REDOING THE NBA HALL OF FAME (retired in 1995 or earlier)

[worldjbfree]

Missed the last two threads, but I'm glad to be back on this one. My votes:

Larry Bird
Bill Laimbeer
Moses Malone
Kevin McHale
Sidney Moncrief
Jack Sikma
Isiah Thomas
James Worthy

HM: Bernard King, who it kills me to not include. The guy was phenomenal, but injuries made that spectacular near-MVP 1984 season his peak. That year also gave King the only playoff "success" his career would ever see. Love him, but I'm not rewarding others with short runs/limited playoff success, so I can't make an exception here.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

This will be tough, I must check because I am not sure who made it in the 90 class

Bird - obvious king
McHale
Moses
Worthy
Isiah Thomas

are obvious locks

Then there's a group with Dantley, Cheeks, Eaton, Cooper, Sikma, English, Lambeer, Moncrief and I am sure many more once I will start checking

Pretty sure Moncrief, Dantley and Cheeks will finally get in, let's see the rest.

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Ok, semi final
Bird
Malone
McHale
Thomas
Worthy
Moncrief
English
Sikma
Cheeks
Dantley

The last two are still not 100% sure


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[Dr Positivity]

Change my vote from Nance to Laimbeer. The more I thought about it the more rewarding Laimbeer for Bad Boys success makes sense, I believe he has underrated case for being their best player in 89 and 90.

[penbeast0]

AD/English/King

Dantley was the best scorer of the 3, more efficient, greater volume (though all were spectacular), and since that's the primary skill all three were celebrated for, that counts for a lot. Weakest defender, tendency to leak out, but Chuck Daly who I consider one of the top 10 coaches of all time raved about his professionalism in Detroit where his nickname was "The Teacher."

English did more other things. In that Nuggets offense he was, at various times, their interior scorer (playing next to Vandeweghe and Issel though Issel's post up game was underrated), their floor stretcher, their off ball scorer, their point forward, always getting 25 ppg with good efficiency. The best defender and passer of the 3 as well though King was a better rebounder (and Dantley more proficient on the offensive boards).

King was the most coldblooded. He was not a likeable guy, very mercenary, but he never backed down from anyone and probably the best playoff performer. He struggled with alcoholism as well. Easily the 3rd of the 3 overall to me because of his shorter career but in his prime, it's pick em between the 3.

[70sFan]

AD/English/King

Dantley was the best scorer of the 3, more efficient, greater volume (though all were spectacular), and since that's the primary skill all three were celebrated for, that counts for a lot. Weakest defender, tendency to leak out, but Chuck Daly who I consider one of the top 10 coaches of all time raved about his professionalism in Detroit where his nickname was "The Teacher."

English did more other things. In that Nuggets offense he was, at various times, their interior scorer (playing next to Vandeweghe and Issel though Issel's post up game was underrated), their floor stretcher, their off ball scorer, their point forward, always getting 25 ppg with good efficiency. The best defender and passer of the 3 as well though King was a better rebounder (and Dantley more proficient on the offensive boards).

King was the most coldblooded. He was not a likeable guy, very mercenary, but he never backed down from anyone and probably the best playoff performer. He struggled with alcoholism as well. Easily the 3rd of the 3 overall to me because of his shorter career but in his prime, it's pick em between the 3.

I agree with most, except I'd probably have King below Dantley defensively (and in terms of passing). King was amazing scorer but very limited all-around player.

[penbeast0]

Oh, in terms of who you want to be around, fwiw, English won quite a few citizenship/good guy awards too. Dantley, not so much; King, definitely not.

[penbeast0]

Votes so far:

Larry Bird (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)
Moses Malone (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)
Isiah Thomas (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)

Kevin McHale (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)
James Worthy (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)
Sidney Moncrief (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)

Alex English (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, Ryoga Hibiki)

Adrian Dantley (Durchball97, Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063, 70sFan, Ryoga Hibiki)

Jack Sikma (Narigo, Dr Positivity, 70sFan, worldjbfree, Ryoga Hibiki)

Bill Laimbeer (70sFan, worldjbfree, Dr Positivity, Ryoga Hibiki)

Larry Nance (Narigo, penbeast0, trex_8063)
Bernard King (Durchball97, penbeast0, Dr Positivity)

Maurice Cheeks (trex_8063)
Spencer Haywood (Durchball97)

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Changing my vote from Cheeks to Laimbeer.

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[eminence]

Bah, sorry I never got around to any discussion here.

Votes:
Bird
Moses
Thomas
McHale
Worthy
Moncrief
Sikma
Laimbeer
Cheeks

Couldn't decide on who I wanted to give the last slot.

[Doctor MJ]

Hey y'all,

I've been busy the past few days. Will post my vote tomorrow.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I guess it's closed as we started 2000, no?

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[Doctor MJ]

Alright so, I'm going to post my vote and just not count them unless told to count them.

I'm going to just list out the ones where I agree with the 10 winners, and then focus on the ones where I disagreed. I'll note that it so happens my vote wouldn't actually change anything, but I'd like to lay out what I see.

