1. Kobe Bryant
2. Steph Curry
Nomination
David Robinson
Since Steph seems to be cruising towards 1st place and I'm not particularly opposed so I'm going to shift my focus towards what is likely going to the battle for slot #12...
Narigo wrote:Vote: Larry Bird
Alternate: Kobe Bryant
Nominate: Oscar Robertson
A tossup for me between Bird and Kobe. Kobe is better scorer imo mostly because Bird has problems getting to the free throw line which hurt his efficiency. Although Bird was a better off-ball player and outside shooter, and passer. Kobe was much better slasher. Bird was better help defender, Kobe was a better man defender. Bird was better at their best. But Kobe has better prime longevity. It's a tough call for me... I might prefer bird slightly over Kobe mostly cause I think bird has better intangibles
So I think there's something you're leaving out here. Bird is worse at getting to the rim and the stripe. He's also a worse penetrator, and all of this really spawns from Bird being a much weaker-ball handler. This hurts his scoring efficiency. But what about his creation?
Being a more skilled passer is all fine and good but ultimately what matters is what you create. Or, put another way, your ability to take out or minimize variables that make it harder for teammates to score. And when we look at that...
Spoiler:
FWIW, I think there's a decent chance the various creation metrics(none of which present Bird as a significantly better creator than Bryant) may actually be biased in his favor...
ceiling raiser wrote:HeartBreakKid wrote:I think ZeppelinPage's post has really sold me on West's defense. I was always high on it before but did not really fully take into account just how elite he probably was.
I think West is about as good of a two way player a player his size can be. He likely is not far off the goat PG in terms of PGs, and by my calculation he is the best scoring PG as well.
West is tremendous when it comes to both volume and efficiency. Along with Big O these guys were putting up good efficiency even by modern standards. West also had 3 point range (plenty of footage of him hitting hard long range jumpers, and also we know he is a 90% FT shooter so that's a pretty strong sign).
He had the most 40 point games in the post season if we are talking about heroics for a couple decades. Then after Jordan came it took another couple of decades of James to bump him down. These type of heroic records are often a big thing brought up with Kobe (like how many high scoring games he had in the RS), but West had 7 more 40+ games.
Really tremendous efficiency as well as deep playoff runs (weak conference, but it does say a lot about the sample size that he is a legit performer).
Took a while for him to probably become a legit floor general but he became one none the less. I have a hard time thinking Curry is better than him, as dramatic as Curry's 3 point warping his, I am fairly certain West has a more resilient and physical game while also being able to do a pretty good imitation of a long range bomber. The defense that West brings to the table would likely make me put him over Magic, never mind Curry.
My vote is for Jerry West
Alternate vote is for Larry Bird (not sold on him, but again, waiting for people to discuss him in depth before I make an updated decision)
Nomination is for Oscar Robertson
Not a box score guy, but a thought…
Kobe seems to look better than Bird in box creation, and is pretty close is passer rating, eh? Both might be a bit too optimistic on Larry.
To be more specific
-> Passer-rating is still limited to tracking what happens at the ends of possessions. A strong ball-handler Kobe does not get credit for breaking down defenses pre-pass which is one of the advantages of being a better slasher. A weaker one like Bird does not benefits comparatively.
-> Box-creation considers things such as 3-point volume and efficiency to credit players for indirectly creating off-the-ball
Here's the thing;
Spoiler:
Larry Bird is not Steph Curry. He is not getting doubled at half-court, and defenses are not selling out to stop him from hitting triples. He is also not Russell Westbrook...
Spoiler:
Bird is a great mid-range scorer but mid-range is not as good for creating space as rim-scoring and 3-point shooting. Your teammates are literally closer to you and thus it's easier for a defender to switch/help. Pair that with not really penetrating to create openings and not really driving past defenders to break down defenses before the end of a possession, and you get a player who is finding more than he is generating. This means his teammates have to do more of the lifting:
Spoiler:
Compare that with Kobe who ranged from good to elite at basically every type of play:
Spoiler:
If nothing else, I think all this warrants consideration for those using versatility as a criteria:
Samurai wrote:mong all-time greats but he was just so good at so many things during his prime that I'm very comfortable with him here.
Nominate: Oscar Robertson
For those wanting a more holistic lens, "all this" is arguably reflected in the results.
Even without Shaq, in 3-years with a legitimate co-star, Kobe led a +6.5 playoff offense on par with the best 3-year run of Bird's Celtics(86-88). In 08, in games with Gasol, the Lakers were +9.8 scoring higher than any of the "full-strength offenses" Ben lists for Bird.
With Shaq, the Lakers hit highs Bird never approached with Kobe arguably being the lead(played more minutes, kills in on/off, outscores and outcreates in 3 of 4 rounds by box, primary-ball handler ect) when the Lakers posted a +13 offense in 2001 to go along with an overall PSRS of +18(2nd all-time behind the 2017 Warriors and a 11-point improvement from what they posted in 2000).
Accounting for minutes, Kobe arguably was the league's most impactful player in 2008 and would have been in the running in 2009 and 2010 had Lebron not posted the two most valuable regular seasons of the last 40-years. And on top of all that...
ceiling raiser wrote:Clyde Frazier wrote:I'm a little surprised Magic fell all the way to 10 (even with Garnett making the top 10 more crowded). Life has gotten in the way so I haven't had a chance to read many arguments, but I still find his offensive impact to be truly elite putting him slightly ahead of some two way all time greats. I'll go back and read the threads when I have a chance.
