#11 Highest Peak of All Time (Garnett '04 wins)

[therealbig3]

Vote: LeBr...oh, never mind.

It's between Dr. J, Walton, and Garnett for me, and I don't see why Garnett shouldn't go first among that group. Him and Walton are extremely similar players, but I think Garnett is a little better offensively.

Dr. J seems to be LeBron-esque, which would suggest that he should go next, but he wasn't quite that elite level ball handler and creator that LeBron is, and that to me separates him from that super-elite class of offensive players. A bit worse defensively too. Overall, I do only see a small gap between LeBron and Dr. J, but that small gap is enough for Garnett and Walton to slide in above him.

Vote: 04 Garnett

As drza has so excellently described, KG was an absolute monster at his peak. The only reason why I may have seemed to be a little harsh on him was because I have the people he was being compared to (LeBron, Duncan) a bit higher on my GOAT peak list. But make no mistake, I have massive respect for peak KG.

[mysticbb]

Performance level measured by what? How do you measure defense? Do you look at playoffs?

You haven't read the whole post, if you don't know the answer to the first question. No, I did not check for the playoffs specifically. Why should I use a smaller sample? The regular season performance level should be enough. That is also in very good agreement with ALL other studies made on that subject.
The defense doesn't even matter, because the comparison is made based on league average. If you think the ABA was a weaker league in terms of average defense, that would apply to all players, which then would be adjusted by the league average values anyway. Thus, that is a non-issue.

Do you see anyone discussing TMac in #11 thread?

What? That has nothing to do with the point made. There was also no discussion about Jordan or Bryant in this thread. I just used McGrady as an example for extreme drops from a younger age (22 to 25) and later (29 to 32). Overall Erving fits into a the usual trend, that wing players tend to have their statistical best seasons between 22 and 25 while seeing a somewhat 5% drop in their performance level from 29 to 32. That is true for Bryant, Jordan and Erving.

[lorak]

Performance level measured by what? How do you measure defense? Do you look at playoffs?

You haven't read the whole post, if you don't know the answer to the first question. No, I did not check for the playoffs specifically. Why should I use a smaller sample?

So why so many people here value playoffs much more?

The defense doesn't even matter, because the comparison is made based on league average. If you think the ABA was a weaker league in terms of average defense, that would apply to all players, which then would be adjusted by the league average values anyway. Thus, that is a non-issue.

I don't understand. You are talking about players performance level, which is measured by WS or PER, right? But that two metrics don't include defense, so half of the game is almost non existent in that performance level measurement (?)

[mysticbb]

So why so many people here value playoffs much more?

I have no idea what you even talking about. For an individual player the playoff performance level is a pretty good indicator of his real performance level. But in average the difference is marginal at best. And then again, I compared the average level for a lot of players. If I would just compare the players who played in the 1976 ABA playoffs and then proceded to play in the 1977 NBA playoffs, how much would there be left? Makes no sense to reduce the sample that much.

I don't understand. You are talking about players performance level, which is measured by WS or PER, right? But that two metrics don't include defense, so half of the game is almost non existent in that performance level measurement (?)

Not PER or WS, but PER and WS/48. The average PER is 15 in each season, the average WS/48 is 0.099. When a player has a PER of 15 and WS/48 of 0.099 he would get: (15/15+0.099/0.099)/2=1. If he has 17 PER and 0.115 WS/48, he would get: (17/15+0.115/0.099)/2 = 1.15 (or 15% over league average). Just a simple way to normalize the player level to league average.

First, both metrics have the individual defense included to some degree. The boxscore does not give enough informations in order to make much better statements about the individual defense anyway. Second, if the defense in the league is lower, that will effect the individual efficiency numbers, they will just increase. So, the average level will just be raised, which then is normalised by the used stats anyway. Thus, for the made test it doesn't even matter. If the "worse defense" of the ABA caused the higher numbers for the ABA players, that should be brought down by the better defense of the NBA players in 1977. Thus, the average in performance level should shift stronger and down for the ABA players from 1976 to 1977. But that didn't happen. In fact the NBA players shifted more and down, while the former ABA players stayed the same in terms of performance level. There is really nothing here which would suggest a weaker defense caused the ABA players to perform better over league average than the NBA players. In fact, the numbers are even suggest the opposite, that the better ABA players (keep in mind those are 90% of the minutes occupied during the 1976 ABA season) were slightly better than the better NBA players (also 90% of the occupied minutes during the 1976 NBA season).

