Real GM Top 100 List #11

[lorak]

I'm a big pusher of Oscar getting consideration this high, I just can't find a way to say he's not below West,

Oscar was better offensive and all around player (only Magic beats him here), he wasn't worse in playoffs than West, defense is hard to evaluate, but even if West was better defender (what isn't so sure) he's impact on D was minimal or none at all.

[fatal9]

Won't have time to make many arguments myself in this thread, will be more reading (very busy until Friday). Have no idea who to vote for.

But is there a reason why Barkley isn't being mentioned along with KG/Malone? Him and Dirk are the greatest offensive PFs to me. He peaked higher than Malone in my mind, better playoff performer in general, though has his share of failures. In '93 playoffs, he took over in ways I've never seen KG or Malone take over in games consistently (some really underrated moments in that Spurs series btw, everyone is only aware of the Sonics series it seems). I personally prefer KG over both them usually, but surely he should be getting mentions. He doesn't quite have the longevity and could cause distractions around the team but based on how good he was? Should be mentioned especially if it's looking like KG/Malone are gonna garner a lot of votes.

This vote would have been a lot easier if bizarro LeBron didn't show up again this year.

[Fencer reregistered]

Garnett also gets bonus marks for being a pathbreaking high school draftee.

I hope you're kidding about this. Giving a player bonus points for something so arbitrary leads down a dangerous path for future threads. I may as well vote for Jerry West because he is The Logo.

When I nominated West, I referred to the fact that he is literally iconic. THAT was a bit of a joke.

But yes -- I am giving extra marks to guys who transformed the game in some way. Their accomplishments are more impressive if they had to chart new paths, rather than travel ones already well-worn.

[mysticbb]

But yes -- I am giving extra marks to guys who transformed the game in some way. Their accomplishments are more impressive if they had to chart new paths, rather than travel ones already well-worn.

Again, what is with Moses Malone? He went from Highschool to Pro directly, when he was 19.

[Pistol Pete Vescey]

V: Big-O
N: Pettit

Just to let you know, your vote doesn't count because you aren't on the list. If you want in, you need to get through The Pen and The Baller. This scenario sounds dangerous, but they're peaceful.

Blasphemy!

[Pistol Pete Vescey]

But yes -- I am giving extra marks to guys who transformed the game in some way. Their accomplishments are more impressive if they had to chart new paths, rather than travel ones already well-worn.

Again, what is with Moses Malone? He went from Highschool to Pro directly, when he was 19.

Indeed, but Moses did not open the floodgates like KG. KG brainwashed a decade's worth of general managers. (That said, I think you both have good arguments. Should we award 'transformation points' for guys that have been critical to the evolution of the sport? )

[Fencer reregistered]

But yes -- I am giving extra marks to guys who transformed the game in some way. Their accomplishments are more impressive if they had to chart new paths, rather than travel ones already well-worn.

Again, what is with Moses Malone? He went from Highschool to Pro directly, when he was 19.

Indeed, but Moses did not open the floodgates like KG. KG brainwashed a decade's worth of general managers. (That said, I think you both have good arguments. Should we award 'transformation points' for guys that have been critical to the evolution of the sport? )

Not sure I'd phrase it that way , but you have the essence. I didn't mention Moses in that context because he wasn't much of a precedent.

Speaking of precedents -- part of my reasoning in voting for Russell at #1 was how tranformational he was. And another part was that I dislike the transformation to the iso game that Jordan led.

[penbeast0]

For Wade fans, how do you get around the fact that he has only 8 years in the league and 3 of them had serious injury issues?

If he tailed off for another 3 years of mediocrity then retired, I think he's just barely ahead of Sidney Moncrief (another guy with a terrific 5 year prime but injury issues who I am probably the biggest fan of on this board admittedly) and below Walt Frazier at the moment. Not sure he should be ahead of Drexler either.

[FJS]

My vote goes to Karl Malone
Nominate: Pettit

Why the mailman above KG?

Mailman gave 1471 games giving 25 points and 10.1 rpg in every of those games.
17 seasons of not losing games with more than 20 ppg
15 seasons of more than 22 ppg
14 seasons of more than 23 (KG hit more than 23 two times)
12 seasons of more than 25 ppg
9 seasons of more than 26 ppg
8 seasons of more than 27 ppg
4 seasons of more than 28
3 seasons of more than 29

2 MVP He was top ten for a while (14 seasons) and top 5 9 years.

He never missed playoffs, with worse or better teanmates.
He was able to change his game as he was getting old and being as good or better than he was young. Some of his "not prime seasons" would be prime for almost every player in the league.
He provided elite offense, and great deffense.

His only fault it's not getting a ring.
Altough he failed in some moments, he provided great performances in playoffs too.
Remind he was the first, and sometimes the one option in offense, and still he delivered.
He was good enough for 24.7 ppg in playoff and 10.7 rpg who aren't too different that his RS averages.


