RealGM Top 100 List #9

[ceiling raiser]

Hakeem was great no doubt but it amazes me how severely overrated he is on REAL GM.

Thanks for the in-depth analysis with specific evidence to support your claims.

[fatal9]

With all the talk about Hakeem's struggles against the Sonics from 93-96 I decided to look at Hakeem's RS FG% vs Sonics compared to his teammates and the league average. As shown in the table below, Hakeem consistently shot above 50%, while his teammates were shooting well below the league average.

93-96 Rockets RS FG% vs. Sonics

Code: Select all

Season    Hakeem’s FG%    Teammates FG%      League Avg. FG%

93          .530                    .422                  .473

94          .530                    .408                  .466

95          .520                    .429                  .466

96          .544                    .396                  .462



In '94, he actually shot 68.6% against them (70 TS%, 28 ppg), guessing you mixed it up with '93. I still don't understand why any of this ongoing Sonics discussion matters though.

[shutupandjam]

Spoiler:

Oh wow you did use my suggestion.

So why is Pippen so high now? What's the playoff difference like? That hurts Robinson, but he's still top ten.

Yeah, the playoff adjustment helped Pippen a lot...guys like Hakeem, Kobe, Isiah etc too. Here are the average playoff differences of everyone in the top 100 from the 2011 project:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DsVfN9F888r36jwXbr5apX7NchRXURMn7SwxSz-9AbM/edit?usp=sharing

I apply that adjustment to the player's impact for each season and use that number in the regression. Really surprised by how much Isiah elevated his game on average...also surprised how much worse Shaq did (I initially expected him to be one of the better playoff performers relative to his regular season production).

It might not be a bad idea to mean regress the adjustment a bit, but no matter how I split it you're either gonna have DRob and Malone being rated higher than you'd expect or guys like Bird, Garnett, and Russell being rated lower.

Well in that chart that floated around eariler, Isiah has the greatest PER increase.

So does this have strength of schedule? That would help Shaq. How do you deal with out of prime seasons? Are you taking a career average playoff adjustment and applying it to every season?

Yeah, I adjusted for opponent strength based on regular season adjusted net rating.

I'm adjusting every season by the career average playoff adjustment...I could go season by season, but most playoffs don't have a stable enough sample size to make the adjustment fair imo. It might be interesting to do one adjustment for "prime" years and one for non prime, but where would I draw the line? It would have to be pretty arbitrary (e.g., every season at 90% of peak or every season from age 23-30)

EDIT: Maybe I could do something like half career adjustment, half actual season adjustment...

[SactoKingsFan]

Spoiler:

With all the talk about Hakeem's struggles against the Sonics from 93-96 I decided to look at Hakeem's RS FG% vs Sonics compared to his teammates and the league average. As shown in the table below, Hakeem consistently shot above 50%, while his teammates were shooting well below the league average.

93-96 Rockets RS FG% vs. Sonics

Code: Select all

Season    Hakeem’s FG%    Teammates FG%      League Avg. FG%

93          .530                    .422                  .473

94          .530                    .408                  .466

95          .520                    .429                  .466

96          .544                    .396                  .462



In '94, he actually shot 68.6% against them (70 TS%, 28 ppg), guessing you mixed it up with '93. I still don't understand why any of this ongoing Sonics discussion matters though.

Yeah, thanks for pointing that out.

[penbeast0]

My vote is for Hakeem...

I actually started writing this up as a post in support of Bird, since there's a pleasing symmetry in having him next to Magic in the rankings. But the numbers above don't make Bird look better than Hakeem, other than assists.
....

I did the same thing. I started writing a post voting for Bird twice justifying my "eye test" support of him as the greater player; but when I read it over, I just wasn't convincing myself.

[Clyde Frazier]

[

The fact that Garnett's ALSO more portable than perhaps any other player we've ever seen though, does make his case even stronger.

