#18 Highest Peak of All Time (Dirk '11 wins)

[therealbig3]

Paul is typically a positive impact defender, because his hands are so damn quick and he plays the passing lanes and pick pockets opposing players so well...but I think because he does play the passing lanes so much, he has the tendency to get burned at times, and I don't think his man defense was ever all that great, especially when you consider his size. I think it may have been him getting burned more than usual in 08, or maybe because he had to carry the offense so much (similar to what was said about Kobe, Wade, T-Mac, etc.), his defense suffered. Who knows?

But Paul is a good mention. I personally take Nash, however. It's very close.

[mysticbb]

I see some of Barkley's awesome offense but poor defense arguments to be similar to some of Nash's. However, this issue at the 4 is very large when compared to the defense that is needed by the pg. PG's effect on the defense has been shown to be small when compared to that of the front-court.

And that's where the issue with Barkley basically comes from. His weak defense while occupying the inside position makes it tough to find the fitting frontcourt partners for him. Essentially, you need a bigger guy who can defend, but is still skilled enough to step out of the zone and make things happen. Ilgauskas would have been a pretty good complementary player next to Barkley, but those kind of players just aren't available that often.
It is a limitation and a clear problem, which is why it shouldn't be such a big surprise to not see as big of a difference between Barkley in and Barkley out. But it seems as if that kind of reasoning is offensive to some people and thus it should be ignored specifically for Barkley.

That obviously doesn't mean that Barkley sucks, especially under the light that we expect an average player to have 0 as in/out or on/off, in order to have someone "sucking" we would need to see a huge negative value. But that seems to be not that easy to grasp for some people around here.

I think the issue in this discussion is related to the same issue in Iverson discussion, while it is not the same group of people, there are still some people giving Iverson more credit, because he is smaller than an average player (even guard). As if being small and accumulate stats is making the stats more valuable. The same thing I see with Barkley, were his build is actually used to prop him up, making it seem as if a rebound by a 6'6'' PF would be worth more than the rebound by a 6'10'' PF. It is not, and while the 6'10'' can take rebounds away from his teammates, a 6'6'' can do the same. Matter of fact is that some of Barkley's production and efficiency advantage over his replacement players was compensated by the 76ers, that puts his numbers into a context. It is essentially similar to Moses Malone or Kevin Love today, and be assured, if Kevin Love would have played on the Spurs in 2012, while Spurs then would go on to win the championship, we would see a myriad of people pushing Love 2012 for a much higher peak level than he really had. In the end, Love could be the same +3.5 player he was last season, but people would likely be convinced that Love was the most valuable player in 2012, because of ppg and rpg.

[mysticbb]

mystic, I always thought you were high on 03 McGrady (or at least, I remember that from the discussions you've participated about him in the past). What changed? Is it because of his unimpressive RAPM in 03? Because that's really all I see that could be wrong with his season that year.

The RAPM is influenced by the prior of 0.5, so I cut him some slack here. But when I ran the regression without a prior, he ended up being not that impressive as well. His production and efficieny is great, especially his really low turnovers despite handling the ball so much, but something is missing here. When we look at Wade for 2009 and 2010, we see a supporting cast not much different from the 2002 and 2003 Magic (Heat were even a bit worse without Wade), and yet, with Wade on the court the Heat were better than the Magic with McGrady, and all that while the Heat had to play a tougher schedule.
Well, and I think I'm somewhat influenced by a game I recently watched, where the Magic played in Utah and had no Grant Hill. McGrady had back problems and couldn't really play well, the Magic were down by 6 when McGrady went out in the 2nd quarter. And what happens? Somehow the Magic show an improved defensive game, show improved teamplay and end up winning in Utah by 7, one of the places with the strongest HCA in the league, and the Magic can win there without Hill and McGrady. That was during the 2002/03 season.
Yeah, we can argue that Garrity went hot (which he did) and that Kemp got an extra boost playing against Malone again, but in the end I saw a Magic team willing to do all the things needed to win a game. Why didn't they show the same energy in the games with McGrady?

