RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #11 (Stephen Curry)

[One_and_Done]

If you're not playing at full intensity most of the time, because you haven't 'tightened things up' most of the time, then that is a bad thing and 100% counts against you, just like it would for other lazy/low intensity players.

Consistent impact is always better than inconsistent impact.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Would a Robinson supporter please make their case over Karl Malone?

I see comparable RS impact metrics in prime, David looking better in lower minutes in the later years than later career Malone (approximately equaling one another out to my eye, but your mileage may very).

In Karls favor, better longevity and winning the head to head playoff matches pretty emphatically.

Robinson has being the #2 on a dominant title winner and maybe some skillset arguments?

On what basis are their prime RS impact metrics comparable? I'd have Robinson on a different tier from Malone.

Also would argue I would prefer neither one as a #1 option. However, Robinson's lob-threat and defense make it so he can have more impact when he has the ball less. I don't think Malone could have the kind of impact Robinson had as a 2nd guy in 99.

Robinson being a 5 who can floor-space is also a bigger advantage than Malone being a 4 who can floor-space. Robinson could play to next to non-shooting 4s, and allow them to go to work on the block, which is huge. Malone has to be a 4 ideally due to a lack of rim-protection outside of occasionally using his elbows.

Oh he used those elbows more than occassionally.

But numbers for impact stuff:

Robinson
'94: +9.4 On, +19.9 On/Off
'95: +10.7, +19.8
'96: +10.7, +16.6
'97: N/A

+10.3, 18.8 avg

Karl
'94: +7.4 On, +17.4 On/Off
'95: +10.6, +9.6
'96: +10.2, +13.5
'97: +11.7, +21.9
'98: +9.6, +17.4
'99: +10.4, +13.0
'00: +8.2, +14.4

+9.7, +15.3 avg (kind of arbitrary cutting off at '00, but was always going to be)

I see those pretty similarly, and the samples probably lean favorable to Robinson.

Both hang in the low 90 percentiles in Moonbeams new RWOWY through their primes (Robinson rookie year to injury, Malone early 90s to '00).

In Bens WOWYR Karl is way back (I want to say something like +4 vs +8), as it sides pretty strongly with Stockton in the Stockton/Malone split (putting Stockton (+9) above Robinson, and I think above anyone not named Magic in the original sample).

Responding to the years you used.

Robinson

AuPM/G

94:+7.7 (tied for #1 all-time)
95: +6.4
96: +6
97: N/A


Malone

AuPM/G

94:+5.7
95: +5.1
96: +5.7
97: +6
98: +5
99: +4.7
00: +4.3


Robinson

PIPM (Believe PS is included, so should help Malone)

94: +8.3
95: +7.1
96: +7.4


Malone

PIPM

94: +4.8
95: +5.3
96: +5.5
97: +6
98: +6
99: +4.1
00: +4.2


Robinson

RAPTOR

94: +9.12
95: +7.94
96: +8.52
97: N/A


Malone

RAPTOR

94: +4.20
95: +5.38
96: +6.23
97: +6.22
98: +5.93
99: +4.29
00: +4.58

You already mentioned the WOWYR sample for Malone. Robinson looks arguably the best ever in the WOWYR samples.

[Doctor MJ]

okay, but again i don't think we can just treat steph as some sort of non-box score player. he has regular season numbers that make hakeem look like he forgot how to play basketball. yes, teams try different things in the playoffs, but teams aren't just running 2 guys around with steph for 48 straight minutes in the playoffs while kevin durant takes wide open 3's. steph gets the ball, a lot. steph still runs the same PnR-trap-get ball to draymond for 4v3, a lot. steph could theoretically isolate almost any time he wants and i honestly think he should have done it more. maybe it's like the previous project post, and he just couldn't. even for guys who have the ball a lot, the defense isn't just directly forcing more assists and less shots. they are coming up with novel approaches to try to limit those guys, even their assists after they pass.

Oh I'm not suggesting that we should ignore Curry's box score, but consider this:

In the regular season, Curry has a career WS/48 of .203.
In the post-season, Curry has a career WS/48 of .190.

Keep in mind that aside from the fact that this really isn't a big drop, it still puts Curry as 16th in history by WS/48 rate in the playoffs by bkref's list.

so we can't do that because steph missed the playoffs his first 3 years, which dragged down his regular season WS48 and didn't affect his playoff numbers. by the same calc where i had steph 32nd out of 38 in playoff resiliency, if i just limited it to WS48, then steph would have been 31st out of 38, so barely any change.

Fair point, though I'll reiterate that if we just take the playoffs on face value, he's 16th in the metric. That's outstanding by any normal standard. I understand he's being compared to the best of the best here, but your resilience-orientation is making you see this as something that's actually evidence of his effectively failing his team...as he's been winning more than any other star among his contemporaries.

I think it's important to think incremental differences in a stat like this are the ground truth against which everything else is suspect.

In general what I'd say is that a metric like this should never be expected to capture Curry's impact, and if you're talking about playoffs making a dent in those regular season numbers, a drop like this is pretty understandable.

so the average player does indeed drop in WS48 in the playoffs. after all, there is only 1 win share for every game played and if you have to share it with a playoff team instead of an average team, then it will go down. but steph still drops worse than normal. and WS48 is actually a very favorable steph stat. it loves efficiency and loves when your teammates are good at defense. it's the perfect metric for steph to dominate.

Well if it were the perfect stat for Steph to dominate, then he'd be presumably be doing at least as well by it as he is in all of the myriad regressed +/- metrics, right? Because if he looks worse by Metric A than by Metric B, then clearly Metric A cannot be where he looks best.

2. Refusing to use all the tools we have for modern players simply because we don't have them for historical players is tying your hands behind your back. It's one thing if you literally don't believe in the value of what we call impact metrics, but if you see the value in the concept, you should use it where you have it.

so i definitely believe in them less than most here. or at least find them so noisy and situation dependent that i don't know how much to trust them.

Well, I understand being torn on how to deal with noise concerns, and as a result placing less faith in that family of stats than myself.

What I would emphasize though is this:
It's the team scoreboard that matters.
That is the thing that decides success.
So if we had enough data in enough permutations, a regression of +/- would be the perfect holistic stat.

Recording all of the box score stat is very useful for understanding quickly, roughly how a guy was playing, but when you group that into a holistic measure, you're creating something that's inherently biased toward the stuff that's most easily tallied - the most simplistic, most concrete parts of the game.

Hence, we should really expect that any time a guy is spending considerable energy doing stuff that doesn't show up on the box score, if that stuff is worth doing and he's doing it well, that's going to be impact that gets missed by box score all-in-ones.

This to say: Regardless of what you think about Curry, if you're not thinking about the stuff guys do beyond the box score as a thing that +/- gives a window into, you should.

