rk2023 wrote: Just curious how you would frame a Moses > Oscar or West argument? Same logic for someone like Nowitzki who comes out as more valuable through most approaches.
I think the argument would be that Moses was very arguably the best player in the world for a significant time period (despite a top 3 guy being in his prime at the time), and that is not true of any of those other guys. And meanwhile he has plenty of longevity. I don’t really think team success goes in these other guys’ favor either. All those guys have 1 title. Dirk’s was probably most impressive, but Moses was the best player on one of the best teams ever—which is quite significant (West can say the same IMO while Oscar was merely 2nd best on a best-team-ever candidate). And he also took a mediocre team to the finals, running through the 1980s Lakers to get there. West of course went to the finals a lot more but in a small league with lots of talent on his team and a lot of finals losses so I don’t really see it as a huge positive.
I think Moses was a top 3 player, for 3 seasons. I wouldn’t say he was the unanimous best player in the league in any of those years, including the FO FO FO run.
Moses won MVP in 3 out of 5 years. His main competition for best in the world in those 5 years was Kareem. In those 5 years, Moses had a 25.0 PER compared to 24.7 for Kareem. Moses had 70.2 win shares, compared to 65.1 win shares for Kareem. Kareem was a better defender, but Moses did make an all-defensive first team and an all-defensive second team in those years. They directly competed for all-NBA, and Moses got three all-NBA first team selections and two all-NBA second team selections, while Kareem had two all-NBA first team selections and two all-NBA second team selections. Kareem got two titles in that timespan, but Moses got one title in his one year with a good team and took a very mediocre team to the finals another year. Their teams met in the playoffs twice in those 5 years, and Moses’s team won both times, with Moses being better in both series. Meanwhile, the only other guy to win an MVP in those 5 years was Julius Erving, who became second-fiddle to Moses in this timeframe when they were on the same team. Overall, Kareem is close enough that Moses perhaps wasn’t a “unanimous best player in the league,” but the edge generally goes to Moses in those years IMO. Which, at the stage we’re at, is pretty significant, I think. I’m not really sure there’s anyone left on the board who can make a good claim to having been the best player in the league in a 5-year span (besides perhaps Kobe, who will very likely be nominated this time around).
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
Speaking of Magic, he'll be my first Nominee. To tell a bit of my journey here:
When I started on RealGM, I had Magic higher than the Olajuwons/Shaqs/Duncan/KGs. Then I started focusing on two things:
1. Longevity - where Magic's HIV diagnosis forever damaged what he could achieve.
2. Impact - Shaq, Duncan & KG had such high impact, and impact on both sides of the ball, that it was hard to imagine that Magic was enough better to make up for longevity issues.
Also, related to impact, was me consider how lucky Magic was to arrive on the Lakers. Incredible team success to be sure, but to be expect to a degree with that talent around you, right?
On the longevity front, I've walked it back a bit. While I'm still fine using extended longevity as a tiebreaker, I'm generally more focused in what a player can do in 5-10 years, because for the most part that's when a franchise can expect to build a contender with you. And of course, Magic had that. In Magic's 12 years before the HIV retirement, the Lakers had an amount of success that's just plain staggering for any career.
12 years. 12 years 50+ wins. 32 playoff series wins.
For the record, if my count is correct, LeBron himself only has 12 50+ win years (though he does have 41 playoff series victories).
So yeah, Magic packed in so much success into his career, that it's hard to take seriously longevity as that big of concern to me. Tiebreaker at most really.
Of course he had help and I don't want to just elevate the guy because he had more help...but being the star and leader of the team having the most dominant decade run since Russell is not something to be brushed aside lightly. I think we need to be very careful about assuming other guys have a comparable realistic ceiling.
Going back to LeBron, I'll say that watching him through his career has also helped me gain more confidence in Magic's ability to find ways to control the game around him no matter the context or how his body changed. I think Magic had an extremely strong intuition about how to win the arm-wrestling contest of basketball, finding little affordances to gain leverage over time, and I think it's offensive geniuses who in general have this capacity in the modern (and even somewhat-near-modern game).
Actual voting post Alright so I want to first vote the context within this project. This is the first time my prior vote for Nominee will immediately translate into my vote for Inductee, and it feels awkward, but I know it won't be the last time this happens.
Without further ado...
Bird and Magic, the Beautiful Rivalry
I can't help but think about Magic with the rivalry and comparison to Larry Bird in mind. Obviously we all know them to be an amazing rivalry that dominated a decade, and probably all of us are aware that it's with the two of them that the NBA regains its momentum, and this is a big deal for a lot of reasons but its bigness isn't that relevant to this particular project.
What's just amazing about this rivalry to me is that both players weren't just very, very good at basketball, but that both players feel so qualitatively distinct from the players that came before. Magic's the most obvious one here because while you can point to transition-offense legends and tall guards of the past, I'm sure no one looked at Magic and though "Hey, he should try to play a bit like Bob Cousy!".
I find Bird's uniqueness - at least such that I perceive it - to be the more profound. In Bird you have a player with off-the-charts level awareness and (while young) an incredibly high motor, and he begins positioned - literally and figuratively - where you'd expect for a guy with his size and touch given contemporary thought, and from there he just vibrates all around based on what his utterly-unique instincts told him to do.
Bird to me feels like something of a self-taught genius in the sense that he's so incredibly good at the things he applies his mind to do, and this is a weird thing to me because he's from Indiana, the land of high school basketball for more than half a century before then. You would hope that a player who came of age there with prodigious talent would come out of their pyramid highly optimized.
It's as if Bird's in-the-moment BBIQ was so overpowering that coaches really had no idea what they could do with it other than just let him keep doing his thing.
But while that led to a career that will places him very high on my list, there was a time where I actually had him higher than Magic, and times after that where I agonized between the two of them. At this point, I have to give Magic the nod by a good distance.
It wouldn't be so strange perhaps if I said this was because of Magic's longevity - though that in itself is debatable - but there's another thing on the forefront of my mind.
I think that fundamentally on offense, there's just a real cost to have an insane in-the-moment basketball intelligence not having the ball for any extended period of time. However valuable you are off-ball, you have less decision making power because the ball is the thing.