So, if the defense was different, the used stats and the way I applied it, would make it a non-issue. In fact, the numbers can be interpreted in the way that the ABA players were actually better defenders, while there is no way to interpret the numbers the other way around.

[bastillon]

there is no NBA evidence whatsoever to suggest Walton was in Garnett's league as a scorer. lmao @ that statement.

[ardee]

At last the LeBron issue is done

A very intriguing three-way discussion between the Doctor, Walton and KG here.

Uhh, to me, it's looking a bit like between KG and Walton to me. I love Doc, and that '76 Finals was absolutely unreal. I'm just not convinced he can impact a game as much as he did if he wasn't scoring the way he was. He was definitely a great perimeter defender, but KG and Walton were among the top 5-6 defensive ANCHORS, which is one of the most valuable commodities possible.

Tentatively, I'm leaning toward KG over Walton, because he seemed like a superior offensive player. Open to arguments though.

[drza]

(snip)

I can't believe you just "lol" and dismissed me. I'm not even going to go into much depth on a response, because it would just be argumentative. If you and Mystic want to argue that in general the average player stayed roughly similar from one league to another, that's a reasonable thing to do. But 1) it defies my common sense that if you put all of the best players in the world instead of half and half that there is NO difference and 2) there were literally TWO transcendant players on a historical level in the early-mid 70s...coincidentally both of them were in the early part of their primes when the NBA and ABA merged...and neither of them ever came close to the kind of statistical domination that they had prior to the merger afterwards, despite them being 26 and 28 years old when that merger occurred. It strains credulity for me that both of them just happened to have this fall-off due to other circumstances to the degree that we should ignore the MUCH BIGGER EVENT of the two leagues merging that just happened to occur at the exact same time. Your mileage may vary.

For a potential mechanism, I point out much of the same commentary that occurred when people were discussing 2009 LeBron's #s going nuts against 2 bad teams and a Magic team that was a) ranked #1 defensively, b) had trouble all year against players that play like LeBron and c) were emphatically NOT the Celtics, who )elephant in the room) were the real best defense and also had a history of diminishing LeBron's numbers.

Perhaps the average player wouldn't have seen their numbers change much as circumstances changed, but the BEST players would be the ones most capable of taking advantage of the mismatches and weaknesses that would have shown up with lesser quality. Plus...

3) Doc has his own strengths, he doesn't need to borrow LeBron's.

Dude, I've been talking about how unreal it was for Erving to lead his team in all categories etc for years. Years before LeBron did it. For them to be the only two guys to have ever done it, and both being guys to discuss in this project, it's be silly not to mention them together when talking about this accomplishment. While doing so, it would be silly not to mention that they are both forwards.

And of course, while doing so it would be irresponsible not to note that they did have different games...which is why I noted that.

It feels like you're just disapproving because you think I talked about their shared accomplishment too much without spending enough time on the differences. Totally fine for you then to focus more on the differences, but I'm not here making anything up. Domination-wise, I see them very similar.

Never accused of making anything up. Said the players were stylistically very different. And they were. The "led in every category" is a weak point of comparison because a) we're going much more in depth in this project and b) ironically, one of the other major players being discussed right now ALSO led his team in all 5 categories, and that was Garnett in '03. Just leading the team in all 5 cats doesn't say anything about the way the players played...Doc J led his team in assists with an assist % of about 20%...LeBron led his with an assist% up near 40%...that's a HUGE difference. Especially when the other major GOAT offensive players have shown the ability to have the latter type of assist % as team offense creators (yes, even Jordan and LeBron showed they can do that). J never did. But that isn't even the whole point...

Your thought experiment question was whether someone should vote for Doc '76 JUST because they voted for '09 LeBron. My answer is emphatically no, because the 2 players are entirely different. This isn't 80s Magic and Bird. This isn't even 2000s Duncan and KG. Can there be some rough parallels drawn between J and LeBron? OK, maybe some rough ones. But are they so identical that a vote for one is a vote for the other? Not even close. Which was the main point of my response.

