More overrated: Garnett or Nash

[rrravenred]

Once again you sidestep my point. THE PISTONS went through the gauntlet of THE LAKERS, THE BULLS and THE CELTICS. If Zeke matched up directly against any of those players it's a fundamental coaching fail on either side.

You may want to reduce the interactions of 20 odd players, referees, coaches and support staff into a glorified one on one game, but it's a PROFOUNDLY simplistic way to analyze basketball and one that garners zero respect from me.

Sent from my SM-T310 using RealGM Forums mobile app

I don't believe he is reducing it to a one on one game. <snip>

I really dont' care about your arguments, which are frankly your loathing of Nash congealed into words so I'm basically not going to respond.

[MisterWestside]

I think that when it comes to making a Top 100 list using the many-month method we use in our projects, the ideal you're suggesting isn't practical, if I'm understanding you correctly.

You're talking about judging a kind of inherent goodness of a player completely outside of ecosystem, and the reality is that rather simplifying matters, it complicates and turns it all into abstract discussions. It's hard enough to agree upon what actually happened, and coming to meaningful group conclusions about what might have been is an entirely different beast.

But that's how coaches and GMs actually have to think in order to help their teams achieve success. You couldn't be the GM for Phoenix, observe the impact that Nash had in Dallas, then say to yourself, "Gee, this guy's impact is good but not historic, so let's make Amar'e our focus instead". You would never reach optimal success that way. You have look at skills in a vacuum first, then build, then implement. And this isn't trivial or hypothetical (building teams is more abstract, evaluating skills is entirely the opposite). That's how trades are made, players are drafted/signed, rosters are built, and GMs and coaches keep their jobs. That's how you become the Moreys and Prestis of the world, as opposed to the Dolans and Jordans. And that's how Spoelstra/Riley showed that they could field a functional basketball roster, as opposed to assembling a glorified all-star team.

But this is boils down to a fundamental difference of how players are ranked. I personally don't do historic impact/legacy rankings, and I also respect how others do things, so I'll refrain from commenting further on this here. Just sharing a viewpoint.

That said, it's not like I advocate context-blindness here. Looking at the players in question, I cut Garnett a lot more slack than I do Nash, and if I'm a homer for anyone it's Nash rather than Garnett. What do I mean by this?

I mean that Garnett in, say, '06 or '07, really doesn't seem to me to belong on any MVP lists because the stuff he was doing had no real bearing on championship contention, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to hold those years against him. We know he was doing about all you could expect him to do in his situation, and that with a better supporting cast, he would have been more relevant. So why hold bad luck against him?

By contrast, while I'm a firm believer that Nash could have become a superstar well before he did given the right opportunity, the pro-Phoenix issues aren't about him doing his superstar thing and no one noticing, they are about him playing the game in a different manner. Nobody, not even Nash, watched what he was doing in Dallas and thought "That's an MVP-level player right there", so it's simply crediting Nash for things he didn't do if you insist on talking about him as if he reached his peak before '04-05.

I would actually contend that Garnett had more of a role shift than Nash, but that's beside the point.

Nash wasn't doing all that much differently, he was simply provided with a roster and system that was entirely reliant upon what he brought to the table with his skillset. He could shoot like a boss, drive like a boss, set up his teammates like a boss, dribble like a boss, lick his fingers after every made basket by the opposing team like a boss, etc. Phoenix just took him and proceeded to let the animal out of his cage. Now look at what took place once he went to LA. He just enjoyed an impactful season in Phoenix, and was still a well above-average point guard in great (if not prime) form. He had some injury issues, but when he was healthy and on the court he still retained those same skills as a Laker. But his impact drops like a rock - not because he forgot how to play the position, but because he had to play a cog in the "Kobe System". Nash is actually a great example of why I don't rank by players by impact. It is team dependent. I want impact - I love impact - but there's so much more to evaluation than impact.

These are philosophical choices that I make though, and when it comes to philosophy I'm not saying I have the ability to dictate how others look at things. There is some wiggle room within even these specific lists depending on what the project runner allows.

Yes, understood Also, re: Wilt. I wasn't looking to elaborate on him on any other player specifically with regards to a ranking list. There are plenty of other threads that are more appropriate for that

[G35]

Once again you sidestep my point. THE PISTONS went through the gauntlet of THE LAKERS, THE BULLS and THE CELTICS. If Zeke matched up directly against any of those players it's a fundamental coaching fail on either side.

You may want to reduce the interactions of 20 odd players, referees, coaches and support staff into a glorified one on one game, but it's a PROFOUNDLY simplistic way to analyze basketball and one that garners zero respect from me.

Sent from my SM-T310 using RealGM Forums mobile app

I don't believe he is reducing it to a one on one game. <snip>

I really dont' care about your arguments, which are frankly your loathing of Nash congealed into words so I'm basically not going to respond.

Well....that's unfortunate.....

[Texas Chuck]

Nash wasn't doing all that much differently, he was simply provided with a roster and system that was entirely reliant upon what he brought to the table with his skillset. He could shoot like a boss, drive like a boss, set up his teammates like a boss, dribble like a boss, lick his fingers after every made basket by the opposing team like a boss, etc. Phoenix just took him and proceeded to let the animal out of his cage.

How could you leave out: fix his hair mid-dribble multiple times before throwing the perfect lob like a boss or making a near impossible reverse layup like a boss, then turn and show the ref exactly how it should be an and 1 like a boss? Or land supermodels like a boss? He also stretched out his back like a boss.

Bottom line: Steve Nash was a freaking boss. That much we should all agree on.

[Texas Chuck]

This thread feels like some kind of trap for me.....

You, my friend, have shoved those words into my mouth, which is OK because I'm hungry.

Trap Sprung

[john248]

This thread feels like some kind of trap for me.....

You, my friend, have shoved those words into my mouth, which is OK because I'm hungry.

Trap Sprung

Don't feel so bad. The guy who started this thread got caught in his own trap.

[mojay641]

Nash is the biggest loser in history. At least KG won something.

[ElGee]

All these points still boil down to context. One group ignores context. Then they present a bunch of context-free arguments to a group of people who adjust everything with nuance depending on the context. It's two entirely different discussions.

