but Michael and Kobe had variance. If I were less concerned with scaling (portability), I'd probably have Malone bordering on top-5.

Nash, on the other hand, only played 67 PS games from 05-10 in Phoenix. 43 of them were against sub-105s. (!) You know what happened in those game? His scoring spiked. 19.2 pts/36 on 60.2% TS. UP from the RS of 17.6/10.6 62.5% TS.

Hold on I nearly fainted. Didn't realize it was that impressive until I hit "calculate." Never seen that before.

OK I've regained consciousness. The clutch numbers reflect all this as well. It's not a "change" in their games, but a *reflection* of their games -- Nash was a great offensive player because of the pressure of his own scoring (from shooting) combined with his GOAT-level reads and quick passes. Defending him off the PnR was a nightmare. Stockton was excellent, but more passive, not as good of a shooter, not as big and crafty in finishing and while a great passer, i don't think he was quite at Nash's Manning-level of defense-reading.

Stockton's 5+5 clutch numbers:
1997: 19.6% USG | 21.6% Pts% | 51.7 ast%
1998: 26.3% USG | 26.4% pts % | 50.0% ast%
1999: 20.6% USG | 15.7% pts% | 60.9% ast%
2000: 23.5% USG | 24.7% pts% | 58.3% ast%

Nash's 5+5 clutch numbers:
2005: 30.8% USG | 28.3% pts% | 68.6% ast%
2006: 30.6% USG | 32.7% pts% | 63.9% ast%
2007: 28.6% USG | 31.5% pts% | 55.3% ast%
2008: 31.3% USG | 34.3% pts% | 61.0% ast%

Peaking in 2010 at 35.3% USG, 36.2% pts% and 63.9% ast%. All told, their classic clutch stat lines look like this:

Nash 05-10: 27.2 pts/36 | 64.1% TS | | 54.1% eFG% | 9.7 ast/36 (856 min)
Stock 97-00: 18.3 pts/36 | 60.6% TS | 47.9% eFG% | 9.7 ast/36 (538 min)

Nash went from an 17.3/36 scorer to a 27.2/36 scorer -- a 57% improvement -- while increasing efficiency. Stockton jumped from 14.4 pts/36 to 18.3 -- a 27% scoring jump -- on a 1.1% drop in efficiency. Let's put Nash's scoring in perspective here: there have been 22 player-seasons in NBA history at 27 pts/36 and over 54% eFG%. It's been done by 12 men. (Shaq, Dantley, King, Kareem, K. Malone, Durant, Kiki, Bird, Jordan, Walter Davis and Gervin). From 03-11 Dirk was 30 pts/36 at 47% eFG% in the clutch.

And I've heard people suggest confusion as to why Nash should be heralded for situational volume scoring while others aren't (necessarily). It's simple -- there's nothing situational about the PRESSURE Nash applies on the defense -- it's constant, he just balances his own shots with his teammates. He COULD be a volume scorer if he wanted to, the way some lead guards play by default (from the Francis/Marbury type to guys like Wade and even LeBron), but Nash senses higher efficiency elsewhere and perceives passing as the best option. Hard to argue with the GOAT-level offensive results. When the passing is choked off and the option sub-optimal -- due to defensive adjustment, teammate changes, or simply Nash just hedging his bets and simplifying the game by calling his own number more -- he is still capable of volume scoring well because he's awlays been capable of scoring well. Which is exactly what makes him so different from John Stockton. Similar, but steroids make a huge different.

Full circle to Malone -- Karl was the guy who played more of the Nash role I just described. When the going got tough, Utah went to Malone a lot. Sometimes Karl passed, but he wasn't the creator Nash was. He was a phenomenal passer, and an excellent scorer. There are probably only a handful of players in history who could have performed better against that kind of stress/load he faced annually in the playoffs. Meanwhile, Stockton passed and passed and essentially wilted against better defenses at the most inopportune times. And I still think Stockton's good, but there's a sizable gap between him and Malone.

[ElGee]

Quoting you and I realize others have a similar thought though...

How do you determine who the best basketball player was in a single game? Does it matter if one guy played 5 great minutes and another 40 solid minutes? What about best player in a series? Reggie Miller or Steve Smith in 1996?

