Stockton Vs Nash vs Kidd

[Texas Chuck]

Baller,

Im still confused about how you conclude that:

Stack
Damp
Devin
Henderson
Terry

are more talented

than

Nash
Walker
Jamison



Not that it really matters to this discussion, but i have a need to put things into proper perspective. Dallas improved a team post-Nash because they built a team that made more sense around Dirk, not because of better overall talent. Nash alone is more talented than all those additions combined, and its not really very close. I mean you are attempting to defend Nash all over this thread yet by continuing to make this assertion, you are claiming that Damp and JET are more talented than Nash which is insane. Because Stack was not good at all, I already pointed out to you earlier that Devin was a low-minute role-player and Henderson was a role player as well.

[Baller2014]

Happy to explain.

Walker was a piece of trash. There's really no nice way to say it. He was a loser who rarely contributed anything positive to his teams, as holistically he was a cancerous egomaniac. As a 5 all his worst qualities are magnified tenfold. I know what you're thinking, "but he was the Robin on that great Celtics team who made an ECF!" Guess what? That "great" Celtics team had a 14-14 record against the West in 02, and had an SRS of 1.75. Antoine Walker was one of the many beneficiaries of a historically awful East (even worse than today), which let him appear like a serious player by putting up empty numbers on a team which wouldn't have even made the playoffs in the West. And that was their high point. Their SRS and win % v.s the West was even worse the following and previous year (it was actually a negative SRS in 03 & 01). Contrary to popular belief, the Celtics didn't really miss Walker when he left either. Their marginally worse 04 record was likely more to do with their vets like Battie and E.Will getting hurt on what was an already paper thin team (along with front office pressure to play lotto pick Marcus Banks, who sucked- plus the team had started to tune out Jim O'Brien, who usually only lasts a few years being a hardass before that happens). Come 05, with a new coach, they were back to where they had been with Walker.

Jamison, although with a better attitude and sense of team play, is cut from the same clothe as Walker. His numbers are suggestive of an impact he doesn't have, because he pads a lot on bad/weak teams. He is a horrid defender, and a one dimensional scorer.

Nash was an all-nba player on Dallas, but he wasn't being used optimally (nobody on the Mavs was, because Don Nelson had let the game overtake him, and was being very stubborn).

Dampier on the other hand was a borderline all-star 5 (not saying much at the time, but nonetheless) who could actually play like a big, something that helped the Mavs no end. Dirk hadn't had a real 5 to bang inside next to him ever really. Terry was a borderline all-star who was really underrated. I'd take him over Jamison by a good margin. Harris was a really good point guard in his youth, before the injuries and stuff. Not really worthy of the all-star team he made, but still really good. Stack was a nice vet, a solid addition. He wasn't a negative like Walker at least. Meanwhile Josh Howard, an all-star forward, improved a lot after his rookie year (and got more minutes accordingly). Don Nelson hadn't cared much for rookie Howard, who was a defensive player who didn't hit 3's well (basically a Kawhi like player. Less potential down the track, but comparable impacts in 05 v.s 14), but Avery finally started using him properly to great effect.

So we're really comparing all-NBA Nash, a player with a negligible impact on winning (Jamison), and a player with a negative impact on winning (Walker), all of whom are being badly utilised, against an all-star, a borderline faux all-star 5, 2 really good upcoming young players who would soon be all-stars, and a few solid vets, all of whom were being properly utilised. That sounds like a pretty easy comparison to me.

Those players were a clear upgrade over the existing players, especially since they were actually utilised in a sensible way (unlike the way Don Nelson utilised the roster, doing ridiculous things like playing Toine at the 5 spot).

[Texas Chuck]

We are just going to have to disagree. I guess you can call JET and Damp near all-stars--tho I wouldnt.

But you are dead wrong on Stack and Devin. Stack was brutal offensively and Devin was a low minute guy who was a decent defender, but not very effectively offensively at all.

And again any arguments about Nellie are irrelevant to the talent. I agree they were a better team. But its not due to talent. You don't lose a 2x MVP for nothing and get more talented.

And stop with the idea that Nellie didnt know what to do with Nash. I've already debunked that idea--but it was ludicrous to begin with. Nellie has his flaws as a coach, but knowing what to do with a talented guy like Nash simply isnt one of them. Nash had the ball all the time in Dallas.