This is a common thought--and it's of course tied directly to his highly versatile game. But what's interesting to me is that Dirk played in the same era and while he never left Dallas, he played for a minimum of 3 distinct teams: Nellie/Nash, Avery, and Carlisle/Kidd and was hugely successful both individually and from a team standpoint with all of them. Maybe KG could be as portable, but Dirk actually proved it. 05-07 suggest that his portability from a team standpoint has some limits. Dirk's teams in that same period while better constructed aren't actually much more talented and Avery Johnson is one of the worst coaches of all-time so that's not an edge either.

And there are other players as well who have proven more portable than KG. We need to be careful not to assume versatile=portable and that less versatile players automatically aren't.

It became quite clear over the course of dirk's career that if you put some semblance of talent around him, the mavs would win 50+ games. It is pretty amazing how he's remained a constant on a roster that's been overhauled multiple times. That does seem to get overshadowed by the disappointments in 06 and 07.

[acrossthecourt]

With all the talk about Hakeem's struggles against the Sonics from 93-96 I decided to look at Hakeem's RS FG% vs Sonics compared to his teammates and the league average. As shown in the table below, Hakeem consistently shot above 50%, while his teammates were shooting well below the league average.

93-96 Rockets RS FG% vs. Sonics

Code: Select all

Season    Hakeem’s FG%    Teammates FG%      League Avg. FG%

93          .530                    .422                  .473

94          .686                    .408                  .466

95          .520                    .429                  .466

96          .544                    .396                  .462



His teammates shot a lot of three's and he did not, so that's misleading. Use TS% or ORtg at least.

[O_6]

After all this analyzing and studying video of the greats, I've come to the conclusion that Hakeem and Bird are my two favorite all-timers to watch. They both produced above all else, but their beautiful styles just made them so easy to watch. Hakeem's unique combination of explosiveness and fluidity at that size was just extremely rare. I think this is the reason why we haven't seen any of his pupils truly recapture the magic of the "Dream Shake". Hakeem was just physically capable of moving in a way that BIGs simply aren't supposed to. And this made his game so beautiful to watch. Larry Bird's beauty was less about athleticism and more about a genius-level BBIQ and a spectacular skillset that allowed him to make an impact in so many different ways. I wouldn't say Bird is the GOAT offensive player, but I would say that he is my favorite Offensive Player ever because of his ability to dominate that side of the court without the ball in his hands. Two great players who are absolutely nothing alike in terms of style, but both so beautiful to watch in their own unique ways.

But one of the main facts about basketball that has been solidified in my head through this project is the value I place on having an absolute monster BIG to anchor my team. Having a dominant BIG in the middle who can make a major impact on both sides of the floor gives you the easiest piece to build a Championship team around. I feel like there are 6 BIGs who stand out ahead of the pack and headline the GOAT BIGs list, Russell/Kareem/Wilt/Duncan/Shaq/Hakeem. There are others like Robinson/Garnett/Barkley/Malone/Dirk/etc. who are right there but for one reason or another I have them slightly below the "Elite 6 Bigs". (Although the Garnett discussions in particular have been eye-opening).

The only wings I personally have graded at the same level or above the "Elite 6" are Jordan and LeBron. I feel like those two players combined historic Offensive production with absolutely incredible defensive play to make an impact that was comparable or better than the 6 Great BIGs. I placed Jordan as 1st on my list and I feel like LeBron is cruising towards a Top 4 spot on my list, maybe higher, when all is said and done.

I personally did not rate Magic ahead of those 6 BIGs, although I understand his argument. And I understand Larry Bird's argument. His feel for the game was absolutely incredible. I love how others have mentioned Jason Kidd as a comp for Bird's feel, because I've always loved watching Kidd do the little things on the court and Bird is the same way except his shooting gave him more options. He was one of the greatest offensive players ever. But just like Magic, I do not believe he has the defensive impact or longevity necessary to make up for a player like Hakeem's massive defensive advantage.

Long story short, I vote HAKEEM OLAJUWON for a few reasons...