Magic's instinct to keep control of the ball and the offense in a way allowed him considerably more impact than Bird on offense, even though I think Bird's in-the-moment BBIQ was even higher than Magic's. It's possible Bird could have been even better than Magic at being Magic if that's what he were groomed to do. It's also possible that in an age with mature 3-point shooting Bird's gravitational value would significantly change the equation. But as things played out in our universe, to some degree it's like Bird brought a knife to a gun fight with Magic.
Now let me say: This isn't factoring in defense, where I'm considerably more impressed early on by Bird, nor is it me trying to say Magic reached the tippy top tear as quickly as Bird did, but just looking at ability for offensive impact, Magic's approach was the killer app.
Top 5 ALL 11 healthy years? Really?
This is a place where I completely understand if you think I'm too eager to give Magic such credit early on. He only makes Top 5 in the NBA MVP voting 9 times. Now, I'd note that it's still AMAZINGLY impressive that he proceeded to be in the Top 3 of the MVP race each of the 9 next seasons before his diagnosis - I don't believe any other player in NBA history can claim they have 9 in a row with the debatable caveat of Jordan depending whether you consider '93-94 & '94-95 as dealbreakers.
But yeah, I think he deserves an All-Season POY Top 5 nod in both '79-80 & '81-82 as well, and that's also what the consensus was during the RetroPOY project too. So while we can disagree, I feel pretty settled on him making my Top 5 for those seasons too.
And so yeah, that's all 11 of his healthy years, which puts him in very rare air.
You can bring up that he was in a fortuitous context, cool, and yeah it helped him win more, but lots of guys go into fortuitous contexts, and they don't bat a thousand at it like Magic did. Further, we should keep in mind that we wouldn't give Magic those nods simply for being on Kareem's team. Magic got the accolades he got because he was so good, he made Kareem into a sidekick.
Now, Kareem's already voted in and I wouldn't have it any other way. Obviously it's an older Kareem that we're talking about here...but while that's not fair apples-to-apples, it's worth pondering what it would have taken to do that to Jordan or LeBron at the same age. Even if you want to say Kareem was X% lower a summit to summit, it still speaks to how incredible Magic was.
Anyway, this gets back to the thing where I think Magic had more (or the same in Wilt's case) Top 5 level seasons than any of the other guy's remaining, and this makes it hard for me to knock him too hard for longevity.
What about Defense?
The question of whether guys like, say Hakeem/Duncan/KG, are overall better or more valuable than Magic is something I've chewed on a lot over the years. While Magic moved down my list below those guys in the past partially due to ideas of longevity, there was also that 2-way advantage in my head, as well as how great KG & Duncan's on/off looked.
I've come to the conclusion that in practice, the Lakers' ability to have a good-enough defense to win playoff series was quite robust. And while I've had questions about how well this could be achieved today in this era of spacing, not only is that technically irrelevant to the criteria I'm personally using at this time, I just witnessed arguably the closest thing to Magic play out in the 2023 playoffs with Jokic and the Nuggets, and it really seemed okay.
Magic looks great in the +/- stats we have, but the sample is very small. It's possible I'll see bad enough stuff in the future to lower my assessment of Magic, but I have to say that that unless it was something really dramatic, I don't know if I'd be swayed even if he looked a bit weaker than these other guys. As I've alluded to, Magic has such profound ability to apply control and add impact on offense, that I think it would make his teams a very hard out as a matter of course...kinda like LeBron.
A moment to mourn for what might have been
Not factoring into his placement here, but I think it's critical to just appreciate how this project would look if not for the HIV diagnosis, or a better understanding of HIV at the time. Magic at age 31 was showing no signs of slowing down. We know that incredible floor generals can thrive into a late age - demonstrated most crazily by what we might call the age-inverse of Magic in Steve Nash who only began his MVP-candidacy at age 30 - and we know that Magic 2.0, aka LeBron, has stayed amazing for an incredibly long time (not identical players, but more in common than most superstars to be sure).
It's quite plausible that Magic could have kept up his game without much fall off for another half decade, and that if he did, I wouldn't be talking about how no one's ever had more Top 5 seasons than Russell, because Magic could've been rocking 15 by then.
It's quite possible, in other words, that in another basketball universe, I'd have Magic as my GOAT.
Vote 2: Steph Curry
Yeah, Curry jumps in and immediately moves past the other non-Magical contenders for me.
My previous Nomination post is in spoiler below.
Spoiler:
So, along with Magic, Curry is benefitting from my perspective shaped by how many Top 5 years he has achieved. For different reasons, Curry also is seeing as having weak longevity. Unlike Magic there's an aspect of this that's just utterly mundane:
In my experience with Career GOAT lists, our sense of a player's longevity tends to lag behind what it actually is while he is in prime. It's as if we don't actually look to quantify a player's longevity until it's basically over and done with.
I firmly believe this is something that has been hurting Curry in people's eyes at least in prior projects, and I'd advise folks to ruminate on whether it might be hurting him here.
As I've pointed out, in my estimation he's actually had a pretty long career as star player. Not enough that he should kill other candidates in play right now based on longevity, but enough that I don't think anyone should get an automatic longevity-win over Curry until they've really thought about it remembering it's 2023 now.
I chose an image for Curry emphasizing his shot, which is obviously his big weapon. He's the greatest shooter in basketball history, bar none, easy to see how that's helped him have a legendary career.
The most interesting thing to me about Curry's shot sequence is the fact that it's so clearly NOT about about having a form that helps him be the most accurate 3-point shooter in a vacuum. It's a form crafted to allow him to get his shot off so quickly that it's hard to block, even though Curry is a small guard by modern NBA standards. This isn't the first time a new standard has emerged that's about preventing blocked shots even if it means sacrificing accuracy - that's what the jump shot is after all, and that's what all manners of floaters are.
But the fact that I don't believe ever had a shooter be this impactful before in all the decades of basketball, and he's doing it with such a non-vacuum-optimal approach that adds to the degree of difficulty is breathtaking, as is the fact we are now more than a decade point the point where Curry became the clear-cut best shooter in history...and we haven't seen anyone from new draft classes to this point who seems like he's going to be even close. That could change in a hurry, but is hasn't yet, and to be honest, I'm surprised.