I asked G35 to explain the other side's argument because there is so much misrepresentation that it seems like anti-Nash/KG posters don't understand the argument for these players. To be more specific, just picking posts in the last day from this thread:

Why are the pro Nash/KG guys trying to make this thread an "us vs them"?

There is no "side". There are only differing viewpoints. Even those on the same side may not agree on every viewpoint...kind of like republicans/democrats, some are extremists and some are moderate

I was, as I said earlier, following a distinction I've seen you use over the years for the purpose of making the point. You were generalizing "advanced stats" users and I followed suit to demarcate pro/anti Nash for the purpose of the thread. I don't think dichotomy is accurate, but I went there because I (correctly?) assumed everyone in the threat new what I was saying (or what you were saying). I have an idea that we both know who we are talking about with these distinctions, but perhaps that assumption is wrong.

With that said, I created two new groups to make another point -- context-driven vs. context-free. Like almost all things in the universe, this exists on a spectrum and is fluid, not dichotomous. But it's a lot harder to make this point that way, and I didn't think it would be an issue since the people I was lumping into "context-free" judgement of individual players will very loudly proclaim black-and-white statements like "either a winner or not."

This, of course, was all a trap to signature one of my favorite posters, Texas Chuck.

Seriously, though, my point about ideology is really the crux of the issue, so let me clarify...

To me the end justifies the means. So my bottom line winning. That gives a player the most points in my rating.

So I think a much better classification than context is degree of context. A top-down approach is exactly what G35 just described -- he takes the final result of a team and sort of reverse-engineers a player performance from that. But it's all working off of explaining the team result. The degree of context used depends on how much a particular poster wants to drill backwards. For example,

Now I do take in account that not all situations are created equal because I still rate Barkley, Robinson, Erving, West, Wilt, KJ, Stockton/Malone, very highly. So I take in account their play, how they did in particular situations under their particular circumstances.

Context. Right there. Obviously being completely context-free is extreme and almost impossible. The ideological issue I'm driving at then is degree of context, or ignoring context in other situations.

A bottom-up approach is not working backward from a team result, it's starting from the building blocks of individual players and asking "how did things get this way?" Right off the bat in that approach, there's nothing inherently tied to "Rings" (or any derivative) because the very reason you're doing the analysis is to untangle the individuals from the team. It's starting with the premise that there are other variables that impact the game besides one individual player (even the best player!)...and asks questions like:

but what do Allen's muscle actions in that moment have to do with how good a player LeBron & Duncan are?

IF the answer to this question were "everything" then we wouldn't need a bottom-up approach because there would be nothing to untangle! Everyone would just see who won, as they do in a sport like tennis, because in individual sports there are essentially no variables to untangle. (Cue Doc chiming in on court surface.) But precisely because the answer is a resounding nothing, we have some investigating to do. If you ignore any context when you evaluate the team result, you are ignoring that Allen's muscle actions have nothing to do with LeBron and Duncan. And since we've never seen evidence that LeBron or Duncan do control Allen's actions, or Player X can control other players actions, that's where the bottom-up group says "wait...what are you doing and why?"

Deep breath.

So the main point? These Nash/KG type threads and the gap that exists between posters is driven by less of how we all perceive their play and more about the approach to analysis. That is a discussion that will go around in circles for years because some of us try to never ignore context, so the discussion gets stuck where the other side does.

---
I should note that there's nothing "bad" about comparing teams or legacies or anything that eliminates details for simplicity. It's just not something many people here see as interesting, or for me, debatable. I don't need to watch basketball or know a thing about it to go through the history books to determine "legacy," or to find the leading scorer on all the title teams.

[ElGee]

To ElGee's idea in general: If you've never try the approach to figure out where your common ground with someone is, you really should. Has nothing to do with who is right here. It's just plain practical. If we take it on faith that no matter what you're going to think the rest of us are wrong, it would be nice at least after all these years if you would be able to simply state going forward the actual reason why we disagree rather than throwing out wild allegations.

I guess Im also confused why this only holds true for one side in this debate. Especially the bolded portion. Id say the pro-Nash or pro-KG crowd also has plenty of guys who think and argue from this same vantage point: Im right and you are wrong and they do no better job of entertaining arguments from the other side.

You need go no further than the litany of posts where guys quote an entire post and proceed to pick part and "destroy" every single argument made by the other side. This isnt dialogue or debate with an open mind. Its I've already made up my mind and Im not interested in your ideas because they don't agree with mine.

Now not everyone on either side of the debate does this, but people on BOTH sides do. This isnt just a G35 issue.

Absolutely the 100% logical response IMO. I agree that there is often not dialogue with an open mind. However there is an important distinction to be made here, which is what I was getting at with the "can you explain the other sides POV?"

For me, it's important to deeply understand the viewpoint, "logic" (even if it appears flawed) and purpose of others. In this discussion, I feel very comfortable representing the other side, and the ins and outs of what they think and why. I think Doc was saying he's done this exploration as well, as he asks many questions too. But I can't speak for others...if someone hasn't taken those steps, regardless of the issue or the topic, it's a really valuable practice.

[drza]

From what I can tell this is how I differ from your viewpoints:

To me the end justifies the means. So my bottom line winning. That gives a player the most points in my rating. Now I do take in account that not all situations are created equal because I still rate Barkley, Robinson, Erving, West, Wilt, KJ, Stockton/Malone, very highly. So I take in account their play, how they did in particular situations under their particular circumstances.

I am also something of a comic geek and I kind of think that there are an infinite amount of universes with an infinite amount of probabilities. In some universe somewhere Horry misses on the hip check to Nash and Amare/Diaw do not get suspended. The Suns win that series and are able to win a ring. In another universe, Kevin McHale doesn't offer Joe Smith a deal under the table, the Wolves do not lose their draft picks, Marbury doesn't leave Minnesota (or maybe Billups stays), Malik Sealy doesn't die, perhaps Popovich goes to coach in Minnesota and teams up with Garnett to form a dynasty winning 3-4 rings. Those things ARE possible.

Unfortunately, in this reality none of that happened. So you can go off of could happen, what might happen, what should have happened, but I'm going off what actually did happen. You can give credit that a player has the potential to win in a "What if" scenario but at the end of the day you have to ground yourself and judge what actually did happen.

