RGM Top 100 Vote Thread - #2

[tclg]

I didnt sign up, But I would like to participate, I think I would go with Kareem. Some of the teams that he was on in the 70's were terrible besides him. His Gaurds barely contributed and in the playoffs teams just focused in on him. The guy has a ridiculous amount of MVP awards. His scoring rebounding and defense in combination are what puts him ahead of B.R. for me. His amazing longevity is pretty astounding as well. He might have been mechanical but the guy was just ridiculously efficient. He ran the floor, He basically did everything you could want out of a Center. And he dominated from day 1.

Nominate Moses Malone. To me the guy was just a force when he was at his peak He took out a lot of great teams

[Doctor MJ]

Could I get a link to the stats that state the greatness of this Celtics defense. Because the stats that I have available (points allowed per game and opponents FG%) show that Celtics team be winning championships with the best offense in the league some years and the best defense in others.

Hmm, I can give you a few things to look at:

1) Not sure where you're seeing opponents FG%, but b-r.com has team's own FG%. You'll find that the Russell Celtics never led the league in it, and often had the worst in the league. Actual points allowed isn't too useful because it doesn't tell us how many possessions were involved. (And yes, the Celtics were known for playing fast)

2) Here's a b-r blog post about the players who played on the best defenses in history. You'll notice it's dominated by Russell-era Celtics:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=7239

3) Also here's one for offense. You'll note that those Celtics aren't anywhere in the list. (Oscar Robertson is, who led the best offensive team of the 60s)

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=7225

4) Here's one which actually gives a list of the best season offenses and defenses of all-time. It is worth noting that they are using their own methods on all of these, and that while the Russell Celtics clog up the top 10, he actually considers the '93 Knicks the most statistically impressive defensive season.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=6205

5) You'll find ElGee's ORtg & DRtg estimates sprinkled around the RPOY project. Below is the link to his '63-64 post. I'll say up front that this is the pinnacle year for the Russell Celtics defense. So yes, other years are impressive but not as impressive.

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1052309#p24945224

For those curious using the best data that's available (ElGee's estimates in early years, b-r for later years), here are the team's with the most years as the best defense:

Russell's Celtics 12
Duncan's Spurs 4
Eaton's Jazz 4
Ewing's Knicks 3
Robinson's Spurs 3 (giving '98-99 to Robinson rather than Duncan)

[Doctor MJ]

KG's support casts are often understated. I have him at 14 overall bear in mind, but aside from 2003 and 2007, his support casts varied from "passable" to "excellent", and his results with those casts are woefully inferior to what Lebron and Duncan have been able to produce with far less help.

We're now up to 8 Laker fans so far (the next highest fanbase is 3 voters). I can't wait to hear what the excuse is going to be afterwards.

I have no idea how you make that assertion. In general, when Garnett was off the court, those teams were hideously bad.

[penbeast0]

Assuming Gilmorefan's count on page 9 and David Stern's correction (which he posted twice, sorry David) was accurate we currently have a tie

Russell 11
Kareem 11
Wilt 1

Nominations are running

Karl Malone 6
Moses Malone 6
Jerry West 4
Kevin Garnett 3
Oscar Robertson 2
LeBron James 1

tclg, Baller24 has said we are not letting people come in freely but if you want to join the project drop him a PM and he will add you for the next one, #3.

[JordansBulls]

Damn this is close.

Curious though. Let's say this ends in a tie, do we take the votes from the previous thread which was Russell = 6 and Kareem = 5 to be the tiebreaker or what?

[lorak]

Assuming Gilmorefan's count on page 9 was accurate we currently have a tie

Russell 11
Kareem 11
Wilt 1

Nominations are running

Karl Malone 6
Moses Malone 5

Moses got 6 nominations (Fencer reregistered, JordansBulls, GilmoreFan, rrravenred, TMACFORMVP and Warspite).

[Doctor MJ]

But haven't you been arguing team impact in regards to Russell? I'll give KG a pass for 2005, because the Wolves were in the hunt for a spot & played in the West. BUT, there is really no excuse for 2006 & 2007. The Wolves were in the low 30's with wins, and KG was healthy.