And from there, you just have to decide for yourself how transparent or opaque the window is, with the recognition that if you default to a completely opaque assumption, you're dooming yourself to being biased in your analytical assessment toward the players who specialize in the most simple, concrete stuff.

again, this isn't steph-specific. i've never seen a david robinson impact number or plus/minus number that says we shouldn't have him like top 5. even after his injury, in his first 4 years with duncan, he literally has the highest 4 year playoff APM ever. so he even excels in the playoffs. and yet he'll be doing good to finish in the top 20, here on a board that loves impact metrics. because i assume people don't really find the end result to be reflective of the impact numbers. presumably to a pretty large degree to get robinson as low as he will be.

This seems like your criticism of the stat is really a criticism of the people you've seen use the stat. I understand being turned off by the messenger, but do recognize that that's what's happening.

I will say that you feeling like there's a discrepancy with Robinson makes a lot of sense and it's something that bothered me from the beginning and something I've certainly done my best to examine for myself.

As a starting point:

David Robinson made the Top 5 of MVP voting in 5 years.
I have him in my Top 5 POY list in 7 years.
The years where he missing my 5 in prime were:

'91-92, injured and missed the playoffs
'95-96, he's a serious contender, but I have him below Jordan, Pippen, Penny, Malone & Payton
'96-97, injured

So, I could see someone arguing for him to be in there 8 times, but I feel like at 7 it's hard to argue I'm not seeing him as a consistent rock star.

Re: High playoff APM with Duncan. ftr, I rank Robinson 1st in my POY in '98-99. So yeah, I'm not ignoring this stuff, it's absolutely factoring into my assessments...it's just he ends up where he ends up.

I'll also say that if you look at the metric graphs Moonbeam is coming up with - which a definitely coarse metrics that shouldn't be treated as gospel - you'll see how good the guys already voted in are. It's not that Robinson is unworthy of being up there with those guys, but competition is just really stiff at these levels.

and when i say situation-specific, since you keep bringing up kerr's offense. i think it's fair to say it's tailor made to steph. and since you guys agree steph is fairly unique, i think it's tailor-made to him in a way that the rest of the team is probably never going to be able to look as good when steph is off and they keep running the offense. especially for someone like durant who can save the warriors bacon when they need an iso bucket in the finals but isn't going to look as good in the day to day on/off stuff because he doesn't fit in the same way steph does. now does that mean they shouldn't run that offense? no. but is it possible that it being a somewhat novel offense for a novel player makes it harder to replicate for the rest of the team and inflates steph's impact numbers?

Oh but it wasn't. Yeah, it's fit really well for Steph and that's not a surprise to any of the decision makers, but it's not what motivated Kerr to play this way, but rather Kerr's philosophy made him want to come to Golden State to work with the players they had. Meanwhile the big appeal of Kerr's scheme to the Warrior front office wasn't about unlocking Steph - who was already unlocked and had been ranked as a Top 5 guy by our boards POYs for two years prior to that - so much as it was about unlocking Klay alongside Steph.

Re: novel players are harder to replicate and thus will have "inflated" impact numbers when optimized around. This is where the whole thing about him leading the best team in the world is important. If a guy has the best RAPM consistently but he's playing on a team super-optimized around him that never quite gets good enough, I think it's actually important to be quite skeptical that that guy is the player we should be anointing as the best in the game.

When a team is able to ride the player in question to extreme success though, I think we need to consider where exactly our skepticism is coming from.

Re: KD save bacon. Honestly it weirds me out that this is still getting used against Curry in 2023. Just a reminder:

Seasons where team won Western Conference Finals w/out Durant: 4
Seasons where team won Western Conference Finals with Durant: 2

I feel like folks made decisions about Curry based on the presence of LeBron & KD back from 2016 through 2018 and everything that's happened since just isn't changing anything.

Re: Irving & Love not actually that impressive. I do think you should look at what their shooting numbers looked like in those playoffs. I'd argue they got pretty lucky, but if we assume there was no luck, the Cavs had some great shooting on the floor far beyond what the Jordan Bulls could muster, just as an example.

sure, irving shot well in the finals, but he would seem to be a guy who has only ever shown he could win next to lebron. but i guess the warriors faced the version who was next to lebron so maybe it evens out. but love, that guy had 36/26 shooting splits in the finals and was a massive defensive liability. that's rough to overcome from your 3rd best player and you wouldn't expect a team with a terrible performance from their 3rd best player to pull off a big upset.

"only ever shown he could win next to LeBron". Remind me again how many chips Curry's teammates have without him?

Mind you, I'm not saying it would be impossible. There's no such thing as a player being "capable of winning a championship" as a binary thing unless there's something problematic enough about him he can't be on the floor in the critical minutes.

Of course you're right about Love in that series, and point taken.

In the last 20 years, we've watched this game transform in a way that's unparalleled unless you go all the way back to the 40s-60s duration, and the result is that all of these teams are better on average than what came before. How can you see that happen and come away so skeptical that the best of the bunch has been doing something amazing?

i mean it's all relative, right? the warriors are also better than older teams as well. i don't think the newer era somehow prevents a team that has accumulated a lot of talent from being the best team in the league for a while. just like i don't think anything stopped a team in the 70's from dominating. the talent just got spread around instead of concentrated. no amount of variance is keeping a team with 3 future hall of famers playing their entire primes together and an unlimited payroll for role players from being good for a long time.

I think you should look at your all-time list and ask yourself if you really think the '70s were as loaded as the '60s in the star talent. Unless you actually think that they were, then the fact they weren't immediately gives an intuitive explanation for why the '70s struggled to field long-sustaining dynasty contenders.

Re: No amount of variance is keeping a team from being good for a long time. You're conflating things here. I never said variance was a reason why you shouldn't expect teams to be good. I was talking about variance when you were talking about the Warriors failing to win the 2016 Finals.

Big thing: It ain't mediocrity. All these teams would win most games against any of those other eras.

i don't understand this comment. it sounds like we're just saying older players are worse in an absolute sense. i agree, but that doesn't seem to be how we look at things on this board or in this project. otherwise we are going to end up with a drastically different top 100 that should mostly be devoid of anyone from before the last 20 or 30 years.

I believe you're effectively looking to judge players on an era-dominance scale that doesn't take into account how increasing variance to optimized team strategy decreases capacity to dominate.

