RealGM Top 100 #81

[therealbig3]

BTW, I could use some advice:

We have 80 guys voted in, all of them in my top 100, which means there's 20 guys left. I have 19, so I was wondering who should be that guy, and was hoping I wasn't blatantly missing someone. My list of the remaining 19:

Kemp
Nance
Brand
Sharman
Dandridge
Hardaway
Deron
Dumars
Pressey
Melo
Sheed
Bosh
Big Ben
Amare
Marion
Sikma
Daniels
Daugherty
Debusschere

Who am I missing?

[bastillon]

Mullin or Schrempf ? if Bosh and Marion, why not Lamar Odom ? also Terry Cummings.

Well, definitely:

Nominate: Elton Brand

Once again. Now, by no means would I say that Brand had the best peak of any of the current players who are not yet nominate. However, this is a guy with an unquestionable Top 10 peak, who to my mind was a clear all-star level player for 6 straight seasons, and did so with a fantastic attitude along the lines of Duncan. Like Pau Gasol, he missed out on all-star status because you have to be a superstar to be an all-star lock on a crappy franchise (which is why he eventually took the opportunity to go).

To those who say "6 years isn't great longevity", well let's not overreact. Brand's got a 29 K minute career with an average PER of 21.5.

For perspective, there are 43 players in the career 25 K & 20 PER in history. The only one besides Brand not already voted in is Dantley, and all but 6 of the others by my count are in our Top 50 (exceptions KJ, Schayes, Lanier, McAdoo, Carter, Webber). And incidentally, if we rank those players by PER, Brand is 30th.

So this is not a guy with a tiny career. He's a guy with a very solid career with fine longevity, who shines in offensive stats while being a good defender and a good locker room guy.

PER is misleading in Brand's case. it favors high volume guys over defenders and Brand's impact wasn't high on defense. same with his career mins, he may have played 29k mins, but before 2002 and post 2007 he didn't play particularly well, so yeah, his longetivity being 6-year period, it's pretty damning for him at this point.

I have a hard time thinking Nance's impact wasn't at least similar to Brand and he played at this level for longer. of course Nance is now voted in, but he's one of many guys who fit that profile. Terry Cummings. Dandridge. Dumars. Sheed. even Marion. we should focus now on consistency rather than peak. neither of candidates or nominees is giving you a legit shot at championship anyway. they're well suited as #2 or #3 though and you want that type of players to play as long as possible.

[Doctor MJ]

PER is misleading in Brand's case. it favors high volume guys over defenders and Brand's impact wasn't high on defense. same with his career mins, he may have played 29k mins, but before 2002 and post 2007 he didn't play particularly well, so yeah, his longetivity being 6-year period, it's pretty damning for him at this point.

I have a hard time thinking Nance's impact wasn't at least similar to Brand and he played at this level for longer. of course Nance is now voted in, but he's one of many guys who fit that profile. Terry Cummings. Dandridge. Dumars. Sheed. even Marion. we should focus now on consistency rather than peak. neither of candidates or nominees is giving you a legit shot at championship anyway. they're well suited as #2 or #3 though and you want that type of players to play as long as possible.

Eh, I think you phrasing Brand's PER like it's somehow particularly unusual is weird. Obviously it's not a stat that we should use and think it captures defense as well as offense, but that's true for every player.

Now, you're clearly saying that Brand's offense to defense ratio is particularly skewed, and I'd certainly reject that. He's always been a solid rebounder and shot blocker, he works hard all over the court. He's obviously not a Ben Wallace level defender, but I think there's a real danger in saying "Well if a 4 or a 5 isn't a superstar defender, I don't want him." Bottom line is a great overall player to have on your team.

I'm also a bit exasperated by the way you talk about his longevity as if he was literally doing nothing outside of his best 6 years. He has that high career PER in part because his career curve has been pretty dang graceful other than the time marred by injury. Here I quote him having a PER of 21.5, and his first two seasons were north of 20 PER, and you treat them like they don't exist.

Now, undoubtedly you'd say "Well the Bulls still sucked, so he clearly wasn't that good", but when talking about filling out a guy's career, I think that's an unreasonable perspective. Bottom line is that if you acquire Brand from day 1, and he does for you what he actually did, you're not going to see him at all as someone who was nothing his first two years by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course a natural rebuttal to that statement of mine would be "Well if he's not actually that much better in his prime, than what he was in Chicago, how could could he be?", but the Bulls were a complete catastrophe in those seasons. They simply weren't built to be anything like contenders. A completely depleted roster, massive turnover year-to-year, throwing a bunch of young guys out there without structure.

Re: "we should focus now on consistency rather than peak". I suppose this is a philosophical area where there are no wrong answers, but I don't really see why it makes sense to change your standards as the list goes on. If Player A would be more coveted by teams in general than Player B, and you agree with their assessment, why would you skew matters on your list? Just because you feel like you should have sidekicks represented on your big list?

[ThunderDan9]

BTW, I could use some advice:

We have 80 guys voted in, all of them in my top 100, which means there's 20 guys left. I have 19, so I was wondering who should be that guy, and was hoping I wasn't blatantly missing someone. My list of the remaining 19:

Kemp
Nance
Brand
Sharman
Dandridge
Hardaway
Deron
Dumars
Pressey
Melo
Sheed
Bosh
Big Ben
Amare
Marion
Sikma
Daniels
Daugherty
Debusschere

Who am I missing?