Magic and Bird were savant level decision makers which is why I think they're still clear cut top 10 players regardless of average at best longevity. So while my gut is to still go with Bird here, I totally get the argument for Curry who's one of my favorite players. He has a relatively full career we can now judge vs these guys.
Then there's kobe, who i've had right outside the top 10 for a while now. Taking a look at his career again, he still has the longevity edge but not quite as significant as I remember. Those last few seasons post achilles were rocky to say the least. Going into the project I had bird/kobe/curry in that order so now I have some thinking to do.
I've long been a Kobe skeptic, but I think it's time to reevaluate him. Other than the soft skillset stuff, it's worth noting Kobe has an advantage over Bird based on some of Ben Taylor's work in SRS-championship correlation studies.
I think Bird's skillset is interesting, but I wonder if the top 10 GOAT offensive candidate status is gifted despite mediocre impact from the signals we do have, and big question marks as a creator, scorer, and defender.
Yeah, let's not sugar-coat this.
Kobe is not only ahead, he's comfortably ahead:
Spoiler:
The formula has an objective basis. It is, to my knowledge, the only attempt to estimate the influence of srs(over-time) on the ultimate goal. The inputs are subjective. And in this case the inputs are coming from someone who, despite all of the above, at the time of this listing had Bird as an offensive GOAT. I do not know how much each poster is valuing this, but I do not think there's much of a case to be made that Larry offered more over the duration of his career than Bryant did.
As a closer, since most of the Bird talk has been offense focused, I'll spend some time on the defensive side. Bird has a bit of a reputation as a defensive monster. I would argue Bird was closer to serviceable. In some situations he could be a positive. In certain matchups...
Spoiler:
)...If we move to game 5, literally dubbed the steal game, we can see some of his limitations on tape:
;t=374s
(6:14)
Note that while he coughs up a layup, we decided to only count this as a minor breakdown as it wasn't his man and "most players" may not prevent this.
But Bird, by reputation, is not "most players" with many assuming his all-time cerebral offense translates to draymond/kg/lebron/cp3 level defensive court-mapping on the other end. I'd say Larry was more good than great in this regard, frequently being baited into questionable gambles, sometimes getting caught ball-watching, and mostly reacting to what was in his direct line of vision rather than the sort of anticipatory play-reading you'd expect from the best of the best.
Consequently here, in the very first possession of a massive playoff-game, we see that Bird isn't really tracking the weak-side, isn't aware of what's Laimbeer is up to, and ultimately fails to make a high-value help read that the KG's and the Draymond's are making in their sleep.
Rather, Bird mostly reacted to what was happening in front of him, sticking to assignments and making mostly good/reasonable decisions even when the execution didn't come off...
22:32
This was graded as a moderate breakdown for a number of reasons and I think encapsulates Bird's limitations defensively.
For one, fronting a player of your same position instead of guarding straight up is already somewhat of a small loss for the Defense.
This is not a guard trying to save a mismatch on a wing, and while it's not a bad decision(especially against Dantley), it's important to understand that Bird's relatively weak man-defense was largely covered for by an excellent supporting cast(more on that later)
Two, we see this here a few seconds later when, after Bird botches the execution leaving Dantley in the clear, Mchale comes in and delays Dantley giving Bird an opportunity to recover and help.
Three, unfortunately, be it due to athleticism, awareness, or motor, Bird gives up on the play early and Dantley converts.
To be fair there were also positives...
40:15
This was classified as a good defensive play and shows some of Bird's strengths. He does a good job fronting his man away from the ball, makes a timely rotation to get in front of Isiah and his size allows him to swallow Thomas's drive well before he gets to the hoop.
It was not classified as great because the shot was block occurred further from the basket with multiple bigs behind him(thus not as high percentage of a look) and Bird's teammates do a fair bit of lifting pressuring Isiah into an ill-advised shot attempt.
This play is also only really possible because Bird is being utilized as an SF defensively rather than being asked to fight for position under the hoop.
And this gets us back to that cast. It is a luxury that Bird was allowed to play like a PF on offense while being hidden at SF on the other end. Strong rim-deterrents who were also switchable and could also could handle, pass, and score in isolation were not an easy find in the 80's. Put him on a conventional roster and his various weaknesses probably become more apparent.
If you watch this game carefully, you might notice that Bird is mostly away from the on-ball action. That is by design. The less Bird guards up, the better. And luckily for Larry he had, as noted before, an excellent supporting cast:
Spoiler:
This is not to say Bird was a bad defender(though I'd say he was a situational negative vs the Pistons), but the idea that he was some all-time defensive forward who was willing great defenses with his blocks, rebounds(often uncontested), and steals is just way off. He was good in certain situations(significantly more situations than he was bad in at his best), but could also be bad in others, and the mythologizing of Bird as this unflappable genius who invented the concept of hustle and hard-work really should stop.
He was a weak man defender, he was not his team's primary or secondary rim-deterrent, and while his help was good, he had various limitations that prevented it from being other-worldly. In certain matchups that combination proved problematic. In others it proved effective. And while I think it's fair to say it proved effective(or at least functional) in most situations, pretty much all of that came on a team with optimally constructed to maximize Larry on both ends of the floor.
And despite all that, it was Kobe who won more and Kobe who generated significantly more value over his career while quite arguably reaching higher highs both individually and from a team perspective.
Bryant was not used optimally. He did not play with the same core for the duration of his success. He did not get to coast for large swaths of a game running here and there in the hope a defender would shuffle a few feet.
Yet, ultimately, more often than Larry, it was Kobe who got the job done.
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