Think about this, the 07' Wolves had nearly the same SRS as the 07' Celtics(with an injured Pierce). (-3.16)

Without scorers around him, KG's impact is minimized.

I don't see a contradiction here. The goal is to make the best estimate for what a player contributed. It makes sense to use team results, it just doesn't make sense to utterly ignore more precise individual data because of them. I'll fully admit to not knowing as much detail as I'd like about Russell, but the information I do have says amazing things.

Re: '06 & '07. Again, Minny was utterly hideous when KG didn't play. What makes you so sure that teammates are always good enough to let a superstar have strong team results?

Re: "same SRS as the '07 Celtics". I don't get your point. The fact that the '07 Celtics could move from THAT bad, to best of the decade so quickly once they had Garnett says very good things about him.

Re: "without scorers". Obviously you're not a +/- guy, but again, the Minny teams did decently as long as KG was on the court, and hideous when the didn't. Sounds like impact to me.

And to the notion that +/- is a team rotation thing, I find that notion so silly when talking about big minute superstar. Garnett, like every other superstar, played a rotation that allowed him to play as much as possible. There's nothing mysterious about this.

And heck, Garnett played for 5 coaches that we have +/- data for, on all of them, he shows majorly impressive +/- data.

So how has Dwight led Orlando to top defenses then??? I mean his teammates have never been good defensively, yet the Magic always have a great DRtg.

And again, haven't you been praising Russell for turning around the Celtic's defense almsot singlehandly? Surely KG could have at least made Minny respectable.

I'll put it this way: The gap between the best & worst defenses in the league this year was about 12 points per 100 possessions. What's your basis for deciding how much impact an individual player can make? Mine is +/-. And it tells us that if a player has a defensive impact of 5 points per 100 possessions he's doing a fantastic job. Pretty easy to see from that there's simply a lot more to team defense than any one player can give.

Of course +/- tells us Garnett had an impact north of 7 points, but even that is small compared to 12 points, and you've also got to consider Garnett doesn't play 48 minutes per game.

Case study? In '06-07, let's say the T-wolves were as bad as the worst defense in the league without Garnett (112.3), and let's say that Garnett had a 7.8 impact per 100 possessions on defense (which is what one APM study said he did). Garnett played 75% of his team's minutes making his impact per team minute about 106.5 about 5.8. We'd then expect the team's actual defensive rating to be 106.5. Which is right around the league average.

Of course in actuality, the T-Wolves ended up worse than that at 107.9. But that's not really THAT far off, it was probably Garnett's worse year anyway, and of course we do have Minny's defensive numbers when Garnett was off the court and they were even worse than 112.3 (they were 113.0).

I'm not seeing anything that's really that hard to explain.

How do I reconcile that with my opinion of Russell? Well first, by fully admitting I don't have all the data I'd like on him. Second by looking at the data we do have:

1) Russell's Celtics at their best were off the charts good on defense while platooning everyone else on the roster except Russell. It simply doesn't make sense to say that Russell wasn't drastically more important than everyone else on the roster. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to give too much credit to Auerbach since he basically changed his scheme to let Russell keep doing what he had been doing in college. Credit Red for knowing a good thing when he saw it, but not for revolutionizing the game.

2) I'm literally thinking Russell was like Garnett on steroids. Smarter, better shot blocker, playing in a more conducive era. As much as I'm saying a 5 point defensive impact is fantastic, Russell could very well have been north of 10 while playing 45 MPG. When you're having THAT level of impact, you literally can make the worst defensive supporting cast in the league look good, and make a solid defensive supporting cast look like gods.

The hype surrounding the Big 3 in Boston was HUGE, and they were certainly stacked on a historical scale as we look at who Rondo became. Relative to their era, the Celtics were seriosly stacked. They were 1 game away from the ECF without KG for the entire 2009 playoffs.

Y'know AUF, it's no sin to misremember things, but you might've looked this stuff up before saying I was wrong.

Here is the championship prediction from ESPN that year, 18 guys, none pick the Celtics:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/preview20 ... -NBAChamps

Here's the page for the Celtics, 10 guys, only 1 picks the Celtics to win the Easter conference despite the fact that only 1 of the 18 guys mentioned before picked an East team to win the title. They were saying essentially: The East is a joke, and the Celtics still have only a slim chance at winning it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime ... review0708

The Celtics' improvement being the biggest of any team in NBA history is something no one saw coming.