- I value Hakeem's dominant 2-way impact over Bird's primarily Offense-based impact
- I feel like '93-'95 Hakeem made a larger impact than '86 Bird (so Peak form goes to Hakeem)
- Hakeem had the longevity edge (not a huge factor for me, but could've helped Bird's case)

Because of those factors, I would need to believe that Larry Bird held an absolutely monstrous offensive advantage over Hakeem over their prime. And while I believe that Bird was clearly a more impactful offensive player, I don't think the gap is quite large enough. Especially in the playoffs when Bird's shot was off a little bit more often than you would hope while Hakeem elevated his offense. You could even argue that Hakeem was a greater offensive player than Bird in the playoffs over their careers, which just makes it incredibly hard for me to choose Bird on the basis of far superior offensive impact.

[tsherkin]

actually usage is one of the myths. If you look at the numbers(and remember watching Dallas from 01-04) its clear Nash wasnt under-used in Dallas. The biggest factor by far in the change from Nash in Dallas to Nash in Phoenix, is shockingly enough---Steve Nash. That and the Suns players were more symbiotic with him than Dirk in particular, but also the rest of the Mavs team.

Well, no, that's not entirely accurate and we'll get into that when it's more Nash-related. I look forward to that discussion, though, since while I disagree with you, I also don't generally agree that Nellie specifically did anything wrong with Nash. He was a senile old bastard who flouted convention for the sake of being different and it cost him at times, but that had more to do with his treatment of the team's frontcourt and defense than anything to do with backcourt control. Most wouldn't make the decision to go away from their obvious-star-is-obvious, generational-talent big man and give it to the scrappy guard no one had expected to turn into an All-Star, so it's hard to lampoon him for having Nash give up the ball for isolations to established All-Star players.

Hakeem will likely be selected #9 or #10, nobody's ripping him, I think you're being too hyperbolic.

But you're wrong. People are specifically singling out Hakeem's pre-93 team success as a point of contention in his ranking, and that's a concern I wanted to address, since it has broader implications through this whole project. This is a guy who, when he had some talent, took his team to the Finals through the reigning-champ Lakers when he was in his second season. Then his teammates fell off and he had some coaching issues that undermined team success despite significant individual performance. The arc looks very similar to what we've seen from basically every other player in league history under similar circumstances. It parallels early Jordan, Minny Garnett, everyone. And this is a point of discussion in this particular ranking thread right now over the last few pages, so it is eminently relevant to this discussion. Whether or not he's apt to be ranked #9 is irrelevant because that is the tone and content of the discussion right now.

What happened before his rings should be taken into consideration and given the proper weight and context.
Some believe that he was partially responsible for some of the disappointments, nobody's saying he was not a great player even at that point

Right, but taking what I said and trying to extend it into a complaint that people aren't respecting him as a great player is fallacious and not what I was arguing. We're talking about people using his team success as a critique of his potential ranking in this project, and I want to address that concept. We dance around it often and waffle frequently but have not really discussed the point to a meaningful degree over time, and that was the point of my comment. You can take exception to the word "ripping" if you like, but it's a semantic point not terribly salient to the meat of what I was saying. People are using that portion of Hakeem's career to attack his candidacy for the position, so I want to discuss the point.

To whit, we're talking about a guy who looked like this through the 92 season:

RS: 22.9 ppg, 12.5 rpg, 51.3% FG. 69.3% FT (6.9 FTA/g), 55.3% TS, 109 ORTG, .184 WS/48
PS: 26.5 ppg, 12.5 rpg. 54.0% FG, 68.0% FT (8.9 FTA/g), 58.0% TS, 118 ORTG, .223 WS/48