Just a bit of context here: I tend to mark the evolution of the game from a horrifically small sample size playing once or twice a year against teams at my high school. Feel free to chuckle at my expense here, but what I can't help but notice as a 6'9" man:
I used to block their shots like crazy and the games were close. Now I basically don't block shots and the teams kill us, and it's not because I'm older and even more out-of-shape (ahem, though both things are true). It's because they aren't even trying to attack the interior except in transition or rebounding situations where the defense (eh, me) isn't set. And they haven't changed this out of strategy to beat me...that's just how they play now. If you give them room to shoot a 3, they'll take it, and they all seem to have proficient form modeled after Curry. They just plain torch us every time, boys or girls. They all shoot from range with a proficiency that us old guys just don't have.
I'll note that I don't teach at a school where students come for hopes of athletic scholarship. Rationally I know these kids aren't great within their own generations standards...yet they are considerably more effective than they were 5-10 years ago because of the way they shoot 3's. And this is why I think Curry is going to go down as one of the most influential players in NBA history.
But again, his influence is irrelevant here and it's not why I'm nominating him. I'm nominating him because that shooting - along with his roving off-ball play and the rest of his game to whatever amount its added to his success - has led him to achieve so, so much as the fulcrum of everything the great dynastic run of this era has implemented.
Okay, only other thing I really feel a need to touch upon here is my man KG:
Breaks my heart having him sink on my list if I'm honest. I desperately want others to be as in awe of what he was capable of as I am, and in another universe, he'd be higher on my list. To some degree I suppose, it's the fact that I'm irritated with what happened in my own universe that I feel such a need to champion a guy like KG.
I realized though as I was going through that last pass year-by-year and considering something like where he belonged in my DPOY ballot that I'd been tying myself in some logical knots putting him above a guy like Duncan. While I can intellectually justify why KG's team defenses weren't stronger based on things that were unfair to him about his context (teammates, scheme, etc), the reality is that in doing so I was effectively projecting what I "knew" about KG back into those earlier years when I did that rather than judging his achievement based on what actually happened - and that gets me back to the question I kept circling back to:
Do I want to do this project by imagining how things would go if...?, or, Do I want to talk about what guys actually did?
Based on the latter, KG just spent a good chunk of his career in a place where he didn't have the opportunity to define an epoch the way that Curry has. Not his fault - you might call that a minor basketball tragedy, but that's life. I can't normalize for opportunity and still talk about what actually happened, so I chose the latter.
Nominate: Oscar Robertson
Saw iggy's comment and figured I should post sooner than later on Oscar's behalf.
When I first arrived at RealGM I was skeptical of Oscar. He had huge individual numbers, but his team often wasn't that amazing, so maybe, I thought, this was one of those situations where one guy just dominated everything and it kept his teammates from doing more. There was also the matter that he had Jerry Lucas on most of those Royal teams and Lucas was also won of the great prospects of the era - arguably just behind Oscar & Wilt. With Cincy having possibly the most talented top 2 in the world, shouldn't they have been able to do better?
As we started to get more data though - shout out Ben in particular here - it became clear that not only did Oscar lead an offensive dynasty, but that in his rookie season of '60-61, he had arguably the single greatest offensive season in NBA history to that point.
First, by the data used by bkref based on Ben's original algorithm, those Royals put up the best ORtg in history to that time with Oscar leading all statistical categories we have - minutes, scoring volume per minute, TS%, assists, rebounds.
Later, bkref put up their TS Add stat that allowed for easy comparison of volume/efficiency. And there Oscar led the league with a +335.1 to go along with putting up more APG than anyone else.
All this before Lucas arrived, and when Lucas did arrive Oscar remained a WOWY king while Lucas really never did.
You take all of that, and then you get what happened in Milwaukee. Yes Kareem was the MVP of the team, but the team immediately had the most dominant playoff run in all of history to this day (by some measures at least), with Oscar continuing to control the offense but smoothly transitioning from being his team's main scorer to focusing primarily with a teammate. Clearly, Oscar didn't need to be the guy doing the big scoring, it just seems he made that call - correctly - until a new approach made sense.
Astonishing career. In the argument for greatest offensive career ever.
I have Oscar was having a Top 5 season 10 times. The only players who match & surpass that - Russell, LeBron, Kareem, Jordan, Magic, Wilt - have all at least been added to the Nominee list already, with Magic being the only one who hasn't yet been Inducted.
Now as I say this, first, this is certainly on the back of his offense. His defense is what dragged him behind Russell & Wilt as a matter of course so I'm not dismissing it...but as I've said, falling behind Russell & Wilt when those guys are already voted in doesn't seem like it should really be held against him too hard.
I do have one observation that could be seen as a criticism: I think Oscar was a bit of a cautious control freak like Chris Paul. Oscar liked to slow things down and not make mistakes, and as a result I'd argue he was actually loss of a jaw-dropping passer than, say, contemporary Elgin Baylor. That doesn't prevent Oscar from being considerably more effective as a floor general than Baylor, but when compared to guys who have the aggression of Baylor but with better judgment and accuracy, it does.
So, I'd be inclined to rank Magic & Nash ahead of Oscar prime vs prime, but that's basically it among guys who I really think of as "point guards". (If you want to talk about guys like LeBron or Curry cool, but they are a bit different to me.)
But I do rank Oscar comfortably ahead of Nash by career. The difference between having the GOAT offensive season as a rookie, and not really getting an opportunity to shine for a number of years.
I'll also mention Jerry West as someone I've gone back & forth with respect to Oscar over the years. In the end my criteria for this project sees Oscar as being the more accomplished player. I think I'd draft West ahead of Oscar - better scorer, considerably better long-range shooter, better defender, also a passing whiz when given the opportunity - but the reality is that West in vivo had greater synergy issues than Oscar did. I don't think this was West's fault - I'm critical of coaches, management, Baylor for many years, and Wilt pre-Sharman - but it is what it is. West will be up for me soon, but not before Oscar.
Last guys I'll mention are Kobe & KD, who are being talked about relative to Oscar elsewhere.
Oscar vs Kobe is the most straight forward to me. The thing about Kobe is that he really wasn't impact-oriented, and that's not meant as a criticism. The goal of the game is not to win every game by as many points as possible. It's to win games, and in particular, win playoff games. I do think Kobe played more effectively in the playoffs compared to the regular season on average, and I think his defensive focus had a lot to do with that. But while Kobe had a lot of playoff success, and in seasons where that was profound enough he tends to make my POY ballots, it didn't happen every year. He wasn't Duncan, and in seasons without that kind of playoff run, it really holds Kobe back.