[Baller2014]

Just remember. The Mavs were a 60 win team in 03 with an SRS of over 7. A huge part of the reason for dropping to 52 wins and an SRS of less than 5 was due to the horrible acquisition of Walker (and the meh acquisition of Jamison), which saw a tonne of horrible gimmick ball being played. Just by getting rid of those 2 guys, and making the Mavs play proper line-ups again, the Mavs improved a lot. It's not just Nash v.s an all-star, a faux all-star 5, a solid vet, and 2 young guys who would be go on to be all-stars (Howard within 2 years). It's Nash plus 2 other assets that have negative value to the Mavs v.s those things (plus those things now get used in a proper system, not Nellieball). Sure looks like a clear plus to me.

[G35]

It seems like we are discussing two different things and not reading what is actually being written.

You asked what effect Lebron has on a game that isn't being played...if this is important to you, you should explain your reasoning. In the context of discussing Steve Nash, I don't think Lebron has any effect. If you want to get into the minutiae everyone and everything has an effect on this world. You just can't see it.

So from what I gather when Nash creates a better shot for a shooter, it really has no effect because he is independent. Then you can predict Amare's stats because of the effect Nash had on what type of shots/looks he received.

So what are you saying? Is there an effect or isn't there? Could you predict say Kwame Brown's stats in place of Amare from 2005-2008 because you can do it for Amare? You can take this "independence" effect and accurately predict how a single player will perform?.....

From what I see here this is a really simple idea that's gotten more and more complicated over the past few posts:

You tend to judge players based on their final team results.
ElGee, as others before, pointed out this is a team game and hence there's stuff beyond the player's control.

After back & forths ElGee started going in a more abstract, academic direction to the get to the logical crux of the matter outside of basketball, to which you respond treating the questions with probably more depth than was intended because he was trying to simplify things not complicate them.

In the end what he's saying is that to justify the player = team results perspective you have to attribute every factor that went into that final result to the player in question, and then he's giving you deliberately absurd examples that you cannot possibly disagree with. Such as: When you watch SAS-OKC, you're not sitting there thinking that LeBron should be judged based on what happened in that series. And yet that result very clearly has the possibility of swaying the end results of the NBA season which will affect your opinion on LeBron. This means LeBron is only part of the story of the NBA champion, and the NBA championship is only part of the story of LeBron this year, which means you have to deal with the other parts, aka context.

I'll add in another example that I've given before:

While it makes sense to judge a player in part based on whether he made or missed one clutch shot in the NBA finals, it doesn't make sense to judge him based on whether someone else hit a shot.

So, when Ray Allen hits that key shot last year, that should have had ZERO direct impact on you opinion on LeBron. And if Allen missing that shot (which would have meant the Heat lost the finals) makes you see LeBron's standing differently, this means you're essentially allowing pure chance to determine your opinions on a player, which you should see as a problem.

Here is a misconception. If I judge players based on their team results why do I think David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone are better than Kevin Garnett? If I'm only about rings why do I think that John Stockton is the 2nd/3rd best PG ever? I don't think that you ONLY judge players based on stats or even primarily.

This the whole theory of how we learn. People want to put things in to a nice, neat category, as if everyone can only pick one of the following: visual learner, auditory learner, kinesthetic/tactile learner. Honestly, there may be a preference but you use all your senses to learn.

Many on the PC board do not believe that rings mean much, that it is arbitrary, unfair, not a true indicator of ability. That's true a ring does not make one player better, but it does show that you know what it takes to win in a team environment. Especially those that win consistently at the higher levels. I think it is far easier to perform, individually, at a high level.

There are other things on this board that I know many others do not agree with; I believe in hot streaks, being the in the zone, mojo, high's/lows, even superstitions or rituals. Can I quantify any of that? Hell no, wouldn't even try, in my mind it's like explaining a joke, if you don't get it then you don't need to get it.

I really think the arguments made here, particularly on the PC board, are more academic than realistic. It sounds plausible, even doable especially by those who are persuasive but I have yet to see anything that will convince me that winning is not the goal and the best players put that as their priority. I think we have all heard that such and such player could average a ridiculous stat line but they subjugated their personal/individual numbers for the betterment of the team. When that comes into play, then the numbers become nearly obsolete to me. Then the matter of who won takes priority.