[C-izMe]

For me it's between KG 04, Dr. J 76, and Dirk 11? (maybe 06). Some issues with all of them though-
KG - Was his impact that high partially because of his team? They were built around him and very good at playing their role. Maybe a stronger team only gets a slightly suped version of 08 KG.
What separated this KG from the others? He always played amazing in PS wins but he always played bad in losses. No middle ground here and iirc this year was the same.

Dr. J - Was competition a factor? He played in a split league during the mid 70s. A pretty weak era (off the top of my head the next great draft class was in 79 and 73 is probably bottom 5 along with some others) by many accounts and the weakest era IMO.
Is he highly portable? His next season marked a major fall in numbers and impact. Some say his relationship with McGinnis is the reason why but I'm not sure if that completely explains it away. His game was mostly putbacks, cuts, and transition baskets (with the occasional post up) so it seems his game should be portable.

Dirk 11/06 - which should I choose? One was a way better PS the other was a way better regular season.
Is he great enough to be placed here? His impact definetly places him here, but that has to do with the team's build around him IMO. As a individual player he's the weakest of the three IMO.


Walton - I'm not buying the monster impact here. I can see him high but he's not in the top 13 if you ask me.

[mysticbb]

it defies my common sense that if you put all of the best players in the world instead of half and half that there is NO difference

Why? Devide the current NBA in two different leagues rather equally (in terms of talent), the average for each league will be the same level as the average for the current league. Why should the average change? Really, I don't see any kind of common sense telling me that the average would change.

there were literally TWO transcendant players on a historical level in the early-mid 70s...coincidentally both of them were in the early part of their primes when the NBA and ABA merged...and neither of them ever came close to the kind of statistical domination that they had prior to the merger afterwards, despite them being 26 and 28 years old when that merger occurred.

Uh? Abdul-Jabbar had just recently his 77 season voted in as his peak season, that is right after the merger. How can you say that he never reached the dominance again? And Erving just saw a big role shift, a big change to his game. He goes from being the main guy on offense, to a system in which he has far less touches (in 76 he had about 23 shots per 75 possession, in 77 it went down to 18!), a different rule set, different coaching philosophy, etc. pp.

It strains credulity for me that both of them just happened to have this fall-off due to other circumstances to the degree that we should ignore the MUCH BIGGER EVENT of the two leagues merging that just happened to occur at the exact same time.

You might as well just being obsessed with finding a pattern which fits your preconception. Before I looked into it; I also thought that the ABA was much weaker than the NBA at that time. Then I collected the numbers and it became more and more clear that this wasn't the case. And when we actually look at the difference between the players before and after the merger, there isn't difference to other year-to-year developments either. The biggest surprise is the consistency for the ABA players despite the bigger shifts in role and minutes, that's basically the only things which really sticks out here in comparison to the year-to-year development for the players in other seasons.

[C-izMe]

Why? Devide the current NBA in two different leagues rather equally (in terms of talent), the average for each league will be the same level as the average for the current league. Why should the average change? Really, I don't see any kind of common sense telling me that the average would change.

But if you add 5-10 teams the league will be weaker as a whole. That's also ignoring the fact that young talent wasn't flying out in the early 70s and the league was thin anyway.

[Dr Positivity]

I don't love the Erving-Lebron comparison either. 76/77 Erving's perimeter polish isn't close to Lebron's, even in 2009. By 80-82 he had gotten more consistent in that area, but still not at a Lebron level. Furthermore on their drives they rely on different things. Lebron is about power, Erving seems like a much more slippery and crafty player, a near genius at recognizing holes and space and taking advantage of a help defender being a split second slow. I think in a way Erving has as much 80s Jordan in him as Lebron (and people were talking about Jordan being the evolutionary Erving when he came out)

[drza]

it defies my common sense that if you put all of the best players in the world instead of half and half that there is NO difference

Why? Devide the current NBA in two different leagues rather equally (in terms of talent), the average for each league will be the same level as the average for the current league. Why should the average change? Really, I don't see any kind of common sense telling me that the average would change.

