RealGM 2017 Top 100 #78 (Hal Greer)

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: Ben Wallace
2nd: Mel Daniels

Both of these guys were the foundation of great teams. There's luck involved with that, but it still says something.

Also, I was tempted with Nance, and think he's a fine choice. Issel's not really my guy, but I probably underrate him.

[trex_8063]

Vote: Ben Wallace
2nd: Mel Daniels

Both of these guys were the foundation of great teams. There's luck involved with that, but it still says something.

Also, I was tempted with Nance, and think he's a fine choice. Issel's not really my guy, but I probably underrate him.

As stated in post #19, we're now in a 4-way runoff between B.Wallace, Greer, Nance, and Issel. Due to concerns of a 4-way runoff hanging in limbo or taking days to whittle down to two candidates, I've proposed a ballot point system runoff in the event we're faced with runoff between FOUR (or more) candidates, in which you specify your top pick and your second choice among the four.

Daniels is not one of the four that made the runoff, so I'd ask that you specify your second pick between the other runoff candidates.

If your vote had come in an hour earlier, I could have included it in the initial tally, and we'd have a two-player runoff between Greer and Wallace. But as I'd already stated the 4-way runoff, AND we've already had one person chime in on that ahead of you (and he stated Wallace would be last among the four for him, fwiw), it wouldn't really be fair to renege on things now.

[Outside]

Vote: Greer
Alternate: Nance

Reasoning for Greer from the runoff thread with Parker:

Spoiler:

I need to look more thoroughly into Parker. He's obviously a crucial part of multiple championship teams, but he's something of a high-wire act -- great at his best, but the drop-off is huge. Parker's main assets are scoring and breaking down the defense with penetration, which was absolutely key to the offensive success of the Spurs, but the rest of his stats don't jump out at me. For as many seasons as he's been around, his RS longevity in games/minutes isn't super -- he has 36k minutes compared to 47k for Duncan -- but he has outstanding PS games/minutes. His TS% isn't that great -- 54.9 RS, 51.7 PS. How does he have only 3.9 total PS VORP when Duncan has 18.6 and Manu has 10.9? He's never been a very good individual defender, though he's been part of great defensive teams. I just don't know what to make of him. He's a tough guy for me to peg.

Greer, on the other hand, is more consistent. He doesn't have the number of titles that Parker has, but he was a big part of the one he was on. He was a good all-around player. He has more RS minutes than Parker and the same PS WS/48 as Parker. I don't have the numbers handy, but I believe Greer's TS% compares more favorably to league average compared to Parker. Parker is known as a penetrator, yet Greer has the higher FTA (5.1 RS and 6.2 PS vs 3.8 RS and 4.3 PS for Parker), and Greer's FT% is significantly better (80.1 RS and 81.2 PS vs 75.2 RS and 73.1 PS for Parker).

My Greer vote doesn't help the runoff situation, so my alternate vote is the more important one. At this point, all candidates have a flawed resume, but Nance's seems like the most complete player of the other guys being considered.

I particularly value defense and rebounding, so it's hard not to go with Ben Wallace, but his peak was short, and my wife is as capable as him offensively. He'll get in the top 100, but I find it hard to fathom how a quality player could be so inept at putting the ball in the hole.

Issel is (sort of) the opposite -- a good offensive player who was a lousy defender. He wasn't as lousy at defense as Wallace was at offense, but he wasn't as good at offense as Wallace was at defense either.

I've always liked all of these guys, and I hope they all get in. We're just futzing over order at this point.

[trex_8063]

I should make clear that for this ballot system of narrowing the runoff, I cannot accept votes for anyone who does not designate both a first and a second pick; it could otherwise be construed as stacking the deck against the other candidates. penbeast0, Clyde Frazier, Doctor MJ, and pandrade83---->cannot count your top picks in this runoff unless you specify a secondary.

Spoiler:

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[Owly]

I should make clear that for this ballot system of narrowing the runoff, I cannot accept votes for anyone who does not designate both a first and a second pick; it could otherwise be construed as stacking the deck against the other candidates. penbeast0, Clyde Frazier, Doctor MJ, and pandrade83---->cannot count your top picks in this runoff unless you specify a secondary.

Spoiler:

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What's effectively happening here is two points for a first vote, and one for a second, no (I should probably re-read rather than guess)?

Couldn't voters without a second preference simply only get one point for their first preference? That way anyone who didn't see this before you want to call it could still get their first preference counted.