Oscar vs KD is a situation where KD's toxic personality looms large. In general I actually think our POY votes have underrated Durant - I think we should venerate that he was a critical part of the best basketball team of all time - and so going purely by my POY votes as I have them at this time, he's actually above Oscar by a smidge. But KD's negative effects on his franchises that come due to his insecurity and poor social coping mechanism hurts him more than a smidge. And in fact, I'd still probably put Kobe ahead of him. Kobe had his own interpersonal issues, but from a team-franchise perspective, they weren't nearly as debilitating.
lessthanjake wrote:I’m not really sure there’s anyone left on the board who can make a good claim to having been the best player in the league in a 5-year span (besides perhaps Kobe, who will very likely be nominated this time around).
One_and_Done wrote: This is why I have come to the conclusion that people have such a visceral reaction to KD, they are not giving him a fair shake. This is like the 10th time I've had to post stats to correct the incorrect 'facts' about KD.
Kobe's per 100 assists between 00-10 (which are the same as his 01-10 numbers FYI) are 6.9 assists/4.1 TOs. KDs per 100 assists between 10-23 are 6.3 apg/4.3 TOs.
It's like people's eyes are seeing what they want to when they look at the stats. So yes, Kobe has a small advantage, but it's pretty minor.
You've quoted 70s fan, but he is engaged in some cherry picking that Tserkin was querying too. He's taken Kobe's literal best years, and he's comparing them to KDs worst years, then he's limiting the comparison to the playoffs only. It's clearly not a holistic analysis. We call them averages for a reason. But it's also not appropriate because RS impact has alot of weight also. We don't just toss it in the bin.
The stats say it's KD, and with almost everything else is telling me it's KD (scoring, efficiency, rebounding, defensive versatility, offball ability, ability to lift a bad team, eye test, etc) I'm going to need alot more than a very minor assist to TO advantage to think this is Kobe.
I listed the playoff stats, not the regular season ones - you can look for yourself on basketball reference. It seems you are over-relying on stats over eye-test and context - and eye-test is subjective to even begin with. For example, anybody could watch a 5 minute HoH of Durant playing in the easiest situation in NBA History for a superstar in Golden State and being positioned in them various occasions in the Regular Season - a stark contrast to how he has empirically fared within playoff settings when the pressure rises - with too many series to name in this regard. A holistic analysis of film is needed before anyone can use "eye test" as a tangible talking point, so I would like to see some provided if you are going to cite "eye test" as a reason for Durant > Kobe (particularly as it pertains to what makes his defense better and off-ball ability better). He certainly doesn't have a consistent track record of floor-raising akin to Kobe's aggregate impact from 2006-10 - regardless of what slate of time you are going to use.
One_and_Done wrote:
MyUniBroDavis wrote:An argument for peak durant would have to revolve around thinking that 2017-2019 represented an evolution in his game, that was supplemented by his situation.
Or you might just think playing in a low spacing environment in OKC is relvant, and post OKC he is only played in spacing friendly environs.
Dude, he was starting next to Westbrick, Roberson and Adams/Perk.
Lastly his non-GSW stats are still clearly better than Kobe from 00-10. It's only when 70s fan limits it to OKC only, playoffs only, that it's close.
Speaking of questions regarding Durant's ability to carry a team / carry teams, there's a very strong argument the play you are referring to as 'Westbrick' outplayed your guy Durant in the playoffs immediately following his 2 best RS campaigns of 2014 and 2016.
And as with Curry, impact metrics would agree with the proof of concept played out in actuality:
rk2023 wrote:... Curry was the significantly more impactful and valuable player throughout the 2017 season (and from 2017-19 as a whole) for Golden State - in the RS and the PS, regardless of what 'advanced box stats' may say. Empirical play-by-play data and impact measures more or less focused on the on-court team side of things favor Curry, in line with this viewpoint.
For the 2017 Season: R.S. PIPM: Curry - 8.3 | Durant - 5.9 LEBRON: Curry - 6.7 | Durant - 5.3 AuPM/Game (RS -> PS): Curry - 6.6 -> 7.5 | Durant 4.9 -> 4.6 BackPicks BPM (RS -> PS): Curry - 6.9 -> 8.7 | Durant: 7.9 -> 8.7
It's worth noting that Durant played much less than Curry this year (62 vs. 79 games, ~600 less minutes) which perhaps gave him more bandwidth to save energy for exertion in the Finals - even with the nuance that GSW's offense ran through Curry's hybrid on/off-ball chops.
Curry in games Durant didn't play, RS only:
Spoiler:
- 16-4 Team Record - 16.8 Net Rating on , 11.0 Team Rating Overall , 120.0 ORTG on , 113.9 ORTG Overall - Per 75 stats: 28.5 Points , 5.1 Rebounds , 8.1 Assists (only 3.5 TOV) , 61.6 TS%
From 2017-19: LEBRON (RS -> PS): Curry - 5.8 -> 6.89 | Durant - 4.8 -> 4.99 Shot-Charts L.A. RAPM (RS only I believe): Curry - 6.34 | Durant - 3.55 AuPM/G (RS -> PS): Curry - 5.9 -> 5.9 | Durant - 4.3 -> 4.8 R.S. PIPM: Curry - 7.4 | Durant - 5.5 BackPicks BPM: (RS -> PS): Curry - 6.4 -> 6.9 | Durant - 6.6 -> 7.6
Across all of these, BPM is the metric which favors Durant - not too surprising given that is more proportional towards rebounding & defensive box score, and treats every possession equally from a standpoint of equating end-player as the one starting a given play - thus not factoring in more granular details over a larger sample of plays.
Mogspan wrote:I think they see the super rare combo of high IQ with freakish athleticism and overrate the former a bit, kind of like a hot girl who is rather articulate being thought of as “super smart.” I don’t know kind of a weird analogy, but you catch my drift.
One_and_Done wrote: This is why I have come to the conclusion that people have such a visceral reaction to KD, they are not giving him a fair shake. This is like the 10th time I've had to post stats to correct the incorrect 'facts' about KD.
