#32 - GOAT peaks project (2019)

[Odinn21]

1. 1992 Karl Malone
I see the reason behind picking one of 1996, 1997, 1998 but this is his most complete season. And it was on par with Chuck's 1993 season.

2. 1970 Willis Reed
Insane season. Very underrated. He led his team to 60 wins (62 expected wins) with 8.42 SRS in a time without three point line. In the playoffs dominated Unseld, and held his own very good against 2 goat level centers, Kareem and Wilt. Surely Frazier's insane game 7 performance was needed to seal the deal against the Lakers but up to that point, Reed was on a historic run.
I feel like Reed could be the master of impact metrics.

3. 1972 Walt Frazier
Showed what he was capable of in Reed's absence. One of the greatest defensive PGs ever, may be the best. And I think it's time consider him.

[liamliam1234]

Btw answer this separate if you want but i need to ask.

With your heavy weight on playoff performance and how they do vs high level competition. Why aren’t you looking at say 2015 Harden?

He didn’t have a bad series that year, and dude put up 28/8/6 on 63 ts% against the 1st ranked defense Warriors. People will nitpick his turnovers in that last game, but let’s face it they were overmatched. Dwight was a maybe 2/3 of his Orlando self in those playoffs, and Harden did what he could imo.

Because I am not going to be dumb about when he was actually a better player, lol.

Most of my playoff preferences have been debatable, and very close in time. I was probably a bit inconsistent with 1964 Robertson in that sense, but I did not feel his postseason was in all context a notable dip from 1963. But obviously 1969 Reed will be close to 1970 Reed, 2013 Durant will be close to 2014 Durant, and so on. Wade had a bigger gap, but his 2006 impact metrics were great in their own right, and his playoff run was a much larger sample. KMalone obviously has debatable peaks depending on what you want (scoring 1992, defence 1994, passing somewhere from 1996-98)...

But Harden was absolutely not better in 2015, just like Davis was not better. And even the playoff box score is misleading, which you can kind-of tell by the fact his team came back against the Clippers without him.

[liamliam1234]

Easy now. The Duncan injury was overblown. I mean to play almost 38 mpg over the playoffs and average roughly 24/12 with a 25 PER, I’m going to question how much he was held back by it. Is that not fair?

It is not unfair, but the other points stand — in this case, especially Amar’e being trash defensively.

Don’t really doubt that Reed was better on defense, but he wasn’t the best player on his title teams, or at best perhaps even with Walt on the first one, so I just don’t see what you’re getting at with the penalization of Davis. Reed had Walt and he wasn’t going against anything like the 18 Warriors, sorry.

1. Voting for 1969 Reed.
2. Walt was great in 1970, and maybe even has a case for having been better in the playoffs, but he was not his 1972 self, and Reed was definitely the better player in general that year.
3. Walt was even worse in 1969.
4. I do not care about the offensive talent of the Warriors. Maybe if I were saying Reed is better simply because he led a better relative defensive rating, then that could be a relevant point. But I am talking about how they performed offensively. And compared to the 1969 Bullets, let alone Russell’s Celtics, the 2018 Warriors are a defensive joke.

I’m not overacting to a few short series when he overall in his prime was a 20-22 ppg player in a weaker era than Davis, by far I might add.

If Davis could not handle 2018 Draymond, he has no hope against Unseld and especially not Russell, “weak era” or not.

And again, “a few short series” are literally the essence of every team’s ultimate goal.

And again again, I am not claiming Davis was worse offensively than Reed. But at his playoff peak, the gap was a lot smaller than it normally appears.

Which is why it is relevant that the very next year he won a championship.

Where his ts% that you propped up fell to just 50.7 % which was a bit below average for that time.

Which is why I am not voting for it. I already said I felt he won that year because Frazier was better and Russell was gone. But the point is that he indisputably proved his ability to lead a team to a championship, so of course I am not going to dismiss him as a, well, Chris Paul -type player.

Which is what Davis did in 2015? Nothing got worse about his game in 2018 which led to a worse performance. I’m going to go back and look at a few of those games and see what went on, but again it’s likely just variance which all players are adept to, and not because he was exposed or whatever.

Alternatively, 2015 was the variant year, against a still green Warriors squad ill-prepared for him.

I admitted it’s pretty small, but when we finally got that full playoff run from Reed he seemed to be overall worse than when the samples were just smaller.

Again, which is why I think he was better in 1969 and specifically went out of my way to argue both years should have been MVP campaigns.

Davis we don’t know how he’d perform over 3-4 series, but we can try to speculate I guess.

You can do that, but I would rather look at what happened.

He was great in 2 series, and mediocre in another, what are you talking about?

Playoffs do not roll over, especially not three years apart.

Anyway, I’m probably going with Dwight over Davis and them anyway. With him, his playoff sample isn’t small and he pretty consistently performed well.

See, I am quite a ways away from that because Davis was substantially more talented on offence and Howard’s playoff impact metrics (or what is available) are shockingly bad.

[No-more-rings]

See, I am quite a ways away from that because Davis was substantially more talented on offence and Howard’s playoff impact metrics (or what is available) are shockingly bad.

Dwight was significantly better defensively. And i’d suggest going and looking back at some of Dwight’s series, he’s had some dominant offensive performances.

[liamliam1234]

By the boxscore, yes. But I do not only need to look at boxscore when it comes to modern players.

[euroleague]

1. 1997 Karl Malone - switching back lol. Most of his standard and advanced stats for the reg season peak here. I've decided to stick with my opinion that the playoff run was fine.