Re: Took Orlando to 7 games without Garnett. Oh they were good without Garnett, but they were a lot better with him. In the games where Garnett played, their ORtg was 116.4 while their DRtg was 96.0. Literally, the Celtics finished with the 2nd best SRS in the league that year despite Garnett missing 25 games, and with him they were quite a bit better than that.

I'm not saying Garnett deserves all the credit for the Celtics success. What I'm trying to get across really is that those Celtics were REALLY impressive, and even after you give some credit to other people, Garnett's share is huge.

[Doctor MJ]

To make sure I'm counted:

Vote: Russell
Nomination: Garnett

[Jeff23]

Vote: Russell
Nominating: Garnett

[Fencer reregistered]

So I was doing a little research and found some numbers that I found interesting.

Russell faced Wilt 142 times in his career. In those games Wilt averaged 28.7 ppg / 28.7 rpg while Russell averaged 14.5 ppg / 23.7 rpg.

If these numbers are true (the site I got it from didn't have any sources, but I saw a couple other sites that backed it up as well), then how can people possibly say that Russell didn't have better teammates than Wilt?

Sure Russell slowed Wilt down and that is very impressive, but Wilt clearly outplayed him, but Russell's teams would outplay Wilt's.

Maybe Wilt's teammates scored less effectively than Russell's did because they faced a Russell defense while Russell's only faced a Wilt defense.

Maybe Wilt just inefficiently took more shots, while Russell's teammates had more of an offensive flow. How did FG% and FTA compare?

How were overall rebounding percentages between the two teams? Did Wilt's extra boards actually make a difference, or was Heinsohn just outrebounding Wilt's teammates or something?

[Fencer reregistered]

In other news, I think we need a re-vote for all the non Moses/Karl voters if things keep up like this. I don't think it'll be representative of the consensus if one of them gets up with like 5 or 6 votes out of 30, and the current vote is Karl Malone on 6, Moses on 5, J.West on 4, KG on 2, Oscar on 2 and Lebron on 1.

It's silly, but it's also probably a fairly harmless error. By the time anybody seriously suggests putting Moses or Karl on the all-time list, they'll both have been nominated, along with Oscar and West.

[Fencer reregistered]

The Celtics won 46 games in 52-53, they won 44 in 56-57, Russell's rookie year.

That's four years later.
Also, the Celtics traded a Hall of Famer or two for the rights to Russell.
Also, Russell didn't show up until mid-season.

[Fencer reregistered]

Damn this is close.

Curious though. Let's say this ends in a tie, do we take the votes from the previous thread which was Russell = 6 and Kareem = 5 to be the tiebreaker or what?

I think a run-off would be highly appropriate.

[An Unbiased Fan]

I don't see a contradiction here. The goal is to make the best estimate for what a player contributed. It makes sense to use team results, it just doesn't make sense to utterly ignore more precise individual data because of them. I'll fully admit to not knowing as much detail as I'd like about Russell, but the information I do have says amazing things.

Re: '06 & '07. Again, Minny was utterly hideous when KG didn't play. What makes you so sure that teammates are always good enough to let a superstar have strong team results?

Re: "same SRS as the '07 Celtics". I don't get your point. The fact that the '07 Celtics could move from THAT bad, to best of the decade so quickly once they had Garnett says very good things about him.

Re: "without scorers". Obviously you're not a +/- guy, but again, the Minny teams did decently as long as KG was on the court, and hideous when the didn't. Sounds like impact to me.

And to the notion that +/- is a team rotation thing, I find that notion so silly when talking about big minute superstar. Garnett, like every other superstar, played a rotation that allowed him to play as much as possible. There's nothing mysterious about this.

And heck, Garnett played for 5 coaches that we have +/- data for, on all of them, he shows majorly impressive +/- data.

1) +/- stats simply put, don't measure how good a player is relative to his peers. They are good for analyzing rotations and lineups, but not much else.

