#15 Highest Peak of All Time (Kobe '08 wins)

[Doctor MJ]

Hi all,

This is just a friendly reminder from the guy trying hard to make this thing happen that the standards of conduct here need to be a bit more polite than on the rest of the board because this is something we're working on together. We're debating each other, our opinions are competing with each other, but we are creating something together and in that we are a team. To make it happen, we need people to commit for multiple months, and that's no easy thing.

Bottom line is that we need to keep it civil and we need to keep in fun. I can give official warnings, but people have also been booted for projects before simply because they were being too hostile. Don't let your internet muscles fly into a rage here.

PM me if you have questions,
Cheers,
Doc

[Doctor MJ]

@Doctor MJ

What about pace though? I mean wouldn't 30 and 40 point games be more common in an era with a lot of pace? Understood, it's still really impressive by West, since it's not like anyone else at the time was doing it, but when you compare it to modern players at slower pace, like Jordan or Wade or Kobe or Shaq, I think adjusting for pace matters.

All true, and that's not the only thing to adjust for. Obviously it's no given that the competition is constant. There's also the matter that West was doing this all without the 3 point shot, and he'd have been a great 3-point shooter (which is a reason why it makes sense to say he played at just about the worst time for someone of his skill set unlike the bigs of his era).

I just really want to make sure people get a sense of how West put up huge numbers with it all on the line. Huger numbers than in less important games despite the fact he was going against the toughest competition in those games. (Competition which caused Wilt's numbers to really fall off.) This wasn't someone who we're saying "Oh yeah, 25+ points, that's nice", this is a dude who took games over reliably.

[Doctor MJ]

Hey guys... I'd like to start participating alittle in these discussions if its alright and maybe later on start voting if you like my input.

Discussions are great, glad to have you. On the voting there's typically a wait, and with your relative newness I'll be a bit more cautious to be honest. But if I'm impressed, I'll put you on the panel.

[ardee]

Right, so there are four contenders to me, at this point. Kobe, Wade, West and Robinson.

Now, when it comes to West, I understand were Doc and ElGee are coming from about the 1968 season, but I'd like people to look at the '66 Lakers.

That was a really, really bad team with the exception of West. Baylor was the second best player and averaged 16 ppg on 40% shooting. Yet somehow West dragged them to 46 wins and a Finals berth. Efficiency was the name of the game for him. 840 free-throws made? That's an all time record. Insane durability that year, imagine a 6'3 guard getting hammered 10 times a game on drives and still playing that well.

Then, the postseason was, IMO, better than '68. He scored more, and on 2% less TS, and did so without a healthy Baylor or Goodrich to help carry the load on offense, not to mention there was no offensive system to help make things easier for him.

Again it comes down to the conundrum of what is more impressive: making a bad team good, or making a good team great.

It'll come down to Kobe and West for me. I love D-Rob, and the '94 regular season was legendary, but unless someone makes a good case for '91 (his best Playoffs pre-Duncan), I'm not sure if I can consider such a poor Playoffs this high in the all-time peaks. Wade, his best was just spread out over too many years. Best regular season, 2009. Best postseason, 2006. Best defense, 2011. Best individual playoff series, 2010. I'll eventually pick 2009, but I'll probably vote for him after these three.

[therealbig3]

^Can you explain (apologies if you already have) why not T-Mac?

[Expert-Sizzle]

T-Mac's 03 season should be considered.

Might be the most impressive individual season by a SG before the rule changes (sans Jordan ofc).

The only reason why I don't give it stronger consideration is because of how the season ended for him.

He started out really strong in the playoffs with 3 epic performances but then really flamed out after that even saving his worst performance for the elimination game.

I put some emphasis and value on performing strongly in victory or defeat so for me it damages his chances by doing poorly at the end.

It was a really incredible season though... I do think it should be discussed.

[ardee]

^Can you explain (apologies if you already have) why not T-Mac?

The '03 McGrady season seems quite similar to '06 Kobe to me in terms of narrative. A putrid offensive supporting cast, Kobe/Mac has to go for 33-35 ppg on decent efficiency to keep them relevant. The difference, to me, however, is that Kobe's 06 team overachieved massively. Starting Smush Parker at PG and Kwame Brown at C, they still managed the 7th best SRS in the league.