That is why I do give credit to Russell because even though I think his teams were stacked and Auerbach was ahead of his time you still have to go on the court and win those 11 rings. Because there are a litany of reasons why it couldn't happen i.e.:

Injuries - the number one reason why many teams do not win. I could list 20 playoff teams that could have a ring if not for injuries

Motivation/emotions - Jordan should have 8 rings....except he got burned out and retired. Kobe/Shaq should have 6-8 rings....if not for different agendas....Lebron could have won a ring in CLE if he didn't want to team up in Miami.

Upsets/Probably chance/Dumb luck - the 1977 Sixers should have been NBA chances because they were more talented but they didn't. The 1980 Sixers should have been champions because Kareem got hurt but they didn't. The 1994 Sonics should have been champions except they ran into Dikembe and the Nuggets. The 2006 Mavericks should have been champions except they ran into the officials...the 2007 Mavericks ran into a bad matchup. The 2011 Heat were favorites to win against an old, lesser talented Mavericks team. The 2013 Heat are lucky that Popovich blew game 6 taking Duncan out in a crucial moment.

So when I see statistical evidence that shows impact and how events should unfold I give it a healthy dose of skepticism because that is the antithesis of sports. The entire reason I watch sports (I understand that is not the motivation for many others so I have to temper my understanding of others) is because I never know the outcome. No one does. When we do comparisons with all the information we have that is based off past events. It has ZERO bearing off what will happen in the future or ANY OTHER POSSIBLE SCENARIO......

If we really are trying to find a common ground and not just arguing past each other, the underlined is a CRUCIAL spot where you are fundamentally misrepresenting the "statistical approach".

Statistics aren't a "what if". Statistics also aren't a prediction of what should unfold. Statistics are a measure of what actually happened...just like you say that you judge based off of. A win is, at the end of the day, a statistic. It's a team statistic, but it's still a statistic.

But I think this is so important, because contrary to what you wrote in one of your posts, there is a tendency to group all statistics (and those that use statistics as evidence) into one group as a means of minimizing the results. The approach is to define the argument as "those who know basketball" or "watch the game" vs. those stat-heads that use random stats to lie, or to make the game into hypotheticals, or that don't care about/value winning.

This is especially done with the +/- stats. I guess it makes sense with it being the new-kid on the block of stats, but the +/- stats are often the ones most easily denigrated. Folks will find a counter-example of someone universally not considered good that measures well in +/-, or they will just scoff at the results in general, or they will insinuate that those utilizing +/- are basing all results "off of just one stat".

But addressing the last two paragraphs together, the thing is that on/off +/- is actually the teams performance with and without a player. In/out is actually the teams performance with and without a player in a given game. If someone does the regressions to have an adjusted +/- stat, those are also measures base on what actually happened. They aren't hypothetical.

And by the same token, these aren't all "just one stat"...it's a whole body of stats that are attempting to make note of what actually happened on the court outside of the box scores. And very rarely (perhaps never) do you see a respected poster look at a +/- list, see a person at the top of it, and then declare them to be great. No, either someone is noting that a player does a lot of wonderful things on the court and makes the team better, then supports that by looking at some of their +/- stats...or else a person might have a surprisingly good value in +/-, which then causes someone to look harder at that player to see if there might have been an underlying reason for that value that was missed. Either way, though, it's not "just one stat" being relied upon in a vacuum...instead, it's another piece of evidence that, when taken in full context, can help paint a fuller picture of what actually happened.

If what you wrote in this post is true, that you base your conclusions on what actually happened as opposed to hypotheticals, then your mindset isn't in fact fundamentally different from those that you're debating with. You may disagree on how much value to assign to one stat vs. another which is fine, healthy and can spark good debate. But all that it would take for these conversation s to become a lot more constructive is an acknowledgment by both sides that we're each relying on some combination of our judgments and statistical measures to come to our conclusions and that even if we don't agree with each other's conclusions, if we can make logical points that are supported by logically consistent evidence then we should at least be able to respect each other's opinions. That last bit, the logical consistency and respect, are very often missing in these discussions.

[Okada]

The 1977 Sixers should not have been champions at all. Portland was significantly better than them and that team, while very talented, was one of the most selfish and overpaid teams ever by a mile. George McGinnis is a freaking joke. I just looked up the Finals wrap-up article from SI and it's downright hilarious.

The title was 'All For One Sure Beats One For All' with the caption 'Dr. J was his usual outasight, but one man can't beat five, particularly when five men play like one, as Portland did to win the NBA title.'

Some quotes (I highly recommend reading these, these are simply amazing):

The sweeping collapse of the 76ers might have seemed melodramatic had it not been so comical and, given the schizophrenic nature of the species, so thoroughly predictable. Philly's downfall probably began on an airplane somewhere over Des Moines during the team's trip West after the first two games. It was then that the Sixers stopped taking the Blazers seriously and started debating whether to give Erving all their playoff shares or just buy him the Liberty Bell as a thank-you present.

Even before the humiliating 130-98 pasting the 76ers took in Game Four, it appeared as if some sort of grenade had exploded in the Philly camp. Among the ongoing atrocities was Free's request to go home because his sore ribs hurt too much to play in the biggest games of his life. "Lloyd is 85% well," said team physician Stanley Lorber. "Some people just don't want to play."

(this is Kobe's dad directly trashing his own teammate in the middle of the Finals)

Fourth Forward Joe (Jelly Bean) Bryant, who did want to, contributed some nasty verbal slaps at third Forward Steve Mix for "not really playing 100%. As soon as we started losing, Steve didn't feel well," said Jelly Bean. "Any given day I'll beat Steve's face in any aspect of the game."

Sixer Coach Gene Shue spent the hours he wasn't working on his backhand—"Tennis clears my mind. I don't want to overthink," he said—closing practices or canceling them outright. A 76er official was asked if this was done out of a need for secrecy. "No," he said, "out of embarrassment."

Behind closed doors, McGinnis, laboring through one of the worst slumps any superstar chain smoker ever experienced, got solace from his teammates. Every time Un-gorgeous George put up a jumper, the 76ers shouted "brick, brick"—the NBA term for an incredibly horrible shot. Once when McGinnis was wide open under the basket, a teammate deliberately hurled a pass over his head into the seats, as everybody laughed. McGinnis must have figured this was at least as hilarious as the banner at the Spectrum which spelled his name MCGOONIS.