Because if winning is not a guideline and it's a matter of how an individual performs what is the baseline for elite performance? And the difference between era's is so huge that you can't possibly, with any amount of intellectual honesty/fairness compare them. These are some quotes from posters from recent threads that caught my eye:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1325978

Small fact frog:

Russell won 27 playoff series
Jordan won 30

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1326207

I don't want to sound like a homer or look like I'm washing LBJ's balls but the impact he had on tonight's game was insane. Everytime he left the floor, San Antonio would kill Miami and the Heat have trouble scoring even with having two or three HOFers on the floor in Wade, Bosh and Ray Allen.

His defense was crazy good, scrambling all over the floor and he went off tonight too. It's just times like this where the difference between him and the rest of league is illustrated so clearly.

If we compared Lebron's impact on/off the floor compared to Nash's impact on/off the floor, it's not even a contest because of the defensive impact that Lebron brings. You can't separate that.

LeBron is the 2nd best player ever already. It's embarrassing that people seriously think guys like Bird, Magic, Kareem, etc (as great as they were) were more dominant than this guy. A 3-peat firmly entrenches him in the #2 spot of all-time.

The impact of recency is such a huge factor on these boards. When Kobe was doing his thing from 2006-2010 I saw posts like that for him. Hyperbole, yes. Same thing with Lebron, not say that Lebron doesn't deserve that conversation, because I think he does but Lebron is hot right now. Comparing Nash to Stockton is more of the fact that more people have seen Nash than Stockton and it's hard not to be affected by that.


viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1326148

There is absolutely no way losing before the finals is better than losing in the finals.

The "well, if you're team is good enough to make it, they are good enough to win it" argument is really an awful one. You could just keep going. Well if your team was good enough to make the conference finals, they should make the finals. If you're good enough to make the playoffs, you're good enough to make the 2nd round. If you're good enough to be the 9th seed, you should be good enough to make the playoffs.

This says so much about teams and if they are good enough to win it all.

It's possible for a player to improve his legacy losing in the first round and it's possible for a player to hurt his legacy winning a championship (maybe not in the eyes of a casual fan that only values a player because of his rings, but that doesn't matter. A legacy should be more than a popularity contest). It's all about context, basketball is a team sport after all.

I agree with this that it's not all about winning a ring that can improve your stature. Not everyone has the support to win a title. I don't think James Worthy is better than Dominique because he won titles with the Lakers. The bottom line is everyone has their favorites and who they perceive as the proper way to play. I think that Dr J did more than Magic/Bird did to carry his 76ers to the finals but he gets less credit than them and criticized for his shortcomings more than either of them. Put Magic or Bird on those Sixer teams, give Doc Parish/McHale or Kareem/Worthy and I guarantee he would be seen as a top 10 player easily.

The player that I see as the poster child for why winning matters is Hakeem. He is as good as people describe him but he wasn't seen that way at all until after he won those two titles. Magic, Bird, Barkley, Robinson, and some years Ewing, or Karl Malone were seen as better players. He was labeled a malcontent and his team went out in the first rd four straight years and then missed the playoff's altogether. What changed his reputation?

It certainly wasn't leading a dominant team. Those Rockets teams did not dominate in the playoff's, several times nearly getting eliminated in the playoff's. Hakeem's reputation is not enhanced for his individualism, it's because the Rockets won back to back titles. Those teams had really no business winning any titles for any familiar with the NBA. Seattle should have won in 1994 and the Rockets were a 6th seed in 1995 and should have lost to Utah and Phoenix. If Hakeem would have put up the exact same numbers he did but lost in the 2nd rd, he is a footnote, battling with Ewing and Robinson in the all time rankings. Winning secured his position......

[Doctor MJ]

Here is a misconception. If I judge players based on their team results why do I think David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone are better than Kevin Garnett? If I'm only about rings why do I think that John Stockton is the 2nd/3rd best PG ever? I don't think that you ONLY judge players based on stats or even primarily.

We wouldn't be spending the time hammering in the importance of player vs team independence in winning if you were one of the ones who truly only counted rings. Nonetheless there are times when you use the fact that a guy finishes 2nd as some manner of statement to imply he simply couldn't finish 1st, and this thinking is falling prey to the same fallacies that you're well aware are absurd when they come from simpler analysts.

There are other things on this board that I know many others do not agree with; I believe in hot streaks, being the in the zone, mojo, high's/lows, even superstitions or rituals. Can I quantify any of that? Hell no, wouldn't even try, in my mind it's like explaining a joke, if you don't get it then you don't need to get it.

ftr, I completely agree that things like being in the zone exist. While there are some statistical fundamentalists who don't believe in it, really all the data says in general is that we can't find evidence of it, which may be do to other confounding factors. In the case of NBA scorers, the obvious answer is that when guys go in to heat check mode, they tend to take dumber and dumber shots due to an overconfidence that trumps even their in-zone fine motor skills.