KG doesn't deserve to be above Malone. He was in his prime a great defender, but his teams weren't elite in defense and his teams (as the alpha dog) only passed one time first round if not missed playoffs.
Wolves needed him to score more, because they weren't super talented. KG was not the answer. He had some low % in the postseason... and he only played 47 playoff games in his 12 years as a Wolve. (58 with Celtics in 4 years and one missed by injuries)
Then he goes to the Celtics, and after his great 1st year (still was PP's team) and his rings thanks to play with 2 allstar who help his inability to step up in offense when needed, he start to decline pretty fast.

I'm not saying KG it's not great. He was great, but I think he is pretty overrated here by two facts
1) The year when he was MVP (he deserved it, he was a beast that season)
2) The year he won the ring.
But two great years can't deny the fact that as the big dog he only managed with:
7 years above 50 in W-L % (6 if you consider 98-99 his first prime season)
7 first round exits (5 if you consider 98-99)
3 years of missing playoffs in his prime (you can say he played with terrible teammates, but players like Lebron, Kobe, AI, Kidd made it with terrible teammates)

In 9 prime seasons with Wolves all his great deffense, all his rebound ability, all his all around game was good enough for 1 wcf and 1 MVP and then 5 first round exits (where his teams never fight, they never lost in a final game, 3-0, 3-1 or 4-2) and 3 seasons of no playoffs.

I'm sorry but this is not good enough to be the 11th best player ever in history of NBA.

[pancakes3]

disingenuous factoids that i can't get my feeble mind over when considering KG:
- for his first 7 playoff series, he won a cumulative 7 games.
- only four 50+-win seasons with minny, 7 overall. dirk has 11. chuck has 8. Malone has 11.
- in his 3 deep playoff runs, he went from 24/15/4 (very impressive) to 20.5/10.5.3 (mildly impressive) to 15/7/2.5 (fairly unimpressive). that's it! 3 series where he hit double-digit games as a sample size...
- in comparison, DRob who entered the league 6 years older than KG to a crappier squad had 4 "deep" playoff pushes before Duncan arrived (7 overall) and had better numbers in those series - even if he did take a hit in production from the regular season.
- DRTGs (RS/PS):: KG (pre-Celtics): 100/100.6 KG(career): 99/99.5. Drob (pre-duncan): 97/101. Drob(career): 96/96

1 - i really dislike the "his production took a hit" argument, especially when the net results are ignored. Kidd's apg and fg% all took a hit in the postseason whereas billups' points, assists, and rebounds all rose yet nobody's making a case that kidd is better than billups... are they? if someone "shut down" DRob to 20/10 whereas KG "stepped his game up" to 20/10... does it really matter?

2 - i didn't care much for the post that outlined the "shut down" factor of KG. no basketball team is going to force the issue by feeding the ball to a guy being guarded by the opposing team's best player unless you've got a scoring dynamo like MJ or Shaq. Duncan is no such dynamo and he would gladly share the ball with manu or Drob if it meant that they could get their jollies off Rasho or Flip Murray.

3 - APM is not only variable through lineups, but also matchups and teammates. in a league where PFs are beastly, and KG playing on crap teams, his APM would be significantly greater than say... Amare's simply because Amare could have either marion and nash on the court when he took a breather due to foul trouble or whatnot. you take KG out and you put in Rasho/Kandiman and you've got +/- problems out the wazoo. So yes, if you want to show consistency in the APM throughout the various TWolves teams... fine. you can draw the conclusion that KG was the best player on those teams, and that his teammates were consistently crap. however, i don't know if you can use that as a way to figure out "intangibles".

[drza]

3 - APM is not only variable through lineups, but also matchups and teammates. in a league where PFs are beastly, and KG playing on crap teams, his APM would be significantly greater than say... Amare's simply because Amare could have either marion and nash on the court when he took a breather due to foul trouble or whatnot. you take KG out and you put in Rasho/Kandiman and you've got +/- problems out the wazoo. So yes, if you want to show consistency in the APM throughout the various TWolves teams... fine. you can draw the conclusion that KG was the best player on those teams, and that his teammates were consistently crap. however, i don't know if you can use that as a way to figure out "intangibles".

A few things.

1) You are oversimplifying APM to the point that you aren't even accurate. Raw +/- is, in fact, heavily team dependent. But the whole purpose of APM is to ADJUST for the factors that you name. In the example that you name, APM would be looking at how Amare performs with/without Marion and with/without Nash, as well as how Nash and Marion perform with and without Amare. So no, it's not an example where good teammates mean's lower +/-. That's incorrect.

2) The biggest problems with the "adjustments" I mentioned are noise and collinearity. Non-technical terms aside, that's saying that you have to have a lot of data from many different combinations of players for the "adjustments" to be solved accurately. Those issues can be present even in a year or two of data. Which is why multi-year studies are the best for APM results. They provide a very large sample size, and we get to see the player with and without a large group of teammates. Which means that an individual player's impact can be isolated to a great extent from his teammates, and that those results are much more accurate. So again, your protests above are just wrong when applied to the APM results that have been presented in this project.