Erving, who scored 24 points, was not amused. "We got to challenge the other team," he said. "Be aggressive. Get some big axes and chop arms and legs." Dr. J was asked why he seemed to be forcing his own game. "Nobody else—uh, nothing else—is working." he said, slipping for once from his admirable doctoral diplomacy.

Erving was correct, of course. McGinnis, shooting 16 for 48 and saying, "I feel like a blind man searching for the men's room," was disintegrating from being merely terrible to being a monster turkey and recalling such wonderful fold-ups as Gil Hodges' in the 1952 World Series, Fran Tarkenton's in the Super Bowl and George Foreman's on Planet Earth.

Jones was out to lunch and so, too, it seemed, was Dawkins, the ferocious Dawk reduced to a Squawk since his scary fisticuffs with Lucas in Game Two. Collins looked battered and unhappy. Even the usually dependable Henry Bib-by, whom the 76ers call Julio, because of his Hispanic features, missed 14 of 19 shots in Portland.

Everybody was knocking everybody else while Shue was swatting tennis balls. "We don't hold grudges," said the coach, and smiled.

Portland's Squirmin' Herman Gilliam summed up the 76ers' plight. "I hear them yelling in the warmups to 'get together!' " he said. "That isn't normal. That team can fall apart much easier than it can pull together."

The explosion provided Portland with its third 40-point plus quarter in three games as well as effectively deciding the outcome. After the Blazers took a 91-69 lead with 8:28 to go, those fans who weren't booing were heading for the exits as if 76er owner Fitz Dixon had screamed "Fire!"

While Dixon's millions went up in smoke, Erving, Collins and the hyperactive Jelly Bean led Philadelphia back to a semirespectable 110-104 defeat. Dr. J, again spectacular with 37 points, shook his head in the locker room. "I had a good feeling about tonight," he said. "It all backfired. It's a bad scene."

Bryant again accused some of his teammates of giving up. Collins said what Bryant saw was confusion, not quitters. Free said he didn't want to play Sunday. Shue smiled and slammed a door. Dawkins filled his tote bag with soda pop cans, then slammed a cooler. McGinnis saw former 76er Billy Cunningham and said, "Hey, Bill, can I borrow a smoke?" Mix said, "Can you believe the head cases on this team?"

During the 76ers' charter flight to Portland on Saturday (where 5,000 fans had greeted the Blazers at 4:30 a.m.), it was easy to believe anything. Most of the wives and girl friends were along. Poker money exchanged hands and tape decks blared. Mix prepared ice cream sundaes. Free complained about his ribs.

The Dawk recited poetry: "I love fast cars, cool summer breezes. Love when I want to and quit when I pleases." Turquoise Erving refused to take bows for being a prophetess. A 76er official announced over the P.A. that Shue was buying dinner for the entire plane and "you don't even have to eat with him." Was this a circus act or a Ship of Fools?

Caldwell Jones was asked what it was all coming down to. "I'm missing the cartoons," he said. "I be glad when basketball be over so I can get back to my 'toons."

On Sunday pro basketball finally was over. Only the Philadelphia 'toons flickered on.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

I mean......that is pure comedy. Point being, that team by no means should have won a championship.

[rrravenred]

Wow. That reads like a rejected Will Farrell script.

Sent from my SM-T310 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[rrravenred]

To ElGee's idea in general: If you've never try the approach to figure out where your common ground with someone is, you really should. Has nothing to do with who is right here. It's just plain practical. If we take it on faith that no matter what you're going to think the rest of us are wrong, it would be nice at least after all these years if you would be able to simply state going forward the actual reason why we disagree rather than throwing out wild allegations.

I guess Im also confused why this only holds true for one side in this debate. Especially the bolded portion. Id say the pro-Nash or pro-KG crowd also has plenty of guys who think and argue from this same vantage point: Im right and you are wrong and they do no better job of entertaining arguments from the other side.

You need go no further than the litany of posts where guys quote an entire post and proceed to pick part and "destroy" every single argument made by the other side. This isnt dialogue or debate with an open mind. Its I've already made up my mind and Im not interested in your ideas because they don't agree with mine.

Now not everyone on either side of the debate does this, but people on BOTH sides do. This isnt just a G35 issue.

Absolutely the 100% logical response IMO. I agree that there is often not dialogue with an open mind. However there is an important distinction to be made here, which is what I was getting at with the "can you explain the other sides POV?"

For me, it's important to deeply understand the viewpoint, "logic" (even if it appears flawed) and purpose of others. In this discussion, I feel very comfortable representing the other side, and the ins and outs of what they think and why. I think Doc was saying he's done this exploration as well, as he asks many questions too. But I can't speak for others...if someone hasn't taken those steps, regardless of the issue or the topic, it's a really valuable practice.

Speck in another's eye, plank in your own.

I will admit to sometimes being reactive to (what I see as) bad arguments, or arguments made in bad faith and somewhat jump on them (an analogy with the burning paper bag on your doorstep may or may not be appropriate).

The important thing for me is that you then look for somewhere to go forward AFTER that. If it's all (to borrow from earlier in the thread), "you're totally wrong" <drops mic>, then you've got a bunch of guys and girls in a thread whose interest is in ending the thread in their favour rather than in exploring an issue and eliciting interesting information and viewpoints and actively challenging their own. Which is sort of inimical to what this board is supposed to be about.

[B_Creamy]

I'm going to share a few thoughts on this forum in light of the mention of dueling "Pro/Anti KG" sides. The topic of the thread itself has kind of become irrelevant. Excuse the stream of consciousness TL;DR post.

I say wholeheartedly that I believe RealGM is the greatest (and by a huge margin) basketball forum in the world. This is because a lot of the opinions expressed here are not popular, they are not opinions that the casual fan would automatically obtain through his standards (Kobe scored 35 points he should've been MVP!). Anyone who does not feel this way, the "only on RealGM..." crowd, would be better served leaving here and finding a community of more like minded people. If I thought ISH was where I could gain the most knowledge on Basketball you'd find me there instead of here which is why posters like OP baffle me slightly.