The only reason why we shouldn't take +/- data to be THE defining estimation of player value in that context is noise.
That noise is a very real and massive concern...but when you're talking about something that's "seemingly always" happening, it starts becoming very problematic to chalk it up to noise.

it's more than impact metrics seem to pick winners and losers. i don't know if it's the prior informed thing or just team-specific things in the way certain guys fit their situation. but it seems some guys rise to the top and are just always there, like your garnett's or curry's, and some guys, even guys who have won a lot and are playoff risers and seemingly do everything you would want in a winner, aren't viewed as well. you even get someone like a kyle lowry in RPM who popped up high one year and then had a great ride through the mid-2010's and early 2020's, culminating in him finishing #1 in 2018, a bonkers result. but hardly less bonkers than him finishing just ahead of #3 fred van vleet from his own team. was there something in the water in toronto that year or could the numbers just not figure out what to do? now kyle lowry's a fine player who does lots of winning things, but he "always" finished way up high in a way that i don't think reflects his true value. kobe finished #73 in 25 year RAPM i believe. since he'll probably finish like 13th in this project, it appears no one is taking that 73rd place finish very seriously.

now maybe the metrics are right. maybe it's as simple as them being way better than everything else. maybe i just get the value of a player's teammates and their opponents way wrong, and what appears to be a guy carrying a team to a championship is really more to do with his teammates and i just can't see it. but there's enough conflicting info from where i sit, that the impact metrics are going to have to show me more before i trust them more than i do. others will disagree, i suppose.

Yeah so this is you criticizing the people you're seeing make cases for their inconsistency, not the actual statistics. And as I said, I think the criticism is a good one, so long as it's placed on the feet where it belongs.

Re: Lowry. I take the numbers pretty seriously. I consider Lowry the top player from the 2006 draft class, a Hall of Famer, and a worthy candidate for our Top 100 (he ended up 103rd on my pre-project rough draft). If you want to drill into more detail there feel free, but I'll just say up front that I make no claims to perfect consistency, only that I'd prefer to root out all the inconsistencies in my own studies that I can find.

Re: Kobe. Probably worth reading my response to ShaqAttac, and if you want to go further with me you can. Just know that Kobe is traditionally a fraught subject so I may cut it off if it seems like I'm messing with the vibe of the group.

[OhayoKD]

What's there really to say? Bird is not getting in this thread so I don't think it's proper to derail it to debate a rather out landish opinion.

There is already a lot of anti-Bird stuff outside of these threads recently, so I reckon the great Bird war will come soon enough.

I am trying to wrap my head around how rebutting outsiders not being able to tolerate opinions they disagree with(and mostly cannot be bothered to argue against) is somehow inconsistent with tolerating an opinion people may disagree with....

Ceiling is welcome to his outlandish opinions. As am I. And as are you. If you wish to ask for justification, no one is stopping you, but it is not a indictment on the board that opinions you find "outlandish" are tolerated

Point A example:

You of all people were quick to question anyone who had Jordan top 2. Yet, have nothing about Bird not being a top 30 or event top 50. Lol, you of all people acting like you respect outside opinions, considering what you say about other board users off-line.

Yeah I'm not obligated to question what you want to question as is no one else on this board. The reason I do not bother with Bird top 30 is I do no think that is getting serious traction. I will spend more time on things which seem poorly justified and are more popular. I do not buy Bird is not top 20, but Bird is currently in the running to be voted for top 12 so it doesn't seem worth challenging.

If you find it so problematic, challenge it yourself.

[eminence]

On what basis are their prime RS impact metrics comparable? I'd have Robinson on a different tier from Malone.

Also would argue I would prefer neither one as a #1 option. However, Robinson's lob-threat and defense make it so he can have more impact when he has the ball less. I don't think Malone could have the kind of impact Robinson had as a 2nd guy in 99.

Robinson being a 5 who can floor-space is also a bigger advantage than Malone being a 4 who can floor-space. Robinson could play to next to non-shooting 4s, and allow them to go to work on the block, which is huge. Malone has to be a 4 ideally due to a lack of rim-protection outside of occasionally using his elbows.

Oh he used those elbows more than occassionally.

But numbers for impact stuff:

Robinson
'94: +9.4 On, +19.9 On/Off
'95: +10.7, +19.8
'96: +10.7, +16.6
'97: N/A

+10.3, 18.8 avg

Karl
'94: +7.4 On, +17.4 On/Off
'95: +10.6, +9.6
'96: +10.2, +13.5
'97: +11.7, +21.9
'98: +9.6, +17.4
'99: +10.4, +13.0
'00: +8.2, +14.4

+9.7, +15.3 avg (kind of arbitrary cutting off at '00, but was always going to be)

I see those pretty similarly, and the samples probably lean favorable to Robinson.

Both hang in the low 90 percentiles in Moonbeams new RWOWY through their primes (Robinson rookie year to injury, Malone early 90s to '00).

In Bens WOWYR Karl is way back (I want to say something like +4 vs +8), as it sides pretty strongly with Stockton in the Stockton/Malone split (putting Stockton (+9) above Robinson, and I think above anyone not named Magic in the original sample).

Responding to the years you used.

Robinson

AuPM/G

94:+7.7 (tied for #1 all-time)
95: +6.4
96: +6
97: N/A


Malone

AuPM/G

94:+5.7
95: +5.1
96: +5.7
97: +6
98: +5
99: +4.7
00: +4.3


Robinson

PIPM (Believe PS is included, so should help Malone)

94: +8.3
95: +7.1
96: +7.4


Malone

PIPM

94: +4.8
95: +5.3
96: +5.5
97: +6
98: +6
99: +4.1
00: +4.2


Robinson

RAPTOR

94: +9.12
95: +7.94
96: +8.52
97: N/A


Malone

RAPTOR

94: +4.20
95: +5.38
96: +6.23
97: +6.22
98: +5.93
99: +4.29
00: +4.58

You already mentioned the WOWYR sample for Malone. Robinson looks arguably the best ever in the WOWYR samples.

Maybe I need to update myself on those metrics, but as of last check, all of those Robinson metrics don't actually include any impact metrics. They're just BPM variant #48c.

*Other than WOWYR - which I think supports a reasonable take - Stockton was actually the leader of the Jazz, but that really just substitutes Stockton in place of Malone in the tertiary player of the 90s argument (MJ/Hakeem/Robinson vs Stockton/Malone).

[f4p]

Oh I'm not suggesting that we should ignore Curry's box score, but consider this:

In the regular season, Curry has a career WS/48 of .203.
In the post-season, Curry has a career WS/48 of .190.

Keep in mind that aside from the fact that this really isn't a big drop, it still puts Curry as 16th in history by WS/48 rate in the playoffs by bkref's list.

so we can't do that because steph missed the playoffs his first 3 years, which dragged down his regular season WS48 and didn't affect his playoff numbers. by the same calc where i had steph 32nd out of 38 in playoff resiliency, if i just limited it to WS48, then steph would have been 31st out of 38, so barely any change.

Fair point, though I'll reiterate that if we just take the playoffs on face value, he's 16th in the metric. That's outstanding by any normal standard. I understand he's being compared to the best of the best here, but your resilience-orientation is making you see this as something that's actually evidence of his effectively failing his team...as he's been winning more than any other star among his contemporaries.

I think it's important to think incremental differences in a stat like this are the ground truth against which everything else is suspect.