The narrative continues. It's astounding really. The team makes the first round and is pitted against a 1st/2nd seed. They jump out to a shock 3-1 lead behind great play from their superstar. Then, it all falls away. Mac averaged 26 ppg on just 36% shooting in the last three games, all losses. And here's the thing: that Detroit team, they weren't very good. They were the 1st seed in the EC with just a 50-32 record, and they were just a 2.9 SRS team. I don't see '08 Kobe, or even '06 Kobe for that matter, struggling so much against them.

When someone loses in round 1, you can give them credit if they go all out and burn their opponents like Wade '10. But Mac really underperformed as compared to the regular season. Can't rank him over Kobe '08 the same reason I can't rank Kobe 06 over Kobe 08.

ElGee did show that the Pistons were a good defensive team, but if Mac averaged 36-6-5 on 52-40-74 splits in the first 4 games against them, he was obviously capable of lighting them up, so why did he tail off so badly?

It's definitely a great season, but I can't rank it above seasons with great Playoff performances (again, applying this standard to Kobe as well, which is why I'm not considering '06).

[lorak]

Oh and btw, a couple of questions:

-I actually did agree with peak Oscar going over the other wings (Wade/West/Kobe/T-Mac), but I had some trouble pinpointing his specific peak. Why 63 Oscar over 64 Oscar?

Oscar '64 was probably injured and because of that struggled vs Celtics.

[lorak]

despite 1964 being the Celtics defensive peak (2 points better than in 1963),

relatively to league average difference it is only 1.1, and of course these drtgs are estimations so maybe between '63 and '64 Celtics aren't any difference in reality.

[PTB Fan]

I didn't vote the last time.. not the case here.

Looking at Baylor, Moses and West.

For those who voted West '68, why over '65, '66 for example? Or '69?

Let's debate that.

[ardee]

Two guys I'm surprised haven't got even a whisper:

1. Bernard King: The 1984 season ranks among the greatest offensive ones in history. 26.3 ppg may not cause you to raise your eyebrows too much, but his efficiency was nothing short of startling. 57.2% from the field!!! That's Kareem/Shaq level, from a 6'7 wingman! Not Jordan, not LeBron, not West, no wing has managed that kind of efficiency and volume at the same time, while not adversely affecting his team (looking at you, Adrian Dantley).

What's more incredible is that the Knicks somehow got the 3rd best SRS (a 47-35 record) in the league when Bill Cartwright was their second best player. Better than the Lakers, better than the Sixers: only Boston and Milwaukee surpassed them. The entire offense was on King.

Then in the Playoffs he ripped off 33 ppg on 62% TS, including 42.6 ppg on 65% TS against the Pistons. He then faced the eventual champion Celtics, and held his own against Bird in a shootout of a series: 29.1 ppg on 60% TS, against a -3.2 defensive team. All of this while he was probably the only consistent scorer on his team.

You could call it on par offensively with Tracy '03, Wade '09 and Kobe '06. Just stunningly efficient in the regular season, and unlike the other three followed it up with a monstrous Playoffs.

And to some extent:

2. Patrick Ewing

Yes, both Knicks. I'm not as sure about Ewing as I am about King, so I'd like people to expound on him more. I was obviously looking at the 1990 season, mainly because his raw numbers match up quite favorably to David Robinson's in 1994. I only question whether his defensive impact was on par with D-Rob's that year, because the Knicks were hovering just about exactly average.

For what it's worth, he had a monstrous Playoffs. 29-11-3 on 58% TS punctuated by a 44-13-5 with 7 steals against the Celtics (7 steals... 7!!), and 45-13-6 in a game 3 win over the Pistons (eventual champions, one of the best defensive teams ever).

Ewing could be considered for the next tier, but when we're discussing superstar wings I think King needs to be mentioned. He was just about unstoppable that year.