I really think the arguments made here, particularly on the PC board, are more academic than realistic. It sounds plausible, even doable especially by those who are persuasive but I have yet to see anything that will convince me that winning is not the goal and the best players put that as their priority. I think we have all heard that such and such player could average a ridiculous stat line but they subjugated their personal/individual numbers for the betterment of the team. When that comes into play, then the numbers become nearly obsolete to me. Then the matter of who won takes priority.

It's not that winning is not the goal, it's that the end win/lose is too coarse a metric to be able to tell the whole story so we look for more fine grain metrics that measure things that clearly lead to winning.

If a player always makes his team do well when he plays, and they always struggle without him, how can you say that his play is not contributing toward the end goal?

If we compared Lebron's impact on/off the floor compared to Nash's impact on/off the floor, it's not even a contest because of the defensive impact that Lebron brings. You can't separate that.

You can't definitively separate the two things, but you can get a pretty good sense of the distinction.

Anyway, to what end do you object here? If the debate is who the more valuable player is, we all agree it's LeBron. If the debate is who the more valuable offensive player, all you've stated here is a right to abstain from the discussion, which no one ever denied anyone.

LeBron is the 2nd best player ever already. It's embarrassing that people seriously think guys like Bird, Magic, Kareem, etc (as great as they were) were more dominant than this guy. A 3-peat firmly entrenches him in the #2 spot of all-time.

The impact of recency is such a huge factor on these boards. When Kobe was doing his thing from 2006-2010 I saw posts like that for him. Hyperbole, yes. Same thing with Lebron, not say that Lebron doesn't deserve that conversation, because I think he does but Lebron is hot right now. Comparing Nash to Stockton is more of the fact that more people have seen Nash than Stockton and it's hard not to be affected by that.

That's certainly a real factor, and the poster here is silly.

Not really sure where you're going with it though. You appear to be making an analogy where '06-10 Kobe is "old" but '06-10 Nash is "new". Pretty clearly breaks down. If though you want to say that you believe that playing in an earlier era hurts perception of Stockton relative to Nash, there's certainly a case to be made for that.

There is absolutely no way losing before the finals is better than losing in the finals.

The "well, if you're team is good enough to make it, they are good enough to win it" argument is really an awful one. You could just keep going. Well if your team was good enough to make the conference finals, they should make the finals. If you're good enough to make the playoffs, you're good enough to make the 2nd round. If you're good enough to be the 9th seed, you should be good enough to make the playoffs.

This says so much about teams and if they are good enough to win it all.

You're losing me here. The poster is clearly saying something entirely correct, but what does it have to do with what we're talking about?

The player that I see as the poster child for why winning matters is Hakeem. He is as good as people describe him but he wasn't seen that way at all until after he won those two titles. Magic, Bird, Barkley, Robinson, and some years Ewing, or Karl Malone were seen as better players. He was labeled a malcontent and his team went out in the first rd four straight years and then missed the playoff's altogether. What changed his reputation?

It certainly wasn't leading a dominant team. Those Rockets teams did not dominate in the playoff's, several times nearly getting eliminated in the playoff's. Hakeem's reputation is not enhanced for his individualism, it's because the Rockets won back to back titles. Those teams had really no business winning any titles for any familiar with the NBA. Seattle should have won in 1994 and the Rockets were a 6th seed in 1995 and should have lost to Utah and Phoenix. If Hakeem would have put up the exact same numbers he did but lost in the 2nd rd, he is a footnote, battling with Ewing and Robinson in the all time rankings. Winning secured his position......

Everything you talk about here has you accepting other people's opinions as the fundamental truth. Winning is evidently important to you because you think it's important to "other people".

I'd say fundamentally everyone needs to be coming at things from a perspective of having faith in their ability to directly judge a player rather than polling the drunks at a bar. Sure Hakeem playing great on his way to finals should help people's opinions of him, but to the extent that people see Hakeem totally differently because his team ended up barely beating the Knicks that's ludicrous. I understand that that's how crowds work, but it's up to an analyst to be the one setting the course not following in the wake of others.

[Rapcity_11]

I have yet to see anything that will convince me that winning is not the goal.

Nobody is trying to convince you of that.