In general what I'd say is that a metric like this should never be expected to capture Curry's impact, and if you're talking about playoffs making a dent in those regular season numbers, a drop like this is pretty understandable.

so the average player does indeed drop in WS48 in the playoffs. after all, there is only 1 win share for every game played and if you have to share it with a playoff team instead of an average team, then it will go down. but steph still drops worse than normal. and WS48 is actually a very favorable steph stat. it loves efficiency and loves when your teammates are good at defense. it's the perfect metric for steph to dominate.

Well if it were the perfect stat for Steph to dominate, then he'd be presumably be doing at least as well by it as he is in all of the myriad regressed +/- metrics, right? Because if he looks worse by Metric A than by Metric B, then clearly Metric A cannot be where he looks best.

2. Refusing to use all the tools we have for modern players simply because we don't have them for historical players is tying your hands behind your back. It's one thing if you literally don't believe in the value of what we call impact metrics, but if you see the value in the concept, you should use it where you have it.

so i definitely believe in them less than most here. or at least find them so noisy and situation dependent that i don't know how much to trust them.

Well, I understand being torn on how to deal with noise concerns, and as a result placing less faith in that family of stats than myself.

What I would emphasize though is this:
It's the team scoreboard that matters.
That is the thing that decides success.
So if we had enough data in enough permutations, a regression of +/- would be the perfect holistic stat.

it might be. but honestly, wouldn't we still be talking about the problem of if people are in good or bad situations for their own personal way of playing? team construction is a small sample size thing. you only get so many shots are constructing a team around a player. one guy having a perfect situation while another waits for his team to figure it out could make a huge difference. so at best we'd probably only ever be measuring how good you were in a situation. obviously if you played in a bunch of different situations (not really relevant to steph) and looked good in all of them, that would be better.

as for the actual calculations, i suspect we have enough smart people working on plus/minus stats that we are probably pretty close to as good of calculations as we'll ever get. whether they can ever truly account for everything is just going to limited to the fact that guys play finite amounts of minutes with finite different lineups and whether some opponent hitting 50% of their 3's in the player A on/player B off minutes was luck or just player A being terrible at defense will be tough to say. i certainly don't think we're ever going to get to the point that we just pull up the adjusted plus/minus numbers of a bunch of guys, read the rankings it spits out and have anyone, much less everyone, go "yep, fits my rankings perfectly". someone will always be lower than you personally think or higher than you personally think, and you're going to turn to other sources to support your conclusions (though it's also possible you will conclude the other sources aren't backing you up either and maybe the plus/minus is right). so if we admit that there isn't a single plus/minus list that you or i or anyone on this project is faithfully following, then we must admit that we're all giving weight to other things.

Recording all of the box score stat is very useful for understanding quickly, roughly how a guy was playing, but when you group that into a holistic measure, you're creating something that's inherently biased toward the stuff that's most easily tallied - the most simplistic, most concrete parts of the game.

Hence, we should really expect that any time a guy is spending considerable energy doing stuff that doesn't show up on the box score, if that stuff is worth doing and he's doing it well, that's going to be impact that gets missed by box score all-in-ones.

so just to be clear, if i'm being generous with curry and the box score and using his Age 25-34 playoff data to plug into my Age 22-31 spreadsheet, curry i believe came out 22nd in the postseason box rankings. so me having him 12-14 is already acknowledging that i think he shows things (yes, even impact metrics) that are beyond the box score. much like no one is blindly following plus/minus metrics, i am not doing that with the box score either. but elevating him 10 spots is pretty generous.

also, just to point it out, if we ignore guys who were probably never going to be voted early in this project for either era (mikan/schayes) or longevity (active guys like jokic/giannis or injured guys like kawhi/AD), this is the 10-year postseason box rankings i get:

1. Jordan
2. Lebron
3. Wilt
4. Kareem
5. Hakeem
6. Shaq
7. Chris Paul
8. Tim Duncan

factoring out the eternal outlier that is bill russell, a guy for whom we'll never have impact data and who played before the box score was complete, and realizing this is a 10 year peak measure and so doesn't factor in duncan's longevity, that list looks a whole lot like the top 7 or 8 of this project. i don't think this board is as divorced from the box score as is commonly thought. and the next guys on the list of west, durant, barkley, nowitzki, magic, oscar, robinson, curry look a lot like the guys who have been nominated or will be shortly (only ray allen really stands out as having no chance any time soon). worth noting kobe/bird are down at 29/30 and i'm voting them 12/13. can the box score miss a KG (although longevity helps him)? sure, but RAPM can tell us kobe is the 73rd best player of just the last 25 years (so maybe, 150th all time?).

When a team is able to ride the player in question to extreme success though, I think we need to consider where exactly our skepticism is coming from.

sure. but steph's success doesn't seem that extreme compared to say bird or kobe, who are right here as well. all guys who got to play on lots of good teams and in good situations and they won a lot.

Re: KD save bacon. Honestly it weirds me out that this is still getting used against Curry in 2023. Just a reminder:

Seasons where team won Western Conference Finals w/out Durant: 4
Seasons where team won Western Conference Finals with Durant: 2

I feel like folks made decisions about Curry based on the presence of LeBron & KD back from 2016 through 2018 and everything that's happened since just isn't changing anything.

2022 changed things for me. curry's opponents weren't hurt. he didn't have overwhelming talent, though i think it was the best talent. he showed the ability to step up in the finals. i wouldn't even be thinking of considering him here if not for 2022.

but i guess i'll just keep saying that you can't show weakness in 2 straight finals, barely win one due to injury and then lose the other with a horrible performance and then essentially just run away from those failures by getting KD to make things so lopsided it's pointless, and then expect us to forgive you for those failures.

part of lebron's redemption from 2011 is that, when the world was falling around him for game 6 against boston in 2012, facing more outside pressure than steph has ever dreamed of, he responded with a 45/15/5 masterpiece for the ages and then cemented it with a great game 7 and finals. he answered the question of "can lebron step up in the biggest moments and win it all" in resounding fashion. and for some (arguably even a little bit with me), 2011 will never go away completely because we still know that "lebron can throw away a championship" is true, but 2012 definitively told us "lebron can overcome everything in the biggest moments and win". steph just sidestepped that answer for like 3 years and then did nothing of note for the next 2 years. so yeah, it took 2022 to finally prove he could do it. that's the price to pay for taking the easy way out in 2017. if 2012 lebron had signed a KD type player (let's say, kevin durant for example) and the heat stomped 16-1 through the playoffs, do you think lebron is hearing the end of it that he just took the easy way out? of course not. now people like curry and he's never gotten the heat that lebron has during his career, so people never really gave steph the same criticism, but that doesn't mean we here on the PC board should ignore it.