[lorak]

I'll vote 2010 Wade again until it becomes apparent he's not getting traction. If West becomes a big player in this thread, I've always felt prime Wade was better than prime West because of how he's a step up explosiveness wise

Not sure exactly what you mean because I could see it going either way.

1) If you just mean Wade is more agile, then I'd agree, although I think West's shooting edge makes up for it.

2) If you mean Wade's excellent ability to explode in the playoffs, this is a great time for me to point out just how awesome West was at exploding.

Here's the list of guys with the most 30 game points in the Finals:

1. West 32
2. Jordan 23
3. Baylor 17
4. O'Neal 16
5. Kareem 15

Of course, the fact that you see both West and Baylor is a tip off that those Laker teams played in a lot of finals, in part because there were less teams back in the day. But you can see that West almost doubles Baylor despite the fact he spent much of his career shooting less than Baylor.

West scored 30 or more in 58% of his NBA Finals games. There are only a few guys who've done it 50% of the time who played in multiple series (and obviously none who did it year in and year out):

Barry 80% (shot a ridiculous amount, not very efficiently, still quite good)
Jordan 66% (is awesome)
West 58%
Pettit 56% (pretty awesome)
O'Neal 53% (is awesome)

You crank it up 40, and West once again laps the field:

1. West 10
2. Jordan 6
2. O'Neal 6
4. Baylor 4
5. Barry 3

At this point if you look at percentages West actually passes Jordan (though O'Neal passes them both, and Barry remains the most likely to do it).

In case you're wondering in comparison to current guys:

West had 10 40s and 32 30s in 55 games

Kobe has 1 40 and 13 30s in 37 games
Wade has 2 40s and 6 30s in 17 games
LeBron has no 40s and 2 30s in 15 games
Dirk has no 40s and 2 30s in 12 games

and for the heck of it

Iverson had 1 40 and 4 30s in 5 games
Miller had no 40s and 2 30s in 6 games

C'monn Doc. A lot of finals for West from weak (and small) Western Conference is first issue and you mentioned it. But second and even more important issue is pace. Adjust scoring for pace and is West still looking so good here in comparison with others?

[lorak]

So we have two options:
1. two years from his GOAT season Wilt was negative on offense by 4-5 ortg pts (!), because of his clash witch coach
or
2. 51 games sample from 68 isn't representative enough to judge quality of Lakers offense with West.

I really don't know how you and Elgee so easily believe in option no 1.

Very strange the way you're attempting to boil it down here:

You're implying you believe the answer is #2, which implies that you're deciding what is and is not adequate sample size on the fly in order to make yourself not feel weird. (Apologies if you're really just trying to say you're not sure, it felt to me like when I read it you were going beyond that.)

If someone's going to say they think 51 games not enough but 82 games is enough, to me that's close enough in the order of magnitude that there's no reasonable way to say that without all sorts of deep statistical analysis.

I think what really hammers this home is the fact that if you take the Lakers' full 82 games that year, it's one of the top 2 offenses of the 60s. That right there, we're not talking about a team that's strictly might have been. This is a huge offensive accomplishment that on its own deserves analysis as to what caused the break through.

The shock when you get down deep into it is that it's a tale of two seasons. One with West, one without, and the former is so good that even with the latter, their combination is arguably the greatest offense of the 60s.

More generally here, what we're dealing with here is what I've called before the Matilda Complex (after the children's story): Basically, when the truth is too far removed from preconception, the truth gets rejected. When the truth and the preconception are closer, it's easy for people to leap to the truth, but when things are too far away from each other, it essentially forces people to conclude that one of the two sources is completely without merit, and they are unlikely to believe their preconception can possibly have no merit, so the new source is rejected without consideration.

This happens with Wilt over and over again.

You can't believe that Wilt could possibly have a huge negative effect, but it's actually pretty easy to understand when you consider that players can't "feel" these effects unless they are big enough that the team's record becomes a huge problem.

To the extent Wilt could even feel anything at all in a negative way, it would feel like shooting it in the wrong basket obviously. it also wouldn't be so much that the team was clearly missing potential but rather a confusion as to why what they were doing wasn't taking the giant step forward that they hoped.

