RealGM Top 100 #3

[An Unbiased Fan]

^^^Yes, but you're sounding like that influences you to the point of taking other players over Magic because of that.

I take a lot of things into account when ranking players. The two main things are how dominant they were in their era, and how well their skills/style of play translate acros other eras. I also take account of their overall skillset, how they perfmored in the playoffs, and their imapct on both sides of the court.

I had both Magic & KAJ relatively on par based on this criteria, but the completeness of Kareem's game gave him the edge. The defense wasn't the sole factor, but it certainly was a factor in my decision.

As a crude example, I'm a better 3-point shooter and free throw shooter than Shaq. It doesn't matter though, because his overall impact was greater.

But yet again, both Magic & KAJ's impact was comparable. Actual skills like defense, 3pt shooting, FT shooting, etc., certainly enhances a player's value.

For instance, using your crude example. If Shaq shot 40% from beyond the arc, that certainly would add to his value, even though one would hardly look to their center for range shooting. If he shot 70% from the FT line, his value would have skyrocketted.

Similarly, Magic's overall impact (from his GOAT offense?) is greater than Kareem's IMO. If Magic were a better defender as you were discussing, he'd have a comparable or better peak than Michael. Now if you just think Kareem and Magic were on par on offense, that's different (bc even relative to position/fit, Kareem is adding more value on D). But I also think that's borderline crazy and probably needs some explanation/examination.

In an earlier thread I pointed out KAJ's scoring exploits. Magic was obviously the best playmaker/facilitator ever, but KAJ is arguably the GOAT volume scorer, or at least up there with Wilt,MJ, Kobe. His defense certainly adds to his case as being the better player, since both guys are comparable in offensive impact. It certainly didn't hurt Magic to have a great volume scorer like KAJ to pass to, or other great weapons like Worthy.

I've seen you levy the same criticism at Nash...

Of course, Nash was a horrible man & team defender.

[Doctor MJ]

Dr. MJ didn't have Wilt in his Top 10, last I checked... wanted to see the reasoning for that.

Sure.

Okay first, I want to make clear that my Top 10 is not set in stone in this project by any means. Wilt make my top 10 as I analyze thoroughly, but it is pretty safe to say that I don't think as highly of him as most, and so he'll probably get voted in before I'm ready to give him my vote.

First here'a a link to something I posted earlier in this thread on Kareem vs Wilt. Definitely relevant to your question.

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1124134#p28530830

To specifically respond to your question though:

Wilt had really serious problems translating his ginormous talents into actual net basketball impact. It wasn't all his fault, but he wasn't blameless either.

The initial problem was naive basketball tactics (blame the coaches or owner) mixed with insufficient court awareness (blame Wilt). They saw his prodigious talent and essentially converted their offense to "Get Wilt the ball!!!" The result was a very predictable offense that actually wasn't much better than having no Wilt at all (see the above link for a table).

With '66-67 and a new role, Wilt led a truly fantastic offensive team for which he deserve a lot of credit. However, he literally was the 5th scoring option when the starters were on the court when they did this. It's one thing to provide more balance to the shooting load, but coach Hannum basically concluded Wilt's scoring was so problematic that it was even better to have role players shoot more than Wilt. I wrote about the bizarre nature of this improvement and what it says about basketball going beyond typical game theory concepts here:

Chamberlain Theory: The Real Price of Anarchy in Basketball

Now, when Wilt was on here, I still think he was the best player in the game because he was capable of doing so much more than scoring, but there really is no cast for Wilt as GOAT that I've ever seen that doesn't give him credit for being the best scorer in history. For him to be such a liability in what is considered his greatest strength is a really big deal.

Still, if Wilt had been able to continue having the success of '66-67 for the next 5+ years, I'd cut him a lot more slack. Unfortunately, the reality was that even with this new scoring focus, he was only able to win 1 more title despite having ridiculous supporting talent beside him.

From a fantasy perspective, you'd think that Wilt going to LA and taking on a role that filled in non-scoring weaknesses a la '66-67 would be able to provide serious help on a team that already had the best offense of the entire 60s (by ORtg above median) the previous year, instead the team's SRS actually got worse.

I look at these results and I see a player without the ability to really feel the game around him and adjust to do whatever is needed at the moment. I feel like coaching Wilt was a bit like trying to tell a novice how to bake a cake over the phone. All the ingredients where there, and if you had a smart coach with time to keep re-trying, you'll sometimes gets a world class dessert. This is very different though from players like Russell or Magic who just have an innate feel for what their team needs at a given time, and essentially give you the best cake possible with the available ingredients all the time.