As I said in my last post, we're not comparing the average ABA or NBA player. We're comparing the best of that era vs the best in other eras. And with the best, sometimes it's only against the other best that their warts show. If LeBron played in a league that didn't include the Celtics, there's a very real chance that he posts better playoff stats and leads his team to the Finals every year between 2007 and 2012. That would be a much different (and better) result than what happened for LeBron in real life, even if he himself isn't different. I don't see why it's ridiculous to apply that same line of thought to Dr. J.

there were literally TWO transcendant players on a historical level in the early-mid 70s...coincidentally both of them were in the early part of their primes when the NBA and ABA merged...and neither of them ever came close to the kind of statistical domination that they had prior to the merger afterwards, despite them being 26 and 28 years old when that merger occurred.

Uh? Abdul-Jabbar had just recently his 77 season voted in as his peak season, that is right after the merger. How can you say that he never reached the dominance again? And Erving just saw a big role shift, a big change to his game. He goes from being the main guy on offense, to a system in which he has far less touches (in 76 he had about 23 shots per 75 possession, in 77 it went down to 18!), a different rule set, different coaching philosophy, etc. pp.

Re-read what I wrote. I said "statistical domination". In Kareem's case this is more in the counting stats, as his top-7 scoring and top-7 rebounding seasons by volume all happened before the merger, and he never got there again afterwards. He got more efficient, but lost the volume. Statistically, what Kareem accomplished in 1971 was greater than what he did in 1977, AND he also won the title. But I think 1977 was more impressive, at least in part because he was doing what he did against tougher competition.

And as for Erving, again, I don't suggest that his changed role might not have been a factor. What I reject is the notion that going from the ABA to the NBA wasn't ANOTHER factor.

It strains credulity for me that both of them just happened to have this fall-off due to other circumstances to the degree that we should ignore the MUCH BIGGER EVENT of the two leagues merging that just happened to occur at the exact same time.

You might as well just being obsessed with finding a pattern which fits your preconception. Before I looked into it; I also thought that the ABA was much weaker than the NBA at that time. Then I collected the numbers and it became more and more clear that this wasn't the case. And when we actually look at the difference between the players before and after the merger, there isn't difference to other year-to-year developments either. The biggest surprise is the consistency for the ABA players despite the bigger shifts in role and minutes, that's basically the only things which really sticks out here in comparison to the year-to-year development for the players in other seasons.

And again, we're talking about outliers here. Doc J was not an average player by any stretch of the imagination, and none of your statistical analysis has any kind of curve to correct for player quality. Doc never reached the level of individual dominance post-merger that he had pre-merger. There are some reasonable circumstances to account for some of that difference, but there is a level of evidence necessary to disprove that the ABA/NBA merger wasn't a big factor. And for me, the level that you're producing isn't enough. For me. Again, your mileage may vary.

[Doctor MJ]

I can't believe you just "lol" and dismissed me. I'm not even going to go into much depth on a response, because it would just be argumentative. If you and Mystic want to argue that in general the average player stayed roughly similar from one league to another, that's a reasonable thing to do. But 1) it defies my common sense that if you put all of the best players in the world instead of half and half that there is NO difference and 2) there were literally TWO transcendant players on a historical level in the early-mid 70s...coincidentally both of them were in the early part of their primes when the NBA and ABA merged...and neither of them ever came close to the kind of statistical domination that they had prior to the merger afterwards, despite them being 26 and 28 years old when that merger occurred. It strains credulity for me that both of them just happened to have this fall-off due to other circumstances to the degree that we should ignore the MUCH BIGGER EVENT of the two leagues merging that just happened to occur at the exact same time. Your mileage may vary.

Well first off drza, I apologize. Tone is difficult to express precisely in text. Know that I have a lot respect for you, but I really am very puzzled as you go on about this.

mystic just wrote a great post where he said 90% of the player-minutes were carried over from both leagues. Sounds about right. So if you wanted to say that the merged league was "10% tougher" or something like that, I wouldn't complain. If you're literally believing that merging 2 leagues makes things twice as tough though, I don't know what to say. You've got some major misconceptions.

