What is the argument against Chris Paul in the top 20?

[mysticOscar]

People do not understand that winners display their floors - min required to seal the win. Duncan with his effort and stats was able to deliver 5 championships to SA. If more effort was needed for those wins, his stats could have been better.
On the other hand, as harsh as it sounds, losers display their ceilings - As great as Melo/CP3/Harden/TMac were, their best efforts in their best years with multiple tries were not enough to carry their respective teams even to the finals.
Those who want to completely ignore/marginalize team success in evaluating basketball players should watch tennis (singles) or golf.

People don't want to marginalize team success in evaluating basketball players, they just want to measure impact upon team success and realize that there are 10 players on the court at once. It is reasonable to disagree on how to do this (the most favored presently tend to be the impact family of stats looking at on and off court team points differential and usually attempting to mitigate for context). it is unreasonable to argue that team (and even more so, binary title vs non-title) is a good measure of player performance. To do so consistently you must favor the former team to the latter

Team titles (with more than one team (so it isn't just playing with MJ or whoever - not that such context is required by a ring counting method)
Charles Johnson ('75, '78 champ)
Steve Kerr ('96, '97, '98, '99, '03)
Robert Horry ('94, '95, '00, '01, '02, '05, '07)
John Salley ('89, '90, '96, '00)
James Edwards ('89, '90, '96)

bench
Will Perdue ('91, '92, '93, '99)
Slater Martin ('50, '52, '53, '54, '58)
Pep Saul ('51, '52, '53, '54)
Gerald Henderson ('81, '84, '90)
Ron Harper ('96, '97, '98, '00, '01)
James Jones ('12, '13, '16)
Lindsey Hunter (’02, ’04)
Wally Walker (Trail Blazers ’77, Supersonics ’79)
Jack Coleman (Rochester ’51, St Louis ’58)
Walt Davis (Philadelphia ’56, St Louis ’58)
Earl Cureton (Philadelphia ’83, Houston ’94)

(we could, if desired, thicken out this squad by allowing ABA champs
Bill Melchionni (once NBA '67 76ers, '74 and '76 Nets)
Jim Eakins ('69 Oaks, '76 Nets)
Ted McClain ('75 Colonels, '76 Nets))

Team "Numbers"/no titles (I'll limit myself to non-active players, including leaving Paul off the board)
John Stockton
Reggie Miller
Elgin Baylor*
Karl Malone
Patrick Ewing

bench
Charles Barkley
George Gervin
Bob Lanier
Tracy McGrady
Steve Nash
Dominique Wilkins

* = (going with what seems to be basketball history canon here, technically he did get a ring for '72 - could sub in Barkley and bring, say, Alex English onto the bench if necessary).

Also the implication that Duncan was half-assing it during his title runs (presumably retro-actively having known he would win and therefore time-travelling back and telling his past self to save effort) and doing the very least (his floor) that he needed to do is hysterical. Some people often call specific player rankings "an insult" or "disrespectful" to the player on here, too often for my taste, but I'll put it this way I wouldn't want to tell him to his face that he wasn't giving his best effort.

Dont get your point. This is to argue whether CP3 can be in top 20 atg, not he better than Ron Harper or not. In order to compare with atg, you are looking at folks that delivered actual wins in addition to stellar "numbers", such as Duncan, Dream, Bird, Dirk, and Kobe.

His strawmanning the argument for fans that like to have winning as part of there formula for ranking atg. Funny thing is he can't see it

[Dr Positivity]

Paul has a much higher peak than Stockton. Not only that, but you could take 9 seasons of CP3 above the best season of Stockton. Now, if you care about the fact that Paul missed about 20 games in like 4 of those seasons + he had untimely injuries sometimes in crucial moments of the playoffs... that's fine. You could argue Stockton is better based on his durability, but let's not pretend they are in the same realm as players... Nothing suggests that. Same goes for Pippen and Ewing. CP3 has a demonstrably higher peak and multiple seasons above these guys best. The difference in offensive impact is staggering to say the least.

Then we have Wade, who you could argue was a better player than Paul at his peak, but the gap in peak would need to be significant (and it's not) to offset Paul simply having more prime seasons. Wade was even more injury prone than Paul. Not only that, but Wade fell off significantly from 2011 to 2012, and then even more from 2012 to 2014, and then he was merely an average player until he retired at 37 years of age. Paul is 34 now and still playing like an all-star.

Nash only argument is RAPM. If you strongly factor in that above all else, then fine, but otherwise there's a lot of reason out there to think Paul was a better player than Nash in their primes. Considering the humongous difference in defensive level between the two, i just don't buy that it's possible Nash was literally tiers above Paul as an offensive player... How would that even be possible? Paul is actually comparable to Nash in terms of AST%, and he comes ahead in TO and scoring... WHERE IS NASH getting all this impact? They played a similar role even... It's not like Nash was playing like Curry. To me, it has to be some weird mix of Phoenix just being ahead of their time. The mid 00's was an era of slow-paced defensive basketball and the Suns just happened to have the perfect player and cast to run up the offensive numbers in a time where the league had no idea what they were doing.

None of Stockton, Wade or Nash made the top 20 of the last RealGM top 100, and that’s a top 20 without Durant or Curry, so I’m not going to go into huge detail over it. For Stockton the argument would be longevity + not being *that* much worse than Clippers Paul (some of the same weaknesses, in my opinion), Wade it would be valuing higher peak if you think he’s quite a bit better duet o the playoff performances, and Nash is a far more empowering leader

Karl Malone has a huge advantage over Paul in longevity, and he was one of the best players in the league for very very long during his career. But if we take a look at strictly their level as player, Paul is simply the better player at their peaks, and he proved that multiple times, including translating his impact into the postseason while Malone is notorious for struggling in multiple runs during his career.

What makes you so confident Paul was simply the better player at his peak? Malone is the one with the MVPs, and his boxscore stats are equally eye popping to peak Hornets Paul, and probably moreso than Clippers version. We don’t have that great of +/- information on Malone.

The NBA version of Dr.J definitely wasn't better than Paul. Paul got multiple years better than what Erving displayed in the early 80's...Not to mention Dr.J was struggling in the postseason in those years too. How does he not get killed for disappointing in the Plaoyyfs, but when Paul is the best player in a series that his team loses he gets all the blame. Funny how that works. Purely agenda driven, can't be anything else. You'd need to be really high on those 3 ABA seasons for Dr.J to claim he's a better player than Paul... Paul has a comparable amount of Win Shares but played 10k less career minutes.

Again, why can’t the NBA version of Dr J be as good as Paul or better? In 1980 for example he put up a pretty impressive 27, 7 and 5 and 2 steals. He led the league in BPM in 1980 and 1981 and WS/48 in 1981 and 1982. He won an MVP. He was a legit superstar in the NBA, to say nothing of his ABA seasons.

