RealGM Top 100 List #46

[Fencer reregistered]

In theory we each have a function in mind whereby we weight various factors and come out with a score for each player, which scores can then be ranked. I couldn't come close to writing that function out explicitly, and the same no doubt goes for the rest of you; but in principle it's probably there.

HOWEVER, there's no rule saying the function has to be linear, in any sense of "linear". And so, it's not NECESSARILY inconsistent to APPEAR to weight different factors differently when evaluating different players.

And with all that as preamble, I vote for Bill Walton.

[TMACFORMVP]

Someone has to explain win-shares to me. I've looked at it, tried to make sense of it, but the data it comes out with doesn't match the eye test at all. How does Marbury end up with more OWS than Nash in '05? Or guys like David Lee and Nene higher than Kobe in 2010? That Billups produced more OWS than Nash in '06 (in fact, even more than LeBron, Kobe, etc). In fact, Nash only having two season with 10+ OWS seasons seems rather odd to me. How does Shaq NOT have the most OWS in '01? Then consider guys like Terry, Calderon, Martin, and even Maggette have made the Top 10 in OWS in random seasons, I seriously have my doubts about the validity of OWS.

Paul has a better beak than Hill, because of his ridiculous efficiency, both in taking care of the ball, and shooting #'s (which are considerably greater than Hill's), while still at his peak maintaining similar volume in terms of scoring. Then consider Paul's uncanny ability to seemingly control the tempo of the entire game, that's what makes him better in my mind. Though, I don't even think Snake was arguing Hill over Paul, rather if we're looking at someone with that short a peak, why not bring in Hill, who has a long-er peak, whilst not as impressive, still very good in it's own regard (the Pistons were top 5 in ORTG twice, once won 54 games with Hill doing 21/9/7, including a ridiculous month where he put up 24/11/9 on 52%)! He wasn't a particularly impressive playoff performer, but he didn't have much help either.

It's the same reason I don't necessarily buy that Paul's peak is greater than three seasons. Paul's rookie and sophomore seasons aren't worth discussing in the grand scheme of this ranking. Then his historically good two year peak, followed by a season in which he missed nearly half the year (which is a big deal), and another very good, but not as good as his '08/'09 campaigns. And it's probably worth mentioning that in one of Paul's peak seasons, he was arguably outplayed by Billups on both ends of the floor. Paul did 16.6 / 4.4 / 10.4 on .505 TS%, while Billups poured in 22.6 / 4.0 / 7.4 on .736 TS%. So, I suppose, he's had four seasons of All-NBA play, one where he was outplayed by a contemporary PG in the post-season, another in which he missed half the year, and another which he wasn't at the same MVP caliber level that he was at in '08/'09.

Again, I'm not arguing that his peak wasn't better than all these guys, but I don't understand why Reggie gets in for his longevity, while a guy like Ray Allen (who, IMO has very underrated longevity - as he's still a very good player) would get put behind a CP3. Maybe it stems from me believing Reggie went much too high, but are these guys peak that much worse that it trumps having 3-4 seasons more of elite play?

I'm just confused myself of which way to go personally, do I start to value longevity more, or focus on peak since we're coming to an area where there's a lot of similar talent left?

I mean, I'd almost wonder, if we're going for a 2-3 year peak for Paul, then would I rather have Walton's 1.5 year peak? Both are short, but Walton's is really only one season, and another half season/year as a 6th man (unless we do really consider the modern medicine aspect which was discussed much earlier). On the flip side though, I hold Walton's single season peak to a higher regard than Paul's -- by a decent margin; is that enough however?

And when I think Paul, I can't erase KJ out of my mind either (same with Iverson); I mean, he wasn't AS good as Paul in his two best seasons, but he has a legitimate 5-year peak with a couple all-starish caliber seasons around that. He was a very good play-off performer, and by almost every metric displayed a large impact on those Suns teams. Again, Paul was better, but THAT much better to not consider KJ's extra years?

[Doctor MJ]

Someone has to explain win-shares to me. I've looked at it, tried to make sense of it, but the data it comes out with doesn't match the eye test at all. How does Marbury end up with more OWS than Nash in '05? Or guys like David Lee and Nene higher than Kobe in 2010? That Billups produced more OWS than Nash in '06 (in fact, even more than LeBron, Kobe, etc). In fact, Nash only having two season with 10+ OWS seasons seems rather odd to me. How does Shaq NOT have the most OWS in '01? Then consider guys like Terry, Calderon, Martin, and even Maggette have made the Top 10 in OWS in random seasons, I seriously have my doubts about the validity of OWS.