I probably pick Karl Malone ahead of McGrady, but I can see an argument for him over Barkley or Moses Malone. I didn't want to imply some sort of incredible great problem with McGrady, just that I think that guards like Wade or Nash or Paul should be in ahead of him. Oh well, Wade is in already...

[JordansBulls]

--------- RS PER, WS48, --------- PER, WS48 playoffs
Moses Malone 1983: 25.1, 0.248 -----25.7, 0.260 (13 playoff games, title)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2 ... nces-11-20

MOSES MALONE FINALS STATS
Points per game: 25.8
Boards per game: 18.0
Blocks per game: 1.5
PER: 26.0



VOTE: Moses Malone 1983.

[C-izMe]

Great post on Paul Fatal9. I honestly forgot how good he was/I thought he was. I'm ranking him over Nash but back then I saw him clearly as the second best PG peak ever. It was like 4th quarter 12 Paul all game.
My favorite Paul game:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xWqdhAumXI[/youtube]

This is the last game where he looked like old CP3. Even in his big games now it's different because until the end of the game he's not aggressive. He also showed off his skillset; perfect passes, 13 boards, a few rips, a few threes, double digit 4th quarter, double digit (assist) first quarter, great crossovers.

He might take this vote from Dirk.

[lorak]

[Personally I would pick 2007 as Nash' peak, and I would say that surely belongs in before players like Barkley, McGrady or the Malone's.

Me to,

vote: Dirk 2011

[C-izMe]

Why 07 instead of 06? I personally think they're even in terms of skill so I picked the one more impressive and a 55 win season/WCF run without Amare' is very impressive. He also had a (slightly) better PS IMO.

[Dr Positivity]

Edit - Change my vote to 11 Dirk

Vote 2003 Tmac

I had Kobe, Wade, and Tmac as close to a 3 way tie. I like them all physically a little more than West. It's definitely strange to see West fall this far but I have that as chalked up to Erving and Robinson (IMO) being the ones too high. Mac is almost a perfect offensive wing - driving, shooting, passing, defense. I feel like he's a top 7-10 talent of all time and this year really showed all the tools

[Dr Positivity]

I'm looking at 2005 as my Nash vote. That crazy 121.7 ORTG when he's on the court number sticks out to me, and I like the fact that he proved he could dominate individually when he FU'd Dallas. I'm not 100% on a Nash vote though because I do think he's more system reliant than all of these guys to have that impact, he's kind of like the conductor of the orchastra on that Suns team. He's in my top 22-25 but I'm leaning Paul over him, I would trust taking his more dangerous scoring/penetrating ability (+ better defense)

[bastillon]

vote: Dirk 11

[The Infamous1]

2008 Paul perfected the PG position, he was great at everything. I always say he's a more efficient, better shooting, less turnover prone version of Isiah Thomas

[ardee]

Edit: Changed my vote from '66 to '68. I'm not as down on Moses as ElGee and others seem to be, but I certainly think West was better. Want to see the Logo in asap.

Vote: 1968 Jerry West

The efficiency he had that year was ridiculous, and ElGee did a great job of illustrating the value he was adding to the Lakers from a team point of view.

After this, it's between Nash, Moses, Barkley, Dirk, King and Paul for me. I'm absolutely shocked Moses has not received a word at all from any other posters. I mean, I know he was a poor defender, but he spent the early 80s brutalizing a slightly past-his prime Kareem, was arguably the best offensive rebounder ever, and could score at Shaq-like rates with slightly worse efficiency.

I want West to get voted in so we can move onto some new arguments.... Barkley vs. Dirk is going to be great, as will Nash vs. Paul.

[Josephpaul]

--------- RS PER, WS48, --------- PER, WS48 playoffs
Moses Malone 1983: 25.1, 0.248 -----25.7, 0.260 (13 playoff games, title)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2 ... nces-11-20

MOSES MALONE FINALS STATS
Points per game: 25.8
Boards per game: 18.0
Blocks per game: 1.5
PER: 26.0



VOTE: Moses Malone 1983.