Who else is there? Oscar? CP3 comes above in numerous stats in both RS and PS... Hard to say who was better since Oscar played 60 years ago and there's limited footage and stats. All we know is he didn't win squat without joining one of the greatest teams of all-time with peak Kareem. Big deal. That's like if Paul teamed up with LeBron in 2011...

I am one of the few to have Oscar out of my top 20 so I’m not going to argue with you there. The argument for him would be that he is a higher end scoring talent than Paul due to his size/shot creating.

Same goes for Jerry West. What did he win in his prime? Nothing. He's got no MVP's... He won 1 Finals MVP in a series he lost. LMAO. That says it all. They wouldn't do that today if you averaged 50/10/10 in the Finals. Ironically he got one title a couple of seasons before his retirement probably playing some of the worst playoff basketball in his career.

West is one of the best playoff performers of all time and his best regular seasons are as good boxscore wise as Paul’s. So I would need more arguing to believe Paul should be above him

For Malone, Dr. J and West all of them are better teammates/leaders than Paul in my opinion

[HeartBreakKid]

What makes you so confident Paul was simply the better player at his peak? Malone is the one with the MVPs, and his boxscore stats are equally eye popping to peak Hornets Paul, and probably moreso than Clippers version. We don’t have that great of +/- information on Malone.

What way are you looking at the stats?

CP3's playoff stats are way better than Karl Malone's. Karl Malone really has bad playoff stats for a 1st ballot hofer, to be frank.

Karl Malone really only has one objective advantage and that's longevity (MVP's are not objective) - and that's the same advantage he has over everyone else, just by different degrees.


Compare their scoring in the post season. CP3 has a lot more positive scoring seasons than K Malone, significantly so.

West is one of the best playoff performers of all time and his best regular seasons are as good boxscore wise as Paul’s. So I would need more arguing to believe Paul should be above him

For Malone, Dr. J and West all of them are better teammates/leaders than Paul in my opinion

So is CP3. Jerry West' career is just validated because he ended up with a ring and he played in an era where people were not over critical of not having a ring. He also played in an easy conference where he didn't have to win a lot of games to make the finals, quite the oppoiste of CP3's situation. Heck, Jerry West was just as injufry prone.

All the great things you can say about jerry west, people would ignore if he had went ringless or wasn't the logo. it's very easy to call players losers when they haven't won a championship.

[dygaction]

What makes you so confident Paul was simply the better player at his peak? Malone is the one with the MVPs, and his boxscore stats are equally eye popping to peak Hornets Paul, and probably moreso than Clippers version. We don’t have that great of +/- information on Malone.

What way are you looking at the stats?

CP3's playoff stats are way better than Karl Malone's. Karl Malone really has bad playoff stats for a 1st ballot hofer, to be frank.

Karl Malone really only has one objective advantage and that's longevity (MVP's are not objective) - and that's the same advantage he has over everyone else, just by different degrees.


Compare their scoring in the post season. CP3 has a lot more positive scoring seasons than K Malone, significantly so.

West is one of the best playoff performers of all time and his best regular seasons are as good boxscore wise as Paul’s. So I would need more arguing to believe Paul should be above him

For Malone, Dr. J and West all of them are better teammates/leaders than Paul in my opinion

So is CP3. Jerry West' career is just validated because he ended up with a ring and he played in an era where people were not over critical of not having a ring. He also played in an easy conference where he didn't have to win a lot of games to make the finals, quite the oppoiste of CP3's situation. Heck, Jerry West was just as injufry prone.

All the great things you can say about jerry west, people would ignore if he had went ringless or wasn't the logo. it's very easy to call players losers when they haven't won a championship.

This is ridiculous. Karl Malone played in western conference finals 6 times and Finals twice, while CP3 never got out of the second round as the leader for his entire career. He has NO GROUND to discuss playoff performance with Karl Malone. For CP3, maybe better look at what he could have done to find his 1A like Stockton did.

[Owly]

People do not understand that winners display their floors - min required to seal the win. Duncan with his effort and stats was able to deliver 5 championships to SA. If more effort was needed for those wins, his stats could have been better.
On the other hand, as harsh as it sounds, losers display their ceilings - As great as Melo/CP3/Harden/TMac were, their best efforts in their best years with multiple tries were not enough to carry their respective teams even to the finals.
Those who want to completely ignore/marginalize team success in evaluating basketball players should watch tennis (singles) or golf.

People don't want to marginalize team success in evaluating basketball players, they just want to measure impact upon team success and realize that there are 10 players on the court at once. It is reasonable to disagree on how to do this (the most favored presently tend to be the impact family of stats looking at on and off court team points differential and usually attempting to mitigate for context). it is unreasonable to argue that team (and even more so, binary title vs non-title) is a good measure of player performance. To do so consistently you must favor the former team to the latter

Team titles (with more than one team (so it isn't just playing with MJ or whoever - not that such context is required by a ring counting method)
Charles Johnson ('75, '78 champ)
Steve Kerr ('96, '97, '98, '99, '03)
Robert Horry ('94, '95, '00, '01, '02, '05, '07)
John Salley ('89, '90, '96, '00)
James Edwards ('89, '90, '96)

bench
Will Perdue ('91, '92, '93, '99)
Slater Martin ('50, '52, '53, '54, '58)
Pep Saul ('51, '52, '53, '54)
Gerald Henderson ('81, '84, '90)
Ron Harper ('96, '97, '98, '00, '01)
James Jones ('12, '13, '16)
Lindsey Hunter (’02, ’04)
Wally Walker (Trail Blazers ’77, Supersonics ’79)
Jack Coleman (Rochester ’51, St Louis ’58)
Walt Davis (Philadelphia ’56, St Louis ’58)
Earl Cureton (Philadelphia ’83, Houston ’94)

(we could, if desired, thicken out this squad by allowing ABA champs
Bill Melchionni (once NBA '67 76ers, '74 and '76 Nets)
Jim Eakins ('69 Oaks, '76 Nets)
Ted McClain ('75 Colonels, '76 Nets))

Team "Numbers"/no titles (I'll limit myself to non-active players, including leaving Paul off the board)
John Stockton
Reggie Miller
Elgin Baylor*
Karl Malone
Patrick Ewing

bench
Charles Barkley
George Gervin
Bob Lanier
Tracy McGrady
Steve Nash
Dominique Wilkins

* = (going with what seems to be basketball history canon here, technically he did get a ring for '72 - could sub in Barkley and bring, say, Alex English onto the bench if necessary).

Also the implication that Duncan was half-assing it during his title runs (presumably retro-actively having known he would win and therefore time-travelling back and telling his past self to save effort) and doing the very least (his floor) that he needed to do is hysterical. Some people often call specific player rankings "an insult" or "disrespectful" to the player on here, too often for my taste, but I'll put it this way I wouldn't want to tell him to his face that he wasn't giving his best effort.