There are many other and deeper ways to analyze his performance, and season-by-season is more appropriate than a full overview, but I want to look at this... the guy's a perennial high-quality defensive anchor by almost every measure, he's performing pretty well in the RS on offense (we've seen the RAPM stuff and it shows a player who was very effective on O) and he absolutely murders it in the postseason for the most part, and this is all pre-peak performance. We watched Sampson fall apart due to injury and saw some noticeable offensive decline under Chaney. We've seen the in/out data for Hakeem and the notes that his teammates had a largely unsustainable and unrepeated streak of success in his absence which helped them go 16-10 in his absence in the 91 season, and we saw the slight turnaround when Rudy T took over midway through the following season. Further, it behooves one to remember that through most of this period, he was still contending with the Showtime Lakers and Drexler's Blazers in his conference, as well as the rising Sonics, the Jazz and the Suns. It's not like he was in some easy conference where he could feast on a lot of bad teams, and he didn't really have comparable talent at all.

So in terms of expectations, it's a little unreasonable to project that he should have won a ton more once you factor in competition, injuries and coaching. Obviously, Hakeem wasn't his peak self the entire time, I mean he had to develop as a shooter from the mid-range and even at the line, etc, but his playoff performance was pretty spectacular and there's a pretty clear decline in the team's efficacy as Sampson lost effectiveness due to injury and then vanished entirely, and with what was he replaced? Olajuwon didn't even have Thorpe until the 89-90 season and then his backcourt didn't round out properly until the early 90s either, and didn't even have Drexler until mid-way through the second title season.

There is some basic threshold of roster quality past which no one can do a ton. Like I said, even Jordan wasn't able to do anything but lead his first couple of teams to sub-.500 records before the roster fleshed out more properly, and further wasn't able to gain real traction in the postseason until Phil got there. I don't mean to directly compare them, because most consider Jordan the GOAT and he's got the full package of accolades, individual ability and postseason success to render that conversation somewhat moot, but it remains relevant: if the putative GOAT couldn't do a ton, what can we really expect from any other player?

NBA basketball is a game where, more so than most other major sports, an individual can exert a hugely palpable force on any given night and thus over the course of a season, but even at the highest levels of individual performance, there's only so much to be done to overcome a poor supporting cast... which is something Hakeem, and many others, experienced during stretches of their career.

Kobe's another one where we have to discuss this, because people seem to forget that the Lakers were actually 24-19 before Rudy T quit and then 10-19 under Hamblen. The divide wasn't so obvious mid-season when Rudy T took over for Don Chaney, but there was a palpable difference mostly on the basis of coaching. We've seen all kinds of qualitative discussion over the mismanagement of the Rockets' offense prior to Tomjanovich's arrival, so there is ample evidence to suggest that factors beyond Olajuwon's control were major contributors to his lack of success through the given period.

And again, that's a major point of discussion. At what point do such factors determine "greatness" as we intend to explore it in this project? It seems that it is inevitable that a list of accolades and team success are the ultimate final determinants... only we're seeing that some of the most decorated players are beginning to fall in our collective estimation now (as we see with Bird and Magic here in this project), so there should be some concurrent elevation of those players who struggled and eventually overcame lame-duck management as well, no? That's the keystone point here.

[acrossthecourt]

Are we gong to keep doing this "two-way" impact stuff? We can point out again and again that the best offensive players have more impact than the best defensive players.... Was Payton better too?


Since Hakeem's scoring stats went up in the playoffs, I thought of conservation and how there are no free lunches. Did his defense get worse?

Unfortunately, defensive stats are pretty awful pre-databall, and people focus way too much on head to head stats. So I looked at how his team's defense performed in the playoffs versus the regular season.

For instance, in 1994 their relative defensive rating was -4.9, which is quite excellent. Teams score about 5 points less per 100 possessions, or like 4.5 points in a normal paced game, versus them. In the playoffs, this dropped by 1.5 points to -3.4. Of course I'm not saying that's all Olajuwon's fault, but he was best on defense and had a lot of responsibility.