And what we're talking about here, for lack of a more well known term, are systems. After floating at a certain levels for years, the Lakers when healthy finally took that next step when they tried a completely new offense (which is a pretty typical reason why you'd see such a major jump, and precisely the reason you'd expect when a team doesn't add stars like in '68). The new system involved all 5 players reading and reacting together to pinball the ball to the open man.

So what happens when you get a new star who refuses to play pinball? Well the system is going to break down. Not break down to levels where the offense is terrible because with the 3 stars they had, the offense was going to still be pretty good. But that breakthrough they made that finally made the Baylor-West duo make sense, that went away.

So it's not hard to believe at all: Someone had a good idea, and someone else didn't like it. The guy who didn't like it is keeping the good idea from truly getting implemented, and so he's being counterproductive.

Let me also remind that we already know with Wilt that it's not like he was producing great offenses everywhere he went. This disappointing Laker offense was still the 2nd best offense Wilt had ever been on. Typical Wilt offenses are downright mediocre, so most definitely Wilt's not going to sense that there's something wrong with the Laker offense. He hadn't been able to sense the problems with much worse offenses, which is why such a drastic solution was needed by Hannum in Philly.

Here's where I'll segue one more time and talk about how big of a deal I think "homing instinct" is in sports. There are just some players who have a sense for the right way to get through the maze, and while there's a spectrum of abilities on this front, I think that most players, like most viewers, would have no idea if they were winning without looking at the scoreboard. This sense for what feels more right that let's certain guys travel upstream toward the optimal even when the scales are so incredibly subtle is absolutely invaluable to any player who is tasked with running a team offense, or a defense for that matter.

Wilt being utterly tone deaf on this front meant that it was not only possible, but pretty much a given that sometimes he'd actually end up sending his team up a path that was significantly less beneficial to what could have been.

1. I know what was Wilt's offensive value and I wouldn't be surprised if his offensive impact on offense in '69 would be around 0 or slightly negative. But I would not believe that he was around -4 ortg negative. I need hard evidence in that case, because no matter how plausible story about coach-Wilt relations looks like, without numbers which would support such big negative impact from Wilt, it's nothing more than interesting story.

2. Maybe I will give you example why I so often talk about small sample in this case (51 games for West). The most efficient season for West was '68: .590 TS%, his second best result was .573 in '66 and then three more seasons in .571-.572 range. His career average is .550. So we see that '68 season was big outlier and IMO the most resonable explanation is - small sample.

Of course in playoffs he had similar efficiency, but look at teams he played against: -3.77 SRS Bulls and Warriors without Thurmond. Then Celtics against whom he didn't look so good (for sure worse than prime Oscar vs much better defensively Celtics).

[lorak]

Two guys I'm surprised haven't got even a whisper:

1. Bernard King: The 1984 season ranks among the greatest offensive ones in history. 26.3 ppg may not cause you to raise your eyebrows too much, but his efficiency was nothing short of startling. 57.2% from the field!!! That's Kareem/Shaq level, from a 6'7 wingman! Not Jordan, not LeBron, not West, no wing has managed that kind of efficiency and volume at the same time, while not adversely affecting his team (looking at you, Adrian Dantley).

What's more incredible is that the Knicks somehow got the 3rd best SRS (a 47-35 record) in the league when Bill Cartwright was their second best player. Better than the Lakers, better than the Sixers: only Boston and Milwaukee surpassed them. The entire offense was on King.

Then in the Playoffs he ripped off 33 ppg on 62% TS, including 42.6 ppg on 65% TS against the Pistons. He then faced the eventual champion Celtics, and held his own against Bird in a shootout of a series: 29.1 ppg on 60% TS, against a -3.2 defensive team. All of this while he was probably the only consistent scorer on his team.

You could call it on par offensively with Tracy '03, Wade '09 and Kobe '06. Just stunningly efficient in the regular season, and unlike the other three followed it up with a monstrous Playoffs.

Great call. So King over Kobe? Bryant fans would be mad

[Lightning25]

Doctor MJ,

I've been contributing to these peak threads for a while especially when it came to Lebron accuse I was very pro-2012 Lebron. Could I also join the voting panel? Or do you want me to continue contributing more? I never let you know that I wanted to join but I am letting you know now.

