f4p wrote:lessthanjake wrote:f4p wrote:
i'd be curious for more nash discussion that isn't just team ORtg based. his inclusion over harden (and frankly others) when harden seems to beat him in anything that isn't influenced by playing with dirk/amare/channing frye at center is a bit perplexing. at least if we're going to reward manu/draymond for being 4 time champions but then just squeeze nash in right ahead of them before we get to the other people without rings. i mean if he was just crushing RAPM or playoff RAPM lists, but he isn't. but that was also how it went in the Top 100 when he was even over someone with 3 championships like dwyane wade (to not just make it about harden and to include someone who did a lot of winning). or even now when he beats out 2005 manu, even from someone whose criteria is heavily weighted toward being the best player on the champion and 2005 manu was the best player on the champion but they don't beat out 2005 nash.
So the bolded is clearly directed at me. But someone’s criteria being “heavily weighted” towards something doesn’t mean it’s the only factor (note: I voted long ago for 2004 Garnett despite him not being the best player on the champion). And, I’ve explained my thinking about Nash to you already multiple times. You don’t like it because you value what box metrics say about Nash more than I do,
Not sure why you say that. Maybe there's some more focused RAPM you are taking about but Nash is well behind harden on the largest sample RAPM and I mentioned this (22nd vs 48th on Engelmann RS+PS and 8th vs 59th on PS only), doesnt crack hardens top 3 in on court playoff plus minus (Doc's measure), even with harden getting the much unluckier draw of 50% of his best teams' minutes being against steph and KD (i.e. Nash wouldn't be in hardens top 5 if his best teams faced the warriors),
I think you’re really fixated on career numbers in a peaks project and that that’s a particular problem when assessing Steve Nash. If you asked me which one of Nash or Harden was more impactful on average throughout their entire career, I think I’d say Harden. Nash was *way* more impactful on the Suns than he’d been on the Mavericks. This was well-recognized at the time. Nash got given offensive primacy and his impact skyrocketed. And this is a peaks project where I’m voting for Suns Nash, not Mavericks Nash.
If we zero in on Nash’s Suns years (as we should for a peaks project), things look a lot different than what you suggested. For instance, in NBArapm’s 5-year RS+Playoff RAPM, Suns Nash had spans of 8.5, 8.3, and 8.0. Harden’s best spans on Rockets were 7.1, 6.4, and 4.9 (he had a 6.5 in his Thunder years too). If we look at 4-year RAPM instead, Nash has spans at 8.8, 7.6, and 8.1. Harden’s best spans are 6.4, 6.2, and 5.7. If we zero in on 3-year spans instead, Nash has three-year RAPM spans at 8.0, 7.5, and 7.4. Meanwhile, Harden’s best spans were 5.5, 5.5, and 4.7. 2-year spans are a bit small for my liking with RAPM, but FWIW, Suns Nash had two-year RAPM spans at 7.5, 6.1, and 6.0. Meanwhile, Harden’s best two-year spans were 5.3, 4.9, and 4.4.
So yeah, if we zero in on Nash’s Suns years, we have Nash reaching RAPM heights that are just a clear rung above what we see from Harden.
didn't form a team nearly as dominant as the 2018 rockets, didn't exactly go out in grand fashion by losing 4-1 in 2005.
Yeah, Harden’s 2018 team being great is a big reason I voted Harden above most other posters here (sidenote: The fact that I actually am higher on Harden than most people in this project makes me a little confused why you take particular issue with my ranking of him). The fact that the 2005 Suns was both the best regular season offense and best playoff offense ever feels like a pretty big team achievement too though. As is the fact that the Suns won 33 more games than the year before, when Nash arrived in 2005.
When I brought up harden vs ginobili, you indicated ginobili winning the title was a big differentiator and said something like "we have to go by what happened" even while acknowledging harden obviously had a much tougher opponent stopping him from winning the title, but then ginobili winning in 2005 doesn't even get him over another person directly from 2005, who ginobili beat straight up no less.
As I’ve explained to you already, me saying “we have to go by what happened” was me saying I don’t care much about hypothetical speculation regarding what players might’ve done or how they might’ve played in different situations. It was not an argument that those who win a title *must* be above someone who didn’t. Rather, I was saying that I am going to judge a player by how he actually played and what he actually achieved in reality, rather than relying on speculative fan fiction. Again, I did already explain that to you, so it’s a bit frustrating to be responding to the same misunderstanding.
