bastillon wrote:this debate has been a waste of time. arguments of Moses backers are nothing new to this board.
Indeed. The most interesting responses to me are those which are saying that Moses Malone scored points and grabbed rebounds when the question at hand was actually which skills did Moses Malone possess to make an impact beyond the boxscore stats. And those responses usually go hand in hand with the accusation that someone like me describing the skills of players would only look at the boxscore. Such responses aren't making any sense at all.
If someone really watched Moses Malone play, he noticed that there wasn't impact beyond the boxscore stats offensively, while he had a negative impact defensively. And that can been seen by looking at his skillset and how he used that skillset in typical situations on the court. But I think that is not what those people want to see; their judgement is compromised, because Malone was working hard and therefore should be given more respect than someone making a similar impact with just his better talent. And that's why Malone was getting those MVP awards, because the voters had actually more respect for the work ethic than actually really evaluating a player's impact.
Yes, Malone was clearly better than average, his work paid off by him making an overall positive impact to the game results. Nobody is disputing that; his work on the offensive glass helped his team to be better offensively, and his overall offensive impact exceeded his defensive shortcomings. But he wasn't an offensive genius, who made everyone else better around him by either moving well, presenting incredible spacing (and contrarily to popular belief, spacing was important in the 70's and 80's as well) or making the tough passes to open teammates.
In comparison, Garnett wasn't an offensive genius either, but beyond his scoring he was able to set up teammates with the right passes, he was able to move in the right positions and settings the screens for the penetrating guards or cutting guards/forwards and he provided better spacing than an average PF due to his ability to move into the position and even hit the long midrange shot on a consistent basis. We know that, we all seen that happening on the court, and the results with Garnett proved that his impact on the offensive end is bigger than by just going by his points scored.
In the end, we see two different players offensively making a similar offensive impact. They used their different skillset to help the teams they played for offensively. If someone want to dispute that, he should back that up with real evidence, not just some sort of generalizations or blindly citing unadjusted PPG numbers.
So, and then we have the defensive end. Is there even one single person out there disputing the fact that Malone did not help his team defensively at all, in fact making those teams play worse defense in average with him than without him? And then, is there somebody out there disputing the fact that Garnett actually improved the defensive play of the teams by being one of the best help and team defenders out there? We know that Garnett made a positive impact on the defensive end; helping his team to achieve much better defense with him than without him. We know that Garnett was clearly a better than average man defender, having defensive range going from close to low post to the perimeter, being able to cover both offensive players in a p&r set with his length and agility. Those things are facts, and it showed up in the defensive results of his teams when Garnett was on the court.
Now we add both together (offense and defense) and adding the synergy effects of better offense and better defense as well. The only conclusion we can draw from that: Garnett made a bigger overall impact to the game. And someone doesn't need to be a Garnett "fanboy" to draw that conclusion; someone just needs to be an objective observer.