Point I'm getting to is that it's not a coincidence that these exact same anti-KG/Nash threads are constantly being made and that the new posters that come in and make them are being banned. They are coming in with opinions of basketball you might obtain from watching First Take, seeing dissent, and then instead of even paying attention to why the opposing party has these "wild" opinions they just proceed to make the same tired arguments that have been repeated on here ad-nauseum for years (But Steve Nash doesn't even have a ring!) in increasingly rude/agressive ways. Seemingly because they think they're talking to idiots who can't see how obvious it is that a player scoring 50 points and grabbing 26 boards a game is better than someone scoring 18 and 24.

It does not require any critical thinking to think Isiah Thomas is a "predator" and Steve Nash is "prey" (as someone so eloquently put it earlier in the thread...). Everyone already thinks that, he's a champion, he beat Jordan for goodness' sake! But even people in the Isiah Thomas camp should be able to agree that it requires some kind of thought to stray from consensus and choose Nash.

Don't take this as me saying that every who disagrees with me is like the above. I feel I understand ElGee when he said

I have an idea that we both know who we are talking about with these distinctions, but perhaps that assumption is wrong.

[Quotatious]

I appreciate your candor here. I like that you're seeing the limits in coherence in your own viewpoint. To me that's always the start of a path that can lead to great insight.

I think one thing you should consider is that there is not ONE all-time list. One could make a list based on influence, era dominance, peak impact, ability to thrive in the modern game, etc. All of those things are lists worth having, and at the same time, it's important not to let the stuff that should be in List A warp List B, right? Should Wilt be a lock for Top 10 on absolutely every one of these lists?

The biggest list project we do here has the generic name "Top 100" in part because anything more specific won't have a catchy name, but it's just one such list. (Although there have been slight changes in criteria from list to list.) Now it's not a random choice of list. It's the one that most have agreed they find most worth doing, but it's important to recognize from the beginning that it is not some amalgamation of all potential lists meant to encapsulate everything that's important and noteworthy about everyone to ever step into the cage.

The list we make is focused on the impact a player had for his teams when he was on the court - that's not the whole criteria, but it's something central enough that it can't be ignored. If people decide that despite a players' talent he wasn't having great impact on his team a lot of the time, then on that list, he should slip, and it should not matter how big a shadow he casts over the history of the game.

By that same token, no matter what we say about the impact we perceive a player to have had, it's not going to remove said shadow, and nor should it.

First of all, let me say that - maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's just something about the way you express yourself, Doc, that makes people respect you, even if you don't actually say anything really insightful in this or that particular post (but you usually do, so that's a purely hypothetical talk here ). It's to the point that I actually felt bad about being so harsh with the way I phrased my last reply, concerning Wilt's place on all-time lists (I'm not saying 'the' all-time list, because you're right that there are many, depending on criteria). I was a longtime regular on this board as a reader, before I started posting here, and I know that you're one of the guys who are pretty low on Wilt, and you have him outside of your top 10 (in the 13-16 range, IIRC), and you have KG over him, and I can easily grasp the argumentation for that. Wilt basically never proved that he could be an all-time great first option in the postseason, and his defensive impact was inconsistent, as were the other parts of his game and his attitude and approach ot the game. His scoring efficiency also differed a lot, depending on his role on a team. His teams' record against Russell's Celtics isn't as good as it should be, considering that Wilt actually had a lot of good teams around him. These are the argument against WIlt that I know, and it's hard to disagree with any of those. Any other, perhaps?

Anyway, I'm not sure whether the criteria for making all-time lists that you named here are random or deliberately chosen, but IMO all of these things (peak, era dominance, general impact on basketball's development over the years, ability to thrive in the modern game), are REALLY in Wilt's favor. I just don't know what your intentions when you listed those 'ingredients of greatness', so to speak. As an 'anti-Wilt' poster (I know you're unbiased, but I said it just for the purpose of this conversation), it's somewhat baffling to see that you've decided to mention specially these categories. Maybe you wanted to guess what were my, according to which I was able to say what I actually said about Chamberlain here? You know, I'm just trying to find some common ground here, so we could continue this conversation.

I certainly understand that Wilt may not be ranked too high if you choose to evaluate players according to the impact they had on their teams though. It's clear to me that Wilt's career pales in comparison to some other players who are routinely debated against him, mainly the consensus top 10 guys. I suppose that my criteria for ranking players may be a bit more holistic so that's why Wilt turns out to be a better player than he is from your point of view. I admit that I'm not always able to be as impartial as I would like to be. I'm saying so because I'm sure that my approach isn't all that 'scientific'. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the road between guys like you, and posters like Grandpa Waiters. Which means that the so-called 'popular consensus' still affects my perception to a certain degree. I guess it depends who I'm discussing with - when you put something grey next to something white, it seems to be black, and if you put it next to something black, it looks white...You know the story.

That being said, I may have to rethink my criteria because it haven't led me to being able to actually put together an all-time list, which is sometimes helpful in discussions on this board...The thing that prevents me drom it may be the fact that I actually overcomplicate my outlook on this matter, while it may be better to create seperate lists based on diffrent criteria, just as you suggest.

[Texas Chuck]

For me, it's important to deeply understand the viewpoint, "logic" (even if it appears flawed) and purpose of others.

Could not agree more.

[mysticbb]

To you and mystic's point that I should try the (senders) approach to find common ground...I'm going to assume you are suggesting going full, advanced/impact stat mindset.

Those "advanced/impact stats" aren't just a singular "mindset", but rather a different source of information. The common ground would be: Understand the meaning of those stats and try to replicate our (let me use the "group aspect" here, even though I don't believe that it is a coherent group of people given the fact that I had my fair share of disagreements with basically everyone from that "group") approach. Given your responses when you try to utilize those stats I can only assume that you really haven't understood the arguments. Take your comment about Stoudemire for example: The argument for Nash from my perspective was never just the offensive result of the Suns, but the way and by how much Nash effected that offense as well as his overall effect on the scoring margin. I tried to explain it to you like 3 years and 2 years ago, when I pointed out that the Suns in 2006 with Nash+Kurt Thomas on the court had a clearly better than average defense as well as a way better than average offense. The resulting scoring margin was the key statistical argument, not the offense alone.
We have another sample which clearly speaks against your belief that with Nash on the court a sufficient defense wouldn't be possible: Last year the Lakers had a 99.8 DRtg with Nash and Howard on the court when Bryant was off the court. From my perspective such a result gives clear evidence to the argument that a better interior as well as team defender than Stoudemire would have been sufficient enough to create a better team defense. That the offense would suffer a bit isn't a problem for my taste, because the offensive impact by Nash was still seen in a similar fashion both examples.
I want to clarify one thing: It should be clear that Nash wasn't responsible for the defensive strength in both cases. Those examples are just here to show that the notion, that with Nash on the court a team can't per se play really good defensively is false. It also points to the notion that a small player's worse defense can be easily hidden in the right team defensive schemes. Also, I want to emphasize that this does not mean that a PG can't have a bigger impact on the defensive end in both directions (positive or negative), it just means that this is not necessarily the case (actually, in most cases the positive as well as negative impact is rather samll).