Dont get your point. This is to argue whether CP3 can be in top 20 atg, not he better than Ron Harper or not. In order to compare with atg, you are looking at folks that delivered actual wins in addition to stellar "numbers", such as Duncan, Dream, Bird, Dirk, and Kobe.

The point is "winning" is either a viable criteria or not. If you've got good criteria to get to compiling a list of all time greats then why not look closer at those criteria to sort it. Rather than suddenly chucking in "winning" which as stated ranks the former team as infinitely better. And the answer is ...

[Owly]

Where does he say he ranks players based on just rings? Your putting ur own spin on it to draw ur own narrative / agenda. Reasonable reader would just translate that post that he takes winning as being important in evaluating a player. Which to me is a reasonable stance in a competitive sport.

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

How is RAPM "just as impacted by different variables" as "winning", however you choose to define that.

And whilst we're both assuming a subtext in the prior post - saying "statistics" (in general, which in a case against Paul is necessarily including impact metrics) measure what type of loser you are if don't "win" (by whatever meaning you take it to have) isn't a reasonable stance and could certainly plausibly read as a version of ring counting.

So PLEASE provide rapm for all players going back to Russell and Wilt

Please make up numbers for me .... why??

RAPM is a stat. To suggest otherwise is bizarre. To suggest that it is ineligible for use because it wasn't available in early NBA seasons is even more bizzare, and would limit you to points, assists, fg% (attempts and makes), ft% (attempts and makes) and fouls. No rebounds. Sorry if you don't have Joe Fulk's full rebounding data you can't use it to compare ANY other players. Is that the logic?

if that is what how u define it ranking?

This doesn't make any sense {ESL?].

[Owly]

People don't want to marginalize team success in evaluating basketball players, they just want to measure impact upon team success and realize that there are 10 players on the court at once. It is reasonable to disagree on how to do this (the most favored presently tend to be the impact family of stats looking at on and off court team points differential and usually attempting to mitigate for context). it is unreasonable to argue that team (and even more so, binary title vs non-title) is a good measure of player performance. To do so consistently you must favor the former team to the latter

Team titles (with more than one team (so it isn't just playing with MJ or whoever - not that such context is required by a ring counting method)
Charles Johnson ('75, '78 champ)
Steve Kerr ('96, '97, '98, '99, '03)
Robert Horry ('94, '95, '00, '01, '02, '05, '07)
John Salley ('89, '90, '96, '00)
James Edwards ('89, '90, '96)

bench
Will Perdue ('91, '92, '93, '99)
Slater Martin ('50, '52, '53, '54, '58)
Pep Saul ('51, '52, '53, '54)
Gerald Henderson ('81, '84, '90)
Ron Harper ('96, '97, '98, '00, '01)
James Jones ('12, '13, '16)
Lindsey Hunter (’02, ’04)
Wally Walker (Trail Blazers ’77, Supersonics ’79)
Jack Coleman (Rochester ’51, St Louis ’58)
Walt Davis (Philadelphia ’56, St Louis ’58)
Earl Cureton (Philadelphia ’83, Houston ’94)

(we could, if desired, thicken out this squad by allowing ABA champs
Bill Melchionni (once NBA '67 76ers, '74 and '76 Nets)
Jim Eakins ('69 Oaks, '76 Nets)
Ted McClain ('75 Colonels, '76 Nets))

Team "Numbers"/no titles (I'll limit myself to non-active players, including leaving Paul off the board)
John Stockton
Reggie Miller
Elgin Baylor*
Karl Malone
Patrick Ewing

bench
Charles Barkley
George Gervin
Bob Lanier
Tracy McGrady
Steve Nash
Dominique Wilkins

* = (going with what seems to be basketball history canon here, technically he did get a ring for '72 - could sub in Barkley and bring, say, Alex English onto the bench if necessary).

Also the implication that Duncan was half-assing it during his title runs (presumably retro-actively having known he would win and therefore time-travelling back and telling his past self to save effort) and doing the very least (his floor) that he needed to do is hysterical. Some people often call specific player rankings "an insult" or "disrespectful" to the player on here, too often for my taste, but I'll put it this way I wouldn't want to tell him to his face that he wasn't giving his best effort.

Dont get your point. This is to argue whether CP3 can be in top 20 atg, not he better than Ron Harper or not. In order to compare with atg, you are looking at folks that delivered actual wins in addition to stellar "numbers", such as Duncan, Dream, Bird, Dirk, and Kobe.

His strawmanning the argument for fans that like to have winning as part of there formula for ranking atg. Funny thing is he can't see it

This is awfully rich jumping on a conversation thread that you weren't a part of to take such a shot given you just said

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

And when questioned about it it didn't back it up and requested RAPM for the 60s, as though it had anywhere claimed to be possible and has any relevance to the question.

Note here that such strawman tactics distract from the fact that if RAPM somehow wasn't intended to be included in your definition of "stats" (because it isn't available for all players?) it's pretty unclear what you think it is.

[mysticOscar]

How is RAPM "just as impacted by different variables" as "winning", however you choose to define that.

And whilst we're both assuming a subtext in the prior post - saying "statistics" (in general, which in a case against Paul is necessarily including impact metrics) measure what type of loser you are if don't "win" (by whatever meaning you take it to have) isn't a reasonable stance and could certainly plausibly read as a version of ring counting.

So PLEASE provide rapm for all players going back to Russell and Wilt

Please make up numbers for me .... why??

RAPM is a stat. To suggest otherwise is bizarre. To suggest that it is ineligible for use because it wasn't available in early NBA seasons is even more bizzare, and would limit you to points, assists, fg% (attempts and makes), ft% (attempts and makes) and fouls. No rebounds. Sorry if you don't have Joe Fulk's full rebounding data you can't use it to compare ANY other players. Is that the logic?

Because if ur gonna weigh rapm stat on ur ranking...this thread is about ranking CP3 in top 20 atg...then I would have assumed that somehow u have play by play stats going back all the way to Kareem and Wilt? also u mentioning about other stats not being available really doesnt help ur cause does it? Not sure why ur turning it on me, when im the one saying that player stats is not the only analysis that should be used when determing goat ranking.

[mysticOscar]

Dont get your point. This is to argue whether CP3 can be in top 20 atg, not he better than Ron Harper or not. In order to compare with atg, you are looking at folks that delivered actual wins in addition to stellar "numbers", such as Duncan, Dream, Bird, Dirk, and Kobe.

His strawmanning the argument for fans that like to have winning as part of there formula for ranking atg. Funny thing is he can't see it

This is awfully rich jumping on a conversation thread that you weren't a part of to take such a shot given you just said

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

And when questioned about it it didn't back it up and requested RAPM for the 60s, as though it had anywhere claimed to be possible and has any relevance to the question.