It's not a perfect stat, just a baseline.

Take PER, adjust it to get rid of some of the more obvious flaws, include a team component, and of course make it a total stat instead of a per minute stat, and boom, you've got WS.

I bring it up not to say "See? X is better than Y", but just to show a statistical basis for things.

In the case of Paul vs Hill, one can certainly make arguments how one wants, but when talking about how impressive Hill's numbers are, it's just critical to understand Paul's a FAR more impressive.

Again, I'm not arguing that his peak wasn't better than all these guys, but I don't understand why Reggie gets in for his longevity, while a guy like Ray Allen (who, IMO has very underrated longevity - as he's still a very good player) would get put behind a CP3. Maybe it stems from me believing Reggie went much too high, but are these guys peak that much worse that it trumps having 3-4 seasons more of elite play?

Surely you don't think a vote for Miller over Paul with longevity helping him win should mean that Paul should fall behind everyone with superior longevity. It's not about saying "Okay, longevity wins it here", it's about being adequately impressed with his prime that Paul's peak edge doesn't overwhelm Miller's longevity edge.

Of course if you don't agree with Miller being clearly above Allen, then you won't have Paul slotted in between them. I've gone into a fair amount of detail though about why I personally see clear gap between Miller and Allen, and just as one would hopefully expect: Where there's a clear gap, we aren't talking about guys I slot right next to each other.

[Snakebites]

People in the professional basketball industry to not care about win-shares.

And if we're going by PER, there were seasons where Bob Lanier was the second best player in the league next to Kareem. And he had a 7 year peak in which he was never lower than 5th.

I wasn't really arguing Hill over Paul. Just arguing how given Paul's short peak it really isn't reasonable for Paul to be placed on the list already while Hill doesn't even have a spot at the nomination discussion. And I still think that is an extremely valid point.

I hate to be anti-Paul, but I really don't think that Hill is the only player one can make such claims about. Paul is a great player but due to a combination of injuries and youth hasn't proven enough to be here just yet IMO.

[Doctor MJ]

People in the professional basketball industry to not care about win-shares.

Umm, so? Why should non-stat people being ignorant of a stat make me not use it? The reality is that the vast majority of people involved in the NBA don't have the kind of mathematical intelligence common around these parts, and the small number who do undoubtedly are using some cousin of the advanced stats we use here.

And look, I never said "You must rank by Win Shares" because I don't rank players by Win Shares. But when I want a ballpark figure, I use stats like that.

[Snakebites]

^Why do you assume I was referring to non-stat people?

It is considered useless relative to other stats, not simply because its a fancy number doo-dad that they can't wrap their minds around.

Things aren't always unpopular because they are misunderstood. Sometimes they are just unpopular because they don't adequetely reflect reality.

I'm sure someone with a high win share total is a very good player. But I simply don't see it as a useful thing to compare different very good players.

[Doctor MJ]

^Why do you assume I was referring to non-stat people?

It is considered useless relative to other stats, not simply because its a fancy number doo-dad that they can't wrap their minds around.

Is it? By whom? Who says this?

[Snakebites]

Just an acquaintance of mine who's worked with a few NBDL teams and knows quite a few people in the industry, statistical and not.

Its not a highly regarded statistic.

I'm not saying that necessarily makes it entirely useless, but I'm going to be iffy on any argument that uses it as its cornerstone.

I'd take Bill Walton's two years over Chris Paul's any day of the week as well, btw.

[penbeast0]

vote: Chris Paul
nominate: Bob Lanier

Btw Beast if you read the SI article I linked to last discussion it does talk about Detroit's defense (outside of Lanier).

Sorry, I missed it, catching up in short 2 minutes stretches like this. Will try to read it if I have any time this thread.

[Doctor MJ]

Sigh, so it's the last day of voting. Quick count says Iverson has 5 votes with a grand total of ZERO explanation. C'mon folks this is a project based around people talking with each other. I've said I really, really want to see people discuss Iverson vs Allen, and these aren't two random guys, but 2 current no nominees drafted in the same year. Everyone has an opinion on how these guys rank against each other, you should be sharing your take, as well as making clear that why you disagree with me.