2. 1997 Karl Malone - best playoff run of the three years probably. I think he was pretty much the same player from 96-98 or so, so this is extremely close.

3. 1996 Karl Malone - again, pretty much the same guy, different year.

I'll be voting for '11 Dwight next, unless convinced otherwise.

You voted 97 Malone twice

[cecilthesheep]

1. 1997 Karl Malone - switching back lol. Most of his standard and advanced stats for the reg season peak here. I've decided to stick with my opinion that the playoff run was fine.

2. 1997 Karl Malone - best playoff run of the three years probably. I think he was pretty much the same player from 96-98 or so, so this is extremely close.

3. 1996 Karl Malone - again, pretty much the same guy, different year.

I'll be voting for '11 Dwight next, unless convinced otherwise.

You voted 97 Malone twice

my bad, fixed. Second one was supposed to be 98

[No-more-rings]

By the boxscore, yes. But I do not only need to look at boxscore when it comes to modern players.

The 3 years after Dwight’s departure, they rocked the 27th, 29th, and 27th ranked offense, when before they were 7th, 11th, 4th, 14th and 15th. So they ranged anywhere from elite to average with him, to bottom of the league bad after his departure. That doesn’t sound like lack of impact in offense.

And i have no idea why you think we should ignore his box scores in the playoffs. The offense was built around him sucking defenders in and starting the ball movement through that, and as pointed out by Trex, you couldn’t guard him one on one or he’d bully most defenders.

But if you want to devolve this into an argument about his playoff rapm or something, i’m not interested.

[No-more-rings]

1. 19 Harden- Same reasoning as before, highly efficient volume scorer, creative playmaker, carried the Rockets to 53 wins and 2nd ranked offense with a declining Paul, and the worst cast he's had since 2016.

2. 2018 Harden- Going with this on the belief he's 98% of his 2019 self, just didn't have the same green light or didn't need it.

3. 2011 Dwight: Same reasoning Trex gave pretty much, dominant defensive player, and there’s plenty of reason to believe he was a quite good offensive player too.

I think Dwight often gets underrated on this board, because of how much he fell off after Orlando, but from like 08-12, he looked like he was on his way to being the next great center, especially since he was only like 25 or 26 in that last year? I don’t think his offense was ever going to be good enough to reach like Shaq or Hakeem level, but he definitely had like top 25 or 30ish career potential.

[liamliam1234]

By the boxscore, yes. But I do not only need to look at boxscore when it comes to modern players.

The 3 years after Dwight’s departure, they rocked the 27th, 29th, and 27th ranked offense, when before they were 7th, 11th, 4th, 14th and 15th. So they ranged anywhere from elite to average with him, to bottom of the league bad after his departure. That doesn’t sound like lack of impact in offense.

No one has ever denied Howard’s regular season impact.

But if you want to devolve this into an argument about his playoff rapm or something, i’m not interested.

I always telegraph where I am going, so I do not see how this ends up being a surprise to you for every player comparison.

Anyway, have not seen a reason to switch my vote yet, so it continues:

1. 1969 Willis Reed
Why not 1970? Well, a few reasons.
Reed deserved MVP this year. I know the Bullets had this huge leap with Unseld, but benefit of hindsight I think has put that vote in its proper context. First, in the eyes of MVP voters, apparently Unseld peaked as a rookie, because he never came close to replicating this. Second, the Bullets winning three more games than the Knicks does not reflect the fact the Bullets only had a +4.04 SRS, as compared to the +5.48 SRS of the Knicks. Reed also led the league in win shares and WS/48 (Unseld was 8 and 9), and considering the fact Russell was still clearly the league’s best defensive player, the case for Unseld clearly becomes just a matter of that wins leap and that misleading top seed finish. Which is not nothing, of course, but it does feel like too much weight was given to a few accumulated clutch wins (and hey, maybe Unseld was a clutch god on offence; but I kind-of doubt it).
But then you look at the playoffs: 25/14/2 on +7.1% rTS against... oh, look, Wes Unseld and Bill Russell. His .242 playoff WS/48 as the most impactful player on his team is one of the better marks left, he paired it with an MVP-worthy regular season, and he immediately proved his ability to lead a team to a title (with Russell gone and Frazier rapidly improving) the year after. The combination of all that is mostly enough for me this late in the rankings.

2. 1975 Artis Gilmore
Still hoping to hear more from 70sFan to potentially justify him receiving my top vote. In my mind, I do not see a way he is meaningfully below Reed. Giving Reed the edge for now because of his competition level, but Gilmore’s profile is just so incredible that I cannot dismiss it simply by way of “weak league”. I mean, we just voted in Mikan, and does anyone doubt that Gilmore could have been at least as dominant in his place?

3. 1972 Walt Frazier
His best playoffs and regular season, with incredible team results in both considering Reed’s absence. Comparisons with Chris Paul colour my vote here. One of the league’s best perimetre defenders and passers, with superb scoring as well. Playoff elevator capable of leading his team to a title, as evidenced by what happened as soon as Reed returned the following year (frustrating that he missed out on Finals MVP, but it happens). Easily the best championship guard left on the board; I find the votes for Barry or Isiah over him to be profoundly baffling.

[LA Bird]

Final totals as at the deadline:

1) 97 Malone = 11.0 points
2) 98 Malone = 7.5 points
T3) 11 Howard = 5.0 points
T3) 75 Gilmore = 5.0 points
T5) 19 Harden = 4.5 points
T5) 75 Barry = 4.5 points
T5) 69 Reed = 4.5 points
T5) 92 Malone = 4.5 points

97 Malone wins.