Note here that such strawman tactics distract from the fact that if RAPM somehow wasn't intended to be included in your definition of "stats" (because it isn't available for all players?) it's pretty unclear what you think it is.

I jumped on it because the convo was highly relevant to our other conversation. Your post just shows your lack of understanding from posters (or perhaps chose to ignore and instead defaulted to strawmanning) the point that winning and championships are important when assessing atg rankings.

Rapm is good data point, but what's the point in highly relying on it when it's only relevant to players in the past 20 years? Also rapm has it's limitations such as, doesn't take into account the role of players, the systems they run, the different combinations that has not been played, how a player performed in crucial moments in crucial games etc...

Usually the available stats we have is just an indicator of how probable a player is at winning championships.....I'm gonna rank a player higher who shows to have good stats backed up by championships rather than a player who have the stats but have nothing to show for it.

Again not taking championships into consideration misses the end game of the atg players in the league...And that is to win championships

[Sign5]

Guys... it's very simple.

The argument for Paul in the top 20 is that there weren't 20 players in NBA history who had a better/longer peak & prime than him, both in terms of level of play and the consistency of which he performed. In the regular season and postseason alike.

Y'all can keep listing a bunch of titles and narrative driven awards but it doesn't matter.

Y'all can keep listing a bunch of names based on above criteria, but most evidence outside of team accomplishment and narratives will favor CP3 at the end of the day.

LeBron, Jordan, Kareem, Russell, Shaq, Wilt, Hakeem, Garnett, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Dirk, West, Oscar, Duncan, Robinson, Dr. J, K. Malone. That’s 18, still not counting Nash, Wade, Barkley, Ewing, Pippen, Stockton...

Paul has a much higher peak than Stockton. Not only that, but you could take 9 seasons of CP3 above the best season of Stockton. Now, if you care about the fact that Paul missed about 20 games in like 4 of those seasons + he had untimely injuries sometimes in crucial moments of the playoffs... that's fine. You could argue Stockton is better based on his durability, but let's not pretend they are in the same realm as players... Nothing suggests that. Same goes for Pippen and Ewing. CP3 has a demonstrably higher peak and multiple seasons above these guys best. The difference in offensive impact is staggering to say the least.

Then we have Wade, who you could argue was a better player than Paul at his peak, but the gap in peak would need to be significant (and it's not) to offset Paul simply having more prime seasons. Wade was even more injury prone than Paul. Not only that, but Wade fell off significantly from 2011 to 2012, and then even more from 2012 to 2014, and then he was merely an average player until he retired at 37 years of age. Paul is 34 now and still playing like an all-star.

Nash only argument is RAPM. If you strongly factor in that above all else, then fine, but otherwise there's a lot of reason out there to think Paul was a better player than Nash in their primes. Considering the humongous difference in defensive level between the two, i just don't buy that it's possible Nash was literally tiers above Paul as an offensive player... How would that even be possible? Paul is actually comparable to Nash in terms of AST%, and he comes ahead in TO and scoring... WHERE IS NASH getting all this impact? They played a similar role even... It's not like Nash was playing like Curry. To me, it has to be some weird mix of Phoenix just being ahead of their time. The mid 00's was an era of slow-paced defensive basketball and the Suns just happened to have the perfect player and cast to run up the offensive numbers in a time where the league had no idea what they were doing.

Karl Malone has a huge advantage over Paul in longevity, and he was one of the best players in the league for very very long during his career. But if we take a look at strictly their level as player, Paul is simply the better player at their peaks, and he proved that multiple times, including translating his impact into the postseason while Malone is notorious for struggling in multiple runs during his career.

The NBA version of Dr.J definitely wasn't better than Paul. Paul got multiple years better than what Erving displayed in the early 80's...Not to mention Dr.J was struggling in the postseason in those years too. How does he not get killed for disappointing in the Plaoyyfs, but when Paul is the best player in a series that his team loses he gets all the blame. Funny how that works. Purely agenda driven, can't be anything else. You'd need to be really high on those 3 ABA seasons for Dr.J to claim he's a better player than Paul... Paul has a comparable amount of Win Shares but played 10k less career minutes.

Who else is there? Oscar? CP3 comes above in numerous stats in both RS and PS... Hard to say who was better since Oscar played 60 years ago and there's limited footage and stats. All we know is he didn't win squat without joining one of the greatest teams of all-time with peak Kareem. Big deal. That's like if Paul teamed up with LeBron in 2011...

Same goes for Jerry West. What did he win in his prime? Nothing. He's got no MVP's... He won 1 Finals MVP in a series he lost. LMAO. That says it all. They wouldn't do that today if you averaged 50/10/10 in the Finals. Ironically he got one title a couple of seasons before his retirement probably playing some of the worst playoff basketball in his career.

So this puts Paul firmly in the Top 20 debate... And there's still players we can argue with. I don't see anything telling me Kobe was better than CP3. Paul smokes him in advance stats. +/- is comparable for their primes... Kobe only has titles on him (which is a result of playing with more talent, health and luck) and an MVP he stole from him as an life-time achievement award. Big deal. ''THE END GOAL IS TO WIN TITLES DOE'' Ok. Robert Horry > MJ

Why is Magic better than Paul? Because he played for the most stacked franchise in the 80's where the West where he faced pathetic 48-win (1.78 SRS) teams in the WCF? Had a red carpet walk to the Finals each year but nobody talks about it. Paul was facing tougher teams in the 1st round of the playoffs and defeating them...

Bird doesn't have a pristine playoff record either. What's up with '82? You think CP3 could afford to average 18/7 on 45%TS and still almost go to the NBA Finals? No. CP3 averages 25/10 on 59%TS and gets blamed for losing to the Jazz...

Ehh Wade averaged 3 less game played in their career (which was mainly due to his meniscus decision pre-NBA) and a freak shoulder injury that sidelined him for essentially a whole season. Either way hardly a substantial difference. You then consider Paul routinely missed crucial games in the playoffs when his team needed him most. Also, regular season success hardly trumps lack of deep postseason success unless it's ridiculous consistency like Malone (who could also boast of multiple deep playoff runs).So although Paul sustained a longer spread out prime than Wade, he still wasn't some iron man nor was it his strength. His durability was also what stopped him from ever making the finals. On the other hand, Wade had his playoff injury woes but was just more resilient and despite being banged up still fought to make himself available for playoff games. Paul just never proved he had what it takes to FULLY deliver his team to a title (like the rest of the top 20ers who all at least made the finals). Thus, career-wise I can't see the case for Paul over Wade.

[Owly]

So PLEASE provide rapm for all players going back to Russell and Wilt

Please make up numbers for me .... why??

RAPM is a stat. To suggest otherwise is bizarre. To suggest that it is ineligible for use because it wasn't available in early NBA seasons is even more bizzare, and would limit you to points, assists, fg% (attempts and makes), ft% (attempts and makes) and fouls. No rebounds. Sorry if you don't have Joe Fulk's full rebounding data you can't use it to compare ANY other players. Is that the logic?