[Doctor MJ]

Just an acquaintance of mine who's worked with a few NBDL teams and knows quite a few people in the industry, statistical and not.

Its not a highly regarded statistic.

I'm not saying that necessarily makes it entirely useless, but I'm going to be iffy on any argument that uses it as its cornerstone.

I'd take Bill Walton's two years over Chris Paul's any day of the week as well, btw.

I would rank Walton's peak ahead of Paul's too. It's not what I'd call my cornerstone by any means. It's just a great way to ballpark things. I mean, other than Wins Produced, I can't think of another popular stat that actually tries to tally cumulative value. To me it goes without saying that you should have a cumulative value stat in your toolbag, so people knocking WS begs the question "What do you use?". If the answer is "I don't like any of them", then that's not a person really trying to max out their statistical estimates.

If you can list some more respected stats according to your friend, I'd be very interested.

[penbeast0]

Well, I think it is safe to say I don't think Allen Iverson belongs this high. The reasons are simple . . . he was a scorer, but that's only one part of the game and even in that part he was a low efficiency scorer who needed the ball in his hands and played one on one streetball with it. Add to that his defense was poor and he had serious and public attitude issues with coaches all through his prime . . . "practice?" . . . so he had negative intangibles.

What it comes down to is I don't think you can build an NBA champion with Iverson anywhere on the squad. His ego needs him to be the star, or at least the co-star, he won't accept a lesser or bench role as he proved in Detroit and Memphis. With Iverson as the star, you have to have a team full of defenders and catch and shoot guys who go to spots (Iverson will drive and occasionally dish but doesn't seem to look for cutters and guys who flash open well); even with a team built that way and one of the GOAT coaches in Larry Brown, they only made it to the finals because the Eastern Conference was in a major down cycle and they still got kicked around there by a very good Laker squad.

Iverson can take over and shoot an outmatched team into victory; the problem is that he is at least as likely to shoot a decent team OUT of position to win. His one finals appearance, he shot in the .300s. And, the point of the game is to win consistently.

[Snakebites]

Just an acquaintance of mine who's worked with a few NBDL teams and knows quite a few people in the industry, statistical and not.

Its not a highly regarded statistic.

I'm not saying that necessarily makes it entirely useless, but I'm going to be iffy on any argument that uses it as its cornerstone.

I'd take Bill Walton's two years over Chris Paul's any day of the week as well, btw.

I would rank Walton's peak ahead of Paul's too. It's not what I'd call my cornerstone by any means. It's just a great way to ballpark things. I mean, other than Wins Produced, I can't think of another popular stat that actually tries to tally cumulative value. To me it goes without saying that you should have a cumulative value stat in your toolbag, so people knocking WS begs the question "What do you use?". If the answer is "I don't like any of them", then that's not a person really trying to max out their statistical estimates.

If you can list some more respected stats according to your friend, I'd be very interested.

I've probably given a false impression of how much I've talked to this individual about it.

I remember a few offhand exchanges in which they talked about the importance of statistics in general, and a condemnation of win shares.

Other than that its not something I've ever really pressed them on.

And honestly, I get that you're saying they are just an approximation, but I can't help but look at your posts on Chris Paul and it seems to be the cornerstone of your argument, whether you are calling it that or not. You may say its not a "perfect" stat, but it really seems to me that you're treating it that way.

I aknowledge that Chris Paul's peak is among the best for a player at his position in NBA history. And that is whether you're looking at win shares or not (so I guess in some ways Win-Shares could be considered a moot point). But with such a limited peak to look at and relatively little proven in the playoffs (something you also seem to value quite highly), I simply don't see the justification in placing him here just yet.

[ElGee]

I've said this before but it's worth repeating. Longevity and Peak ARE NOT competing ideas.

Peak is important because in basketball, the better a player the larger a team's chances are of winning. As the player gets much better, the chances increase almost exponentially. (ie great individuals can have great impact)

Longevity is important because I want to have chances to win titles over periods of a career. (Normally ~15 years.) Every relevant season a player plays he adds to his team's overall title chances in that span.

A player with great longevity can have a great peak for one year, or a solid peak for a number of years (Karl Malone) and give a team a greater overall chance of winning than someone who played just as long with a greater peak.

Sometimes,a long, consistent low-peak player (Reggie Miller) helps the team win more over the years than a high-peak short career (Bill Walton)...sometimes, it's the other way around (Chris Paul over Ray Allen).