Remember, I'm not saying it wasn't harder to win a championship. Clearly it was. But you're making it sound like pre-merger both leagues had X teams, and that half of them got chopped to allow only X teams in the merged league. Clearly that's not what happened.

If you take two rooms separated by a wall, and remove the wall, things are not going to get twice as hot or twice as cold. You're just going to get some temperature somewhere in between the two. The only reason at all to look at the merged league as increasing the average level of difficulty is that not all of the ABA teams came over with the merger. That part IS something you can bring up.

Re: two superstars, never dominated the same way again. You're rejecting the league-wide data in favor of focusing on just two guys? That doesn't seem wise to me. I also don't agree with you. Erving's big change has already been discussed. Kareem's big stat change was simply that he played less minutes in the regular season. His Per 36 was comparable, and in the playoffs he maintained comparable minutes and comparable production.

Never accused of making anything up. Said the players were stylistically very different. And they were. The "led in every category" is a weak point of comparison because a) we're going much more in depth in this project and b) ironically, one of the other major players being discussed right now ALSO led his team in all 5 categories, and that was Garnett in '03. Just leading the team in all 5 cats doesn't say anything about the way the players played...Doc J led his team in assists with an assist % of about 20%...LeBron led his with an assist% up near 40%...that's a HUGE difference. Especially when the other major GOAT offensive players have shown the ability to have the latter type of assist % as team offense creators (yes, even Jordan and LeBron showed they can do that). J never did. But that isn't even the whole point...

Your thought experiment question was whether someone should vote for Doc '76 JUST because they voted for '09 LeBron. My answer is emphatically no, because the 2 players are entirely different. This isn't 80s Magic and Bird. This isn't even 2000s Duncan and KG. Can there be some rough parallels drawn between J and LeBron? OK, maybe some rough ones. But are they so identical that a vote for one is a vote for the other? Not even close. Which was the main point of my response.

I feel like I'm saying something on the order of "Hey, these guys had the two best PERs in history", and you're responding with vehemence at how wrong it is to group guys simply because they have similar PERs. I'm totally fine with you pointing out differences, but I'm taken aback at the vehemence.

I never meant to say anybody had to do anything. I merely trying to get people in a frame of mind for a player whose accomplishments many aren't as familiar with. It's very easy for people to just not deal with the guys they don't know as well. I'm trying to make them feel instead that it's irresponsible for them to not explicitly analyze Erving at this point because he achieved X, Y, and Z just like so & so did. I don't see what's problematic about that.

Re: Garnett. There are other players in history who led in all 5 categories. Pippen did it in '95 for example. If I was not clear before, my fixation on the accomplishment was with players doing it on great teams, because I don't care much if you do it on a lesser team.

Still, Garnett was doing it on a pretty good team, and that's an accomplishment that's definitely worth pointing on.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't love the Erving-Lebron comparison either. 76/77 Erving's perimeter polish isn't close to Lebron's, even in 2009. By 80-82 he had gotten more consistent in that area, but still not at a Lebron level. Furthermore on their drives they rely on different things. Lebron is about power, Erving seems like a much more slippery and crafty player, a near genius at recognizing holes and space and taking advantage of a help defender being a split second slow. I think in a way Erving has as much 80s Jordan in him as Lebron (and people were talking about Jordan being the evolutionary Erving when he came out)

I'd agree. Erving has strengths more in common with Jordan than LeBron.

I also want to note, I've said many times before that the only player with a frame & perimeter talent like James that I can recall is Erving's teammate George McGinnis. LeBron's ultra-powerful build is so unusual that I think it's just weird that people are thinking that I'm saying Erving was a physical clone of him.

Erving was a small forward in a small forward's body. A "that's not supposed to be possible" small forward's body, but it's pretty clear cut how to categorize him.

LeBron is a lead guard in a power forward's body who gets classified at small forward because it was convenient. There is no mold for him, but we can compare his accomplishments with other people obviously.

[bastillon]

just to chime in on the merger debate:

-as mystic correctly pointed out, if talent is the same in both leagues on average players are gonna be the same. however, being a top team means something different. if you win an NBA title after the merger it means you were a part of the best team in the world. it wasn't the case when ABA/NBA were seperate leagues. it matters in our discussion because the whole "Dr J led his team to a title" means a lot less. beating those Nuggets was pretty easy compared to beating Celtics '76. if Dr J played another playoff round and lost against the Celtics, would it be that impressive ? I don't think so. so it wasn't easier to perform, but it was a lot easier to be the best.