Kobe's per 100 assists between 00-10 (which are the same as his 01-10 numbers FYI) are 6.9 assists/4.1 TOs. KDs per 100 assists between 10-23 are 6.3 apg/4.3 TOs.
It's like people's eyes are seeing what they want to when they look at the stats. So yes, Kobe has a small advantage, but it's pretty minor.
You've quoted 70s fan, but he is engaged in some cherry picking that Tserkin was querying too. He's taken Kobe's literal best years, and he's comparing them to KDs worst years, then he's limiting the comparison to the playoffs only. It's clearly not a holistic analysis. We call them averages for a reason. But it's also not appropriate because RS impact has alot of weight also. We don't just toss it in the bin.
The stats say it's KD, and with almost everything else is telling me it's KD (scoring, efficiency, rebounding, defensive versatility, offball ability, ability to lift a bad team, eye test, etc) I'm going to need alot more than a very minor assist to TO advantage to think this is Kobe.
I listed the playoff stats, not the regular season ones - you can look for yourself on basketball reference. It seems you are over-relying on stats over eye-test and context - and eye-test is subjective to even begin with. For example, anybody could watch a 5 minute HoH of Durant playing in the easiest situation in NBA History for a superstar in Golden State and being positioned in them various occasions in the Regular Season - a stark contrast to how he has empirically fared within playoff settings when the pressure rises - with too many series to name in this regard. A holistic analysis of film is needed before anyone can use "eye test" as a tangible talking point, so I would like to see some provided if you are going to cite "eye test" as a reason for Durant > Kobe (particularly as it pertains to what makes his defense better and off-ball ability better). He certainly doesn't have a consistent track record of floor-raising akin to Kobe's aggregate impact from 2006-10 - regardless of what slate of time you are going to use.
One_and_Done wrote:
MyUniBroDavis wrote:An argument for peak durant would have to revolve around thinking that 2017-2019 represented an evolution in his game, that was supplemented by his situation.
Or you might just think playing in a low spacing environment in OKC is relvant, and post OKC he is only played in spacing friendly environs.
Dude, he was starting next to Westbrick, Roberson and Adams/Perk.
Lastly his non-GSW stats are still clearly better than Kobe from 00-10. It's only when 70s fan limits it to OKC only, playoffs only, that it's close.
Speaking of questions regarding Durant's ability to carry a team / carry teams, there's a very strong argument the play you are referring to as 'Westbrick' outplayed your guy Durant in the playoffs immediately following his 2 best RS campaigns of 2014 and 2016.
And as with Curry, impact metrics would agree with the proof of concept played out in actuality:
rk2023 wrote:... Curry was the significantly more impactful and valuable player throughout the 2017 season (and from 2017-19 as a whole) for Golden State - in the RS and the PS, regardless of what 'advanced box stats' may say. Empirical play-by-play data and impact measures more or less focused on the on-court team side of things favor Curry, in line with this viewpoint.
For the 2017 Season: R.S. PIPM: Curry - 8.3 | Durant - 5.9 LEBRON: Curry - 6.7 | Durant - 5.3 AuPM/Game (RS -> PS): Curry - 6.6 -> 7.5 | Durant 4.9 -> 4.6 BackPicks BPM (RS -> PS): Curry - 6.9 -> 8.7 | Durant: 7.9 -> 8.7
It's worth noting that Durant played much less than Curry this year (62 vs. 79 games, ~600 less minutes) which perhaps gave him more bandwidth to save energy for exertion in the Finals - even with the nuance that GSW's offense ran through Curry's hybrid on/off-ball chops.
Curry in games Durant didn't play, RS only:
Spoiler:
- 16-4 Team Record - 16.8 Net Rating on , 11.0 Team Rating Overall , 120.0 ORTG on , 113.9 ORTG Overall - Per 75 stats: 28.5 Points , 5.1 Rebounds , 8.1 Assists (only 3.5 TOV) , 61.6 TS%
From 2017-19: LEBRON (RS -> PS): Curry - 5.8 -> 6.89 | Durant - 4.8 -> 4.99 Shot-Charts L.A. RAPM (RS only I believe): Curry - 6.34 | Durant - 3.55 AuPM/G (RS -> PS): Curry - 5.9 -> 5.9 | Durant - 4.3 -> 4.8 R.S. PIPM: Curry - 7.4 | Durant - 5.5 BackPicks BPM: (RS -> PS): Curry - 6.4 -> 6.9 | Durant - 6.6 -> 7.6
Across all of these, BPM is the metric which favors Durant - not too surprising given that is more proportional towards rebounding & defensive box score, and treats every possession equally from a standpoint of equating end-player as the one starting a given play - thus not factoring in more granular details over a larger sample of plays.
I don’t have anything against the idea that Brooks was a bad coach and that OKC team had bad spacing, but I never said otherwise lol, but obviously the warriors aren’t exactly a normal situation either
I do think KD genuinely got better with the warriors anyways, at handling physicality and stuff like that
Doc made a reasonable comment about KD being underrated, then lost me with his rationalisation that Oscar and Kobe still come out ahead because even though the numbers say it's KD, he was 'more toxic'. That's a subjective thing that is hard to refute, but it's also pretty ridiculous when the subject of comparison is Kobe Bryant.
The effect 'on the court' from KD appears to be close to nil. With Kobe it's the opposite. Nobody even suspected KD had a personality issue when he was on OKC, he was professional and waited out his contract and left. Since then it's clear KD has some insecurities that might lead to him leaving your team, but we're ranking guys on how good they were not on whether we'd draft them. On the court KD has always been a pro. Kobe has not, and if he hadn't been able to force his way to LA, and keep mostly stacked teams, he'd have left too.
I really do feel like I'm in crazy town. Phil Jackson spends whole chapters of his books detailing the on court and locker room problems Kobe caused, to say nothing off his rape trial. Make the better team mate claim for Oscar if you will. Never use it for Kobe.
I am grateful for one thing; Doc admitted that on paper the next guy should be KD over Kobe or Oscar. Hopefully other people take note of that.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
One_and_Done wrote:You've quoted 70s fan, but he is engaged in some cherry picking that Tserkin was querying too. He's taken Kobe's literal best years, and he's comparing them to KDs worst years, then he's limiting the comparison to the playoffs only. It's clearly not a holistic analysis. We call them averages for a reason. But it's also not appropriate because RS impact has alot of weight also. We don't just toss it in the bin.