And honestly, you could "game" a secondary vote by allocating it to the present weakest rival candidate - if anyone were so inclined.

I could be missing something though.

[trex_8063]

I should make clear that for this ballot system of narrowing the runoff, I cannot accept votes for anyone who does not designate both a first and a second pick; it could otherwise be construed as stacking the deck against the other candidates. penbeast0, Clyde Frazier, Doctor MJ, and pandrade83---->cannot count your top picks in this runoff unless you specify a secondary.

Spoiler:

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What's effectively happening here is two points for a first vote, and one for a second, no (I should probably re-read rather than guess)?

Couldn't voters without a second preference simply only get one point for their first preference? That way anyone who didn't see this before you want to call it could still get their first preference counted.

That's fair; I'd thought of that myself shortly after posting the above. It prevents people from being penalised if "life gets in the way".

So it's clear: for those who fail to designate an alternate pick in the ballot runoff, your ONE [top] pick will be awarded the same number of points as the secondary choice of the other voters [those who DID designate a secondary choice]. You will need to specify your secondary selection in order for your first choice to get "full credit", as it were.

[Clyde Frazier]

Mulling over my second vote between nance and issel. Will make a final decision within the next hour or so.

[pandrade83]

I’ll take issel as my 2nd choice over Wallace.

Defense is more important for bigs and Wallace played in a tougher era. But at the same time, issel wasn’t worthless defensively like Wallace is offensively and issel is a longevity giant by the standards of the players remaining.

Maybe too much of the modern game is influencing my thinking here but I find It really hard to win when you’re playing 4 on 5 offensively and that’s what you’re doing with Wallace. I’ve been anti Greer in other run-offs with stated reasoning why.

[penbeast0]

I'll go with Greer as my alternative runoff pick behind Nance. Ben Wallace was the biggest needle mover but out of the Detroit system, he was ineffective and with his offensive woes (and his offense is worse than Amare's defense!) he's just tough to see being a key piece of many championship caliber teams. Similarly, Issel as a center, which is where he played the bulk of his career, is actually a weakness at times (especially in Denver in the years where they had plenty of scorers but no rim protection . . . not as bad as Kiki but possibly actually hurting the team over a mediocre Wayne Cooper type player considering the talent blend). Also some issues on portability since he would be a problem for any team that needed interior defense which in his era almost all the teams did. Interestingly, Nance would have been a perfect partner for him.

Which leaves me with Hal Greer as the alternative almost by default. Good (not great) offense, good (not great) defense, a player with no real weaknesses. He's just a little stronger on most contenders than either of the alternatives.

Runoff vote: Larry Nance; Alternative vote Hal Greer

[Clyde Frazier]

-

Runoff 2nd vote - Dan Issel

A near tossup to me between nance and issel. While nance had an edge in versatility with regard to his production, I ultimately favored issel's longevity and durability here. He was still a very productive player in his own right, and possibly overlooked for his success in the ABA specifically, where he really shined. He had a solid transition to the NBA and held his own quite well. He still played a complementary role in his final season, losing to the eventual champion lakers in the WCF.

[dhsilv2]

Darn, I was really wanting to spend some time on Webber, Wallace, Nance, and a couple others possibly and missed the vote.

First Vote Greer -

I'll summarize for this one. 7 time all nba. Key go to scorer for on a title team and had some rather good games against the celtics. His game relied on a jumper which spaced the floor before people knew that was a big deal. The 3rd or 4th best guard in his era which spanned 9 year of prime with 2 early quality years and then he was a replacement level vet for his final 3 seasons. He doesn't have a great peak but he made up with it through his importance to the history of the game and extreme longevity and consistency.

Second Vote - Ben Wallace

Darn I did this write up and just lost it. Basically 4x DPOY, great box score metrics (VORP for example has him and nance in a virtual tie) despite being a poor offensive guy. Overall Issell suffers from going to the ABA which is just not going to help him with me. Meanwhile Wallace had great playoffs success and Nance really only had 2 playoff runs.

[scrabbarista]

I've already voted for two of the four, so I'll repeat it here:

78th: Dan Issel
79th: Ben Wallace

[trex_8063]

Thru post #32:

Hal Greer - 9 pts
Larry Nance - 6 pts
Dan Issel - 5 pts
Ben Wallace - 5 pts

OK, the ballot runoff has yielded these results, so we'll narrow things to a final runoff [now just a standard runoff] between the top two in points: Greer and Nance. Based on prior voting.....

