Peaks Project #35

[Quotatious]

Ballot #1 - Bob Lanier '74
Ballot #2 - Willis Reed '69
Ballot #3 - Connie Hawkins '68

Changed my votes quite a bit. Lanier and Reed emerged as great candidates because of their excellent all-around skill-set, and the fact they are centers, which earns a few points in my book, too- I give Lanier a slight edge, but it's basically a toss-up. Both were great offensively and defensively at their peaks, very good rebounders, too. Excellent in the playoffs, as well (and against #1 rated defenses, at that). It was an extremely tough choice to give Lanier the edge, but he looks marginally better, statistically, and that playmaking Lanier provided, is the thing that made me give it to him. Both guys really impressed me based on eye-test, too. Great post game for that era, good shooting touch, both really physical, but capable of finesse moves, as well. Especially Lanier's post game (that hook shot he had, was effective out to about 13-15 feet - that's awesome range for a hook shot or jump hook) was textbook perfect.

Connie remains in my top 3, but I'm not as high on him as I previously had been, because the ABA in its first season looks like a really weak league, compared to the NBA. Still, Hawkins dominated it so much that I think he deserves to get my vote (he also dominated the #1 and 2 ranked defenses in the ABA that year, in the playoffs - the Muskies and Buccaneers).

[trex_8063]

Also, McHale vs Brand is extremely close, to me. McHale was a more efficient scorer, but Brand was very efficient, as well, on very similar volume,

Yeah, but while Brand's efficiency is "very good", McHale's was on a "omg what is happening??!" level for a high-volume scorer. You seem to have implied that it's kinda close, but it's really just not.

But how much of McHale's efficiency is a result of him being this good, versus playing with a GOAT-level passer in Bird?

I kinda addressed this in above post #14:

How does McHale compare in these aspects of the game? Here’s how I see it….

I think he’s [clearly] the best scorer of the three. Seriously: 31.9 pts/100 poss @ 65.5% TS (+11.73% rTS) in a what is [perhaps by far] the most competitive league of the three is ridiculous.
Critics may mention how the presence of Bird and Parish takes pressure off of McHale. Fair enough, but they also steal primacy (volume) from him. Look how a near-peak Chris Bosh’s volume fell when he arrived in Miami next to two stars. That McHale was a dominant enough scorer to warrant the volume he had among that company is remarkable.
Critics may also cite Larry Bird’s playmaking as responsible for a big chunk of McHale’s efficiency. This is a touch misleading, imo; watching games from that era, McHale appears to be getting A LOT of his points on simple low-post isolations: he posts up, they dump him the ball, and he destroys whoever is guarding him. Simple as that. I’d further cite McHale’s ‘89 numbers as evidence of his prowess. Bird missed basically this entire season, and McHale is 31 years old and decidedly past his peak at this point (was really never quite the same after the injury late in ‘87), too: he still averaged 29.9 pts/100 poss @ 60.8% TS (+7.11% rTS).

Basically comparable scoring resume to peak McAdoo and/or Hawkins, even without Bird (and this is PAST his peak). But also read description, too: lots of McHale's buckets came in simple post isolation scenarios.

Because if we are just looking at boxscore production, someone like Amar'e ranks well up there:

36.9/pp100 @ 65.6% TS, 27.6 PER, .262 WS/48, 124 ORTG in 2008

It's pretty much common consensus that Amare's goodness on offense is well overrated compared to his production, isn't it logical that the same would apply to McHale?

I don't think it's quite logical to make that assumption, no. Amare's relationship to Nash differed greatly from McHale's relationship to Bird (e.g. I would wager that the number of Amar'e buckets which were assisted by Nash per game was easily double the # of McHale buckets assisted by Bird).
Additionally, part of why consensus that Amar'e's offensive goodness is overrated relative to his production is because his impact indicators are consistently kinda pedestrian (or at least well behind his box/advanced metrics).

Obv we lack on/off splits or RAPM for McHale and others of that era, so I can't say anything for certain; I will try to harvest and post some of the data that is available here in the next few days. In the meantime, I don't think it's fair to simply assume this same anomalous low-impact seen for Amar'e exists for McHale too.