He was looking at seasons where Durant and Kobe were both primary drivers, so he was excluding seasons with Harden/Irving (not sure why) and when he wasn't on Golden State (which makes sense to me). At least as far as I can tell. I don't know if that makes when you consider Westbrook, but excluding Golden State certainly made sense. Not quite sure why he ignored Brooklyn, but I guess the efficiency in the Boston series would harm things, even if that's a series of a sort Kobe has had before (and against a Boston defense, no less). Perhaps a little more questioning on the subject would make sense; in the other thread, he did state he was focusing on KD's "best stretch with OKC," FWIW.
lessthanjake wrote:I’m not really sure there’s anyone left on the board who can make a good claim to having been the best player in the league in a 5-year span (besides perhaps Kobe, who will very likely be nominated this time around).
Cough... Mikan... Cough.
Yeah, that’s definitely right, of course. I personally just kind of don’t consider that era of basketball to be something that qualifies for any particularly high spots (I’d have Mikan somewhere around #25). It was just too nascent as a sport for me at that point. But yeah, people can take different approaches to that, and if you consider that era as being a comparable thing (which I do not) then Mikan would be another example of what I described above about Moses.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
One_and_Done wrote:Doc made a reasonable comment about KD being underrated, then lost me with his rationalisation that Oscar and Kobe still come out ahead because even though the numbers say it's KD, he was 'more toxic'. That's a subjective thing that is hard to refute, but it's also pretty ridiculous when the subject of comparison is Kobe Bryant.
The effect 'on the court' from KD appears to be close to nil. With Kobe it's the opposite. Nobody even suspected KD had a personality issue when he was on OKC, he was professional and waited out his contract and left. Since then it's clear KD has some insecurities that might lead to him leaving your team, but we're ranking guys on how good they were not on whether we'd draft them. On the court KD has always been a pro. Kobe has not, and if he hadn't been able to force his way to LA, and keep mostly stacked teams, he'd have left too.
I really do feel like I'm in crazy town. Phil Jackson spends whole chapters of his books detailing the on court and locker room problems Kobe caused, to say nothing off his rape trial. Make the better team mate claim for Oscar if you will. Never use it for Kobe.
I am grateful for one thing; Doc admitted that on paper the next guy should be KD over Kobe or Oscar. Hopefully other people take note of that.
I can’t speak for others, but my issue with Durant as compared to Kobe wouldn’t really be about actual basketball skill. There’s a pretty good argument Durant is a better player (though we should keep in mind when looking at numbers that Kobe played abnormally good playoff defenses in his career, in a more defensive era). But I don’t think there’s a very good argument that he’s had the greater career. Durant has just not done anything as impressive as what Kobe was able to do in 2008-2010. I was surprised at the time that he was able to do it, and perhaps Phil Jackson should get a lot of the credit for it too, but it’d just be very hard for me to vote Durant over Kobe when Kobe actually won back-to-back titles (and went to three straight finals) while being the #1 guy on a team that was good but not actually super stacked. Durant has spent virtually his entire career with teams as or more talented than that, and he’s not done anything of the sort. Maybe it’s luck or randomness, but I look at it and just see one guy that is on a higher tier of achievement in the league, regardless of whether the other guy may be a better player on paper.
In terms of basketball achievement, I do actually value what Durant brought to the Warriors more than most people do, I think. Curry was definitely the most impactful player on the team, but I don’t take lightly that Durant was a star player on probably the best team ever. That definitely reflects really well on him. The problem for Durant in a comparison with Kobe is that Kobe was a star player on a team that’s right up there amongst the top few teams of all time too (the 2001 Lakers). So while that aspect of Durant’s career actually does impress me a lot, it doesn’t really do a whole lot for him in a comparison with Kobe IMO.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
Doctor MJ wrote:But I do rank Oscar comfortably ahead of Nash by career. The difference between having the GOAT offensive season as a rookie, and not really getting an opportunity to shine for a number of years.
What do you think of Cinci missing the playoffs 4 times in his decade with the Royals, and being sub-.500 the same number of times? What about how trash they were defensively that entire stretch? Just team context and disadvantage from roster issues? Offense seemed to click at a similar-ish level the whole time, but just not having enough of a frontcourt to win, coupled to smaller league and fewer playoff slots?
I think I'd draft West ahead of Oscar - better scorer,
Was he? He has a couple seasons at a slightly higher rate per 75, but only one with comparable relative efficiency. Slightly worse free throw shooter, not better at drawing fouls, similar ScoreVal (though a shade higher, tbf). It's close enough that I'm not quite sure why you say that so confidently, so perhaps there's a discussion which has been had somewhere which I've not yet read (which, given my lengthy absence, is easy enough to believe), wherefore my question.
I do think Kobe played more effectively in the playoffs compared to the regular season on average,
His average PS rTS was +2.04. He had fairly tepid postseason in 02-04 and was generally bad in the Finals, apart from 2002 (leastwise in terms of shooting and scoring efficiency, I should clarify), but was also very commonly brilliant in the WCFs. The average delta in his rTS from PS to RS is -0.06. Some of that is how much his scoring efficiency tanked from 02-04, and then you can argue that perhaps 2011 and 2012 are far enough outside his prime to be not worth considering. If you remove them, PS to RS change averages -0.13, so it doesn't actually help because of precisely how much he dropped off in 02-04, where his worst drops are larger than his best improvements. So certainly from a scoring efficiency POV, he didn't play better in the playoffs compared to the RS on a regular basis, even if you adjust that efficiency to look at it relative to league average the postseason, and even if you look at it from a POV of PS vs. RS.
This is something of a narrow slice, focusing on scoring efficiency, to be sure. That said, Kobe's most know and most emphasized attribute was his scoring prowess/volume/etc. He was also a very adept playmaking wing, and when he was younger, an especially good man defender. And there is truth to be found in the idea that his Finals may be overemphasized in his scoring efficiency numbers across the smaller sample of a playoff run. There is also some consideration to be had for Kobe having his worst troubles when feuding with Shaq; after Shaq was traded, Kobe's average change from PS to RS was +0.91, making him a slight playoff riser. He also had his best and third-best postseason rTS performances during that stretch, though he was notably less effective during the regular season, which perhaps might be the genesis of your comment?
lessthanjake wrote:I’m not really sure there’s anyone left on the board who can make a good claim to having been the best player in the league in a 5-year span (besides perhaps Kobe, who will very likely be nominated this time around).