[Baller2014]

Team results can help indicate player value. IF a player spends his career posting big stats on a bad team (like Cousins) I'd want explanations as to why, that's for sure. But you're way too obsessed with them G35, and worse, you're obsessed with arbitrary success. In your mind it's not "did the star carry the team to huge success", it's arbitrary, circumstance based success like "did he make the finals" or "did he win a ring". Someone could be the 2nd best player all-time, but if they always have to face the best player in the conference finals then they aren't going to be doing those things (not if the two players have equal teams anyway). Your constant refusal to recognise obvious flaws like this, and moderate your argument, has been the most tiring aspect of this thread. I've asked you simple questions a dozen times to get to the heart of it, and you just ignore them rather than admit you could be wrong.

[ElGee]

It seems like we are discussing two different things and not reading what is actually being written.

You asked what effect Lebron has on a game that isn't being played...if this is important to you, you should explain your reasoning. In the context of discussing Steve Nash, I don't think Lebron has any effect. If you want to get into the minutiae everyone and everything has an effect on this world. You just can't see it.

So from what I gather when Nash creates a better shot for a shooter, it really has no effect because he is independent. Then you can predict Amare's stats because of the effect Nash had on what type of shots/looks he received.

So what are you saying? Is there an effect or isn't there? Could you predict say Kwame Brown's stats in place of Amare from 2005-2008 because you can do it for Amare? You can take this "independence" effect and accurately predict how a single player will perform?.....

From what I see here this is a really simple idea that's gotten more and more complicated over the past few posts:

You tend to judge players based on their final team results.
ElGee, as others before, pointed out this is a team game and hence there's stuff beyond the player's control.

After back & forths ElGee started going in a more abstract, academic direction to the get to the logical crux of the matter outside of basketball, to which you respond treating the questions with probably more depth than was intended because he was trying to simplify things not complicate them.

In the end what he's saying is that to justify the player = team results perspective you have to attribute every factor that went into that final result to the player in question, and then he's giving you deliberately absurd examples that you cannot possibly disagree with. Such as: When you watch SAS-OKC, you're not sitting there thinking that LeBron should be judged based on what happened in that series. And yet that result very clearly has the possibility of swaying the end results of the NBA season which will affect your opinion on LeBron. This means LeBron is only part of the story of the NBA champion, and the NBA championship is only part of the story of LeBron this year, which means you have to deal with the other parts, aka context.

I'll add in another example that I've given before:

While it makes sense to judge a player in part based on whether he made or missed one clutch shot in the NBA finals, it doesn't make sense to judge him based on whether someone else hit a shot.

So, when Ray Allen hits that key shot last year, that should have had ZERO direct impact on you opinion on LeBron. And if Allen missing that shot (which would have meant the Heat lost the finals) makes you see LeBron's standing differently, this means you're essentially allowing pure chance to determine your opinions on a player, which you should see as a problem.

Here is a misconception. If I judge players based on their team results why do I think David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone are better than Kevin Garnett? If I'm only about rings why do I think that John Stockton is the 2nd/3rd best PG ever? I don't think that you ONLY judge players based on stats or even primarily.

Premise A: To judge players based ONLY on rings
Premise B: To use rings as some component in judging players

Perhaps I haven't been clear here. The discussion we've been having here (and in the past) is NOT about Premise A. I've never thought you think Horry > Jordan. It's about Premise B. These are two entirely different things.

I really think the arguments made here, particularly on the PC board, are more academic than realistic. It sounds plausible, even doable especially by those who are persuasive

What we're talking about is individual player analysis, not playing sports. If I were to provide analysis for success to players in scouting reports (did this in HS) I would provide them completely different reports." The "doing" in our case would be testing the description/prediction accuracy of our analytical outcomes. Outside of the testing, the analysis isn't just theory but it's applied by scouts, GM's, coaches, players, etc. and has been for decades, and the reason why analytics and scientific-level analysis has a one-directional lifespan in sports and every other field (no one goes from analytics to NO analytics, only the other way around) is because the method always improves description/prediction.

I have yet to see anything that will convince me that winning is not the goal and the best players put that as their priority. I think we have all heard that such and such player could average a ridiculous stat line but they subjugated their personal/individual numbers for the betterment of the team. When that comes into play, then the numbers become nearly obsolete to me. Then the matter of who won takes priority.

Winning is the goal -- as Rapcity said, no one has ever tried to convince you of that because we all agree. You're just confounding individual performance with the team winning, which was where we started this sidebar in this thread and gots into independence...