Of course, then there's the matter of Wilt's attitude. I don't want to be too critical here. This was a man who had the heart to stay in the game at unheard of levels, and didn't hesitate to play hurt. But like Shaq, Wilt was someone who had a tough time staying happy in a situation. His career is just chalked full of drama.

When I do these comparisons, one of the questions always on my mind is: "If I draft this player, what can I expect to get from him?" I mean this primarily in terms of longevity when we talk about the all-time greats, but with guys like Shaq & Wilt it also refers to the likelihood that things will go wrong.

[Dr Positivity]

For me what it comes down to, and the reason I'm actually starting to buy into this Magic #3 possibility, is that the biggest common denominator for offensive success is BALL MOVEMENT. When the ball doesn't move the defense is prepared for the shot you will take. We just saw a Finals that was an absolutely fabulous example of this. The Mavericks had the better offense because the zipped the ball around until they found the best shot between a Dirk score, an open 3pter by Kidd/Terry/etc., or an inside score by Marion or Chandler. While the Heat concentrated on feeding 3 guys

I would suspect one of the biggest reasons we saw a bigger lull offensively with early career Wilt or late 70s Kareem compared to say, 80 or 81 Bird or 91 Magic, is that on Wilt and Kareem's teams they got caught passing the ball in and standing around. And that's just the nature of their roles - When you're a big who gets the ball on post passes, you're not going to able to control your team's flow like a perimeter player unless you make them through leadership and effect on culture like Russell or Walton or Duncan. That's the counter to "big over small". I will always take the greatest offensive perimeter players over the greatest big man ones (though defense obviously balances the scale). IMO the best offensive players ever are Jordan, Magic, Bird, Oscar, West and Erving - and Shaq because I feel in his prime both his ability to draw doubles/triples and then pass out and create shots was all time great for a big man. I'm sticking by that.

Of course, a guy like Magic has to be a lot better than Kareem offensively to make up for the defensive difference and longevity in this case, and the fact that Kareem just happened to land in two situations with PGs doing everything they needed in controlling the game offensively, where he was a perfect fit and racked up the titles

[Doctor MJ]

But Doc, I'm not saying you stop a great offensive PG with a great defensive PG, anymore than you stop a great offensive C with a defensive C. Kidd would have a tough time guarding Rose, just like Deke had a tough time guarding Shaq. However, a poor defender at ANY postion creates new mismatches for the oppostion, and once again, basketball is a game of mismatches. A poor defender like Fisher not only allows PG increased penetration in the paint, he's also weak on rotations which allows open perimeter looks. You also then have to use other defenders like Kobe to help on D because of the mismatch, which weakens defense in other areas. I'm talking about the sum of all parts.

In regards to Magic, I didn't even bring up PG defense(since he didn't guard them alot), it was his slow rotations on TEAM defense, and his subpar defense in man situations(typically against forwards), that I critqued him on.

Let me go back to the Paul example. You're seeing this and thinking "Gosh, Fisher is letting Paul kill us." But Paul's numbers in that series aren't actually out of character for Paul. By advanced metrics like PER & WS, Paul has actually spent entire seasons doing better than he did against the Lakers in the playoffs this year. If 100% Paul can essentially kill every team in the league, then it's a red herring to bemoan Fisher's D. Not because Fisher's D isn't bad, but because the effect of Fisher's D is minor compared to the effect of Paul's offense: Putting a great defensive point guard in there, is only going to make a tiny dent in Paul's production.

Now you're saying: "Well the same is true for stars of every positions.", and I'm saying 2 things:

1) Not to the same extent.

2) A guy like Deke has a lot bigger impact on someone like Paul, than a guy like Kidd has on Shaq.

A couple pieces of data:

http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008 ... lus-minus/

Statistician Eli Witus (now a consultant for the Rockets), did an analysis of how the positions fared by +/- in offense and defense in '07-08. Here are the results:

Pos Off Def Tot
--- ---- ---- ----
PG 0.8 -2.0 -1.2
SG 0.5 -0.8 -0.3
SF 0.9 0.2 1.0
PF -0.8 1.0 0.3
C -2.1 2.5 0.5

Notice how clear cut the defense is. On average if you want better defense, you go big.
(btw, offense shows the opposite trend a little less clearly. Keep in mind that perimeter stars that aren't classified as PGs are likely to still be the primary ball handler. If we could re-classify this by "primary ball handler" instead of PG, it would easily surpass the other positions.)