[ElGee]

My Paul argument:

Now, Chris Paul is a name I don't think has really been mentioned at all, but he's right here for me...and I'll take him right now over the other candidates...actually by a pretty comfortable little margin. Why? First, the career:

2007 AS season
2008 weak MVP level season
2009 weak MVP level season
2010 ~AS season
2011 good all-nba level season

Yes, those 5 years, especially with the peak play, vault Paul's career above almost everyone left. I can make an argument for Miller and maybe Hayes ahead...Wilkins and Kevin Johnson are right there too. Howard not far off. But what else for Paul?

Well, he's arguably got the best peak of that lot. Howard is the only one who could challenge that. Then I look at my giant draft board and I have CP3 somewhere in the early 30s...near Frazier, Morning and Howard. I like him on a lot of teams -- he's an astoundingly good ball-dominant or PnR PG. He's a nice defender too.

We like to look at ORtg when we see a ball-dominant, QB-style offensive force...When Paul joined the Hornets they had the worst offense in the league. After some slight improvements, they jumped to 5th (111.5, +4.0) in 2008.

We can look at his team's offense with him on the court at 82games:
2007 109.7 +8.7
2008 116.0 +15.4
2009 113.6 +16.4
2010 110.7 +4.1
2011 110.4 +11.6

Even though it's 08 and 09 people associate with, Paul, including his injury-laden 2010 season, has the 4th-highest APM (Dirk, James, Durant) over the last 2 years using the Rosenbaum model. He's 8th in the Engelmann 6-year run.

Henry Abbot likes to point to Paul's teams as a beacon of success in the clutch. If we're buying that, I'm assuming that's a reflection of Paul's consistency/skill that is fairly indefensible regardless of the scenario or opponent. So his PS numbers shouldn't dip.

In the 08 playoffs, New Orleans had a 113.5 ORtg with Paul (+16.7).
In the 11 playoffs, New Orleans had a 106.7 ORtg with Paul (+22.9).

Sure enough, his ORtg, WS/48 and scoring all increase in those postseasons.

Someone said his sophomore season isn't relevant. I understand the dude played in a small market but my goodness, how little do you value this guy when good boost and 17-9 from a PG doesn't help a team at all? Not saying it's much, but I'm pretty picky about what's relevant (basically AS-level play and above) and dismissing that seems strange to me.

[ElGee]

Iverson v Allen is easy to me. Iverson has good career value for what he did in Philly. I've discussed it before and an re-post if needed, but there's a reason I call it Iverson's Law. The guy did good things with a bad offensive team. That's not great, but I think his peak was higher than Ray Allen's, even if circumstance conspired to make that happen.

So career value they are comparable.
Peak goes to Iverson.

The big difference to me is that in a vacuum (ie a random team), Iverson doesn't FIT well and Allen, like Miller, fits amazingly well. You want a great shooter like Allen to stretch the floor, and we've discussed it extensively in this project about how good these guys look in Offensive +/- and on team effect. Allen is consistent and save for one surgery, healthy. AI, OTOH, pretty much needs to play the two which creates some defensive/rebounding issues and almost necessitates a large PG. He can play off ball but he's not a great shooter so it doesn't open the floor the same way Miller/Allen can. He usually needs the ball so it's hard to see him succeeding two of the most successful systems ever

(a) The triangle (or any balanced high-post initiating offense
(b) QBing PG's

Allen pretty much makes every team better. AI, I'm not sure how he fits in two of the most successful styles of basketball in modern history. And if I draft him, I'm getting a warrior but also a bit of a malcontent who might not "get it."

It's worth pondering since they come from the same draft class and Ray Allen is still giving good seasons while AI has been out of the league for a few years, partially due to his inability to FIT.

[Dr Positivity]

With regards to Zo's longevity vs Paul's...keep in mind that Paul has generally been healthier. If you simply take the average games/season for both players (Paul's career vs Zo's first 8 years), Paul averages 71 games/season, while Zo averages 70 games/season (estimating about 75 games played for Zo in 99, if you extrapolate it to an 82 game season). But Paul has never missed close to the same amount of games as he did in 2010, and it looks like whatever injuries were bothering him are probably past him now. It looks more like a fluke amount of missed games to be honest. If we throw out 2010, Paul averages 76 games/season for 5 years. Throwing out Zo's most injury-riddled season means that he plays 72 games/season for 7 years. So yeah, you'll get two extra years out of prime Zo, but he does play 20 less games through 5 years than Paul, and for 2 seasons, Paul is a notch above Zo as a player.