[MisterWestside]

What's more incredible is that the Knicks somehow got the 3rd best SRS (a 47-35 record) in the league when Bill Cartwright was their second best player. Better than the Lakers, better than the Sixers: only Boston and Milwaukee surpassed them. The entire offense was on King.

Cartwright was terrific that season. A capable low-post player who helped the Knicks defensively.

[bastillon]

I'm surprised folks around here don't know this already - TMac 03 fell off a cliff because Tayshaun Prince started playing more mins and guarded TMac a lot more. he was torching Michael Curry before, horrendous defender from what I've seen. Tayshaun locked him up. I'm not that impressed by 03 TMac - great player but I don't see his impact at THIS level.

I don't like Wade either because he's not very portable as a player. people have criticised LeBron and Dr J for this, but I think it applies to Wade even moreso. he does play some off ball but his style is not really conductive to team basketball. I don't think he could be putting up the same kind of stats on a strong team. I agree with Mufasa that 2010 Wade was better than 2009, but what about 2011 ?

I've got Kobe as better than both, actually. I don't think TMac/Wade commanded as much defensive attention overall. they could break down the defense consistently but Kobe was making it collapse the moment he got the ball because teams were often overhelping, particularly after he got hot. I don't think he was a good defender but he's smart and sometimes can make an impact. but offensively he was a monster at his best. I'd go with 07 or 08 Kobe as his peak. one of the GOAT scorers.

I don't like Robinson actually. he really was a different player against strong competition. people talk about his performances vs Malone and Olajuwon but he was equally bad vs other strong defenders. Mutombo demolished him IIRC. Robinson was also overwhelmed by Shaq (though that's not unexpected, Shaq was a monster). we should be really paying attention to his postseason performances. Robinson was the one player who lost A LOT of his value facing strong opposition.

ElGee, did you study Thurmond's in/out like you did with West ? it'd be very interesting to see how he performed there, especially on defense.

[ElGee]

Vote: Robinson 95

For me it's Robinson-Wade-West...and I dock West slightly because of his missed time. I'm willing to change to one of the other two if Robinson has no traction.

Doc, I'd like a 3rd day for some of these threads.

EDIT: Changed vote to 95 from 94...

[ardee]

Two guys I'm surprised haven't got even a whisper:

1. Bernard King: The 1984 season ranks among the greatest offensive ones in history. 26.3 ppg may not cause you to raise your eyebrows too much, but his efficiency was nothing short of startling. 57.2% from the field!!! That's Kareem/Shaq level, from a 6'7 wingman! Not Jordan, not LeBron, not West, no wing has managed that kind of efficiency and volume at the same time, while not adversely affecting his team (looking at you, Adrian Dantley).

What's more incredible is that the Knicks somehow got the 3rd best SRS (a 47-35 record) in the league when Bill Cartwright was their second best player. Better than the Lakers, better than the Sixers: only Boston and Milwaukee surpassed them. The entire offense was on King.

Then in the Playoffs he ripped off 33 ppg on 62% TS, including 42.6 ppg on 65% TS against the Pistons. He then faced the eventual champion Celtics, and held his own against Bird in a shootout of a series: 29.1 ppg on 60% TS, against a -3.2 defensive team. All of this while he was probably the only consistent scorer on his team.

You could call it on par offensively with Tracy '03, Wade '09 and Kobe '06. Just stunningly efficient in the regular season, and unlike the other three followed it up with a monstrous Playoffs.

Great call. So King over Kobe? Bryant fans would be mad

I'm a Kobe fan

Not saying that King should be getting a vote here, but if we're talking about Wade, Bryant, and West, I think he at least deserves some discussion. Just an amazing offensive player.

[bastillon]

Vote: Robinson 94

For me it's Robinson-Wade-West...and I dock West slightly because of his missed time. I'm willing to change to one of the other two if Robinson has no traction.

Doc, I'd like a 3rd day for some of these threads.

why Wade over Kobe ? or West, for that matter ?