Because if ur gonna weigh rapm stat on ur ranking...this thread is about ranking CP3 in top 20 atg...then I would have assumed that somehow u have play by play stats going back all the way to Kareem and Wilt? also u mentioning about other stats not being available really doesnt help ur cause does it? Not sure why ur turning it on me, when im the one saying that player stats is not the only analysis that should be used when determing goat ranking.

So your stance is indeed that ANY information that we have today that we don't have for older players isn't usable.

Sorry you can't use game footage, we don't have every game of Joe Fulks.

Sorry you can't use rebounds, we don't have that for every season of Joe Fulks.

What an utterly absurd position. And fwiw, though it's moot because your stance is absurd either way, the statement was

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

Not "boxscore stats are ....". Not "those stats which are available for all players in NBA history ...".

So I'm "turning on you" because you're saying silly things.

[Owly]

His strawmanning the argument for fans that like to have winning as part of there formula for ranking atg. Funny thing is he can't see it

This is awfully rich jumping on a conversation thread that you weren't a part of to take such a shot given you just said

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

And when questioned about it it didn't back it up and requested RAPM for the 60s, as though it had anywhere claimed to be possible and has any relevance to the question.

Note here that such strawman tactics distract from the fact that if RAPM somehow wasn't intended to be included in your definition of "stats" (because it isn't available for all players?) it's pretty unclear what you think it is.

I jumped on it because the convo was highly relevant to our other conversation. Your post just shows your lack of understanding from posters (or perhaps chose to ignore and instead defaulted to strawmanning) the point that winning and championships are important when assessing atg rankings.

Rapm is good data point, but what's the point in highly relying on it when it's only relevant to players in the past 20 years? Also rapm has it's limitations such as, doesn't take into account the role of players, the systems they run, the different combinations that has not been played, how a player performed in crucial moments in crucial games etc...

Usually the available stats we have is just an indicator of how probable a player is at winning championships.....I'm gonna rank a player higher who shows to have good stats backed up by championships rather than a player who have the stats but have nothing to show for it.

Again not taking championships into consideration misses the end game of the atg players in the league...And that is to win championships

Using championships confuses cause and effect. A high level of (TEAM) basketball leads to championships. Championships do not lead to a player being better. Measuring players by championships rests upon the latter interpretation.

RAPM does have limitations, including those you listed. If my statement had been RAPM is a perfect, flawless metric, this would be a devastating critique. My contention was that it was not, in fact

just as impacted by different variables

as winning is.

Unless RAPM is doing a worse job than chance of attempting to filter out the nine other players on court (never mind models that build in coaching etc), then it's better than a raw on-off, which itself is far more detailed and accurate than team standings which is better than binary title/no title. The closer you go to team "winning" and the further you get from serious, statistical analysis the worse the measure becomes.

So feel free to support another poster's claim that RAPM like all stats is in fact "just as impacted by different variables",

And please clarify why the only statistics we are allowed to use in comparisons is the basic slashlines available from the BAA 46-47 season and whether this extends to allowing 0 full game footage.

[ardee]

Paul has a much higher peak than Stockton. Not only that, but you could take 9 seasons of CP3 above the best season of Stockton. Now, if you care about the fact that Paul missed about 20 games in like 4 of those seasons + he had untimely injuries sometimes in crucial moments of the playoffs... that's fine. You could argue Stockton is better based on his durability, but let's not pretend they are in the same realm as players... Nothing suggests that. Same goes for Pippen and Ewing. CP3 has a demonstrably higher peak and multiple seasons above these guys best. The difference in offensive impact is staggering to say the least.

Then we have Wade, who you could argue was a better player than Paul at his peak, but the gap in peak would need to be significant (and it's not) to offset Paul simply having more prime seasons. Wade was even more injury prone than Paul. Not only that, but Wade fell off significantly from 2011 to 2012, and then even more from 2012 to 2014, and then he was merely an average player until he retired at 37 years of age. Paul is 34 now and still playing like an all-star.

Nash only argument is RAPM. If you strongly factor in that above all else, then fine, but otherwise there's a lot of reason out there to think Paul was a better player than Nash in their primes. Considering the humongous difference in defensive level between the two, i just don't buy that it's possible Nash was literally tiers above Paul as an offensive player... How would that even be possible? Paul is actually comparable to Nash in terms of AST%, and he comes ahead in TO and scoring... WHERE IS NASH getting all this impact? They played a similar role even... It's not like Nash was playing like Curry. To me, it has to be some weird mix of Phoenix just being ahead of their time. The mid 00's was an era of slow-paced defensive basketball and the Suns just happened to have the perfect player and cast to run up the offensive numbers in a time where the league had no idea what they were doing.

None of Stockton, Wade or Nash made the top 20 of the last RealGM top 100, and that’s a top 20 without Durant or Curry, so I’m not going to go into huge detail over it. For Stockton the argument would be longevity + not being *that* much worse than Clippers Paul (some of the same weaknesses, in my opinion), Wade it would be valuing higher peak if you think he’s quite a bit better duet o the playoff performances, and Nash is a far more empowering leader

Karl Malone has a huge advantage over Paul in longevity, and he was one of the best players in the league for very very long during his career. But if we take a look at strictly their level as player, Paul is simply the better player at their peaks, and he proved that multiple times, including translating his impact into the postseason while Malone is notorious for struggling in multiple runs during his career.

What makes you so confident Paul was simply the better player at his peak? Malone is the one with the MVPs, and his boxscore stats are equally eye popping to peak Hornets Paul, and probably moreso than Clippers version. We don’t have that great of +/- information on Malone.

The NBA version of Dr.J definitely wasn't better than Paul. Paul got multiple years better than what Erving displayed in the early 80's...Not to mention Dr.J was struggling in the postseason in those years too. How does he not get killed for disappointing in the Plaoyyfs, but when Paul is the best player in a series that his team loses he gets all the blame. Funny how that works. Purely agenda driven, can't be anything else. You'd need to be really high on those 3 ABA seasons for Dr.J to claim he's a better player than Paul... Paul has a comparable amount of Win Shares but played 10k less career minutes.

Again, why can’t the NBA version of Dr J be as good as Paul or better? In 1980 for example he put up a pretty impressive 27, 7 and 5 and 2 steals. He led the league in BPM in 1980 and 1981 and WS/48 in 1981 and 1982. He won an MVP. He was a legit superstar in the NBA, to say nothing of his ABA seasons.

Who else is there? Oscar? CP3 comes above in numerous stats in both RS and PS... Hard to say who was better since Oscar played 60 years ago and there's limited footage and stats. All we know is he didn't win squat without joining one of the greatest teams of all-time with peak Kareem. Big deal. That's like if Paul teamed up with LeBron in 2011...