I like this as well. My vote 1983 Moses Malone

[drza]

Right now I'm leaning Dirk or TMac. In general terms I feel like both at their peaks are somewhat like souped up versions of West due to their physical advantages. I'd love to bring Karl Malone into the discussion as well, as I tried to do a thread or two ago, but I'm still not in a position to do it myself and so far no one else has picked up the gauntlet except for ElGee briefly. Barkley at least generated some conversation last thread, but so far nothing on Karl Malone. I feel like Karl's got to be on the short list for among the greatest offensive big men still left on the board, and he's a very good defender as well. Not defensive anchor good, perhaps, but we're starting to run low of defensive anchors that were also elite offensive talents. I think it's time Karl started getting serious burn.

[bastillon]

Moses, Barkley - I'd like some evidence that they had all time high impact on their teams. both were poor defenders (major flaw for bigs) and greatest offensive rebounders ever while offensive rebounding is probably the least important stat of all (the weakest correlation to scoring margin). I loved Mufasa's breakdown of Moses rebounding, how little he impacted his team's DRB%. why didn't Moses and Barkley run through the league in 1986 ? both were really in their physical primes. they were overrated, that's why. why else would they post 16/23 DRB% as a team if Moses and Barkley were such great rebounders ? IMO Dr J was just as impactful or even moreso in 1983, the same case can be made for 90s KJ (people constantly overlook how good he was in the postseason, he had several explosions in the postseason).

Malone - also overrated to some extent by his raw boxscore stats. particularly because of his scoring. his ppg numbers REALLLYYYY overstated how good he was as a scorer. he had like couple reliable moves, his jumpshot was pretty good (though inconsistent at times) and he could draw tons of FTs and pass very well. but his 1 on 1 scoring skills were lacking and this is why he regressed so often in the playoffs (that + John Stockton taking a lesser role resulting in Malone carrying too much). his consistently lower playoff scoring averages and efficiency were somewhat similar to D-Rob. he's another guy whose scoring numbers overstated his abilities and that was exposed in the playoffs. IMO Kevin McHale was a better scorer in terms of abilities than Karl Malone, D-Rob OR Moses. I don't like fundamentally flawed players.

Dirk is a guy whose scoring skills are far better than his ppg averages and that is why his offensive impact is so incredibly big. I just don't see any of the guys previously mentioned carrying so much of a load on that offensively depleted team (11 Mavs). this is also why Dirk improved in the playoffs consistently and delivered when he was asked to do more and more. Malones or D-Rob simply can't do that.

Dirk is better than several players already in and I actually think he's close to KG/Walton/Dr J ballpark.

[Dr Positivity]

Here is Moses' DRB ranks if someone missed it

Btw I dug up a post from last year when I looked at the DRB ranks of Moses' teams, because I was thinking heavily at the time about how big men who excel at getting offensive rebounds more than defensive ones, may be using their high skill of "tracking" the ball on the glass on the defensive end, thus chasing after rebounds instead of boxing out. Moses of course has one of the highest ORB to DRB ratios of all players in history, such as in 1982 having 47% of his rebounds on the offensive glass, 53% DRB. A guy I compared him to as on the opposite end of ORB/DRB ratio, Dirk, had 10% of his rebounds offensive in 2011, 90% defensive, and his team managed to have a lot of good defensive rebounding years. Here are Moses' team rebounding stats:

Moses
Rockets 77 - 5th
Rockets 78 - 15/22
Rockets 79 - 9/22
Rockets - 80 - 21/22
Rockets 81 - 11/23
Rockets 82 - 17/23
Sixers 83 - 13/23
Sixers 84 - 18/23
Sixers 85 - 15/23
Sixers 86 - 17/23 - This is a Barkley/Moses frontcourt year. WTF?
Bullets 87 - 22/23
Bullets 88 - 21/23
Hawks 89 - 22/25
Hawks 90 - 26/27
Hawks 91 - 7/27
Bucks 92 - 23/27