In addition, the stats are merely a helpful tool to underline an argument, not the lone basis which "our" opinion was formed on. An important part is the understanding of the underlying skills involved to create a successful 5on5 setting and how the player is utilizing his skillset in such an environment. From my perspective your focus is way too much on the numbers which are in disagreement with your view and you try to hard to discredit the numbers rather than understanding the made argument.

Regarding the dynamic of the game: I'm a geophysicist with a specialty in geodynamics as well as climate physics (including oceanography). That requires the understanding of an underlying dynamic (linear or non-linear) and finding a way to express such dynamic in a useful way (meaning, solving the necessary equations (well, at least approximate a solution with a computer model)) in order to make predictions. I make use of inverse modelling which in most cases are based on an ill-posed problem and has a semblance to the issues we see in basketball. Thus, where you see a supposed unsolvable problem in basketball, I see a chance to use the analytical tools from my everyday work to solve the issue.
I know that humans are quick to point to some sort of "human factor" (most times, because they feel the need to separate themselves from the rest of the nature), but in basketball we see the scoring margin as being rather predictable in a big enough sample. The overall dynamic will still lead to a result and at that in the end to a single number (the scoring margin) for each game. Trying to explain and predict that result is easier to achieve when assigning individual player values rather than using aggregated team results. Thus, we can say with great certainty that individual players have a specific value, even though that value is influenced by the "ecosystem".

So I take in account their play, how they did in particular situations under their particular circumstances.

But that is a too trivial approach from my perspective. I don't need to come to a message board and discuss the mere individual and team accolades. That is something we can easily look up in different databases.
I know which teams won the championships, but I really want to know HOW they got it done. And then going deeper and find an objective way to credit that success to the individual players. I never questioned that a specific player was a part of a championship team, and in case of Isiah Thomas for example I would never question that without him they would have likely not have won those titles, but I'm not satisfied with just merely appointing some sort of "intangibles" to him in order to make the narrative fit the results.

You can give credit that a player has the potential to win in a "What if" scenario but at the end of the day you have to ground yourself and judge what actually did happen.

I don't give credit to a player for a "potential win"; I just don't give extra credit to a player, because he was fortunate enough to be in the right circumstances in order to be a part of a championship team. As DocMJ pointed out: Allen making that 3 pointer didn't change my opinion on James or Duncan or Wade or Parker or Ginobili or Bosh or etc. pp. It had a very small influence on my opinion on Ray Allen, but really a very, very small one.
I know it is a rather tough task to separate the individual player from the team success, and in average the better team has the better players on the court (weighted for possessions or minutes that is), but the best player on the court can very well be a guy from a losing team. And as we know, the best player in the league is not per se the guy holding the Bill Russell award at the end of the season.

In regard to your "Marion had the biggest impact" stuff: Marion had indeed the biggest impact on the defensive end to that team, when we look at all the major starters of those Suns teams from 2005 to 2008. Overall the Suns from 2005 to 2008 had an average defense (being 0.3 points per 100 poss worse than average), while the Suns from 2009 to 2012 had a below average defense (being 2.9 points per 100 poss worse than average). From those 2.6 points per 100 poss, we can give Marion a big chunk, but hardly all of it. He was about +2.5 on defense, and was replaced with a player being worse defensively. But overall Nash made a bigger impact on the overall scoring margin, and at that obviously on the offensive end.

Also, because you implied it again, the Suns offense didn't falter in the playoffs at all. In fact, they played better offensively and exceeded the expectations based on their offensive strength in the regular season as well as the defensive strength of their opponents by a good margin. I presented the numbers to you specifically before and they are not just "made up". Believe me, if the Suns would have only played great offensively against weak opponents, I wouldn't go through such length to explain the greatness of that offense (and I strongly suspect others like DocMJ for example wouldn't do that either).

Overall in a PLAYER evaluation I want to separate that individual player from the team result in order to understand his importance to the team success as well as being able to quantify his "inherent goodness". That approach is hardly useful, if I ignore the skills of the individual player as well as ignore the overall impact of different skills on the game result. Without understanding the game and having an idea how the player actually played, that attempt is bound to fail. From my perspective that is something so obvious that it never really occurred to me that it needs to be pointed out explicitly. That was obviously a wrong impression by me and I guess the majority of our disagreements can be assigned to me not spelling it out while you assumed my argumentation would be entirely based on stats alone.

Last but not least I wanted to say that I appreciate your effort to explain yourself. I also hope that my post clarified a couple of things for you, making it more likely that you may follow my train of thoughts (that doesn't mean that I expect you to agree with everything or even anything at all, just that we see less often a misinterpretation of my stance on players).

[Bruh Man]

On this forum KG tends to get overrated in terms of All-Time ranking while Nash tends to get overrated in terms of peak play.

[G35]

I say wholeheartedly that I believe RealGM is the greatest (and by a huge margin) basketball forum in the world. This is because a lot of the opinions expressed here are not popular, they are not opinions that the casual fan would automatically obtain through his standards (Kobe scored 35 points he should've been MVP!). Anyone who does not feel this way, the "only on RealGM..." crowd, would be better served leaving here and finding a community of more like minded people. If I thought ISH was where I could gain the most knowledge on Basketball you'd find me there instead of here which is why posters like OP baffle me slightly.

I agree that this is the best forum for discussing basketball. However, I would caution at genuflecting at the altar so easily. The reason why we are even having this thread is because many hear the arguments made and then it automatically becomes gospel. I like the debates, I like hearing everyone's opinion but I like the free exchange of ideas compared to an Illuminati environment where a few control the thoughts and ideas of many. Which segues into the next point.....