Re: Irving & Love not actually that impressive. I do think you should look at what their shooting numbers looked like in those playoffs. I'd argue they got pretty lucky, but if we assume there was no luck, the Cavs had some great shooting on the floor far beyond what the Jordan Bulls could muster, just as an example.

sure, irving shot well in the finals, but he would seem to be a guy who has only ever shown he could win next to lebron. but i guess the warriors faced the version who was next to lebron so maybe it evens out. but love, that guy had 36/26 shooting splits in the finals and was a massive defensive liability. that's rough to overcome from your 3rd best player and you wouldn't expect a team with a terrible performance from their 3rd best player to pull off a big upset.

"only ever shown he could win next to LeBron". Remind me again how many chips Curry's teammates have without him?

they've made the 2nd round (2018) and basically the conference finals (2016) without him and kevin durant had been to the finals on a previous team. kyrie seems to not only not win, but just destroy every situation he's in like he's an active problem that has to be overcome. playing with lebron is like the one non-disaster he's been apart of. i suppose you could argue it's synergy like steph and draymond. where it doesn't really matter if steph unlocks draymond because the other team still has to play against the unlocked draymond and doesn't care that he might not have that much value independent of steph. and it doesn't matter if lebron is the locker room force of personality that can tamp down the crazy of kyrie because the other team has to face the non-crazy kyrie that knows how to score like few others. the main point was that lebron, who has certainly not won a title every year, wasn't just on some superteam destined to beat the warriors with his all-time teammates. especially when someone like love is practically the last person you would want to have on your team to face the warriors. he was on a talented team that was arguably somewhat ill-suited to face the warriors (whereas at least the 2018 rockets were well-suited to face the warriors). and that was the best of the warriors opponents.

Big thing: It ain't mediocrity. All these teams would win most games against any of those other eras.

i don't understand this comment. it sounds like we're just saying older players are worse in an absolute sense. i agree, but that doesn't seem to be how we look at things on this board or in this project. otherwise we are going to end up with a drastically different top 100 that should mostly be devoid of anyone from before the last 20 or 30 years.

I believe you're effectively looking to judge players on an era-dominance scale that doesn't take into account how increasing variance to optimized team strategy decreases capacity to dominate.

so i sort of agree. i even kind of referenced it in my hesitation in thread #12 to vote for oscar in the next few votes. just how many people are we going to vote in from the first 25 years of the league? there was even a thread a while ago talking about jokic/giannis/luka making the top 10 and the consensus (with which i agreed) was that none of them would make the top 10. now i suspect that has changed with jokic's win, but the point i made then when i realized none of us thought they should make the top 10 was that we were basically saying that no one who has entered the league since lebron would be in the top 10. 20 years of history. in a 30 team league. so closer to 40% of team-seasons. and not one top 10 guy. it makes me think we are taking for granted that it is harder to stand out when, as you point out, things are much more optimized. teams spend weeks trying to figure out how to build a wall for giannis. how to play the warriors motion offense. back in the day it was much less sophisticated. anyone on the right side of the strategy bell curve had a much better chance of standing out. so maybe we are too harsh on the new guys. but i'm still not sure the warriors, especially with 3 years of durant, weren't loaded enough to stand out.

[ShaqAttac]

As you say, with Kobe winning as much as he did, should he really be blamed for pertaining to what might be termed "coasting" in the regular season? To which I'd say: In any given season, a player's performance in the playoffs can really paint over what happened in the regular season...but when that doesn't happen, the regular season generally defines season.

While I could understand a philosophy where you evaluate a guy primarily based on how good he was, along with how long he was that good, and don't really sweat the fact that some seasons never give you that playoff-mode guy, from the perspective I'm coming from, that would be effectively crediting the game with accomplishments he never accomplished.

so you value winning in the regular season as an accomplishment even if you accomplish less in the playoffs?

[WintaSoldier1]

Our system is now as follows:

1. We have a pool of Nominees you are to choose from for your Induction (main) vote to decide who next gets on the List. Choose your top vote, and if you'd like to, a second vote which will be used for runoff purposes if needed.

2. There will also be a Nomination vote where whoever gets nominated by the most voters gets added to the Nominee list for subsequent votes. This is again optional.

3. You must include reasoning for each of your votes, though you may re-use your old words in a new post.

4. Post as much as they want, but when you do your official Vote make it really clear to me at the top of that post that that post is your Vote. And if you decide to change your vote before the votes are tallied, please edit that same Vote post.

5. Anyone may post thoughts, but please only make a Vote post if you're on the Voter list. If you'd like to be added to the project, please ask in the General Thread for the project. Note that you will not be added immediately to the project now. If you express an interest during the #2 thread, for example, the earliest you'll be added to the Voter list is for the #3.

5. I'll tally the votes when I wake up the morning after the Deadline (I don't care if you change things after the official Deadline, but once I tally, it's over). For this specific Vote, if people ask before the Deadline, I'll extend it.

Here's the list of the Voter Pool as it stands right now (and if I forgot anyone I approved, do let me know):

Spoiler:

AEnigma
Ambrose
ceilng raiser
ceoofkobefans
Clyde Frazier
Colbinii
cupcakesnake
Doctor MJ
Dooley
DQuinn1575
Dr Positivity
DraymondGold
Dutchball97
eminence
f4p
falcolombardi
Fundamentals21
Gibson22
HeartBreakKid
homecourtloss
iggymcfrack
LA Bird
JimmyFromNz
lessthanjake
ljspeelman
Lou Fan
Moonbeam
Narigo
OhayoKD
OldSchoolNoBull
One_and_Done
penbeast0
rk2023
ShaqAttac
Taj FTW
Tim Lehrbach
trelos6
trex_8063
ty 4191
ZeppelinPage

Alright, the Nominees for you to choose among for the next slot on the list (in alphabetical order):

Larry Bird


Kobe Bryant


Steph Curry


George Mikan


Jerry West

Will something alike be done for the 2024 NBA Season?

[LukaTheGOAT]

Oh he used those elbows more than occassionally.

But numbers for impact stuff:

Robinson
'94: +9.4 On, +19.9 On/Off
'95: +10.7, +19.8
'96: +10.7, +16.6
'97: N/A

+10.3, 18.8 avg

Karl
'94: +7.4 On, +17.4 On/Off
'95: +10.6, +9.6
'96: +10.2, +13.5
'97: +11.7, +21.9
'98: +9.6, +17.4
'99: +10.4, +13.0
'00: +8.2, +14.4

+9.7, +15.3 avg (kind of arbitrary cutting off at '00, but was always going to be)

I see those pretty similarly, and the samples probably lean favorable to Robinson.


Robinson also looks better in the Regressed RAPM we do have, but maybe you have wider tiers than I do.
Both hang in the low 90 percentiles in Moonbeams new RWOWY through their primes (Robinson rookie year to injury, Malone early 90s to '00).

In Bens WOWYR Karl is way back (I want to say something like +4 vs +8), as it sides pretty strongly with Stockton in the Stockton/Malone split (putting Stockton (+9) above Robinson, and I think above anyone not named Magic in the original sample).