That's rough. I also looked at what happened to the team's after his moves - Rockets move from 17th in DRB in 82 to 18th in 83, Sixers move from 22nd DRB in 82 to 13th DRB in 83. So that's not a bad impact, though he was also replacing Daryl Dawkins, who has probably the worst size of human being to rebounding ratio ever. The Sixers are 17th in both 86 and 87, the Bullets are 20th in 86 and 22nd in 87. The Hawks go from 13th in 88 to 22nd in 89, the Bullets go from 21st in 88 to 12th in 89. The Hawks go from 7th in 91 to 8th in 92, the Bucks go from 21st in 91 to 23rd in 92. So the overall changing from team to team doesn't support Moses being an impact defensive rebounder.

I wouldn't completely rule out Moses having an impact on the defensive glass because team results have many variables, but it doesn't look that good to me

[bastillon]

btw, what did Moses do aside from scoring and offensive rebounding ? he wasn't an elite defensive rebounder since his team was consistently underperforming on the glass. he wasn't average defensively since his teams were mostly BAD defenses. he couldn't pass to save his life. he didn't really set picks or get back fast in transition. he didn't cover a lot of ground defensively. he wasn't known as a leader. he didn't coach his teammates on the floor or anything. his intangibles are pathetic for an all time great. he's very, very overrated as an impact player. I don't think there's a big gap between Moses and Kevin Love. Moses has this, but not by a landslide or anything. Love is also a poor defender but a much better passer, spaces the floor a lot better, and his basketball IQ is also higher. I just don't see how Moses compares to any of the players discussed right now when his adv come down to scoring and offensive rebounding. he's average/mediocre/poor at everything else. average defensive rebounder. mediocre shotblocker. poor passer. poor defender. mediocre leader. just a hell no to Moses at this point.

[ElGee]

Malone - also overrated to some extent by his raw boxscore stats. particularly because of his scoring. his ppg numbers REALLLYYYY overstated how good he was as a scorer. he had like couple reliable moves, his jumpshot was pretty good (though inconsistent at times) and he could draw tons of FTs and pass very well. but his 1 on 1 scoring skills were lacking and this is why he regressed so often in the playoffs (that + John Stockton taking a lesser role resulting in Malone carrying too much). his consistently lower playoff scoring averages and efficiency were somewhat similar to D-Rob. he's another guy whose scoring numbers overstated his abilities and that was exposed in the playoffs. IMO Kevin McHale was a better scorer in terms of abilities than Karl Malone, D-Rob OR Moses. I don't like fundamentally flawed players.

Dirk is a guy whose scoring skills are far better than his ppg averages and that is why his offensive impact is so incredibly big. I just don't see any of the guys previously mentioned carrying so much of a load on that offensively depleted team (11 Mavs). this is also why Dirk improved in the playoffs consistently and delivered when he was asked to do more and more. Malones or D-Rob simply can't do that.

Dirk is better than several players already in and I actually think he's close to KG/Walton/Dr J ballpark.

I'm going to leave the Dirk stuff alone other than to ask anyone thinking about 11 Dirk the following:

-In April of 2011, were you thinking "holy ****, this Dirk guy is playing near an all-time level right now all of a sudden!?"

-How can you clearly distinguish 2011 Dirk as being better than 2006 Dirk when 06 Dirk was better defensively and on the boards? If you can't were you thinking 2006 Dirk was an all-time level peak??

I feel a lot like TrueLAFan when I read these threads these days. He liked to say you can't replace "being there." To me, that means "when we talk about basketball players, we're tapping into tens of thousands of data points that we watched unfold." As in, carefully watching a season play out means you know the coaching tendencies, health, lineup changes, roles of players, etc. Adding analysis ex-post-facto is fantastic --I do it constantly, obviously -- but it most be done in conjunction with that information. Sometimes, I feel that is lost on people or they simply never experienced these seasons/players regularly and are now relying too much on one single idea or factor.