Now, you may ask: Maybe point guards are typically worse on defense than big men, but that doesn't say anything about the distribution. If someone like Kidd has big impact despite playing PG, then that only makes him MORE valuable.

So I need to get into individual +/-. I know you don't like it, and if you're rational, that's because of the susceptibility to low sample size. Below is a link to a 6 year study (big sample size) by Stephen Ilardi (now consulting for the Suns), and I'm not going to focus on individual players but simply positional tendency:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key ... l=en#gid=0

Among players with a large enough sample size to have a low enough standard error (which I subjectively put at 2), here are the number of players at each position, who had a defensive APM rating 3 or better:

PG 0
SG 2
SF 7
PF 9
C 14

Just a massive massive edge to the big men. As with every other piece of data, and frankly common belief, they are telling us that point guards just don't have impact on defense anywhere near what big men do.

(Re: Magic. I know that there was more to the conversation that what I've taken issue with you about. Apologies, but I just felt this part really needed clearing up.)

[LikeABosh]

#3 belongs to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

[ronnymac2]

Add in some breaks like Horry going something like 0/18 on three pointers and missing a buzzer beating 3 that would have shifted the series in LA's favor, while Bruce Bowen shoots 17/26 from three (including game 2 where he hit 7 threes for a career high 27 pts). Duncan should rightly get a ton of credit, he played like a god but just because there wasn't a strong "#2" doesn't mean the team sucked. That said, Duncan stepped up at all the right moments, closed out Lakers with a 37/16/4 game, won back home court against Mavs with a 34/24/6/6 game, and destroyed the Nets in the finals, but you don't need to dismiss his teammates to do it (or play up his competition when it was in fact quite weak).

Good post on Duncan by GilmoreFan, and good response by Fatal.



I'm going to need to get a Shaq post together. I didn't think I'd have to this soon, because I thought the 3 and 4 spots would be Wilt vs. Russell to end all Wilt vs. Russell arguments on here. I was looking forward to it actually, because I had Wilt and Russell at 3 and 4, with Shaq creeping up on them.

Then, Russell got in early for bad reasons like "intangibles." I'm certainly not against Bill Russell being second, or even the GOAT, but not based on "intangibles." Intangibles and leadership are BS excuses to me when it comes to everybody voting here, simply because we're too far removed from what goes on in an NBA practice or a locker room or on the team bus or plane. So unless many of you played in Boston's locker room in the 1960's...

Russell may indeed have the GOAT on-court peak. I could definitely buy that. But that's not what the majority of people were arguing for. They were arguing for Russell based on intangibles and the Boston Celtics winning titles. Not saying everybody, but I saw that argument come up too much. But I digress...

Anyway, I guess Bird vs. Shaq vs. Duncan vs. Hakeem vs. Magic starts now, with Wilt and possibly others added on.

[Bucksfans1and2]

For the 3rd time

V: Kareem
N: West

[An Unbiased Fan]

........

Doc, I'm really not arguing that PGs have the same defensive value as a C. My point is simply that their defensive imapct is still significant.

Fisher allowed Paul to do whatever he wanted on the court, which created tons of mismatches during that series. When Paul runs around a screen and Pau has to go out and defend him, that takes a big from the basket, and opens up other imbalances on the court. when switched onto another player, Fisher is slow to rotate, and has a tough time getting around screens. He's slow to rotate to 3pt shooters, and slow intransition D. Pnenetration puts the bigs into foul trouble which hurts the overall team defense even more. All these things have a definite impact.

Phil Jackson has pointed out how important PG defense is many timess. That's why he used Pippen and Kobe so much against them. You can dusrupt offenses with great PG defense. A guy like Payton who can shadow a PG, or defend a guy like MJ, is of significant value.

But again, I really wasn't just talking about PG defense with Magic.

[GilmoreFan]

You aren't eligible to vote LikeABosh.

The Oscar fans have already switched to West (all 2 of them), which is why Oscar now has zero votes. The current nomination vote, correct me if I'm wrong Stern, is:
* Karl Malone- 10
* West- 10
* KG- 4
* Lebron- 1
* Mikan- 1
Now if the KG voters are picking him over West, it's a pretty safe bet they're putting Karl Malone over West, so I think the desirable outcome would be for them to express their preferences to give one candidate a majority before the deadline expires in a few hours (or whatever).