Responding to the years you used.

Robinson

AuPM/G

94:+7.7 (tied for #1 all-time)
95: +6.4
96: +6
97: N/A


Malone

AuPM/G

94:+5.7
95: +5.1
96: +5.7
97: +6
98: +5
99: +4.7
00: +4.3


Robinson

PIPM (Believe PS is included, so should help Malone)

94: +8.3
95: +7.1
96: +7.4


Malone

PIPM

94: +4.8
95: +5.3
96: +5.5
97: +6
98: +6
99: +4.1
00: +4.2


Robinson

RAPTOR

94: +9.12
95: +7.94
96: +8.52
97: N/A


Malone

RAPTOR

94: +4.20
95: +5.38
96: +6.23
97: +6.22
98: +5.93
99: +4.29
00: +4.58

You already mentioned the WOWYR sample for Malone. Robinson looks arguably the best ever in the WOWYR samples.

Maybe I need to update myself on those metrics, but as of last check, all of those Robinson metrics don't actually include any impact metrics. They're just BPM variant #48c.

*Other than WOWYR - which I think supports a reasonable take - Stockton was actually the leader of the Jazz, but that really just substitutes Stockton in place of Malone in the tertiary player of the 90s argument (MJ/Hakeem/Robinson vs Stockton/Malone).

AuPM is supposed to be a RAPM approximate for smaller sample sizes, so I do believe it would fall under the impact metrics threshold at the very least.

[eminence]

Will something alike be done for the 2024 NBA Season?

They tend to be done once every 3 seasons, but I’m sure the project is open to more participation now, Doc sometimes gives a brief trial period and then full voting rights.

[falcolombardi]

Kobe for me over steph/bird/robinson/paul/etc

Are you leaning Robinson for your nomination?

Him or paul i suppose

[Doctor MJ]

What I would emphasize though is this:
It's the team scoreboard that matters.
That is the thing that decides success.
So if we had enough data in enough permutations, a regression of +/- would be the perfect holistic stat.

it might be. but honestly, wouldn't we still be talking about the problem of if people are in good or bad situations for their own personal way of playing? team construction is a small sample size thing. you only get so many shots are constructing a team around a player. one guy having a perfect situation while another waits for his team to figure it out could make a huge difference. so at best we'd probably only ever be measuring how good you were in a situation. obviously if you played in a bunch of different situations (not really relevant to steph) and looked good in all of them, that would be better.

as for the actual calculations, i suspect we have enough smart people working on plus/minus stats that we are probably pretty close to as good of calculations as we'll ever get. whether they can ever truly account for everything is just going to limited to the fact that guys play finite amounts of minutes with finite different lineups and whether some opponent hitting 50% of their 3's in the player A on/player B off minutes was luck or just player A being terrible at defense will be tough to say. i certainly don't think we're ever going to get to the point that we just pull up the adjusted plus/minus numbers of a bunch of guys, read the rankings it spits out and have anyone, much less everyone, go "yep, fits my rankings perfectly". someone will always be lower than you personally think or higher than you personally think, and you're going to turn to other sources to support your conclusions (though it's also possible you will conclude the other sources aren't backing you up either and maybe the plus/minus is right). so if we admit that there isn't a single plus/minus list that you or i or anyone on this project is faithfully following, then we must admit that we're all giving weight to other things.

Oh to be clear that's what I meant by permutations, so I get your concern here:

Yes, we're not close, and never will be close enough, to treat APM as a stat with perfect precision.

I just think we need to acknowledge that anything from this stat we cannot dismiss due to noise is something critical to understand. It's up to us to decide for ourselves how to see the noise, and it's okay to be cautious, but actively engaging with the data to decide what you think is the most likely explanation is important if you want to understand the basketball better.

Re: +/- about as good as it ever will get. Just to speak a bit on where I'd like to see things go:

I'd like to see player tracking data collection and usage cranked up to an extreme scale with feature extraction algorithms. This would represent a shift away from 1-dimensional notions of player skill/action/goodness/impact shape, toward an n-dimensional shape focused on whatever elements of basketball action can be considered "prime" as building blocks. I expect the holistic calibration would rely on scoreboard +/-, but the value-add would come in team-building, which is the real reason coaches & execs actually end up choosing players.

Note that ranking, which is the process that underlies this project, is inherently a one-dimensional endeavor, and so what I'm saying when I say the above is that I don't think the future breakthroughs to be had are primarily things that help with ranking clarity.

Recording all of the box score stat is very useful for understanding quickly, roughly how a guy was playing, but when you group that into a holistic measure, you're creating something that's inherently biased toward the stuff that's most easily tallied - the most simplistic, most concrete parts of the game.

Hence, we should really expect that any time a guy is spending considerable energy doing stuff that doesn't show up on the box score, if that stuff is worth doing and he's doing it well, that's going to be impact that gets missed by box score all-in-ones.

so just to be clear, if i'm being generous with curry and the box score and using his Age 25-34 playoff data to plug into my Age 22-31 spreadsheet, curry i believe came out 22nd in the postseason box rankings. so me having him 12-14 is already acknowledging that i think he shows things (yes, even impact metrics) that are beyond the box score. much like no one is blindly following plus/minus metrics, i am not doing that with the box score either. but elevating him 10 spots is pretty generous.

also, just to point it out, if we ignore guys who were probably never going to be voted early in this project for either era (mikan/schayes) or longevity (active guys like jokic/giannis or injured guys like kawhi/AD), this is the 10-year postseason box rankings i get:

1. Jordan
2. Lebron
3. Wilt
4. Kareem
5. Hakeem
6. Shaq
7. Chris Paul
8. Tim Duncan

factoring out the eternal outlier that is bill russell, a guy for whom we'll never have impact data and who played before the box score was complete, and realizing this is a 10 year peak measure and so doesn't factor in duncan's longevity, that list looks a whole lot like the top 7 or 8 of this project. i don't think this board is as divorced from the box score as is commonly thought. and the next guys on the list of west, durant, barkley, nowitzki, magic, oscar, robinson, curry look a lot like the guys who have been nominated or will be shortly (only ray allen really stands out as having no chance any time soon). worth noting kobe/bird are down at 29/30 and i'm voting them 12/13. can the box score miss a KG (although longevity helps him)? sure, but RAPM can tell us kobe is the 73rd best player of just the last 25 years (so maybe, 150th all time?).

So, not really sure how to respond here. As I said, I respond to ShaqAttac with some analysis of how I see Kobe. I won't speak for others on this board other than to say that whatever my assessment of their use of +/-, it has no effect on how I view the credibility of the data.

It ain't the data's fault if it gets misused.

When a team is able to ride the player in question to extreme success though, I think we need to consider where exactly our skepticism is coming from.

sure. but steph's success doesn't seem that extreme compared to say bird or kobe, who are right here as well. all guys who got to play on lots of good teams and in good situations and they won a lot.