The only thing I extrapolate from KG's tremendous +/- numbers is that he was extremely indispensible to those 06 & 07 Minny teams. Which is to say, Minny had no real substitue for KG on that roster, and the whole system was built around him. Does that mean he performed better than Duncan for example, no. It means that SA had a better rotation, and backup for TD on the court. This is why a guy like Manu is so high in these numbers. His utility to the Spurs roster is irreplacable, so they lose a bit when he's not on the court. But it doesn't make Manu a better player than Duncan, or more impactful. I guess that's why we disagree on Russell. I don't view his indispensibleness to the 60's Celtics, as making him better than Wilt, or KAJ. He came along at a time when his uniqueness fit perfectly with that Celtics roster of perimeter stars. I mean in 56', Boston's center was 6'7, and nothing like Russell.

Another problem with +/- is the primacy of the minutes being counted. A team with a bad bench, will yield higher +/- numbers for the starters, than a team with a good bench. Many of those extra +/- numbers comes in garbage time, where a team could be chucking to get back, or winding the clock down, and just trying to showoff to the coach to get extra playing time.

2) I brought up the 07' Wolves vs the 07' Celtics because it illustrates the fact that KG couldn't create the best SRS of the decade by simply going to a team.

More to the point, If Pierce, Allen, Thibs and ROndo had gone to Minny, would KG still be looked at as turning that Wolves squad around, OR would people view the addition of talent as the reason.

I'll put it this way: The gap between the best & worst defenses in the league this year was about 12 points per 100 possessions. What's your basis for deciding how much impact an individual player can make? Mine is +/-. And it tells us that if a player has a defensive impact of 5 points per 100 possessions he's doing a fantastic job. Pretty easy to see from that there's simply a lot more to team defense than any one player can give.

Of course +/- tells us Garnett had an impact north of 7 points, but even that is small compared to 12 points, and you've also got to consider Garnett doesn't play 48 minutes per game.

Case study? In '06-07, let's say the T-wolves were as bad as the worst defense in the league without Garnett (112.3), and let's say that Garnett had a 7.8 impact per 100 possessions on defense (which is what one APM study said he did). Garnett played 75% of his team's minutes making his impact per team minute about 106.5 about 5.8. We'd then expect the team's actual defensive rating to be 106.5. Which is right around the league average.

Of course in actuality, the T-Wolves ended up worse than that at 107.9. But that's not really THAT far off, it was probably Garnett's worse year anyway, and of course we do have Minny's defensive numbers when Garnett was off the court and they were even worse than 112.3 (they were 113.0).

I'm not seeing anything that's really that hard to explain.

How do I reconcile that with my opinion of Russell? Well first, by fully admitting I don't have all the data I'd like on him. Second by looking at the data we do have:

1) Russell's Celtics at their best were off the charts good on defense while platooning everyone else on the roster except Russell. It simply doesn't make sense to say that Russell wasn't drastically more important than everyone else on the roster. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to give too much credit to Auerbach since he basically changed his scheme to let Russell keep doing what he had been doing in college. Credit Red for knowing a good thing when he saw it, but not for revolutionizing the game.

2) I'm literally thinking Russell was like Garnett on steroids. Smarter, better shot blocker, playing in a more conducive era. As much as I'm saying a 5 point defensive impact is fantastic, Russell could very well have been north of 10 while playing 45 MPG. When you're having THAT level of impact, you literally can make the worst defensive supporting cast in the league look good, and make a solid defensive supporting cast look like gods.

1) Again though, +/- doesn't speak to a player's ability, it speaks to how indispensible he is to that roster. If you take Nash off the SSOL Suns, they were much worse because they had no one who could run that offense. The Spurs collapsed without DRob, and that's because they had no one to replace him...and they were tanking*cough*. Conversely, the 94' Bulls won 55 games because Pippen could assume the main scorer/facilitator role. That doens't mean MJ wasn't needed or still the best player, it's just that the Bulls could cover for him better than many other teams

So yes, KG was very hard for Boston to replace on the defensive end in that role. His utility to that roster was great, BUT not like Dwight who's actual impact on the court, has guided Orlando to top defenses.

2) The numbers get even murkier for KG when you look at paint defense.