Kareem is on like 22 votes, Magic 3 and Wilt 1.

As for the criticisms of Duncan, they're patently absurd, and the ones by unbiased fan almost refute themselves. This fatal guy is almost as bad, and I hope ElGee's praise was sarcastic.

How is '02 not a failure? The story of that series was SA's fourth quarter meltdowns, which resulted from Duncan (as well as rest of the team's) inability to score down the stretch.

Um, it wasn't a failure because Duncan had a garbage team, and the Lakers had prime Shaq and Kobe? The fact the games were close was a testament to Duncan being awesome, as I pointed out D.Rob was both injured in the playoffs and a total non-factor in the series. I mean, take a look at some of Duncan's games; 26-21-5-4-1 in game 1 (his only other big man help was Mark Bryant and Malik Rose! Game 2 he had 27-17-5-5-1, game 3 he had 28-12-3-1-1, game 4 he had 30-11-6-4-1, and the closing game he had 34-25-4-2-1 while his "help" old man D.Rob put up 0 points, 3 rebounds and 4 fouls in 18 minutes. It's absurd to expect Duncan to have won in 02, and nobody else expected him to win either.

You say he was averaging TO's and not shooting as well as normal, but that's hardly surprising. The Spurs had literally no other help. Maybe this is a new concept, but when a player has a talented team, he gets easier looks and less double teams, because the other team can't afford to put as much pressure on him, and when the team has no talent it's much harder for that player to play well, because the reverse is true. That's why on Boston KG's FG% jumped like crazy to never seen before levels, and that's the reason here too (indeed, it was easy for guys like Shaq to double him because D.Rob was non-existent). Duncan did the unbelievable, he kept the games within a few points mostly, and stole a game, with zero help.

While Magic losing in '90 while dropping back to back 40 point games in the last two games of that series is?

They got manhandled by the KJ Suns that year, yeh it was a failures. Because Magic didn't play well enough to get his team over a less talented team, nor is it true to say his team played badly. It's a failed season. Duncan doesn't have any of those.

And the '03 team has been turned into "garbage" the farther we're removed from that year. The team didn't have the great scoring second option but was built well to compliment him and did not have any weaknesses. It also didn't hurt that the two top SRS teams in the league (Mavs and Kings) had injuries to their best players in the playoffs, Webber going down in the WCSF and Dirk going down against the Spurs in WCF, not to mention a weak finals opponent and that being the weakest of the Shaq/Kobe Laker teams (won just 50 games) the Spurs ever faced (and ever defeated).

Fatal, did you even read what I wrote in depth about the 2003 team? And the Spurs were beating the Mavs 2-1 before Dirk got hurt. We have no reason at all to believe they would have lost that series, or that having mowed down the Lakers, they would lose to the Kings. You know who else the Spurs didn't beat in 2003? The 1986 Celtics. Your characterisation of the team doesn't require a response, because you've ignored my initial post explaining it.

Good post on Duncan by GilmoreFan, and good response by Fatal.

No, it wasn't a good response, because after I laid out a series of arguments like 'exactly why Horry didn't matter that series game by game', the response was "Horry missed alot of shots that series". He may as well not have responded to what I wrote at all, he's talking about how D.Rob was a great defensive big, ignoring what I wrote on him, including his almost non-presence during the 2 Lakers series.

[UDRIH14]

but didnt duncan 01 team, it showed how much the spurs missed the 2nd option in derek anderson (16ppg??) who pulled a shoulder injury in a dirty foul from juwon howard in the spurs/mavs series, and he was out for the series against the lakers....then he bolted to another team the following year 02

was it 06 or 08 that duncan played with plantir foot injury all season

[Doctor MJ]

was it 06 or 08 that duncan played with plantir foot injury all season

'05-06. Yeah, that was rough.

[Baller 24]

Next thread will probably be a lot more interesting. I'd close things up right now, but we're so close with nominations so I'll keep it open for another two hours.

[UDRIH14]

tim duncan won when it matter, when most of his competition were still playing in their primes, and that was from 2000-07...shaq, kobe. kg, webber, dirk, pistons, nash suns

[GilmoreFan]

Still almost enough to take down the very strong Mavs team, had his team mates not choked at the clutch in OT. Take a look at his stats that series, especially adjusted for pace. He was putting up god-like numbers that series.