Cough... Mikan... Cough.
Mikan didn't play in a pro-league by today's standards. He's got no business being in the top 100.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
lessthanjake wrote: I can’t speak for others, but my issue with Durant as compared to Kobe wouldn’t really be about actual basketball skill. There’s a pretty good argument Durant is a better player (though we should keep in mind when looking at numbers that Kobe played abnormally good playoff defenses in his career, in a more defensive era). But I don’t think there’s a very good argument that he’s had the greater career. Durant has just not done anything as impressive as what Kobe was able to do in 2008-2010. I was surprised at the time that he was able to do it, and perhaps Phil Jackson should get a lot of the credit for it too, but it’d just be very hard for me to vote Durant over Kobe when Kobe actually won back-to-back titles (and went to three straight finals) while being the #1 guy on a team that was good but not actually super stacked. Durant has spent virtually his entire career with teams as or more talented than that, and he’s not done anything of the sort. Maybe it’s luck or randomness, but I look at it and just see one guy that is on a higher tier of achievement in the league, regardless of whether the other guy may be a better player on paper.
In terms of basketball achievement, I do actually value what Durant brought to the Warriors more than most people do, I think. Curry was definitely the most impactful player on the team, but I don’t take lightly that Durant was a star player on probably the best team ever. That definitely reflects really well on him. The problem for Durant in a comparison with Kobe is that Kobe was a star player on a team that’s right up there amongst the top few teams of all time too (the 2001 Lakers). So while that aspect of Durant’s career actually does impress me a lot, it doesn’t really do a whole lot for him in a comparison with Kobe IMO.
Cool. I am rating them at how good they were at basketball. I am interested in how much they impacted winning. I don't care about narratives.
At least you and Doc are honest enough to admit KD was better than Kobe. Hopefully others who are not interested in narratives will take notice of that.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
lessthanjake wrote:I’m not really sure there’s anyone left on the board who can make a good claim to having been the best player in the league in a 5-year span (besides perhaps Kobe, who will very likely be nominated this time around).
Cough... Mikan... Cough.
Mikan didn't play in a pro-league by today's standards. He's got no business being in the top 100.
He played in the NBA. Differences across time in terms of the league will mean more or less to each person; it isn't reasonable to make that kind of blanket statement about his business being in a top 100 list. If you have an argument against him, it comes from a longevity standpoint, because he only managed six meaningful seasons and then a crappy comeback season. Yes, there were profound differences in league quality during his time. Yes, he played two seasons before racial integration. Yes, there were only 8 teams, each playing 72 games, during his final season, and yes, you can see a notable drop in his FG% when they widened the lane for 51-52.
But he does have 3 scoring titles (PPG and total points), a couple rebounding titles, and despite what looks like horrible field goal percentage, he was never worse than 105 TS+ until his comeback partial season in 55-56. He has a pair of seasons over 300 TS Add, another 294 and a 105. He has 5 titles, including a three-peat. He was All-NBA 1st team 5 years in a row, and all-BAA 1st the year before that streak started. The NBA didn't start handing out MVPs until 55-56, which was his comeback season.
He is irrevocably part of NBA history, so there must be space for him on this list. It's reasonable to look at the league he played in and make adjustments in your evaluation of him as a result, but it isn't really reasonable to try and completely ignore him or say that he has no business in the top 100 at all. He was the league's first megastar, even if only briefly, and even if he might not translate forward very well. To say nothing of his impact on future players with the Mikan Drill and all that, and setting the archetype of the dominant big guy on the block.
I discussed it at length in the pre-list criteria thread. I see no point rehashing it here. Mikan played in the equivalent of the 1945 Olympic track and field team. None of those guys would be anything special today. He is a part of league history, that's what the HoF is for. This list is about who were the best 100 players, Mikan wasn't one of them.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
1. Career, rather than Peak or Prime. How you weigh Longevity is up to you, but consider the entire Career. 2. Competitive achievement rather cultural innovation/influence. 3. Performance in the NBA and merged leagues (ABA, BAA, NBL). International play and other leagues are not a part of this.
Not seeing much about “best players (in a vacuum)” there.
Your approach seems permissible (or at least has been thus far), but it is not the standard most use because it has minimal engagement with the collective history of the league.
I discussed it at length in the pre-list criteria thread. I see no point rehashing it here. Mikan played in the equivalent of the 1945 Olympic track and field team. None of those guys would be anything special today. He is a part of league history, that's what the HoF is for. This list is about who were the best 100 players, Mikan wasn't one of them.
In your opinion, sure. So don't vote for him. But again, a blanket statement that says he doesn't belong is almost disrespectful to those who disagree with you. There is no objective truth to undermine their opinion or support yours. Food for thought. You're welcome to disagree, for sure, because the reverse applies just as well, but keep specific phrasing in mind.
Accidentally posted this on the last thread, so re-posting it here:
A note on Shaq in comparison to Magic with both playing a bunch of great teams, and Shaq playing longer:
First I think everyone needs to consider for themselves the negative effects of Shaq's tendency to blow things up as soon as he got jealous of his co-star...which happened everywhere he went during his prime. I've long said the choice between drafting Shaq & Duncan is no choice at all. One guy gives you a chance to build a sustainably great culture, one guy just can't help but become dissatisfied even when his team is winning titles.
Beyond that, while +/- data initially painted Shaq in a very positive light for me, it became a little bit less impressive.
First, there's the matter that Penny Hardaway actually looks more impactful than Shaq once Penny comes into his own in Orlando. In both '94-95 and '95-96, Penny has a higher raw +/- than Shaq.
Second, there's the matter that when Shaq hits certain matchups, it's like kryptonite. The best OnCourt +/- per 100 rate of his career comes in '97-98 where the only reason his team doesn't have HCA throughout the playoffs is because of the time Shaq missed (22 games, more than 1/4th of the season). Without realizing this, one might think a 61 win Laker team losing to a 62 win Jazz team in a sweep is embarrassing but really in essence just what we'd expect...but really the Lakers were the superior regular season team when they had Shaq, and so this is effectively Shaq's team getting upset in a sweep.