I see where you're going with this- a guy who couldn't play more than 5 minutes isn't going to be the better player in an individual game than a guy who plays 40. But it's really down to how you're defining best.

If on the 09 Cavs LeBron pulls a hammy 5 minutes in and Mo Williams carries the team to a victory with some hot shooting while playing 40+ minutes, Mo Williams won them the game, but you wouldn't tell me that Mo Williams was a better basketball player than LeBron James.

If they only played that one game? Yes, based on the injury, I would absolutely say that. West is a good example, or Penny or Hill even -- if we remove injuries, they shoot way way up. Injuries matter for very practical reasons in athletics...

What you're getting at, I THINK, is why we use the word "peak.'

[lorak]

So I voted for Malone, but seeing someone bring up Malone vs Stockton reminds me that I'd love to see discussion along these lines.

As someone was arguing, if you take RAPM by face value, Stockton seems like he should rank higher than Malone, which is a pretty interesting acid test for just how far you take the results.

The fundamental issue with this as I see is Stockton was playing reduced minutes, which in general means he's probably getting an advantage of playing when it best suits him. But what exactly does that mean? If part of what we're talking about is that he basically always got to play with Malone and hence his role is basically defined in terms of how nicely he can play with Malone compared to other guys, then clearly I think Malone should be ranked higher. It's not proof that Stockton couldn't do great things without Malone, but there's clearly no basis for saying that all perception of the time giving Malone the MVP candidacy was off.

On the other hand, if we can see data showing that Stockton isn't showing any particular dependency on Malone in terms of team success, that starts giving us grounds to swing the comparison.

1. We have RAPM for Stockton from 1997 to 2003. Over that period of time he averaged 30.3 MPG in regular season and 33.5 in the playoffs. So that's definietly not some role player like Collison.

2. It's not like only RAPM says that Stockton was great after 1996. His WS/48 until 1997 was 0.208 and 0.211 for the rest of his career (also 0.155 vs 0.168 in playoffs - yes, big drop off, but still better than Malone).

3. Look at how often old Stockton assisted Malone - just as often as prime Nash assisted Amare. That says a lot about how important John was even at the end of his career.

Stockton's 5+5 clutch numbers:
1997: 19.6% USG | 21.6% Pts% | 51.7 ast%
1998: 26.3% USG | 26.4% pts % | 50.0% ast%
1999: 20.6% USG | 15.7% pts% | 60.9% ast%
2000: 23.5% USG | 24.7% pts% | 58.3% ast%

Nash's 5+5 clutch numbers:
2005: 30.8% USG | 28.3% pts% | 68.6% ast%
2006: 30.6% USG | 32.7% pts% | 63.9% ast%
2007: 28.6% USG | 31.5% pts% | 55.3% ast%
2008: 31.3% USG | 34.3% pts% | 61.0% ast%

Yeah, lets compare past prime Stockton's numbers from defensive oriented era to prime Nash's numbers from pro (especially for perimeter players) offensive era... great job ElGee! (and BTW, why are you talking about Nash vs Stockton, when the comparison is Malone vs Stockton? And it's not the first time you avoid direct answer to question about Malone and Stockton. Unless of course that prime Malone was better clutch scorer than past prime Stockton is enough to rank Karl higher?)

Here are their clutch numbers (all per 100 possessions) from the same age (so still without era adjustment, but at least comparison of the same stages of their careers):

Code: Select all

PLAYER   MIN   AST   TOV   PTS   +/-   TS%   TSA
JS 97-'01   51,5   13,9   3,4   27,1   20,2   0,626   21,6
SN '09-'13   50,0   11,9   4,1   31,4   -0,9   0,642   24,5


So Nash looks like more active scorer, but not by much, especially considering playmaking and that Stockton played with another high USG player, while Nash didn't. That's also the thing people often forget - that looking at role and context is important and for example in this case Stockton was limited by Sloan. If you don't believe me, then go watch some pre Sloan (or from his first season, when his system wasn't implemented yet) Jazz games and compare them with mid 90s. Stockton simply didn't have the same luck as Nash with D'Antoni giving him freedom and also to some extent new rules. Really, imagine Nash stayed in Dallas and rules never changed. He would be literally THE SAME player as he was in reality after 2004, but his production would be smaller because of factors outside of his control.