I'm championing Jerry West here, who I never saw play live. But I would never look to his stats first and then try and rank him. I'd look to learn about the Lakers TEAM, the history of the team, the coaches, and anything and everything contemporaries observed from tendencies to quirks to patterns to strengths to weaknesses. THEN go to the stats, and try and make more sense of them with all the information available (ie adding ORtg/DRtg and SRS, in/out, etc.).

Which leads me to Karl Malone. If you compare Karl and Dirk as post players, guess who has more moves? Dirk. But Carmelo Anthony also has more faceup moves than LeBron...it's not the complete picture of a player. Malone isn't overstated as a scorer, he's radically understated. Consider some basic information about Karl Malone that is swept away because of Losing Bias, Clutch Obsessions and his consistency (which hurts him in a peak spotlight):

-Karl Malone has 2 of the top 19 scoring rates seasons of all time.
-Karl Malone is one of 10 members of the 30 per 75 club (30 pts per 75 pos for a season)
-Karl Malone is the ONLY player in NBA history to score 30+ per 75 at at least 8% better than league TS%. (+8.9%)
-Karl Malone's scoring barely changes whether Stockton plays, ages, or doesn't play

To boot, in 98 Malone had a slow start to the year...which was typical at the time.

Nov 1995 (14g) 24.6 pts 57.1% TS 8.8 FTA per 36
Nov 1996 (16g): 24.5 pts 61.1% TS 9.3 FTA per 36
First 18 1997: 25.6 pts 58.9% TS 7.9 FTA per 36
First 18 1998: 24.5 pts 58.3% TS 9.5 FTA per 36

In 1998, there's no John Stockton. The idea that Malone needed Stockton to score or that Malone, in any way, wasn't a great iso/one-on-one scorer is entirely unsubstantiated. Malone shows similar performance in

-the 4 games Stockton missed in 1990...Malone averaged 26.3 ppg, 59% TS 9.5 FTA's
-the 5th game against Por in 1992 that Stockton missed 60% of w injury...Malone finished with 38 points on 58% TS 6 FTA
-the Seattle series in 1996 Stockton played injured in ...Malone averaged 27 ppg 50% TS (5.1 apg to 2.7 tpg) 10.0 FTA's. In 4 RS games, he averaged 23.3 ppg 49% TS

To say that peak McHale -- someone who will come up in this project shortly -- is a better post player than Malone isn't a slight to Malone. McHale was a better post player than almost EVERYONE. Unfortunately, he couldn't pass like Malone and his face up shot was NOT as good as Malone (which is what made Malone such a filthy PnR option -- barrel to the basket like a bull or float to space and hit a mid-range shot), nor was his defense as good as Malone's during their offensive peaks.

1998 -- arguably Malone's peak as a polished offensive player -- coincides with Stockton's demise/limited minutes. In one of his greatest games, Stockton plays basically no role in his domination:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-E9rmJPh5U&NR=1[/youtube]

The games end with

-Malone doubled leads to breakdown, Carr layup.
-Next trip double Malone hits Carr for open J.
-Then Malone a scoop over Rodman.
-At 2:00 left hockey assist off Malone double for Carr J.
-Then the dagger jumper over Rodman, and Costas says “Malone personally pushing the series back to Utah.”

It's strange to me that people feel Stockton really helped create Malone's numbers...but they don't stop and think that maybe Malone helped create Stockton's numbers, even when the evidence strongly suggests the latter.

So coming full circle, watching the years unfold with Malone is was clear how good he was when Stockton wasn't on the court. It WAS a debate whether peak Barkley (early 90s) was better than Malone (who peaked shortly after). It still is a great debate...but the biggest disappointment in this project is that people aren't willing to have these debates for whatever reason. Kareem slipped in without a lot of direct comparison, almost no KG-TD debate, almost no Kobe-Wade debate, and potentially Barkley before Malone is even being considered by people.

[fatal9]

Why Moses over peak Ewing, Dwight, McHale to name a few?

[colts18]

I don't know how anyone can champion 68 West when he missed 31 games. Considering HCA is so important in the playoffs, thats a huge deal. There is no argument for him over 11 Dirk.