Chris Mullin!

[lorak]

Hagan, Mullin, Schrempf, Chet Walker, Divac and Eaton. Maybe Pistol Pete, too.

[Dr Positivity]

BTW, I could use some advice:

We have 80 guys voted in, all of them in my top 100, which means there's 20 guys left. I have 19, so I was wondering who should be that guy, and was hoping I wasn't blatantly missing someone. My list of the remaining 19:

Kemp
Nance
Brand
Sharman
Dandridge
Hardaway
Deron
Dumars
Pressey
Melo
Sheed
Bosh
Big Ben
Amare
Marion
Sikma
Daniels
Daugherty
Debusschere

Who am I missing?

Gus Williams IMO. Strong penetrating guard with a great playoff record, huge playoff performances including 29ppg in the 79 Finals, clear sign of impact because of the year he sat out - they dropped to 34 Ws, then bounced back to 50 W caliber and similar SRSs as the DJ years the next few. It's pretty clear by my criteria that Williams > Hardaway, both small/fast pain in the ass-s but I have Williams with a decisive edge in playoff reliability. It's not a huge edge between them but enough to make me confident saying Williams was better. I'm pretty surprised all 3 of the late 80s/early 90s Cavs guys in contention got nominated before a single of the Sonics a decade earlier. I'm not saying it's decisively wrong, just surprising - I like Sikma more than Daughtery decisively though due to twice the longevity and someone would have to convince me why prime Daughtery is better, period. My personal ranking of those 6 guys is 1. Price 2. Sikma 3. Nance 4. Williams 5. Daughtery 6. DJ

Also Paul Westphal is a name to think about, had a top 10/15 peak on succesful teams, is a good fit in most lineups, etc.

And Hagan as someone mentioned

I'm not smoking the Pressey bong, it's possible Nellieball really needed him healthy, but we're talking about a clear supporting, non all-star player here for 5 years with injuries. He's closer to like the Robert Horry zone. I appreciate the In/Out stuff people are posting, but it has to pass the sniff test to me still and I'm far from convinced Pressey isn't what he is (nice point forward, defender, not much of a scorer). I'd vote Nene before Pressey as a recent example of an underrated "sneaky valuable 4th wheel on a 50 W team, they'd fall apart if he wasn't there" guy. Or perhaps one could say he had a "Rondo effect" on the Bucks by giving them an element that completed the team and made them what they are

Sheed's career is too up and down mentally for me to make my top 100 personally. I like Laimbeer over him

[penbeast0]

I don't buy the Lamar Odom idea at all either; he was never close to that good. Speaking of the Robert Horry zone, not sure Odom is better than Horry.

[bastillon]

wait, Laimbeer isn't voted in yet ?
I'm changing my nomination to Laimbeer.

[Doctor MJ]

wait, Laimbeer isn't voted in yet ?
I'm changing my nomination to Laimbeer.

You simply assume he was already voted in?

Okay, just for point of reference, in the previous two times I've been involved in making a Top 100 project, I don't think Laimbeer was ever nominated by anyone. Your opinion clearly deviates greatly from the norm, you should really check out the list so far because it's entirely possible there are more people on your list that will be missing.

(Dumars still not nominated on this list which I would absolutely call an upset)

[Doctor MJ]

Mullin or Schrempf ? if Bosh and Marion, why not Lamar Odom ? also Terry Cummings.

Just saw this.

Odom is a non-all-star. He's a non-all-star because for most of his career with the Lakers he's so prone to falling apart that the team had to move him to 6th man status to really be happy with him.

Pretty much everyone else you mention is a clear all-star. Mullin might be my next nomination, and I'd be open to hearing about others.

[ronnymac2]

Gus Williams is definitely on my radar.

Lamar Odom is probably my favorite player, but he's a support player. He's not made to be a superstar.

I've been thinking about Laimbeer as well, but I think Sikma has to get in first. Sikma's basically a better version of Laimbeer without the rep as a douche.

[ElGee]

vote: Bill Sharman
nominate: Elton Brand

@realbig3 - McGinnis, Cummings, Rice, Durant, Mullin, Gus Williams and maybe even Schrempf, Lou Hudson and Gus Johnson. (I've got Gus 100 with about 8 or 9 more viable candidates to examine.)

Btw, Terry Cummings had a seriously good career considering he hasn't been nominated yet.

[penbeast0]

First 8 years of his career, Cummings was better than Nique or Worthy though he never got the recognition for it . . . then, like Sikma, long late career as limited role player so people don't remember him in his dominant years.


VOTE

Billups – penbeast0, Doctor MJ

BWallace – DavidStern, drza, Dr Mufasa, Laimbeer

Shawn Kemp – bastillon, therealbig3, JordansBulls

Sharman -- ElGee

Dantley – ronnymac2

NOMINATE

Daniels – penbeast0, Laimbeer

Brand – drza, ElGee, the realbig3, Doctor MJ

Deron – Dr Mufasa, ronnymac2, DavidStern

Richmond – JordansBulls

Laimbeer – bastillon