PS
To clarify - I rank Nash over Stockton, but also both of them over Malone.

[Doctor MJ]

Damn. Pretty devastating post by ElGee there. Snapped my head around.

[Doctor MJ]

-The Moses Malone peak things continues to weird me out. It's not like it's some mystery whether people though peak Moses was better than peak Kareem, Bird, or Magic. He's always been considered weaker by most. Hence the whole "domination" argument for Moses just dies right from the start.

I'm not saying Moses is better than peak versions of Kareem, Bird, or Magic. I'm saying for two years Moses was better than prime (top-5) versions of these players.

Moses is in the conversation for #1 from 1979-83, a span where he won 3 MVPs. In 1982, he was the near-unanimous #1. In 1983, he was the unanimous #1.

Karl Malone was never #1 in the league. David Robinson was never #1 in the league.

The relevant comparison is not Moses against Kareem, Bird, Magic.

The relevant comparison is Moses against Karl Malone and David Robinson.

If domination is the benchmark, Moses wins the comparison.

Oh believe me I completely get that the relevant comparison is Moses vs Karl and Robinson, that's the point. The domination metric only makes sense to use after you've adjusted for competition, which I demonstrate by showing how his domination would fall off if Kareem etc just peaked at different times. That hypothetical should have no effect on a comparison with guys who played a decade later, but so far as I can tell it absolutely would be your method.

To be clear "adjusting for competition" here would really about Kareem & company relating to Moses, it would be about looking at guys Robinson & Malone went up against.

So the question: Who was #1 in their peak years who was also worse than Moses in your book?

[Doctor MJ]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I would draft him in an all time draft high as I believe in BPA, and you are pretty much passive-aggressively saying that the people who voted for Walton are wrong.

Passive aggressively? I really can't win. You're basically knocking me for being too polite when telling people they are wrong, but it's not like people like it when I outright say such things.

Look, I'm saying it like I'm saying it because I want people to be sure they really think this stuff through. As I say that, that's going to piss some people off too. I don't know what to say. This is the type of stuff that when I say it in real life, people listen to me. I go on here on the internet and some people just chafe infinitely at any implication I make that I know better than someone else. It's weird because this whole place is full of opinion, and the nature of that is that you always think your opinion is right and the other guy's is wrong. People don't consider it arrogant to have an opinion, but dare to wade into someone's thought process and that's totally different.

Let's step through this here, and maybe you'll point out where your set of assumptions differ from mine in a way that makes sense to me. Here's how I see it:

You're a GM who is fortunate enough have a prescient assistant GM who saw into the future and knows how good each player would prove to be along with how healthy they were. You grill him about Bill Walton:

You: So is Walton as good as advertised?
As't: Absolutely.
You: Who is he like?
As't: Bill Russell is the best comparison.
You: Great, how's his longevity?
As't: Um, problematic.
You: Okay, how many healthy years can I get from him?
As't: Define healthy?
You: Jeez. Well how many years playing 3000 minutes does he have?
As't: One.
You: Holy crap! What about if we include playoff minutes?
As't: Oh sorry, that was including playoff minutes.
You: Oh man. Okay, no playoff minutes, how many years 2000 minutes?
As't: Still just one.
You: Holy cow. Alright, what was the name of the other center we were considering who has longevity issues?
As't: David Robinson.
You: How many 2000+ minute years did he have again?
As't: Eleven.

Are you seriously telling me that your next response in this conversation is to ask more questions about Walton vs Robinson? How can there be any question that Robinson's going to give you more over a career than Walton?

Again, I'm not saying there's a "wrong" answer here in the sense that I'm some authority figure. I'm just another poster in this, and one who grants a lot of leeway in terms of peak vs longevity. I'll also add: Because the NBA did a 50 Greatest thing back in the '90s and included Walton there's long been a tendency to include Walton in the Top 50 here. While the "who would you draft" criteria is a powerful one to me, if I got a response from someone talking about their own personal standards for a player's immortality, I'd have to at a certain point back off and say to each their own.

But if you're truly thinking along the lines of who you'd draft based on what they actually did out there, Walton's injuries are a really big deal.