I am one of the few to have Oscar out of my top 20 so I’m not going to argue with you there. The argument for him would be that he is a higher end scoring talent than Paul due to his size/shot creating.

Same goes for Jerry West. What did he win in his prime? Nothing. He's got no MVP's... He won 1 Finals MVP in a series he lost. LMAO. That says it all. They wouldn't do that today if you averaged 50/10/10 in the Finals. Ironically he got one title a couple of seasons before his retirement probably playing some of the worst playoff basketball in his career.

West is one of the best playoff performers of all time and his best regular seasons are as good boxscore wise as Paul’s. So I would need more arguing to believe Paul should be above him

For Malone, Dr. J and West all of them are better teammates/leaders than Paul in my opinion

Don't really think you're making the case for Malone or Doc over Paul... stats aside Paul's combination of versatile scoring skillset/playmaking/GOAT level PG defense cannot be underestimated. I mean peak Amare Stoudemire has similar box score stats to Malone but you wouldn't put him in the same galaxy as Paul would you?

Btw why is Oscar out of your top 20?

[HeartBreakKid]

What makes you so confident Paul was simply the better player at his peak? Malone is the one with the MVPs, and his boxscore stats are equally eye popping to peak Hornets Paul, and probably moreso than Clippers version. We don’t have that great of +/- information on Malone.

What way are you looking at the stats?

CP3's playoff stats are way better than Karl Malone's. Karl Malone really has bad playoff stats for a 1st ballot hofer, to be frank.

Karl Malone really only has one objective advantage and that's longevity (MVP's are not objective) - and that's the same advantage he has over everyone else, just by different degrees.


Compare their scoring in the post season. CP3 has a lot more positive scoring seasons than K Malone, significantly so.

West is one of the best playoff performers of all time and his best regular seasons are as good boxscore wise as Paul’s. So I would need more arguing to believe Paul should be above him

For Malone, Dr. J and West all of them are better teammates/leaders than Paul in my opinion

So is CP3. Jerry West' career is just validated because he ended up with a ring and he played in an era where people were not over critical of not having a ring. He also played in an easy conference where he didn't have to win a lot of games to make the finals, quite the oppoiste of CP3's situation. Heck, Jerry West was just as injufry prone.

All the great things you can say about jerry west, people would ignore if he had went ringless or wasn't the logo. it's very easy to call players losers when they haven't won a championship.

This is ridiculous. Karl Malone played in western conference finals 6 times and Finals twice, while CP3 never got out of the second round as the leader for his entire career. He has NO GROUND to discuss playoff performance with Karl Malone. For CP3, maybe better look at what he could have done to find his 1A like Stockton did.

You know the Jazz actually got upset way more times than not. Karl Malone has been upset more than CP3 has. So yes, Malone has had more highs, he's also had more lows - you just simply do not remember them.

Karl Malone has gotten further in the playoffs...because he had more attempts than CP3 as his career was healthier and he has played more seasons than CP3 has up to this point. He also had John Stockton for the entirety of his career. The only time Malone didn't have Stockton he had Kobe Bryant and Shaq. Also, Karl Malone had Jerry Sloan for his entire career, the one season he did not he had Phil Jackson. CP3 has had multiple seasons where he had Vinny Del Negro and Byron Scott.

Actually, when you consider how incredibly fortunate Karl Malone's situation was he did not accomplish that much for a superstar.

You think if CP3 had a all time top ten player in their position for his entire career it would not have made a difference? It's like you have no idea how good John Stockton is. The only all-nba guy CP3 played with during his Hornets and Clipper career was Blake Griffin who was incredibly injury prone, the polar opposite of John Stockton.

Also, the entire post was about stats and you just brought it back to arbitrary winning - which kind proves the point that the argument against CP3 isn't actually based on his goodness.

To put things in perspective - you are saying that if CP3 played his entire career with Chuck Daly and someone like Patrick Ewing, Grant Hill or Bob Pettit and they would never ever get injured or miss a game as his teammate - he would not get out of round 2? When you say Karl Malone > CP3 because he got further in the playoffs you are essentially saying this. If you try to take emotion out of this what you're basically saying is that because Karl Malone was the 'best' player of the Utah Jazz everything else doesn't matter and he gets 100% of the credit for all his achievements (and it was debatable, especially back then if Malone was even better than Stockton).


And before someone says this, Basketball is not boxing, it is not tennis, it is not MMA. It is a team sport. Bringing up wins and records doesn't mean anything in an objective sense in 1 vs 1 comparisons, that is just sensationalism. If you acknowledge there are other factors that goes into whether a player wins or loses other than their own ability then you can never use the argument that ____ is better he won this. It is an illogical argument, which of course has never stopped people before, but figured I would throw that out there.

[70sFan]

Paul has a much higher peak than Stockton. Not only that, but you could take 9 seasons of CP3 above the best season of Stockton. Now, if you care about the fact that Paul missed about 20 games in like 4 of those seasons + he had untimely injuries sometimes in crucial moments of the playoffs... that's fine. You could argue Stockton is better based on his durability, but let's not pretend they are in the same realm as players... Nothing suggests that. Same goes for Pippen and Ewing. CP3 has a demonstrably higher peak and multiple seasons above these guys best. The difference in offensive impact is staggering to say the least.

Then we have Wade, who you could argue was a better player than Paul at his peak, but the gap in peak would need to be significant (and it's not) to offset Paul simply having more prime seasons. Wade was even more injury prone than Paul. Not only that, but Wade fell off significantly from 2011 to 2012, and then even more from 2012 to 2014, and then he was merely an average player until he retired at 37 years of age. Paul is 34 now and still playing like an all-star.

Nash only argument is RAPM. If you strongly factor in that above all else, then fine, but otherwise there's a lot of reason out there to think Paul was a better player than Nash in their primes. Considering the humongous difference in defensive level between the two, i just don't buy that it's possible Nash was literally tiers above Paul as an offensive player... How would that even be possible? Paul is actually comparable to Nash in terms of AST%, and he comes ahead in TO and scoring... WHERE IS NASH getting all this impact? They played a similar role even... It's not like Nash was playing like Curry. To me, it has to be some weird mix of Phoenix just being ahead of their time. The mid 00's was an era of slow-paced defensive basketball and the Suns just happened to have the perfect player and cast to run up the offensive numbers in a time where the league had no idea what they were doing.

None of Stockton, Wade or Nash made the top 20 of the last RealGM top 100, and that’s a top 20 without Durant or Curry, so I’m not going to go into huge detail over it. For Stockton the argument would be longevity + not being *that* much worse than Clippers Paul (some of the same weaknesses, in my opinion), Wade it would be valuing higher peak if you think he’s quite a bit better duet o the playoff performances, and Nash is a far more empowering leader

Karl Malone has a huge advantage over Paul in longevity, and he was one of the best players in the league for very very long during his career. But if we take a look at strictly their level as player, Paul is simply the better player at their peaks, and he proved that multiple times, including translating his impact into the postseason while Malone is notorious for struggling in multiple runs during his career.