-I think drza is focusing too much on raw stats. per minute/per possession stats aren't really in favor of pre-merger players. there wasn't much of a drop. for Dr J in particular we should be looking in depth at his 80-82 seasons, when he was still in his physical prime and his per minute numbers look very similar to his pre-merger numbers

-DavidStern has been making a good case against those Nuggets. the primary reason why Dr J is being celebrated on this board is because he dominated future top1 defense and against Bobby Jones in particular. DavidStern first proved the turnover roster was big so their defense wasn't really comparable (and Denver was pretty much average defensive team in 76), then went on to analyse Jones' defensive impact in a seperate thread (viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1200318) and it seems like he was overrated all along

so let's put those things together and Dr J anchored one of the best teams in the world, but his Nets weren't likely to win the title in merged leagues as there were probably couple of better teams. his numbers look great but they weren't against a great defensive team or against a great defender. if anything, Denver got exposed and this series should be the argument for why Bobby Jones is extremely overrated.

[colts18]

This might be the time where we need to start discussing David Robinson. He was a monster in his peak. In his peak MVP winning season of 1995, The Spurs were -2.9 defensively in the regular season then in the postseason they improved to an elite -6.24 defensively and were the best team at stopping the Rockets.

[bastillon]

This might be the time where we need to start discussing David Robinson. He was a monster in his peak. In his peak MVP winning season of 1995, The Spurs were -2.9 defensively in the regular season then in the postseason they improved to an elite -6.24 defensively and were the best team at stopping the Rockets.

if David Robinson then why not Karl Malone ? Malone outplayed him in 94 and 96 when they faced each other and looked like a more dominant player. I'm not feeling David Robinson here, particularly with the way he was dominated by Hakeem.

[colts18]

This might be the time where we need to start discussing David Robinson. He was a monster in his peak. In his peak MVP winning season of 1995, The Spurs were -2.9 defensively in the regular season then in the postseason they improved to an elite -6.24 defensively and were the best team at stopping the Rockets.

if David Robinson then why not Karl Malone ? Malone outplayed him in 94 and 96 when they faced each other and looked like a more dominant player. I'm not feeling David Robinson here, particularly with the way he was dominated by Hakeem.

We are considering Walton here and he was just as much outplayed as Robinson was. KG was outplayed by Shaq. And did Robinson even guard Malone in 94? Rodman was on the team and the logical choice to guard him. In 96 without Rodman, Malone had a terrible TS% (granted Robinson was bad too).

[lorak]

If we are discussing Dr J, what you guys think about Wade? Was he really worse than Doc?

[ardee]

Uhh, to me, it's looking a bit like between KG and Doc here to me, with Walton lurking on the outside. I can't see the latter at this level mainly because he really did not seem to be a prolific scorer at all, and I'm not sure if his high-post passing was Russell/Wilt level. I know he brought enormous contributions on the rebounding/defensive end, but his '77 Portland defense was -1.5 or something in that range, I think, and Russell's peak defenses were -10ish. Not sure if that's enough to cover up for his lack of scoring in comparison to the others.

So I'm going:

Vote: 2004 Kevin Garnett

Mainly because drza's monster posts convinced me. At times, Garnett was playing flawlessly on both side's of the ball. If LeBron had been voted in by thread 9, I'd have probably voted KG over Duncan.

And also, when do you people think Kobe starts getting consideration?

That '08 season is getting seriously underrated, IMO. He led a team with no other All-Stars to the best record in one of history's most competitive conferences. And then in the Playoffs, averaged 32-6-6 on 60% TS through the first three rounds, including 29-6-4 on 59% TS against a -5.7 San Antonio defense. Like someone said about LeBron, if you only get exposed by one of the three best defensive teams ever (along with the Russell Cs and the Ewing Knicks, IMO), you're pretty darned good.

If KG and Doc make it in with the next two, I'll be voting for Kobe at 13.