Those "advanced/impact stats" aren't just a singular "mindset", but rather a different source of information. The common ground would be: Understand the meaning of those stats and try to replicate our (let me use the "group aspect" here, even though I don't believe that it is a coherent group of people given the fact that I had my fair share of disagreements with basically everyone from that "group") approach. Given your responses when you try to utilize those stats I can only assume that you really haven't understood the arguments. Take your comment about Stoudemire for example: The argument for Nash from my perspective was never just the offensive result of the Suns, but the way and by how much Nash effected that offense as well as his overall effect on the scoring margin. I tried to explain it to you like 3 years and 2 years ago, when I pointed out that the Suns in 2006 with Nash+Kurt Thomas on the court had a clearly better than average defense as well as a way better than average offense. The resulting scoring margin was the key statistical argument, not the offense alone.

Last but not least I wanted to say that I appreciate your effort to explain yourself. I also hope that my post clarified a couple of things for you, making it more likely that you may follow my train of thoughts (that doesn't mean that I expect you to agree with everything or even anything at all, just that we see less often a misinterpretation of my stance on players).

The belief that I do not like stats/numbers/quantification. This is not entirely true. In most aspects of my life I will go with the research/analysis especially if I do not have first hand knowledge (which I'm going to say 99.99999% of us on this site do not have which is actual NBA experience as a coach/player). I do trust numbers in select environments. The one topic I do not trust numbers is sports. Especially, when they continually do not back up experts opinions.

Maybe I need it dumbed down even more but when I hear the term "impact" I equate that to achievement, accomplishment. When I read that Nash has more offensive impact than almost any other player, I want to see the results of that impact. Reading, "5.6" does nothing for me. Boiling it down to a number does nothing for me. Now I do comprehend that Nash (or KG) may be at the top of many of these lists over and over and over again. Yet, I don't see where that equates to impact. In my mind it shows that he excels at that particular metric but it does not mean it will result in a positive result for his team.

Now that is another point of contention that sparks the idea that I do not "understand", particularly in Nash's case. That the Phoenix offense did not "fail" in the playoff's. That Nash did his job and the offense ran up to his lofty standards. I know that PPG means nothing, it's points per possession that matters, running an efficient offense. I understand that. I UNDERSTAND THAT. But I (and others) do not have to believe in that. An efficient offense is desirable but it is not the end all for an effective offense. The problem that I have in particular with Nash/Suns offense is that offense is NOT independent of defense. The same 5 players that are playing offense have to transition to defense instantaneously. You cannot build an offense separately; a coaching staff can't say, "Our offense is set so now let's get around to our defense." Amare Stoudemire is heavily criticized for his defense but his contributions to the offense is minimized. When the Suns built their team they had to know what they had. They knew Amare was not the defensive presence they needed but it wasn't a big deal in the regular season. The Suns coaching staff were smart enough to give Nash the weapons and autonomy to run the offense. However, putting a 6'7 SF at the PF position and Amare at the center position was short sighted.

I give credit that the Suns offense was efficient and explosive. However, I also take points away because it was the #1 offense at the expense of the defense. If the Suns were to run a conventional lineup it would have had to sacrifice some of their offensive potency. I have not seen anyone who has disagreed with this but for all this advanced thinking why is this not considered in overall evaluation of Nash's production?

I mean I bet the 2011 Mavericks would have been a more potent offense with this lineup all year:

PG Barea
SG Terry
SF Kidd
PF Marion
C Dirk

That team could have been in contention for the #1 offense but their defense would have been in shambles. Instead they compromised by having Terry/Barea come off the bench and they had Deshawn Stevenson/Chandler in the starting lineup, two players that clearly hurt their offense.

So when we talk about context, you see people shouting "#1 offense! #1 offense!" but they aren't using context. They are just looking at the "result" and making a conclusion, something that I am accused of doing. Teams that have championship aspirations compromise aspects of their team for greater impact over the course of the season/playoffs.

Which comes to the point of offensive impact vs defensive impact and context. Now from my perspective and what I have seen offense, especially very potent offenses, do not necessarily guarantee success in the playoff's. It seems in all the major sports, football, basketball, baseball, good defense will shut down good offense.

I have seen more ATG offenses made to absolutely terrible in all sports. Tonight we saw an amazing, record breaking offense get humiliated by the best defense. This is where my trust in numbers begins to wain is that I have seen too many instances where a great offense that isn't balanced with a relatively equal defense finds that their offense can't overcome their lack of defense. My point? Offensive impact should tempered against great defenses. Many great offensive players have to contribute in other ways other than offense to impact the game. This is where I penalize Nash heavily is because he can't impact the game on defense. Now I'm sure this is the point where I'm being labeled as ignorant, not taking the time to understand the metric, etc. But I'm not of the opinion that more offense will counter poor defense. I don't think I'm alone in this line of thinking:

- the Mavericks traded Nash and they brought Avery Johnson in to turn around their defense when their offense was the #1 offense in the league. Why do you trade Nash when you have the #1 offense?...but their defense was 26th and they lost badly in the 1st round vs the Kings not the Spurs. The Mavericks offense got worse dropping to 4th in the league but the defense jumped up 17 spots up to the 9th best defense. The Mavericks did end up losing to Nash's Suns but the following year they avenged that loss in the playoff's and eventually made it to the finals improving their defense to the 5th in the league.

What I need to be shown is how can a team lose Nash and be in the finals two years later and VASTLY improve their defense? Because they BUILT their team to play offense and defense. They sacrificed offense by inserting Diop in for defense, they sacrificed offense by replacing Nash with Jason Terry and Adrian Griffin. Yes the offense isn't as good but the defense is much better and that makes the team much better prepared for the playoff's. In my mind, that's impact. I don't know how you quantify that but that's where I begin to judge impact.

I do like to discuss and exchange ideas but I can tell you where I get frustrated and Texas Chuck has been a moderator who is a voice for other side and I appreciate him for it. These are sample quotes where I feel the arrogance and uncompromising attitude from the opposing side:

"Random formula". Geez, you want to add some more straw to that mannequin you're disemboweling? Saying something like that suggests that you're either ignorant of how these metrics are constructed or are wilfully ignoring how the metrics are designed to be used. Can you point to any recent examples of when I've used these metrics out of context for purposes which they were not designed for and were not effective in?