What makes you so confident Paul was simply the better player at his peak? Malone is the one with the MVPs, and his boxscore stats are equally eye popping to peak Hornets Paul, and probably moreso than Clippers version. We don’t have that great of +/- information on Malone.

The NBA version of Dr.J definitely wasn't better than Paul. Paul got multiple years better than what Erving displayed in the early 80's...Not to mention Dr.J was struggling in the postseason in those years too. How does he not get killed for disappointing in the Plaoyyfs, but when Paul is the best player in a series that his team loses he gets all the blame. Funny how that works. Purely agenda driven, can't be anything else. You'd need to be really high on those 3 ABA seasons for Dr.J to claim he's a better player than Paul... Paul has a comparable amount of Win Shares but played 10k less career minutes.

Again, why can’t the NBA version of Dr J be as good as Paul or better? In 1980 for example he put up a pretty impressive 27, 7 and 5 and 2 steals. He led the league in BPM in 1980 and 1981 and WS/48 in 1981 and 1982. He won an MVP. He was a legit superstar in the NBA, to say nothing of his ABA seasons.

Who else is there? Oscar? CP3 comes above in numerous stats in both RS and PS... Hard to say who was better since Oscar played 60 years ago and there's limited footage and stats. All we know is he didn't win squat without joining one of the greatest teams of all-time with peak Kareem. Big deal. That's like if Paul teamed up with LeBron in 2011...

I am one of the few to have Oscar out of my top 20 so I’m not going to argue with you there. The argument for him would be that he is a higher end scoring talent than Paul due to his size/shot creating.

Same goes for Jerry West. What did he win in his prime? Nothing. He's got no MVP's... He won 1 Finals MVP in a series he lost. LMAO. That says it all. They wouldn't do that today if you averaged 50/10/10 in the Finals. Ironically he got one title a couple of seasons before his retirement probably playing some of the worst playoff basketball in his career.

West is one of the best playoff performers of all time and his best regular seasons are as good boxscore wise as Paul’s. So I would need more arguing to believe Paul should be above him

For Malone, Dr. J and West all of them are better teammates/leaders than Paul in my opinion

Don't really think you're making the case for Malone or Doc over Paul... stats aside Paul's combination of versatile scoring skillset/playmaking/GOAT level PG defense cannot be underestimated. I mean peak Amare Stoudemire has similar box score stats to Malone but you wouldn't put him in the same galaxy as Paul would you?

Btw why is Oscar out of your top 20?

You don't think that Julius has a case over Paul?

[mysticOscar]

Please make up numbers for me .... why??

RAPM is a stat. To suggest otherwise is bizarre. To suggest that it is ineligible for use because it wasn't available in early NBA seasons is even more bizzare, and would limit you to points, assists, fg% (attempts and makes), ft% (attempts and makes) and fouls. No rebounds. Sorry if you don't have Joe Fulk's full rebounding data you can't use it to compare ANY other players. Is that the logic?

Because if ur gonna weigh rapm stat on ur ranking...this thread is about ranking CP3 in top 20 atg...then I would have assumed that somehow u have play by play stats going back all the way to Kareem and Wilt? also u mentioning about other stats not being available really doesnt help ur cause does it? Not sure why ur turning it on me, when im the one saying that player stats is not the only analysis that should be used when determing goat ranking.

So your stance is indeed that ANY information that we have today that we don't have for older players isn't usable.

Sorry you can't use game footage, we don't have every game of Joe Fulks.

Sorry you can't use rebounds, we don't have that for every season of Joe Fulks.

What an utterly absurd position. And fwiw, though it's moot because your stance is absurd either way, the statement was

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

Not "boxscore stats are ....". Not "those stats which are available for all players in NBA history ...".

So I'm "turning on you" because you're saying silly things.

I really don't know why it's so hard for you to grasp this...not sure why ur strawmanning and totally missing my point.

My stance is that winning should be evaluated highly when ranking atg....im not saying at all just to totally ignore stats all together? Stats and the results should be evaluated together when ranking players.

However you provided rapm as a replacement for considering championships as some stat as an be all end all stat to rank your atg...And I'm telling u, if ur going to do that, then provide it for players older than 20 years ago.

I'm NOT saying do not use the stat, I'm just asking if YOU are gonna put so much weight on that stat for ur ranking, then how are u gonna use that stat to compare players when it wasn't available?

And rapm in itself has a lot of limitations and doesn't even provide much on impact of players in the playoffs let alone pivotal moments on crucial games.

This goes back to my point, stats just as much as championships require context. And for you to totally discard championships in ur evaluation not only ignores what the players play for, but u also ignore the end result that gives a big indicator that things have gone right for a player that may show up on some available stats as well as stats that are NOT available

[mysticOscar]

This is awfully rich jumping on a conversation thread that you weren't a part of to take such a shot given you just said


And when questioned about it it didn't back it up and requested RAPM for the 60s, as though it had anywhere claimed to be possible and has any relevance to the question.

Note here that such strawman tactics distract from the fact that if RAPM somehow wasn't intended to be included in your definition of "stats" (because it isn't available for all players?) it's pretty unclear what you think it is.

I jumped on it because the convo was highly relevant to our other conversation. Your post just shows your lack of understanding from posters (or perhaps chose to ignore and instead defaulted to strawmanning) the point that winning and championships are important when assessing atg rankings.

Rapm is good data point, but what's the point in highly relying on it when it's only relevant to players in the past 20 years? Also rapm has it's limitations such as, doesn't take into account the role of players, the systems they run, the different combinations that has not been played, how a player performed in crucial moments in crucial games etc...

Usually the available stats we have is just an indicator of how probable a player is at winning championships.....I'm gonna rank a player higher who shows to have good stats backed up by championships rather than a player who have the stats but have nothing to show for it.

Again not taking championships into consideration misses the end game of the atg players in the league...And that is to win championships

Using championships confuses cause and effect. A high level of (TEAM) basketball leads to championships. Championships do not lead to a player being better. Measuring players by championships rests upon the latter interpretation.

RAPM does have limitations, including those you listed. If my statement had been RAPM is a perfect, flawless metric, this would be a devastating critique. My contention was that it was not, in fact

just as impacted by different variables

as winning is.

Unless RAPM is doing a worse job than chance of attempting to filter out the nine other players on court (never mind models that build in coaching etc), then it's better than a raw on-off, which itself is far more detailed and accurate than team standings which is better than binary title/no title. The closer you go to team "winning" and the further you get from serious, statistical analysis the worse the measure becomes.