The other thing with Amar'e (which sort of separates him from McHale) is his defense. He's simply bad, always has been. Part of this can perhaps be explained away by noting that he's played much of his career under Mike D'Antoni's system, where he's not exactly encouraged to play defense; but otoh you'd think that MDA's system would give a compensatory boost to his offensive impact. McHale's defense always ranged from "good" to elite (or at least near-elite) throughout his prime.

EDIT: And this latter portion (criticism of his defense) is the more relevant factor here. I was sort of heavily critical of him above, but I probably should give him some credit--->above criticisms aside, he was a legitimately beastly offensive player.

[Clyde Frazier]

Also, McHale vs Brand is extremely close, to me. McHale was a more efficient scorer, but Brand was very efficient, as well, on very similar volume,

Yeah, but while Brand's efficiency is "very good", McHale's was on a "omg what is happening??!" level for a high-volume scorer. You seem to have implied that it's kinda close, but it's really just not.

But how much of McHale's efficiency is a result of him being this good, versus playing with a GOAT-level passer in Bird? Because if we are just looking at boxscore production, someone like Amar'e ranks well up there:

36.9/pp100 @ 65.6% TS, 27.6 PER, .262 WS/48, 124 ORTG in 2008

It's pretty much common consensus that Amare's goodness on offense is well overrated compared to his production, isn't it logical that the same would apply to McHale?

...the phrasing of your statement is a serious disservice to amare. Of course he benefited from nash, but nash also benefited from him as one of the best P&R / pick and pop bigs of all time.

Also, check out amare's production in his first season in NY. He was still an extremely efficient volume scorer after building chemistry with the epitome of average starting PG in Felton. He was that good offensively, and was by no means riding nash's coattails.

And with McHale, he's known as one of the best post players of all time. Bird's passing certainly helped him overall, but I don't think it overpowers his ability as an individual player offensively.

[RebelWithACause]

@Quotatious

Some things:

- My eye test of Brand tells me that he sacrificed defense for offense. While offensively he showed a very consistent good level, volume scoring doesn't necessarily point to great offensive impact.
I will say that I think that Brand that season was a really good offensive player, but still very far from the very best (Nash, Dirk, Kobe).
Now his defense suffered because of the volume on offense and he checks out as a tad above average defensively.

Now if you say Brand is a +4 on offense and a +0 on defense, Rasheed is still a more impactful player if he is a +1.5 on offense and +3 on defense.
Griffin displayed offensive skills that are incredibly valuable. Playmaking has a great correlation to good offensive impact. Don't underestimate Griffin's ability to act as a Point Forward due to handles and passing.
Griffin excelled last season while Paul was missing and maintained a great offense for the Clippers 2 years ago on his own with Paul out.
So I see Griffin checking out a better offensive player , while being comparable on defense (only that season though, usually Brand was better on that end).

I think people tend to forget that defensive aspect weighs almost just as much as the offensive part.

- Same for Drexler and Pippen :

As you see nowadays an elite perimeter defender like Kahwi, PG 14, Artest, Kirilenko can have a huge impact on defense. Now if you think that Pippen is on their level, you should absolutely put him in front of Drexler, because at most I could see him checking out a slight positive (and I watched a lot of his games to form this opinion)

So yeah, all I want to say here is that defense is underrated and doesn't show up in the basic or advanced boxscore stuff.

Random: Will be fun tonight, seeing about a handful of posters that committed to the project, being crazy active in the LeBron thread, discussing how he looks physically, how his jumper is, etc. and not checking in here to cast a vote!

[Clyde Frazier]

Ballot #1 - 63 Pettit

Ballot #2 - 61 Baylor

Ballot #3 - 84 King

Staying with 63 as pettit's peak. Looked at 59 and while his FT rate was really impressive that season, I just don't like how they went out in the playoffs, losing to the -1.42 SRS lakers. He arguably faced better competition in 63 as well, and had a solid reg season and post season. Sorta looking at pettit and baylor in my rankings the same way I did oscar and west. They're very close. As for king, I'm more impressed with him within the context of what he did that season than mcadoo.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #25:

Elgin Baylor - 10
Penny Hardaway - 7
Bob Pettit - 5
Willis Reed - 3
Rick Barry - 3
Bob McAdoo - 3
Scottie Pippen - 3
Bob Lanier - 3
Kevin McHale - 2
Connie Hawkins - 2
Dominique Wilkins - 2
Manu Ginobili - 2
Jason Kidd - 1
Bernard King - 1

Calling it for Elgin. Will have #36 up shortly.