2000 - #19
2001 - N/A
2002 - #19
2003 - #8
2004 - #5
2005 - #9
2006 - #10
2007 - #22

Now those numbers change when he gets to Boston, and has Perk. If people marginalize the impact of perimeter defenders, then I dont' see how they don't marginalize KG's defensive impact a bit. He didn't even start playing PF until 03'.

3) Here's the DRtg ranks of Minny during KG's prime years

2000 - #12
2001 - #16
2002 - #15
2003 - #16
2004 - #6
2005 - #15
2006 - #10
2007 - #21

To compare, TD led a Top 3 or better defense EVERY year until last year. The last 3 years, with no defensive help, Dwight has led Orlando to a Top 3 DRtg.

4) Russell's Celtics were off the charts...for their era. But that's because they were the only team playing that way back then. Dan Fouts and those 70's Chargers were doing things passing wise that no one else in the NFL was doing at the time. He was only the 2nd QB to pass for 4000+ yeards in 79'. And guess what happened in the 80's...it was done 14 times, 22 tiems in the 90's, and 46 in the 00's.

Was Fouts better than Marino, simply because his advantage over his era was greater? is Ruseell better defensively than Hakeem or Duncan, because he played in a 8-12 team league with less advanced offense/defenses? When you put the defensive play of all the players into context, Russ, Hakeem, TD are on par.

Y'know AUF, it's no sin to misremember things, but you might've looked this stuff up before saying I was wrong.

Here is the championship prediction from ESPN that year, 18 guys, none pick the Celtics:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/preview20 ... -NBAChamps

Here's the page for the Celtics, 10 guys, only 1 picks the Celtics to win the Easter conference despite the fact that only 1 of the 18 guys mentioned before picked an East team to win the title. They were saying essentially: The East is a joke, and the Celtics still have only a slim chance at winning it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime ... review0708

The Celtics' improvement being the biggest of any team in NBA history is something no one saw coming.

Re: Took Orlando to 7 games without Garnett. Oh they were good without Garnett, but they were a lot better with him. In the games where Garnett played, their ORtg was 116.4 while their DRtg was 96.0. Literally, the Celtics finished with the 2nd best SRS in the league that year despite Garnett missing 25 games, and with him they were quite a bit better than that.

I'm not saying Garnett deserves all the credit for the Celtics success. What I'm trying to get across really is that those Celtics were REALLY impressive, and even after you give some credit to other people, Garnett's share is huge.

I'll admit to not watching much ESPN back in 2007. I got sick of Ric Bucher and his "inside" reports on where Kobe was being traded. I do remember the hype surrounding the Boston 3, but LOL at ESPN. I can't believe 5 people thought a run n gun Suns team would win it all. Perhaps I did overstate the hype.

The Celtics did have a big turnaround, and like I said eralier, if all those players went to Minny, instead of going to Boston, I don't think KG would be getting as much credit. And yes, the Celtics were very impressive, I certainly agree with that.

One has to wonder where KG ranks if he had stayed in Minny.

[penbeast0]

Without answering any of your other points since I have said enough about Russell already, Fouts's monster season when none of his peers were performing at that level IS more impressive than Marino's being one of several quarterbacks performing at that level. They have changed the rules several times to make things easier for the passing game to the point where you have to look at comparative impact. Fouts's was greater (and Unitas's was greater than that) because of the comparative advantage over his peers.

Similar to the NBA changing the rules to favor perimeter slashers and 3 point shooters -- most obvious when they shortened the 3 point line in the 90s. Does it mean the great 3 point shooters of those years weren't great players . . . no. Does it mean they might not be as great as some of the great shooters who put up slightly lesser numbers from the longer distance . . . yes. You have to go both ways. Saying a player from earlier eras might have trouble in the modern one because of rule changes; you also have to look at whether players from the modern era might have trouble with the older era's rules.

[Doctor MJ]

1) +/- stats simply put, don't measure how good a player is relative to his peers. They are good for analyzing rotations and lineups, but not much else.