Anyways, when it comes to Nash vs. Ginobili, what actually happened is that Ginobili’s team beat Nash’s in the playoffs (which I’ll note was a much closer series than most 4-1 series—every game was within 10 points), but I’m not really sure that Ginobili outplayed Nash in that series. They both were great! And, as good as Ginobili was over the course of the rest of the playoffs, Nash was incredible too—particularly in the Mavericks series, which I think is one of the best series I’ve ever seen a player play. That Mavericks series for Nash weighs really highly to me, because it was just a completely outrageous performance against a genuinely great team. I don’t think there’s anyone left that I could vote for that has a playoff series as impressive as that one (including Ginobili). Meanwhile, as I’ve noted before, I think in the regular season Ginobili was perhaps even more impactful than Nash on a per-possession basis, but I think Nash was rightfully the MVP because I think he was at worst quite close in impact and he played more. So I’m left feeling like over the course of RS+Playoffs I think Nash actually was a bit better than Ginobili. Ginobili won the title, and that’s a really big deal, but the combination of the following is enough to get Nash a bit above Ginobili: (1) thinking Nash was as good or better than Ginobili individually, (2) the achievement of Nash leading the best offense in NBA history, (3) the fact that Nash is one of the few players who my eye test is as high or higher on than Ginobili, and (4) accounting for the minutes issue for Ginobili. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s where I come down when doing a holistic analysis. When I do a holistic analysis of other players that are left, I don’t have them above Ginobili. This isn’t a product of inconsistency or some conspiracy against James Harden (who, again, I have higher than most people here). It’s just a product of the fact that there’s a whole lot of factors that are at play when comparing players.
And yes Nash has a nice +15 offense in the WCF. And lost. You seem to be good at finding series data (where do y'all get the series ORtg and Drtg without manually looking it up?). How many +15 offenses have lost a playoff series? Feels like it can't be manu because being +15 on one side of the ball means you are destroying thr other team. Because the 2010 suns also had a +15 offense in the WCF. And lost. This feels like nash's teams simply went all, all, all in on offense and generated outsized offensive numbers without the corresponding winning. Doesn't seem fair to penalize people on like +7 offenses and -5 defenses for not having as good of offenses.
So this is a good point, and it’s one I’ve pointed out before as well. Nash definitely played on teams that played offensively slanted lineups. Putting Amare at C definitely helps a team’s offense at the expense of defense. And we do have to take that into account when evaluating how good the Suns offense was. But the thing is that the 2005 Suns had easily the best offense ever. So it’s *extremely* impressive even when we keep that context in mind.
The other thing I’d note is that Amare being an absolutely awful defender was probably just as big a deal as the lineup thing. Regardless of whether he played C or PF, Amare had absolutely awful defensive impact numbers—which is a correct reflection of how terrible he was on defense. Seriously, there’s very few big men in NBA history as bad on defense as Amare. I think people look at that and sometimes say “Well him being bad at defense means it was an offensively slanted roster, and we should curve down the Suns’s offensive numbers because they were an offensively slanted roster.” But I think the big flaw in that is assuming supporting players on different teams are equally good. Amare was a historically bad defender, and he was a good offensive player but he wasn’t some uniquely good offensive player that was better than what other great players have had on offense. The examples I often use for this is to say that Amare is not a better offensive player than #2 guys like Kareem, Wade, etc., and yet the Suns had a better offense than teams with those guys. For purposes of this discussion, the better example may be to say that Amare was not a better offensive player than 2018 Chris Paul. Which he was not. He was also a significantly worse defender than 2018 Chris Paul. Having Chris Paul instead of Amare simultaneously resulted in the Rockets having a less offensively slanted roster *and* having the more offensively talented #2 player.
And I’ll note that this is directly responsive to some of the numbers you provided above. The Suns lost despite doing so well on offense because their defense did really badly. And their defense did really badly in part because they played offensively slanted lineups but *also* because they had one of the worst defensive big men ever (and, of course, also because they were facing a Spurs team that had the #16 peak of the 2001-2025 span!). That DRTG wasn’t going to be good even if you had a more traditional lineup with Amare at PF. (To be fair, Nash being a negative on defense is also part of this—but if Nash were a good defender, then I imagine I’d have voted for him multiple threads ago).
my eye test is super high on Nash. And I have more trust in my eye test on him than I usually do about players because I watched more of Nash than I’ve watched of virtually any other player in NBA history. I think it goes without saying that someone’s eye test is a valid aspect of their criteria, and that it is very reasonable to put more weight on it the more you’ve watched a player.
Just feels too cute by half to tell me the impact juggernauts with 4 rings are better than ringless harden because impact and championships are a big deal but just so happen to not be quite as good as ringless Nash and his lower career impact numbers, negative on/off in the 2005 playoffs, and lesser peak teams. Feels like they kind of have to be ahead of or behind both (well, you aren't voting for Draymond yet).
How is that too cute? We are all weighing a ton of factors when we decide how to rank players. Just because one factor by itself wouldn’t result in a particular ranking doesn’t mean that all the factors as a whole don’t. You seem to want to oversimplify how people are approaching things and then say they’re being inconsistent because their votes don’t match your oversimplified framework.
Most impact metrics have him in the 30-60 range on offense, as in sub all-star level. People look at those Orlando teams and think wow Dwight inside sucking in the defense then 3pt shooters outside. Except he is a horrid passer. That team worked better with Gortat when Dwight was sitting on the bench in a pretty decent playoff sample. Like I can't wrap my head around all this. I don't want this to be a Dwight hate post but really I'm very low on him right now. I didn't buy the Draymond hype before but I probably have him over Dwight at this point.