Hal Greer - 4 (Outside, Dr Positivity, Clyde Frazier, dhsilv2)
Larry Nance - 2 (pandrade83, penbeast0)

If your name is not shown here, please state your pick between these two, with reasons why.

Spoiler:

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[trex_8063]

Runoff vote: Larry Nance

Despite the two fewer seasons, Nance's longevity actually stands up reasonably well against Greer, as basically 11 of his 13 seasons were legitimately prime seasons (avg 73-74 rs games per prime season, too). Greer played 15 seasons, but really only 9 appear to be prime seasons (one other fairly close). And I simply feel Nance was a more impressive player in those respective primes.

Nance combined length and athleticism, had an OK mid-range shot iirc, monstrous finisher, solid FT-shooting big (75.9% in his prime, peaking around 82%), decent passing big, fair/decent rebounder, excellent help-defender.
Over the aforementioned ELEVEN-year span he made that work to a tune of 18.3 ppg @ 59.0% TS, 8.5 rpg, 2.8 apg, 1.0 spg, 2.4 bpg, and only 1.9 topg (career rs mTOV% of 8.48, fwiw, which is in the neighborhood of career Kevin Garnett and career Kevin Love); 20.2 PER, .175 WS/48, +4.5 BPM, +13 eff differential in 35.4 mpg over those 11 years. That's basically a solid All-Star [or at least a fringe All-Star] for 11 solid seasons (his single-worst statistical season in that span was 19.1 PER, .152 WS/48, +2.8 BPM, +8 efficiency differential in 33.3 mpg---->still pretty close to a fringe All-Star); and this in a more competitive era relative to Greer.

[Doctor MJ]

Runoff vote: Larry Nance

Sometimes it's simple. I'd love to have Nance on pretty much any team - I just seem him as a good two-way big without a huge ego - and I don't have much use for Greer.

[trex_8063]

Runoff vote: Larry Nance

Sometimes it's simple. I'd love to have Nance on pretty much any team - I just seem him as a good two-way big without a huge ego - and I don't have much use for Greer.

The bolded is a bit dismissive, no?

I mean sure, he pales in comparison to many of the great bigs of his time, but he was at worst the 4-best guard of his era. In a more grand sense (and to make a modern-ish comparison), he's at worst like a "diet" Joe Dumars, but with better longevity. Or for an even more recent comp, he's maybe [again: at worst] like a better rebounding version of Eric Gordon......with more than twice the longevity/career to his credit. Seems a bit much (in terms of career value) to be dismissive of; and I say that as someone voting for Nance here.

[Doctor MJ]

Runoff vote: Larry Nance

Sometimes it's simple. I'd love to have Nance on pretty much any team - I just seem him as a good two-way big without a huge ego - and I don't have much use for Greer.

The bolded is a bit dismissive, no?

I mean sure, he pales in comparison to many of the great bigs of his time, but he was at worst the 4-best guard of his era. In a more grand sense (and to make a modern-ish comparison), he's at worst like a "diet" Joe Dumars, but with better longevity. Or for an even more recent comp, he's maybe [again: at worst] like a better rebounding version of Eric Gordon......with more than twice the longevity/career to his credit. Seems a bit much (in terms of career value) to be dismissive of; and I say that as someone voting for Nance here.

I think that back then you had an even more clear line between the great talents, and the nots. For the meet of the 60s you had 4 truly amazing players, and gigantic chasm between them and everyone else. Wilt was the exception because of how erratic he was, but in general these 4 guys could do whatever they wanted and one of them was always going to win the title (in practice Russell only allowed anyone else to win once of course, because he was a covetous, covetous man).

Anyway, in general, if you're not one of those top guys, when I project you into today's game, I'm probably not going to find you that great of a prospect.

You say he's at worst a rich man's Gordon, but I seriously doubt he'd have been drafted ahead of Gordon had they been born at the same time.

[penbeast0]

I think that back then you had an even more clear line between the great talents, and the nots. For the meet of the 60s you had 4 truly amazing players, and gigantic chasm between them and everyone else. Wilt was the exception because of how erratic he was, but in general these 4 guys could do whatever they wanted and one of them was always going to win the title (in practice Russell only allowed anyone else to win once of course, because he was a covetous, covetous man).

Anyway, in general, if you're not one of those top guys, when I project you into today's game, I'm probably not going to find you that great of a prospect.