I would also vote to induct:

Larry Bird
Moses Malone
Isiah Thomas
Kevin McHale
James Worthy
Sidney Moncrief
Alex English
Bill Laimbeer

But I would vote Mo Cheeks and Bernard King over Jack Sikma and Adrian Dantley.

Why Mo Cheeks?

Well, I think I should lead with the fact we have what I consider to be an incredible resources about the Philadelphia 76ers from '77 with Harvey Pollack's +/- data for the team.

If you haven't see it before, check it out.

I'll tell you that my big takeaways were this:

1. Wow. Bobby Jones really was that impactful.
2. Wow. Mo Cheeks was too!
3. Yup, Moses seems pretty legit.
4. What's up with Doc?

I'm a big Dr. J fan first and foremost because of what it's like to watch him, and I'll just say that I've had to really think a lot about Erving and question some things. I think one could be forgiven for thinking "76ers had Erving, if Jones & Cheeks were Hall worthy, they should have been winning championships before Moses?", I certainly wondered that. But at this point I see it as a situation where Erving wasn't entirely resonating in harmony with his team the way I think he was with the Nets, and unfortunately that made a big difference in impact. The team was still very good...but that's because there were other players that were really resonating. Most notably Jones first, but Cheeks by the time of the '83 championship, and Cheeks for longer.

We know that Cheeks is a respected defender with a tendency toward high shooting efficiency.

I can also say that Cheeks among historical players I've watched who "popped" for me - guys whose motion and action made me asking "Whoa, who is that?".

So before we got access to that data (which I never thought we'd had), Cheeks was someone whose +/- data was someone I was particularly curious about (as was Jones). There do appear to be point guards who are almost myteriously impactful in such data, could we predict that Cheeks would be one of those guys?

And the answer is a clear Yes I think, though i won't claim to be able to make confident predictions about point guards of the past as a general rules.

One mo' Mo note: Cheeks' WOWYR was mentioned, and that number is good but not amazing. I'd note that WOWY is a more coarse method of analysis than +/-, and I think given all we see, we should look at Cheeks as something of a clear cut star player for an extended time, while also possibly being the 2nd most important piece (behind Moses, ahead of Julius) on one of the great teams in history.

Alright, last spot I really agonized over:

Bernard King

So I think the obvious debate here is King vs Adrian Dantley. Completely understand why Dantley is ahead of King in the eyes of many, here's how I come down:

I tend to form assessments through a process of what I might call "iterative deepening". You look at the easy to see stuff, make some estimations, go a little deeper, see if you have reason to adjust, repeat for as much more subtle nuance as you can think to find.

What this means is that if a guy puts up monster stats like Dantley or King, my first pass analysis says "Wow!". That's essentially the default, and while I can become far further impressed with any players if the deeper bits in fact impress me further, I don't look at those stats and say "Doesn't mean anything unless X".

So with King, there are some things that are a bit iffy. His prime didn't last for that long, we only got to see so much of it, the offenses he was running in NY were not that amazing. But he was leading good teams, and both he and his team overperformed in the playoffs. This is a team that pulled off victories that could be argued as upsets in both years King was their star, and then in the 2nd year took the champs to Game 7. You really don't have to squint hard here to see shades of young Jordan.

I don't feel comfortable being too low on King here. He feels legit to me, and frankly when your career is disrupted so clearly by injury, and you're still fighting to get back, I tend to be a bit kind on notions of prime/longevity.

By contrast, I just see too many red flags with Dantley for me to try to map his box score into impact in any way. His teams kept being mysterious underperformers compared to what they feel like they should have been, his teams kept moving on from him and sure seeming wise to do so.

I don't think Dantley was at all a net negative player, but I do believe there were some kinks with mapping his individual brilliance into the team fabric that just never got worked out. Maybe it would have only taken the right coach, but we never saw that, and that leaves a career that's more about "What was the problem?" than "What might have been?" with King.

Some other guys that were on my mind:

Larry Nance - I'm actually more torn on King vs Nance than anything else. In the end, King just seems more historically important.

Jack Sikma - to be blunt, I think he's considerably more worthy than Gus Williams, but just not quite in the top 10 here.

Jamaal Wilkes - Lakers chose Wilkes over Dantley, and I'm 100% sure they would do it again. He was part of something more real than Dantley ever was.

Michael Cooper - Sentimental choice, one of only 3 Lakers (along with Kareem and Magic) who were there for all 5 titles. In the end, he really seems the essence of what a franchise HOF might be, but isn't quite important enough to talk about on the grander stage. I do wonder what more he could have been in the 3 & D era though.

[penbeast0]

Since you voted for Laimbeer thus didn't move Nance or King up into a tie with him disrupting the next thread, I went ahead and added your votes on page 1.

[Doctor MJ]

Since you voted for Laimbeer thus didn't move Nance or King up into a tie with him disrupting the next thread, I went ahead and added your votes on page 1.

Thank you, I appreciate that beast!