3) The 2004 - 2009 APM study widely referenced here was NOT just from KG's poor Wolves teams. In that 6 years, KG played for a 66-win team, a 61-win team, a 58-win team, a 44-win team, a 33-win team, and a 32-win team. AND HIS HUGE APM MARKS STAYED CONSISTENT! So no, you can't just draw the conclusion that because KG was the best player on crap Minnesota teams his APM would be higher. He had the huge marks on both crap teams and great teams, consistently. On the flip side, back to your example, Amare had poor APM marks whether with Nash in Phoenix or on his own in New York. Again, the entire purpose of APM is to try to isolate a player's impact from his teammates as much as possible. And in KG's case, APM indicated that he had a similar impact on his 32-win team in 2007 and his 66-win team in 2008, and in both cases that his impact was HUGE.

Both your complaints, and the logic behind them, are just factually incorrect here.

[Gongxi]

Neither Frazier nor Pettit have been nominated yet, Laimbeer.

Aaaand in the time I posted that, you deleted your post, which sucks because I think it was an informative one.

[An Unbiased Fan]

I'm still trying to parse out my pick here. There's a comparable bigman cluster that includes Malone, Barkley, Dirk, Moses, DRob, and KG. 2 dynamic wings with Dr. J & Lebron. And 2 amazing guards in Oscar/West.

If I had to pick the best of each postion, it would look like this...

G-West
G-oscar
F-Dr.J
F-Malone
C-Moses

So that's the 5 I'm choosing from. I'm also big on playoff impact, so in this group, I have to drop Malone, because the other 4 were better regular season + playoff performers.

G-West
G-Oscar
F-Dr. J
C-Moses

Era dominance means a lot to me, so I have to drop Moses. It's not that he wasn't dominant during th early 80's, it just wasn't the 10 year+ dominance that the other 3 had.

G-West
G-oscar
F-Dr. J

So this leaves me with 3 very different guys. I have to think about this some more, and listen to the arguments in the thread. All 3 have a case for #11.

[cpower]

Vote: West
Nomination: Wade

The logo gets it, Dr. J comes second for me.

[Laimbeer]

For reference, a list of top players from the RealGM 2008 list that still need to be nominated. Needs update for recent achievements and new insight.

2008 Rank, Player

14 John Havlicek
16 Bob Pettit
19 Walt Frazier
21 Elgin Baylor
24 Rick Barry
25 Isiah Thomas
26 Scottie Pippen
27 John Stockton
28 Patrick Ewing
29 Bob Cousy

[Baller 24]

My reasoning for Wade is that he's not too far away from LeBron. The past three seasons he's been a comparable player (LeBron is better, obviously), but if we're comparing their play he's just slightly worse, and that's no cheap shot at Wade, considering LeBron's current play the past three seasons has been on a consistent GOAT level. Aside from that, I think the 2006 dominant all-time historic run actually brings the two a little bit closer.

Nominate: D-Wade

I'm torn for my vote, it's basically down to Erving, Garnett, & Malone. I'll wait and read through some of the arguments before I officially submit, but I'm leaning towards Erving.

[Baller 24]

For reference, a list of top players from the RealGM 2008 list that still need to be nominated. Needs update for recent achievements and new insight.

2008 Rank, Player

14 John Havlicek
16 Bob Pettit
19 Walt Frazier
21 Elgin Baylor
24 Rick Barry
25 Isiah Thomas
26 Scottie Pippen
27 John Stockton
28 Patrick Ewing
29 Bob Cousy

List was a little different. It valued just career accomplishments.

[Laimbeer]

I'm still trying to parse out my pick here. There's a comparable bigman cluster that includes Malone, Barkley, Dirk, Moses, DRob, and KG. 2 dynamic wings with Dr. J & Lebron. And 2 amazing guards in Oscar/West.

If I had to pick the best of each postion, it would look like this...

G-West
G-oscar
F-Dr.J
F-Malone
C-Moses

So that's the 5 I'm choosing from. I'm also big on playoff impact, so in this group, I have to drop Malone, because the other 4 were better regular season + playoff performers.

G-West
G-Oscar
F-Dr. J
C-Moses

Era dominance means a lot to me, so I have to drop Moses. It's not that he wasn't dominant during th early 80's, it just wasn't the 10 year+ dominance that the other 3 had.

G-West
G-oscar
F-Dr. J

So this leaves me with 3 very different guys. I have to think about this some more, and listen to the arguments in the thread. All 3 have a case for #11.

Nice post. For the reasons you listed, particularly era dominance, I think West and Oscar have a bit of an advantage over Karl. Doc and Moses are probably a tick behind them. I'd like to see some West/Oscar debates, but I'm leaning West. Too early for KG, IMO. The last thread really changed my mind...I now see Karl>KG.

I'm thinking Pettit as the nomination, again I'll finalize that after reading more. I don't see Wade anywhere close, only exception being his title run.


Can a Wade supporter explain his case over Pettit? He dominated his position (some say invented it) and had ridiculously more MVP and all-NBA love.

[Baller 24]

Oscar just like Garnett has missed the playoffs on three consecutive occasions at prime form, don't see how he's clearly ahead of him.

[Bucksfans1and2]

K. Malone's playoff failures are way overstated IMO

Vote: Karl Malone

Nominate: Bob Pettit