You say he's at worst a rich man's Gordon, but I seriously doubt he'd have been drafted ahead of Gordon had they been born at the same time.

I agree that the top 4 were appreciably better than anyone else that played at least 8 years in the 60s . . . but we have Havlicek , Baylor, and Sam Jones in and probably will put in more. Greer wasn't far behind Sam Jones (or was ahead of him) in terms of respect from contemporaries. I agree that you are dismissing him too quickly. Or maybe you are much much more impressed with Eric Gordon's career (such as it is) than I am.

[trex_8063]

Runoff vote: Larry Nance

Sometimes it's simple. I'd love to have Nance on pretty much any team - I just seem him as a good two-way big without a huge ego - and I don't have much use for Greer.

The bolded is a bit dismissive, no?

I mean sure, he pales in comparison to many of the great bigs of his time, but he was at worst the 4-best guard of his era. In a more grand sense (and to make a modern-ish comparison), he's at worst like a "diet" Joe Dumars, but with better longevity. Or for an even more recent comp, he's maybe [again: at worst] like a better rebounding version of Eric Gordon......with more than twice the longevity/career to his credit. Seems a bit much (in terms of career value) to be dismissive of; and I say that as someone voting for Nance here.

I think that back then you had an even more clear line between the great talents, and the nots. For the meet of the 60s you had 4 truly amazing players, and gigantic chasm between them and everyone else. Wilt was the exception because of how erratic he was, but in general these 4 guys could do whatever they wanted and one of them was always going to win the title (in practice Russell only allowed anyone else to win once of course, because he was a covetous, covetous man).

Anyway, in general, if you're not one of those top guys, when I project you into today's game, I'm probably not going to find you that great of a prospect.

You say he's at worst a rich man's Gordon, but I seriously doubt he'd have been drafted ahead of Gordon had they been born at the same time.

When you say "at the same time", are you going both ways here? Are we so sure Eric Gordon would have been any better than someone like Dick Barnett, if he'd been born in Greer's time? I'm certainly not.

[Doctor MJ]

I think that back then you had an even more clear line between the great talents, and the nots. For the meet of the 60s you had 4 truly amazing players, and gigantic chasm between them and everyone else. Wilt was the exception because of how erratic he was, but in general these 4 guys could do whatever they wanted and one of them was always going to win the title (in practice Russell only allowed anyone else to win once of course, because he was a covetous, covetous man).

Anyway, in general, if you're not one of those top guys, when I project you into today's game, I'm probably not going to find you that great of a prospect.

You say he's at worst a rich man's Gordon, but I seriously doubt he'd have been drafted ahead of Gordon had they been born at the same time.

I agree that the top 4 were appreciably better than anyone else that played at least 8 years in the 60s . . . but we have Havlicek , Baylor, and Sam Jones in and probably will put in more. Greer wasn't far behind Sam Jones (or was ahead of him) in terms of respect from contemporaries. I agree that you are dismissing him too quickly. Or maybe you are much much more impressed with Eric Gordon's career (such as it is) than I am.

I think Jones is a good one to bring up for comparison, though I certainly am not looking to make an argument for where Jones should have gone.

I tend to see Jones as a guy whose statistical footprint is shaped by an odd Celtic system that probably did him few favors on that front (winning the rings more than makes that up of course). He cut his teeth working off-ball but showed he could work on-ball if he needed to. In general I have high expectations of my floor general, and Jones isn't up to them so it's good that he's shown he can be flexible and give the team what it needs. The fact that Jones was 6'4" makes me feel better about Jones in the 2 also, although granted, I'd like a 2 who was taller.

In Greer you have a guy who was used to being the alpha on his team as the playmaker. Leading the team in both points and assists until Wilt got there. Yes he eventually proved, you could say, that he could play more off-ball working with Wilt, but it's telling that Greer's numbers didn't actually improve in efficiency in '67. He didn't seem to benefit from the lower pressure of being off-ball the way you'd hope. He's also 6'2" according to the measures. To me this says if I'm going to play him today, he's going to have to be my 1.

And do I want him as my 1 being both my primary scorer and assister? Not really. There aren't many guys who get that kind of clout, and Greer isn't going to be one of them.

So what this says to me is not that Greer couldn't thrive today, but he's have to really transform himself in some way that I lack the ability to predict with confidence. Obviously if he turned out to be an outlier-good 3-point shooter that would change everything.

As is though, he feels like a guy with a game geared for a league of spottier quality who would struggle to scale with competition.