I think you're fooling yourself if you think that these other players weren't built around them comparably.

I understand you believe that the unusualness of Kerr's scheme puts Curry in a different category, but for reasons I think I've already alluded to, I would disagree with this interpretation of events.

Re: KD save bacon. Honestly it weirds me out that this is still getting used against Curry in 2023. Just a reminder:

Seasons where team won Western Conference Finals w/out Durant: 4
Seasons where team won Western Conference Finals with Durant: 2

I feel like folks made decisions about Curry based on the presence of LeBron & KD back from 2016 through 2018 and everything that's happened since just isn't changing anything.

2022 changed things for me. curry's opponents weren't hurt. he didn't have overwhelming talent, though i think it was the best talent. he showed the ability to step up in the finals. i wouldn't even be thinking of considering him here if not for 2022.

but i guess i'll just keep saying that you can't show weakness in 2 straight finals, barely win one due to injury and then lose the other with a horrible performance and then essentially just run away from those failures by getting KD to make things so lopsided it's pointless, and then expect us to forgive you for those failures.

part of lebron's redemption from 2011 is that, when the world was falling around him for game 6 against boston in 2012, facing more outside pressure than steph has ever dreamed of, he responded with a 45/15/5 masterpiece for the ages and then cemented it with a great game 7 and finals. he answered the question of "can lebron step up in the biggest moments and win it all" in resounding fashion. and for some (arguably even a little bit with me), 2011 will never go away completely because we still know that "lebron can throw away a championship" is true, but 2012 definitively told us "lebron can overcome everything in the biggest moments and win". steph just sidestepped that answer for like 3 years and then did nothing of note for the next 2 years. so yeah, it took 2022 to finally prove he could do it. that's the price to pay for taking the easy way out in 2017. if 2012 lebron had signed a KD type player (let's say, kevin durant for example) and the heat stomped 16-1 through the playoffs, do you think lebron is hearing the end of it that he just took the easy way out? of course not. now people like curry and he's never gotten the heat that lebron has during his career, so people never really gave steph the same criticism, but that doesn't mean we here on the PC board should ignore it.

f4p, I'm just going to say this:

This ain't the church and we are not priests. There's nothing to "forgive", and I think you're letting emotion thoughts shape your analysis when characterize things this way.

Whenever a player, team, whoever fails at an endeavor, it means that they shouldn't be credited with the success of said endeavor.
Other than that, no other meaning is a given.
Drilling down into greater granularity can allow us to make more specific statements, but whatever we zoom in on as the keystone, it still doesn't necessarily tell us that much about the player/team/whoever at another point in their run.

sure, irving shot well in the finals, but he would seem to be a guy who has only ever shown he could win next to lebron. but i guess the warriors faced the version who was next to lebron so maybe it evens out. but love, that guy had 36/26 shooting splits in the finals and was a massive defensive liability. that's rough to overcome from your 3rd best player and you wouldn't expect a team with a terrible performance from their 3rd best player to pull off a big upset.

"only ever shown he could win next to LeBron". Remind me again how many chips Curry's teammates have without him?

they've made the 2nd round...

...

i don't understand this comment. it sounds like we're just saying older players are worse in an absolute sense. i agree, but that doesn't seem to be how we look at things on this board or in this project. otherwise we are going to end up with a drastically different top 100 that should mostly be devoid of anyone from before the last 20 or 30 years.

I believe you're effectively looking to judge players on an era-dominance scale that doesn't take into account how increasing variance to optimized team strategy decreases capacity to dominate.

so i sort of agree. i even kind of referenced it in my hesitation in thread #12 to vote for oscar in the next few votes. just how many people are we going to vote in from the first 25 years of the league? there was even a thread a while ago talking about jokic/giannis/luka making the top 10 and the consensus (with which i agreed) was that none of them would make the top 10. now i suspect that has changed with jokic's win, but the point i made then when i realized none of us thought they should make the top 10 was that we were basically saying that no one who has entered the league since lebron would be in the top 10. 20 years of history. in a 30 team league. so closer to 40% of team-seasons. and not one top 10 guy. it makes me think we are taking for granted that it is harder to stand out when, as you point out, things are much more optimized. teams spend weeks trying to figure out how to build a wall for giannis. how to play the warriors motion offense. back in the day it was much less sophisticated. anyone on the right side of the strategy bell curve had a much better chance of standing out. so maybe we are too harsh on the new guys. but i'm still not sure the warriors, especially with 3 years of durant, weren't loaded enough to stand out.

Great points in general and I totally agree with that a culture of intense, rapid strategy optimization makes it considerably harder to have dynastic runs, and we need to recognize that this is a shift in the landscape compared to what came before and decide how we want to adjust for this.

We can of course choose not to adjust for this at all, but this runs the risk of a model that seems to imply that the best players of each era are getting worse each era.

I've bolded your question because I like it a great deal. It was actually a critical question for me as well in the process of my study of basketball history:

In the 2003 project (before my time), they named Elgin Baylor 12th. Presuming that meant that at least 4 other guys (Wilt, Russell, Oscar, West were above him, that means that 5 of the Top 12 players in NBA history - which begins in the 1940s - were born in the short period from 1934 to 1938.

Do we really think that that's likely?

My assessment: It's definitely unlikely, but 4 of those 5 guys - Russell, Wilt, West & Oscar - really were stunning outliers in player value on a level that we've rarely seen born a mere 4 years apart.

I will say it's not the most extreme talent concentration period. Consider that 1963 alone had Jordan, Olajuwon, Malone & Barkley. The period from 1961 to 1965 is really quite astonishing. So the broader thing here is that sometimes the basketball gods just smile upon us.

But as I say all of that, I've long been a skeptic of Elgin Baylor. I think I understand pretty well what made Baylor so impressive to people, and I think in practice he didn't offer the kind of impact people thought at the time. I'm fine calling him the 5th best player of the 60s, but I don't think it's a given he should be in, say, the Top 40, and when though of from the lens of "Do the 60s deserve 1/10th of the Top 50?", I think it doesn't seem so unlikely.

But yeah man, I think West & Oscar were really by far the best offensive players the NBA had seen through that time, and really don't think they got surpassed until Bird & Magic.

[Doctor MJ]

Will something alike be done for the 2024 NBA Season?

Nothing just like this. This will be a 10 month endeavor that we're only in the 2nd month of. We generally don't repeat the process for 3 years.

There may well be some other big project though going on at the time.

Feel free to ask if you have further question, know that if you start participating sincerely for a while, I'll let ya join this project.

Cheers,
Doc

[Doctor MJ]

As you say, with Kobe winning as much as he did, should he really be blamed for pertaining to what might be termed "coasting" in the regular season? To which I'd say: In any given season, a player's performance in the playoffs can really paint over what happened in the regular season...but when that doesn't happen, the regular season generally defines season.