The only thing I extrapolate from KG's tremendous +/- numbers is that he was extremely indispensible to those 06 & 07 Minny teams. Which is to say, Minny had no real substitue for KG on that roster, and the whole system was built around him. Does that mean he performed better than Duncan for example, no. It means that SA had a better rotation, and backup for TD on the court. This is why a guy like Manu is so high in these numbers. His utility to the Spurs roster is irreplacable, so they lose a bit when he's not on the court. But it doesn't make Manu a better player than Duncan, or more impactful. I guess that's why we disagree on Russell. I don't view his indispensibleness to the 60's Celtics, as making him better than Wilt, or KAJ. He came along at a time when his uniqueness fit perfectly with that Celtics roster of perimeter stars. I mean in 56', Boston's center was 6'7, and nothing like Russell.

Another problem with +/- is the primacy of the minutes being counted. A team with a bad bench, will yield higher +/- numbers for the starters, than a team with a good bench. Many of those extra +/- numbers comes in garbage time, where a team could be chucking to get back, or winding the clock down, and just trying to showoff to the coach to get extra playing time.

2) I brought up the 07' Wolves vs the 07' Celtics because it illustrates the fact that KG couldn't create the best SRS of the decade by simply going to a team.

More to the point, If Pierce, Allen, Thibs and ROndo had gone to Minny, would KG still be looked at as turning that Wolves squad around, OR would people view the addition of talent as the reason.

I'll echo what you said about the reasons we disagree. Clearly we've got different philosophies, and that's cool.

Re: "+/- doesn't tell you who's good, just who is indispensable". Being a good NBA player means being able to make yourself indispensable. Not that you can judge a player simply based his current situation, but literally everything a guy does has to be viewed from the lens of how hard it is to get someone to do what he does.

Re: Ginobili. +/- isn't actually that big of an anomaly here. Go look at any all-in-one per minute advanced stat, he looks like one hell of a player. The problem with him has always been that he spends so much time not on the court.

Re: bench players. We've got adjusted metrics that factor this stuff in.

Re: Garnett can't just go to any team at make them amazing. No, as you pointed out, he needs a team that can win 20 games without him to add a great off-ball shooter, and then he'll give you the team of the decade. Gosh, he asks for so much doesn't he?

Re: Other guys to Minny, what's Garnett's rep? Actually it's probably better. Then he's not looked at as joining someone else's team. Debatable though particularly because of the way '06-07 ended in Minny.

1) Again though, +/- doesn't speak to a player's ability, it speaks to how indispensible he is to that roster. If you take Nash off the SSOL Suns, they were much worse because they had no one who could run that offense. The Spurs collapsed without DRob, and that's because they had no one to replace him...and they were tanking*cough*. Conversely, the 94' Bulls won 55 games because Pippen could assume the main scorer/facilitator role. That doens't mean MJ wasn't needed or still the best player, it's just that the Bulls could cover for him better than many other teams

So yes, KG was very hard for Boston to replace on the defensive end in that role. His utility to that roster was great, BUT not like Dwight who's actual impact on the court, has guided Orlando to top defenses.

2) The numbers get even murkier for KG when you look at paint defense.

2000 - #19
2001 - N/A
2002 - #19
2003 - #8
2004 - #5
2005 - #9
2006 - #10
2007 - #22

Now those numbers change when he gets to Boston, and has Perk. If people marginalize the impact of perimeter defenders, then I dont' see how they don't marginalize KG's defensive impact a bit. He didn't even start playing PF until 03'.

3) Here's the DRtg ranks of Minny during KG's prime years

2000 - #12
2001 - #16
2002 - #15
2003 - #16
2004 - #6
2005 - #15
2006 - #10
2007 - #21

To compare, TD led a Top 3 or better defense EVERY year until last year. The last 3 years, with no defensive help, Dwight has led Orlando to a Top 3 DRtg.

4) Russell's Celtics were off the charts...for their era. But that's because they were the only team playing that way back then. Dan Fouts and those 70's Chargers were doing things passing wise that no one else in the NFL was doing at the time. He was only the 2nd QB to pass for 4000+ yeards in 79'. And guess what happened in the 80's...it was done 14 times, 22 tiems in the 90's, and 46 in the 00's.

