therealbig3 wrote:acrossthecourt wrote:All that says is that Houston wasn't using him correctly, which people have been saying for a while, but you don't get imaginary credit for an alternate world where you are used correctly. Simply put, the results stand on their own, and it's admitting they did have problems on offense.
No, you should judge players based on their skillsets (their "goodness"), how easy those skills are to apply to a team situation, and how much you can elevate various team environments. Otherwise, why is anyone mentioning Kevin Garnett at this point?
And if players shouldn't be punished for bad teammates...they shouldn't be punished for bad coaching either.
The career that Hakeem Olajuwon actually had was a pretty fantastic one, where his pre-93 seasons were still fantastic, just not applied in a proper team context, because Don Chaney was kind of dumb and his teammates were coked out and inconsistent. And yeah, he made improvements as a player...but he was still a pretty fantastic player before then (pre-93 Olajuwon was basically on the same level as prime KG and prime Duncan...he was always a much more naturally gifted scorer, but he didn't read defenses the way they did...his defense was always on their level though).
So what we're seeing here are two different philosophies:
1. Rank based on what they actually did.
2. Rank based on an idea of they "would" have done.
The second philosophy itself can be broken up into many variants. I've always been pretty tolerant of it as long as it didn't ignore something a player did against himself based on mental immaturity/weakness/etc.
I personally tend to stick to a model that starts focused on (1), and only factors (2) in as a kind of sanity check. This doesn't make for the most consistent possible model, but it allows me to have something pretty consistent that if it has any inconsistency is based on something I feel strongly about.
Interestingly enough, you're mentioning Garnett here as if that has to be based on what he "would" have done, and that isn't how I see it at all. The most objective stats we have for player's actual impact say Garnett had extreme impact for a very, very long time. That alone puts him in contention not only at this point, but earlier.
The fact that Garnett's ALSO more portable than perhaps any other player we've ever seen though, does make his case even stronger.
When we speak of the what "would" have happened, there are players who would be helped if I went more in that direction.
Nash's longevity as a superstar jumps if teams simply understand him earlier.
Magic's longevity as a superstar jumps if he's simply allowed to play.
Bird's longevity as a superstar may very well have jumped if not for an injury he sustained doing manual labor in French Lick, which had nothing to do with basketball.
Wilt's longevity as a superstar jumps if he simply prioritizes helping his teams play basketball better.
The last one is the only one that I really have trouble accepting. Anything else is fair game to me, as long as people can stay consistent and really argue effectively for their thinking. The reason I refrain from going too far in this direction is because I'm skeptical I can do that. And I say this as a kind of connoisseur of ranking things, I've done it compulsively since I was a kid and literally been algorithmist for a ranking website: Sometimes I pick the more conservative approach because I know I can get something meaningful out of it, even if it's not something I call perfect.
Not saying anyone else has to, but it's basically a given that if part way through a ranking project you decide you don't know how to continue in line with what you've been doing, you're far more likely to quit and never refer back to the results again.
