penbeast0 wrote:Not sure I understand your point. Mine was that Frazier was the most efficient guard of his day much the way Oscar and West were in the 60s (though not to the same degree). Relative to the other guards of his time, he was as efficient as Nash relative to the other guards of his day, or very close.
Doc addressed this already, but it bears reiteration that relative efficiency isn't necessarily the same in that era, the meaning isn't as substantive as you attempt to portray here.
Frazier's efficiency was similar to a modern guard, but you'd have to project that his efficiency would rise in order to continue that separation, which isn't terribly likely.
Meantime, from 70-74, the league average TS% was 51.1, 50.0, 50.4, 49.8 and 50.3.
From 05-10, the league average was 53.0, 53.5, 54.1, 54.0, 54.5 and 54.3.
70-74 Frazier: 57.5, 55.6, 57.6, 53.4, 51.9 (and never higher than 53.5% thereafter).
05-10 Nash: 60.6, 63.2 (led league), 65.4 (led league), 64.1, 61.5, 61.5 (with three more seasons of 60%+ thereafter).
It behooves one to mention that Nash's pre-05 TS% is still 58.0%, higher if you cut out his lockout-shortened 99 season, where he had an outlier down season.
Also of relevance? Nash's 05-10 2FG% was 54.1%. Frazier's 70-74 FG% (the same, since there were no 3s) was 49.6%. That's the other thing people forget about Nash, is that he was brutally efficient under the arc.
To whit, if you removed Nash's 3pt shooting from 05-10, his TS% would STILL be 56.3% because of his highly-efficient two-point shooting, which helps invalidate the notion that he'd struggle a lot to have huge efficiency in the earlier eras of the NBA. It certainly wouldn't be the SAME as it is now because of the absence of the 3, but he'd still be basically the most efficient guard in the league or near to it regardless. He never made his bones on free throw volume or on volume of shots around the rim, so even in the older styles of play, he'd still kill it.
Frazier for his day was as efficient as Nash for his -- and most likely as efficient or more than Nash would be in Frazier's day
So like I've already shown, that last chunk is probably not true, since we've now shown Nash's efficiency without the 3 to be basically the same as Frazier's 4-year peak efficiency, and not bolstered by anything which might disappear in the 70s, like FTR.
Meantime, if you look at efficiency relative to league average, well...
Frazier from 70-74 was at +6.4, +5.6, +7.2, +3.6 and +1.6 TS% relative to league average. You can't really make any strong comments about his ability to perform as league average rose, because it stayed reasonably static during that phase of his career and then beyond that point, he declined precipitously overall due to health issues. You do see a sharply abbreviated prime in terms of scoring efficiency, however, which is itself something of a concern.
Now, Nash, 05-10: +7.6, +9.7, +11.3, +10.1, +7.0, +7.2
There is indeed a separation. First of all, there's the consistency across a longer period of time: Nash's low-end deviation from league average efficiency is roughly equivalent to Frazier's peak, and Steve's peak was considerably higher. His 3-year peak assassinates Frazier's efficiency relative to his peers, and this is even if we don't bother considering the peer separation discussion Doc raised earlier, when he talked about how many players were within a given range compared to Frazier's efficiency versus Nash's.
So you look at that, you look at his playmaking, you look at his versatility as an offensive weapon and his efficiency even before his break-out time with the Suns... it's a package deal that tells the same story: Nash was a lot better on offense than Frazier.
Keep in mind that even with the FG% depression from 3pt volume, Nash's 05-10 FG% is still 51.0%, which is roughly the same as the best years Frazier has in his peak range from 70-74.
Food for thought. Frazier actually has a +0.9% TS INCREASE in the playoffs from 70-74, moving from 55.1% to 56.0%, whereas Nash drops from 62.8% to 60.4%, so can chew on that for a while as a point of disclosure, but you're still talking about a player who was massively deviating from league average efficiency even after said drop-off.
This is an interesting debate for me. I've been watching all of the Frazier video that I can find trying to decide what I feel is appropriate weight for his defensive efficacy compared to Nash's thundering offensive dominance. What I've mostly come away with is the notion that he was a very good, legit All-D level defender but not as disruptive as much of his narrative push has often claimed. And that makes sense, because it's bloody difficult to do that as a primarily-man-oriented defender out on the perimeter, particularly in a league where the guy he was guarding typically wasn't the focus of the offense. I've also come away with a very different appreciation for Willis Reed's man defense and the utility of a stretch big for limiting the defensive value of a stay-home rim protector.
I'd lean away from Jim Naismith's recent point of comparison for Frazier in terms of Billups, because I think Frazier's D was actually better and his offense was more consistent and still very efficient. Frazier was an extremely adept guard and I fully believe that his statistical footprint was lessened due to the system he played in. Hell, the Knicks specifically gameplanned for him NOT to score in the 70 playoffs until the last game of the Finals, right? In any case, I think it's important to appreciate him beyond that and over the past two or three years (and in no small part due to penbeast's ongoing awareness campaign!), I've grown to appreciate him a little more than I used to. Same with Reed, actually.
But here, I definitely value the offensive separation as greater than the value of the defensive separation. Frazier for me is probably not far behind, and definitely ahead of a guy like Kidd. Not sure where to rank him with respect to Hondo yet.
I also think that it's hard to really evaluate the utility of Frazier's defensive contributions outside of the scope of Reed's presence behind him. Playing good ball denial on the off-guard is great, but not defensive anchor-level stuff, and he did roam and gamble like a lot of other strong defensive guards I've seen (including, at times, MJ and Kobe). That style is good, but it's hardly the sort of disruptive presence you'd look to for a defensive anchor. It's the kind of stuff Magic used to do while Nixon was on the team, for example, and no one ever called him a defensive marvel even then (though obviously Frazier was better in many other regards on D than was Magic). I get that he pressed a lot, and that's good too: Frazier was capable of placing a great deal of defensive pressure on the opposition defense. It helped that he had less offensive responsibility than some of the high-usage guards we like to discuss so much, but that's more secondary a concern here. From what I've seen of him, I see an All-D guard, but not someone who totally took teams out of their offensive gameplan. I saw the KNICKS do that as a team, but that was a combined effort with the whole squad, not the work of one guy, and certainly not enough (IMHO) to overcome the fairly significant advantages Nash has on offense.