Was Fouts better than Marino, simply because his advantage over his era was greater? is Ruseell better defensively than Hakeem or Duncan, because he played in a 8-12 team league with less advanced offense/defenses? When you put the defensive play of all the players into context, Russ, Hakeem, TD are on par.

1) The Suns had had a crappy offense with Kidd & Marbury. When no one else in the world can do what Nash does, and he can generate the greatest offenses in history when he's on the floor, how does it make any sense to say that's not a reflection on how good he is?

2) Boston had Perk in '06-07, and their defense wasn't good.

It honestly amazes me how people have fallen in love with Perk in the last year. Dude's never played 30 MPG (played less than 25 in '07-08), and never blown any one away with any statistic known to man. What magic power to people think he has?

3) No new ground.

4) The spearhead aspect of Russell is worth everyone developing their opinion on.

With that said, blindly stating he's on par with Duncan is silly.

[Doctor MJ]

Without answering any of your other points since I have said enough about Russell already, Fouts's monster season when none of his peers were performing at that level IS more impressive than Marino's being one of several quarterbacks performing at that level. They have changed the rules several times to make things easier for the passing game to the point where you have to look at comparative impact. Fouts's was greater (and Unitas's was greater than that) because of the comparative advantage over his peers.

Excellent answer. It literally does not make sense to compare passing stats across eras in football because they've done so much to make it easier for quarterbacks.

[Optimism Prime]

Vote: Russell
Nominate: Moses

Huge Kareem fan, and am surprised by this vote... but a lot of the arguments presented in this thread have swayed me. Russell was just dominant from the moment he set foot on the court to the moment he retired; while Kareem was great for longer, he wasn't as consistently great. Peak, I think that Kareem would take this, but for overall body of work, I have to go with Russell. It's very close though; I can't really argue with anyone who puts MJ/KAJ/Russell in their top three, whatever the order.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Without answering any of your other points since I have said enough about Russell already, Fouts's monster season when none of his peers were performing at that level IS more impressive than Marino's being one of several quarterbacks performing at that level. They have changed the rules several times to make things easier for the passing game to the point where you have to look at comparative impact. Fouts's was greater (and Unitas's was greater than that) because of the comparative advantage over his peers.

Hmm....so I guess I go back to my question about how we should look at Mikan then. He was a true pioneer of the game, and used that hook to yield a tremendous span of dominance in comparison to his peers.

I still don't find it more impressive than Wilt's, KAJ's, Russ's, or Shaq's years though, when you put those years into context. And again, that's my issue. When you watch Russell play, he's not doing anything that other top defenders haven't. His blocks are any more spectacular or sound, nor is his defensive rotations. His rebounding didn't look anymore impressive than Rodman's or Wilt's. His offense however, was nonexistent, even with a huge size/athleticism advantage.

Similar to the NBA changing the rules to favor perimeter slashers and 3 point shooters -- most obvious when they shortened the 3 point line in the 90s. Does it mean the great 3 point shooters of those years weren't great players . . . no. Does it mean they might not be as great as some of the great shooters who put up slightly lesser numbers from the longer distance . . . yes. You have to go both ways. Saying a player from earlier eras might have trouble in the modern one because of rule changes; you also have to look at whether players from the modern era might have trouble with the older era's rules.

Well, it doens't mean they were bad 3-point shooter, however, I would certainly kncok down the 3pt% numbers of anyone who played with a shortened 3pt line. Also, I have made the exact point you raised about some younger players have problems with the old style of play. In the West vs Oscar vs Wade posts, I brought this up.

Again, Russell would still be a DPOY caliber player in today's league. It's his total lack of scoring ability, that drops him as a player. What exactly would Russell do, that a guy like Mutumbo didn't in today's game? Could he even realistically match Dwight's imapct on Orlando? I hate asking these questions, because it seems like I'm diminishing Russell as a player, but I have to ask.

[Fencer reregistered]

There was nothing in Dwight Howard's offensive game a couple of years ago that Russell wouldn't have matched the moment he set foot in the modern league, the relevant difference being Russell's era and ours being that Howard faces a less congested paint in this era than Russell did in his.

Meanwhile, I don't know how Howard is against post scorers, because he rarely faces them. Anybody have stats or anecdotes from when he does?