Dr Spaceman wrote:No-more-rings wrote:Dr Spaceman wrote:Amazing post man. So glad to see Paul get the love he deserves. I’ve said before I think his 08-18 run is one of the five best ten year stretches in NBA history and I stand by it.
This feels like a really “out there” type of opinion to me. For 10 year stretch
No case against:
Lebron, Duncan, KG, Kareem, Wilt, Russell, Hakeem, Shaq
Weak case against: Magic, Bird, K Malone, Kobe
Some case, but still not clear cut:
Drob, Wade, KD, Dr J, West, etc list could go on
I generously didn’t include Mj because of the retirement but I probably should’ve anyways since Cp3 was injury prone and missed a ton of time anyway.
As time passes people have a tendency to gloss over the fluctuations in year-to-year play and paint a player’s whole career with the same brush. From 1996-1999 Shaq for example finished 9th, 9th, 4th and 6th in MVP voting. No one was thinking of him as a future “most dominant ever” candidate during these years and it’s mpossible to make a ten year stretch that doesn’t include these. In his later prime he had many issues with weight, conditioning, injuries etc. And we’ve seen that Paul in his late prime with a talent on Kobe’s level can absolutely lead a team as dominant as that Lakers squad as we did last year.
Wilt’s myriad issues in his career have been well-documented. There’s plenty of good reading material on them on these boards. Wilt had mind-boggling year to year fluctuations in on court impact during his prime and for most of his career was more focused on other interests than performance on the basketball court.
Hakeem has some lost years in there as well especially the early 90s when he was kind of known for being a headcase and had some curious drop offs in defensive efficacy. It’s again a case where a dominant peak overwrites a more inconsistent career.
If it seems like I’m picking nits that’s because I am. It’s what you have to do when comparing the best of the best and I do believe Paul is in that level.
I agree people gloss over fluctuations in play over a career but we shouldn’t act like this ain’t the case for almost everyone. Lerbon had some bizarre years like 2011 and 2015 for example, Paul had some less than stellar seasons in there himself where his regular season wasn’t up to par(2011), or 2012 where he wasn’t very good in the playoffs. The backpicks thing by Elgee, had Paul as being consistently pretty good but none of those seasons as historically great and that matters if we’re talking it to “top 5 10-year stretch ever”.
The things about Wilt and Hakeem’s head issues is purely narrative and not based on anything tangible. Even in a headcase year why can we conclude that they still didn’t have at least as much impact as Paul did in an average year? If we’re taking it to hearsay, i can bring up how the narrative is that a lot of Clipper guys didn’t like playing with Paul and other antics like him taking a “secret tunnel to the Clippers” locker room.
Not to rain on Paul’s parade here but when people run around making strong dubious statements like yins are here, i think i have a right to question/debate it.