While I could understand a philosophy where you evaluate a guy primarily based on how good he was, along with how long he was that good, and don't really sweat the fact that some seasons never give you that playoff-mode guy, from the perspective I'm coming from, that would be effectively crediting the game with accomplishments he never accomplished.

so you value winning in the regular season as an accomplishment even if you accomplish less in the playoffs?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer depends on exactly what you mean.

It certainly hurts you when you accomplish less in the playoffs, but it doesn't mean you accomplished nothing in the season.

[ShaqAttac]

As you say, with Kobe winning as much as he did, should he really be blamed for pertaining to what might be termed "coasting" in the regular season? To which I'd say: In any given season, a player's performance in the playoffs can really paint over what happened in the regular season...but when that doesn't happen, the regular season generally defines season.

While I could understand a philosophy where you evaluate a guy primarily based on how good he was, along with how long he was that good, and don't really sweat the fact that some seasons never give you that playoff-mode guy, from the perspective I'm coming from, that would be effectively crediting the game with accomplishments he never accomplished.

so you value winning in the regular season as an accomplishment even if you accomplish less in the playoffs?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer depends on exactly what you mean.

It certainly hurts you when you accomplish less in the playoffs, but it doesn't mean you accomplished nothing in the season.

okay so like

if player a's "accomplishment" is on average conference finals in the playoffs but they only win 50 games while another player is averagin a 2nd round apperance but they win 60 games woul dyou take player b?

coz kobe accomplished alot more in the playoffs, even if we dont only look at championships right? i feel like youd really have to like the rs to say bird accomplished more

[Doctor MJ]

so you value winning in the regular season as an accomplishment even if you accomplish less in the playoffs?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer depends on exactly what you mean.

It certainly hurts you when you accomplish less in the playoffs, but it doesn't mean you accomplished nothing in the season.

okay so like

if player a's "accomplishment" is on average conference finals in the playoffs but they only win 50 games while another player is averagin a 2nd round apperance but they win 60 games woul dyou take player b?

coz kobe accomplished alot more in the playoffs, even if we dont only look at championships right? i feel like youd really have to like the rs to say bird accomplished more

To answer your question honestly, if possibly frustratingly: Depends on context. Depends, first and foremost on how I think they played across the seasonal context.

Re: Kobe accomplished more in the playoffs. I can understand that perspective, but to understand where I'm coming from:

At present I have Bird having 6 Top 2 seasons and Kobe 3. Bird having 8 Top 5 seasons to Kobe's 7.

My holistic choice of ranking is not simply a regurgitation of some counted stat like this, but I think it probably makes sense that if I rank the players by season as I do, Bird would be likely to have a holistic advantage, yes?

If you'd like us to try to zoom in on specific playoffs, go ahead and direct me.

[ShaqAttac]

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer depends on exactly what you mean.

It certainly hurts you when you accomplish less in the playoffs, but it doesn't mean you accomplished nothing in the season.

okay so like

if player a's "accomplishment" is on average conference finals in the playoffs but they only win 50 games while another player is averagin a 2nd round apperance but they win 60 games woul dyou take player b?

coz kobe accomplished alot more in the playoffs, even if we dont only look at championships right? i feel like youd really have to like the rs to say bird accomplished more

To answer your question honestly, if possibly frustratingly: Depends on context. Depends, first and foremost on how I think they played across the seasonal context.

Re: Kobe accomplished more in the playoffs. I can understand that perspective, but to understand where I'm coming from:

At present I have Bird having 6 Top 2 seasons and Kobe 3. Bird having 8 Top 5 seasons to Kobe's 7.

My holistic choice of ranking is not simply a regurgitation of some counted stat like this, but I think it probably makes sense that if I rank the players by season as I do, Bird would be likely to have a holistic advantage, yes?

If you'd like us to try to zoom in on specific playoffs, go ahead and direct me.

what 6 seasons u got him top 2? i think magic mj n hakeem were all better but idk which years you're looking at.

I think kobe is top 2 2001, and 2008-2010. Id say he top 5 every year from 2001 to 2010.

[Colbinii]

okay so like

if player a's "accomplishment" is on average conference finals in the playoffs but they only win 50 games while another player is averagin a 2nd round apperance but they win 60 games woul dyou take player b?

coz kobe accomplished alot more in the playoffs, even if we dont only look at championships right? i feel like youd really have to like the rs to say bird accomplished more

To answer your question honestly, if possibly frustratingly: Depends on context. Depends, first and foremost on how I think they played across the seasonal context.

Re: Kobe accomplished more in the playoffs. I can understand that perspective, but to understand where I'm coming from:

At present I have Bird having 6 Top 2 seasons and Kobe 3. Bird having 8 Top 5 seasons to Kobe's 7.

My holistic choice of ranking is not simply a regurgitation of some counted stat like this, but I think it probably makes sense that if I rank the players by season as I do, Bird would be likely to have a holistic advantage, yes?

If you'd like us to try to zoom in on specific playoffs, go ahead and direct me.

what 6 seasons u got him top 2? i think magic mj n hakeem were all better but idk which years you're looking at.

I think kobe is top 2 2001, and 2008-2010. Id say he top 5 every year from 2001 to 2010.

Kobe Top 5 in 2004 and 2005 is hard to sell.

[OhayoKD]

To answer your question honestly, if possibly frustratingly: Depends on context. Depends, first and foremost on how I think they played across the seasonal context.

Re: Kobe accomplished more in the playoffs. I can understand that perspective, but to understand where I'm coming from:

At present I have Bird having 6 Top 2 seasons and Kobe 3. Bird having 8 Top 5 seasons to Kobe's 7.

My holistic choice of ranking is not simply a regurgitation of some counted stat like this, but I think it probably makes sense that if I rank the players by season as I do, Bird would be likely to have a holistic advantage, yes?

If you'd like us to try to zoom in on specific playoffs, go ahead and direct me.

what 6 seasons u got him top 2? i think magic mj n hakeem were all better but idk which years you're looking at.

I think kobe is top 2 2001, and 2008-2010. Id say he top 5 every year from 2001 to 2010.

Kobe Top 5 in 2004 and 2005 is hard to sell.

2004 when they reached the finals? How much weight are you putting on a series? 2005 is at least defensible if we apply the logic often used for Garnett

And we can do the rankings here or not but ultimately, at least in a career sense, for Bird to push Kobe in value he would have had to been a goat-level offensive player(and to be clear he probably still falls short if you're being strictly corp about things). Realistically he was not anywhere near that, so him "accomplishing more" seems dubious outside of mvp wins.

[AEnigma]

I do not see any argument for Kobe to be top 4 in 2004. Now, that leaves a rather taut possibility he could be #5, but then the next year further superstar breakouts make Kobe’s case wholly untenable.

He also does not strictly need to be.