Here's how the Jazz ORtg looked in their 4 series that year:
Rockets 103.7 Spurs 101.5 Lakers 116.1 Bulls 96.1
See the problem? The Jazz have long been criticized as having an amazing regular season offense that ran into trouble when they played serious playoff defenses. In '97-98, they got held WAY under their 112.7 best-in-league regular season ORtg by all of their opponents except Shaq's Lakers, where they did better than they did in their best-in-league levels.
This despite the fact that the Lakers had an above average NBA defense, and were even better in the time they had him out there. It was an epic drop off in effectiveness the Lakers had in the face of the Sloan offense, and it was Shaq's mobility vulnerability was certainly part of the equation.
This was part of a broader trend where Shaq's teams tended to lose in sweeps. I wouldn't say it was always about his defensive vulnerabilities, but I also think that it's hard not to think Shaq being such an extreme body had something to do with it. If you could handle Shaq...you handled him and tended to win fairly easily.
All of this then contributed to Shaq doing surprisingly poorly in my last run year-by-year run through.
The only times where I rated Shaq as having a Top 5 season were:
'94-95 '97-98 '99-00 '00-01 '01-02
I think it's worth others exploring the same thing. My guess is that most would end up being more charitable to Shaq than I was, but remember when comparing him to a guy like Magic who was having Top 5 seasons as a matter of course all through his career when healthy and did so with a massively positive effect on his teammates rather than an eventually-negative effect on them.
It also means, I actually think Shaq vs Kobe is actually a pretty good debate (Kobe clocks in with 7 Top 5 seasons for me).
1. Career, rather than Peak or Prime. How you weigh Longevity is up to you, but consider the entire Career. 2. Competitive achievement rather cultural innovation/influence. 3. Performance in the NBA and merged leagues (ABA, BAA, NBL). International play and other leagues are not a part of this.
Not seeing much about “best players (in a vacuum)” there.
Your approach seems permissible (or at least has been thus far), but it is not the standard most use because it has minimal engagement with the collective history of the league.
I'm not following. If I were going by best player in a vacuum, my voting would be more similar to my voting in prior projects.
What is it you're seeing that comes off this way here?
One_and_Done wrote:Doc made a reasonable comment about KD being underrated, then lost me with his rationalisation that Oscar and Kobe still come out ahead because even though the numbers say it's KD, he was 'more toxic'. That's a subjective thing that is hard to refute, but it's also pretty ridiculous when the subject of comparison is Kobe Bryant.
The effect 'on the court' from KD appears to be close to nil. With Kobe it's the opposite. Nobody even suspected KD had a personality issue when he was on OKC, he was professional and waited out his contract and left. Since then it's clear KD has some insecurities that might lead to him leaving your team, but we're ranking guys on how good they were not on whether we'd draft them. On the court KD has always been a pro. Kobe has not, and if he hadn't been able to force his way to LA, and keep mostly stacked teams, he'd have left too.
I really do feel like I'm in crazy town. Phil Jackson spends whole chapters of his books detailing the on court and locker room problems Kobe caused, to say nothing off his rape trial. Make the better team mate claim for Oscar if you will. Never use it for Kobe.
I am grateful for one thing; Doc admitted that on paper the next guy should be KD over Kobe or Oscar. Hopefully other people take note of that.
To be clear: I'm very critical of Kobe negative impact and it hurts my assessment of him n this project, but I see KD on another level here more like Wilt or Shaq.
Re: ranking them on how good they were. Ah, now I think I see why Aenigma re-posted the project criteria. He's right, this is not a best-in-a-vacuum project, and never has been. The Peaks project actually fits that description pretty well, though there's some wiggle room.
As I say this, while I want everyone to understand what the criteria here are and not make arguments that are based on something entirely different from them, the reality is that I can't know what's really going on in your head and I'm not going to try to micromanage you on your decisions. You can surely do a best-in-vacuum list and then fudge the reasoning to vote however you see fit, but I hope you can understand why this focus is not just a legitimate one, but one that can be recognized as a key part of GOAT lists in most sports as well as a specific dimension that often carries players to Hall of Fame entrance.
For me, with Wilt and Russell now off the table, my vote is very solidly with Shaq at this point.
The most dominant force in the basketball in '00 (perhaps even by a good margin??): arguably had more interior gravity than any player in history save maybe Kareem (I remember entire defenses collapsing on Shaq), still led the league in scoring on the league's best 2pt% (and leading the league in FTA), along with nearly 4 apg (and with excellent turnover economy, too). This came while anchoring the 5th-rated offense, before Kobe was fully in his prime (missed 16 games too), 36-year-olds Ron Harper and AC Green being 4th and 5th on the team in minutes.
And while defense was an inconsistent thing during his career, in that particular year he was simultaneously anchoring the league's best defense......in a defensive-dominated league environment. They dominated in DREB% and opp eFG%, the factors a big man has the largest impact on. A Spurs team boasting not only Tim Duncan and David Robinson, but also decent perimeter defenders such as Mario Elie and Jaren Jackson, had a DRtg that was +0.4 worse.
For me, he's the best peak left on the table. And it's not like his longevity is bad either, considering he came into the league more or less an All-NBA level player. In his 2nd season he was tied for 10th in rs AuPM; tied for 3rd in his 3rd season ('95); tied for 7th in '96 [an injury-dinged year, iirc]. 17th in NPI RAPM in '97. And after that (in PI RAPM): #1 in '98. #2 in '99. #1 [*by a silly margin] in peak year '00 (*margin between Shaq and #2 is the same as the gap between #2 and #9): while playing a silly 40 mpg. #2 [NPI] in '01. #1 in '02. #3 in '03. #2 [albeit distantly] in '04. #3 in '05. #12 in '06.
More sharp decline after that (though usually a positive), but that's an awful lot of years of top-tier impact.
Anyway, that's the guy I gotta go with.
VOTE: Shaquille O'Neal Alternate: Magic Johnson Nomination: Kobe Bryant
And again I look like a Laker homer......
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