When I said "random formula" I meant how the formulas are built, who decided what values to place inside of that formula.

TS%
TS% = 100 * (1/2) * PTS / (FGA + 0.44*FTA)

I get why the .44 is there, I researched it.

If we forget about free throws for a minute, then the formula becomes PTS/(2*FGA), which happens to be equivalent to eFG%. Now let's think about foul shots. The box score doesn't tell us how many shots a player was fouled on. It just tells us how many foul shots were taken and made. Fortunately, smart folks many years ago figured out that, on average, the equivalent number of shots taken by a player is 0.44 times the number of FTA taken. By using play-by-play data, instead of box scores, it's actually possible to determine exactly how many equivalent shots were taken by each player, but I don't know of any source that publishes or calculates those stats (not exactly, anyway).

However, I still think using .44 is still too arbitrary a number and gives too much weight to FT's.
http://www.goldenstateofmind.com/2011/1 ... ats-primer

Continuing, here is an interesting quote from Dean Oliver,

There are four factors of an offense or defense that define its efficiency: shooting percentage, turnover rate, offensive rebounding percentage, and getting to the foul line. Striving to control those factors leads to a more successful team.

It's said that these 8 factors account for 96% of point differential. What's more interesting is an estimated breakdown of their impact is that for total team impact eFG% contributes to 40% of team differential, TOV% contributes 25%, rebounding % contributes 20%, and foul rate contributes 15% to point differential.

In the case of the Suns lets look at their 4 factors on offense and defense for the 2005 season.

Offense
eFG% 1st
TOV% 3rd
ORB% 22nd
FT/FGA 24th

Defense
eFG% 10th
TOV% 28th
DRB% 29th
FT/FGA 1st

So from what I can tell the Suns shot the ball well, Nash took great care of the ball, but they were pretty bad at rebounding on the offensive end, and they didn't get to the FT line frequently. This is true, Amare got to the FT line 9.9 times a game but no one else on the team got to the line more than 3.4 times a game and that was Marion. Nash got to the line 3.2 times, so really how much impact does he have shooting 90% when he gets to the line so infrequently?

On defense, the Suns actually defended fairly well rating 10th in the league in eFG%. Unfortunately, (because believe it or not I liked the Suns at the time being a huge Barkley fan) they couldn't rebound those misses, and they didn't create TO's. The Suns turned the ball over 1,125 times which is amazing for having the #1 pace in the league. Yet, they only created 1,131 TO's. So, they weren't creating TO's against their opponents so the advantage that they held was they just were a more efficient shooting team. This was mostly created due to the advantages they had at the 4 and 5 positions with Marion/Amare being able to outrun any other front court tandem. The other problems I see is that their perimeter players didn't/couldn't create TO opportunities.

Now what is funny is looking at these 8 factors it becomes obvious that a team like say the Spurs would give the Suns all they could handle. Here are the Spurs 8 factors for offense/defense:

Offense
eFG% 6th
TO% 12th
ORB% 12th
FG/FTA 21st


Defense
eFG% 1st
TO% 6th
DRB% 3rd
FG/FTA 11th


The Spurs were nowhere near as good on offense as the Suns. But in that playoff series the Spurs best players increased their FTA's. Duncan and Ginobli both increased their FTA's in that series; Duncan was getting 10 FTA's. The only player that was getting to the line was Amare for the Suns. The Spurs were not a great offense but they were top 10 regular season and they were able to adjust their offense in the playoff's.

I also would like to exchange ideas on an old axiom, that defense creates offensive opportunities. That in the playoff's there are times when your offense may not be working on all cylinders and you may have to jump start it. The Suns did not have that option since they only had one or two players that created TO's and that was Marion. Also, I would like to openly exchange ideas about Nash's impact on offense and why Marion gets blamed for failing in the playoff's....but isn't it Nash with all the impact? Marion was getting 16 FGA's in the regular season but in that series he only averaged 9 FGA's.

Isn't Nash the one that had control of the ball? Isn't Nash the one that everyone says had the greatest impact on the offensive side of the ball? How is it all Marion's fault when Nash is the one making everyone else better? How is it Marion's fault when he is ALREADY labeled as having a limited offensive game dependent on Nash setting him up? Nash is suppose to get his playmakers in positions to make plays.

The people on here that are associated with leading the push toward KG & Nash never said PER was infallible, they were the ones taking issue with the details. No one anywhere ever said TS% was the final word, given that that's not remotely a "whole player" type of rating - frankly it boggles the mind you even associate it with PER. "Some derivative of RAPM...flavor of the month", in the sense that folks like us could tell you what the faults are of any existing version of RAPM is, and encouraged stat makers to improve on what they were doing, and then recognized the improvement if it existed, and called out the falloff if necessary.

I didn't address this but I think this is a good point for both sides. Maybe you never said PER was infallible, or tsherkin, raven, but I guarantee you that there were many who did think it was. Which goes into another tangent that many times when we rehash these old arguments there are those that jump in with their opinions and it all gets lumped into one big pot of back and forth negativity. I remember when PER was the difference between Jordan and everyone else and the same argument was being made for it that people who were using the eye test didn't understand PER or hated Hollinger.

I don't see how it can't be denied that advanced stats HAVE advanced. That five years ago people were making arguments using these metrics but now we are using new metrics and now the old ways are now being used with "context". But at the time, context wasn't needed, the numbers clearly showed the impact and the people who were using them were shouting down the any opposition. I can think of 2 or 3 posters that use advanced stats and if you don't "get it" then you are stupid or you are entitled to your way of thinking but it's wrong. That is the epitome of arrogance and not trying to see the other sides points.......

[barborous]

I don't see how it can't be denied that advanced stats HAVE advanced. That five years ago people were making arguments using these metrics but now we are using new metrics and now the old ways are now being used with "context". But at the time, context wasn't needed, the numbers clearly showed the impact and the people who were using them were shouting down the any opposition. I can think of 2 or 3 posters that use advanced stats and if you don't "get it" then you are stupid or you are entitled to your way of thinking but it's wrong. That is the epitome of arrogance and not trying to see the other sides points.......

This is pretty much the "wages of wins" mentality. That blog and its creators have been one of the worst things to happen for the perception of the use of advanced stats in basketball.