[Baller 24]

Found it, adjusted to Bird's pace (check out the efficiency on Duncan's part):

Code: Select all

               MPG,  PPG,   RPG, APG, BPG, SPG, TO,   TS,   PER
Bird (80-88):   42.6, 24.5, 10.7, 6.4, 0.9, 1.9, 3.2, .555, 21.9
Duncan (99-07): 40.0, 26.5, 14.1, 4.1, 3.1, 0.8, 3.5, .560, 27.0

Hmm, I was surprised at the 5+ PER difference between the two. Looking back some, I realized PER was generally lower in that era... Bird was #1 in PER twice, something that Duncan never managed to do.

Duncan 21-5 in Series with HCA
Bird 21-7 in Series with HCA

Just for JB,

Bird was the ultimate offensive weapon for me... there literally wasn't a scoring move he couldn't do and was one of the best passers the league has ever seen. He can also rebound like a good PF should... ultimately it comes down to what you like better - Duncan's defense vs Bird's offense. I think Bird's overall offense > Duncan's advantage on defense.

But if you like Duncan over Bird for D, why not KG vs Bird? Or Hakeem vs Bird as well?

Nah, it's more than just that. Garnett isn't on par with Duncan in terms of being a spectacular play-off performer. And while Hakeem's peak seasons are up there, possibly ahead of Duncan, they aren't quite there with Bird. Duncan's overall career however, is very impressive, his different stretches and consistent play at superstar level gives him a significant edge.

[GilmoreFan]

I'm actually curious. Give Duncan Shaq's teams from 98-11. Does anyone seriously think Duncan wins less than 10-12 titles? I realise of course that Shaq wasn't in his prime for the latter years, that's not the point. The point is success is situational. If Duncan had been given a better situation, he'd look alot more like Russell, and would have a heck of alot more titles than Magic. But because his teams were by and large outgunned, he couldn't get them over the top alot of years.

This "Magic was more of a winner" stuff is just nonsense, and Magic was a huge winner of course, I think he's right in this. But he won more titles because of situational advantages.

[Vinsanity420]

Nah, it's more than just that. Garnett isn't on par with Duncan in terms of being a spectacular play-off performer. And while Hakeem's peak seasons are up there, possibly ahead of Duncan, they aren't quite there with Bird. Duncan's overall career however, is very impressive, his different stretches and consistent play at superstar level gives him a significant edge.

That's not true. I am going back to the RPOY project and quoting posts for the next thread... I believe it was made clear that Duncan wasn't all that much better than KG in the playoffs.

And Duncan literally did almost nothing better than Hakeem ( outside of rebounding slightly better), but let's assign some glorified nonexistent intangibles to him and make him the a Top 5 player. Bah. Duncan is better than Hakeem at one thing - being in favorable situations at the right time.

[UDRIH14]

This "Magic was more of a winner" stuff is just nonsense, and Magic was a huge winner of course, I think he's right in this. But he won more titles because of situational advantages.

it is safe to say whether its magic or bird, remove them from their teams, those teams could continue to push deep into the playoffs with their stacked rosters...dunno about winning the ring...but conference finals appearance shouldnt be a problem. Hence those stacked teams, they have multiple players who could create for themselves or 2 way players who were limited due to bird/magic exposure overshadowing those other players who couldve been franchise players for other teams

[Warspite]

Wilt
Oscar

I have been in Vegas and unable to read this thread so I am going to not weigh in to the current debate.

[GilmoreFan]

I've posted some quite in depth reasons on why Duncan was better than Hakeem. You can find the threads, they'e very recent. Pace and minute adjusted Duncan's playoff stats outside of Hakeem's 3 year peak are actually quite a bit better, and that's consistent with the superior impact he had, and the results we could see with our eyes. Hakeem's stats, impact and results all tell us the same thing. He had a peak that was probably a little ahead of Duncan's peak... not in every way, but overall. But that peak lasted 3 years, and the rest of their careers Duncan was clearly more valuable.

You say success is situational, and I agree, but Hakeem wasn't losing to legendary teams pre-94, he was losing to all sorts of run of the mill teams, and having some very mediocre seasons. Again, I can just paste in the usual reasons, but it's a little premature at this point, especially when you can just find the recent thread yourself.