So feel free to support another poster's claim that RAPM like all stats is in fact "just as impacted by different variables",

And please clarify why the only statistics we are allowed to use in comparisons is the basic slashlines available from the BAA 46-47 season and whether this extends to allowing 0 full game footage.

U are really missing my point here. You are just stuck in this continual message in your mind (which proves my point) that fans like me just use "ringzzzzz" to rank players.

I don't know how to snap u out of this trance other than restating my stance again and again....

Championships is one of the part I use to evaluate atg player rankings...no one ive really seen just uses rings without context to rank players here...but somehow certain fans seem to always use this as a way to diminish using championships as one of the factors to rank players

[HeartBreakKid]

Because if ur gonna weigh rapm stat on ur ranking...this thread is about ranking CP3 in top 20 atg...then I would have assumed that somehow u have play by play stats going back all the way to Kareem and Wilt? also u mentioning about other stats not being available really doesnt help ur cause does it? Not sure why ur turning it on me, when im the one saying that player stats is not the only analysis that should be used when determing goat ranking.

So your stance is indeed that ANY information that we have today that we don't have for older players isn't usable.

Sorry you can't use game footage, we don't have every game of Joe Fulks.

Sorry you can't use rebounds, we don't have that for every season of Joe Fulks.

What an utterly absurd position. And fwiw, though it's moot because your stance is absurd either way, the statement was

Stats is just as impacted by different variables...and the end goal for the great players is winning.

Not "boxscore stats are ....". Not "those stats which are available for all players in NBA history ...".

So I'm "turning on you" because you're saying silly things.

I really don't know why it's so hard for you to grasp this...not sure why ur strawmanning and totally missing my point.

My stance is that winning should be evaluated highly when ranking atg....im not saying at all just to totally ignore stats all together? Stats and the results should be evaluated together when ranking players.

However you provided rapm as a replacement for considering championships as some stat as an be all end all stat to rank your atg...And I'm telling u, if ur going to do that, then provide it for players older than 20 years ago.

I'm NOT saying do not use the stat, I'm just asking if YOU are gonna put so much weight on that stat for ur ranking, then how are u gonna use that stat to compare players when it wasn't available?

And rapm in itself has a lot of limitations and doesn't even provide much on impact of players in the playoffs let alone pivotal moments on crucial games.

This goes back to my point, stats just as much as championships require context. And for you to totally discard championships in ur evaluation not only ignores what the players play for, but u also ignore the end result that gives a big indicator that things have gone right for a player that may show up on some available stats as well as stats that are NOT available

What is the context around CP3 having high RAPM? Why do you feel that this isn't a strong argument in his favor? You are saying context is what matters, that is entirely true - but you haven't really explained why RAPM for CP3 should be taken with a grain of salt.

[mysticOscar]

So your stance is indeed that ANY information that we have today that we don't have for older players isn't usable.

Sorry you can't use game footage, we don't have every game of Joe Fulks.

Sorry you can't use rebounds, we don't have that for every season of Joe Fulks.

What an utterly absurd position. And fwiw, though it's moot because your stance is absurd either way, the statement was


Not "boxscore stats are ....". Not "those stats which are available for all players in NBA history ...".

So I'm "turning on you" because you're saying silly things.

I really don't know why it's so hard for you to grasp this...not sure why ur strawmanning and totally missing my point.

My stance is that winning should be evaluated highly when ranking atg....im not saying at all just to totally ignore stats all together? Stats and the results should be evaluated together when ranking players.

However you provided rapm as a replacement for considering championships as some stat as an be all end all stat to rank your atg...And I'm telling u, if ur going to do that, then provide it for players older than 20 years ago.

I'm NOT saying do not use the stat, I'm just asking if YOU are gonna put so much weight on that stat for ur ranking, then how are u gonna use that stat to compare players when it wasn't available?

And rapm in itself has a lot of limitations and doesn't even provide much on impact of players in the playoffs let alone pivotal moments on crucial games.

This goes back to my point, stats just as much as championships require context. And for you to totally discard championships in ur evaluation not only ignores what the players play for, but u also ignore the end result that gives a big indicator that things have gone right for a player that may show up on some available stats as well as stats that are NOT available

What is the context around CP3 having high RAPM? Why do you feel that this isn't a strong argument in his favor? You are saying context is what matters, that is entirely true - but you haven't really explained why RAPM for CP3 should be taken with a grain of salt.

Because if u don't have RAPM (even with all its limitation) for players prior to play by play data was available....then how can u confidentally put CP3 in the top 20 when he doesn't even have a finals let alone a championship under his belt??

I like CP3, I'm actually a fan of his...And don't have a problem for someone putting him in there top 20...not that I agree with that. But my point was made when I keep seeing posters belittling fans that use chips as one if the factors in ranking there atg

[HeartBreakKid]

I really don't know why it's so hard for you to grasp this...not sure why ur strawmanning and totally missing my point.

My stance is that winning should be evaluated highly when ranking atg....im not saying at all just to totally ignore stats all together? Stats and the results should be evaluated together when ranking players.

However you provided rapm as a replacement for considering championships as some stat as an be all end all stat to rank your atg...And I'm telling u, if ur going to do that, then provide it for players older than 20 years ago.

I'm NOT saying do not use the stat, I'm just asking if YOU are gonna put so much weight on that stat for ur ranking, then how are u gonna use that stat to compare players when it wasn't available?

And rapm in itself has a lot of limitations and doesn't even provide much on impact of players in the playoffs let alone pivotal moments on crucial games.

This goes back to my point, stats just as much as championships require context. And for you to totally discard championships in ur evaluation not only ignores what the players play for, but u also ignore the end result that gives a big indicator that things have gone right for a player that may show up on some available stats as well as stats that are NOT available

What is the context around CP3 having high RAPM? Why do you feel that this isn't a strong argument in his favor? You are saying context is what matters, that is entirely true - but you haven't really explained why RAPM for CP3 should be taken with a grain of salt.

Because if u don't have RAPM (even with all its limitation) for players prior to play by play data was available....then how can u confidentally put CP3 in the top 20 when he doesn't even have a finals let alone a championship under his belt??

There is no connection between having or not having RAPM and having or not having a finals appearance.

So your argument is that we have even more data to properly assess players, and CP3 comes out favorably with this data - but because there are players who played before this data it is negated because CP3 did not at least make it to the NBA finals.

You made a post about how people are strawmanning claiming that they are over blowing the "you are using the ring argument" - but you actually are using the ring argument, even if you are not aware of it.

If CP3 had made it to the NBA finals but had the exact same stats then he would be in your top 20 presumably. That would make any criticisms toward your alleged bias' seem rather warranted. You are free to have your own criteria, but why did you take offense when someone said you were using a ring argument?


You did not really answer the question about CP3, RAPM and context either. Why do you think CP3 benefited from high RAPM? You say that people are not looking at his stats in context - then you should contextualize it.