Well a couple problems with this

- The difference between Zo's most injury riddled season in his first 8 (98, 58 Gs) and Paul's most shouldn't be discounted. Paul played 45, but it was more like 38 and then 7 more at a really low level at the end of the season (he averaged like 9, 8 and .45 TS%) and if you extrapolate that level of play as not ready for an NBA court so soon after the removal, the difference between 98 Zo and 2010 Paul in the playoffs had he made it would be huge - Zo was a 23 PER guy still by the 98 playoffs

- I don't see how one can say "Zo plays 20 less games through 5 years than Paul" unless you discount the difference between 98 Zo and 2010 Paul completley. The difference in that year makes up for that 20 G gap. Not even mention the fact that Zo adds 2 full prime seasons and then 02, 06, 07 as well on top of it

As I said, you can virtually cancel out their rook/soph seasons exactly which makes the comparison 08, 09, 10, 11 Paul vs 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 00, 02, 06, 07 Zo. And I just don't know how people can keep taking Paul out of those 2 options. 08/09 Paul vs 99/00 Zo isn't even a non question for me if I'm building a team to win a title. As amazing as Paul's seasons were, there is a serious argument towards taking the Zo and setting yourself up inside and defensively - in a would you rather have Ewing or Nash sort of way. If you add the massive gap between the rest of Paul's resume (10, 11) vs the rest of Zo's (95, 96, 97, 98, 02, 06, 07) I just don't have any doubt here about who deserves to be ranked higher

[Dr Positivity]

On PER/WS: My problem is the pace calculating. Sometimes it's fair to dock players for pace, but other times, like say with Nash or Magic, or Kobe vs Wade, I just don't think it's accurate to dock them. I think on the whole, the players on fast pace teams seemed to have lower PER and WS than they should and the players on slowball teams have higher than they should.

I think Paul's numbers look a little high in PER and WS most seasons, especially next to other historic PGs, since most of them played in fast paced systems and the Hornets have had one of the slowest. I trust that 08 and 09 are among the best PG seasons ever, but above Nash, Magic, Stockton's best, don't know about that. And his 2011 PER was ridiculously high for a player who disappeared a lot when his team needed him and stayed on the perimeter making Jose Calderon passes a lot and whose team results looked extremely suspicious - 19th/30 ORTG and bottom 6 in 3pt attempts tells me the creation level wasn't nearly as high as prime Paul. I think he was a clear all-star and 3rd team All-NBA player, but not any more than that. He had the same falloff as eg. 2009 Duncan vs 2007 Duncan, 2011 Kobe vs 2008 Kobe, etc. Stats looked superstarish for all 3 players, but not the same guys at all (though it really bugs me that 2010 birthyears might look at 2011 Kobe and see "1st team All-NBA! 4th in MVP! 1st team All-D! Only slightly smaller stats! Kobe was in his prime in 2011!"

[FJS]

Vote: Iverson
Nomination: Worthy

[Snakebites]

I voted for Iverson simply because I think, despite his negatives, he has a combination of longevity and high peak that isn't really matched by any of the other candidates at this juncture (other than Elvin Hayes, who, due to some other negatives, isn't garnering much interest at this juncture).

He's frequently bashed for inefficiency, and those criticisms are most certainly warranted. But the player was an amazing talent who was extremely productive despite being on teams with little offensive support. I can see the argument that he frequently didn't mesh well with other scorers, but a quick look at the scorers he clashed with (most notably Jerry Stackhouse and Larry Hughes) reveals that these players were themselves flawed, inefficient, at more ball dominant than their competence on the court should have dictated.

Not only did he generally lack a good offensive second option, but his teams frequently didn't even have good shooting or spacing, so he was doing what he did without much in the way of room to operate.

He was the undisputed best player on teams that repeatedly made it to the second round or beyond, and even lead a team to the finals. He was considered on level with guys like Pierce and McGrady at his peak, and while I realize his inefficiency and other flaws should cost him some spots, its clear given where those two players wen that they already HAVE cost him some spots.

I'm just not convinced Ray Allen had quite the same level of impact. Despite playing with various other all star players in Milwaukee and having the chance to run his own show in Seattle, he never really had a period of sustained relative success until he joined the Celtics as the team's third best player.