Here are their yearly results for difference (negative means their defense got worse):
1986 3.1
1987 -1.1
1988 -2.9
1989 -0.5
1990 -5.7
1991 -2.6
1993 1.5
1994 -1.5
1995 0.1
1996 1.6
1997 -3.4

Average: -1.0
Weighted average (by playoff possessions): -0.33

There's a selection bias here. When their defense is worse, they are less likely to have deep playoff runs. 1986 is also influencing the results a lot. Was Sampson better on defense too that year in the playoffs?

I just thought I'd introduce the theory because generally when players put in more effort somewhere, they lose effectiveness somewhere else.

[Doctor MJ]

All that says is that Houston wasn't using him correctly, which people have been saying for a while, but you don't get imaginary credit for an alternate world where you are used correctly. Simply put, the results stand on their own, and it's admitting they did have problems on offense.

I've seen versions of this mentioned many times over the years that misconstrue this idea.

Judging players on what they actually do means looking at their basketball plays (the things that actually happened) and trying to evaluate their goodness. Goodness is defined by how much a player creates a net positive impact on the scoreboard, all things being equal.

A good point. I'll clarify my previous response to this starting with an example:

When I look at LeBron's career, I don't really look at that first year in Miami and think "well, if he's only been more impactful that year like he was before and after I'd rate him higher". What LeBron was at that point was established, and fluctuations in a given year based on complicated contexts don't really interest me that much - meaning, I don't really see why it makes the list more useful to fixate on a particular thing that doesn't represent what that player was truly capable of.

Now, one might say, "Well, then that means you're basically crediting LeBron with what he might have done", but this isn't how I look at it. I'm just looking at the player top down, and there are some quibbling details that are plenty important enough to factor in from a MVP/POY perspective, but to me the complicate without informing an arch that will last 15-20 years.

I draw a distinction between that and things that to me truly impact timeline of a player's prime. Nash not really doing his thing until he's 30 changes all sorts of things. Obviously Magic & Bird having their career shortened does that too. And similalry, a player who is truly hurt for a significant longevity-damaging portion of their prime is a big deal.

But I'm not really judging 2011 against LeBron except so far as what it tells me about his prime's actual limitations. Same for Garnett's last years in Minny, or Kobe's 2005 for that matter.

[acrossthecourt]

All that says is that Houston wasn't using him correctly, which people have been saying for a while, but you don't get imaginary credit for an alternate world where you are used correctly. Simply put, the results stand on their own, and it's admitting they did have problems on offense.

I've seen versions of this mentioned many times over the years that misconstrue this idea.

Judging players on what they actually do means looking at their basketball plays (the things that actually happened) and trying to evaluate their goodness. Goodness is defined by how much a player creates a net positive impact on the scoreboard, all things being equal.

It's not misconstruing anything when I specifically mention how he's playing, how that's falling short, and introduce other metrics like with/without or ASPM to show how pre-'93 he wasn't a great offensive player. I guess I could imagine him playing better in a team dynamic in those early years, but he didn't.

[O_6]

Are we gong to keep doing this "two-way" impact stuff? We can point out again and again that the best offensive players have more impact than the best defensive players.... Was Payton better too?


Since Hakeem's scoring stats went up in the playoffs, I thought of conservation and how there are no free lunches. Did his defense get worse?

Unfortunately, defensive stats are pretty awful pre-databall, and people focus way too much on head to head stats. So I looked at how his team's defense performed in the playoffs versus the regular season.

For instance, in 1994 their relative defensive rating was -4.9, which is quite excellent. Teams score about 5 points less per 100 possessions, or like 4.5 points in a normal paced game, versus them. In the playoffs, this dropped by 1.5 points to -3.4. Of course I'm not saying that's all Olajuwon's fault, but he was best on defense and had a lot of responsibility.

Here are their yearly results for difference (negative means their defense got worse):
1986 3.1
1987 -1.1
1988 -2.9
1989 -0.5
1990 -5.7
1991 -2.6
1993 1.5
1994 -1.5
1995 0.1
1996 1.6
1997 -3.4

Average: -1.0
Weighted average (by playoff possessions): -0.33

There's a selection bias here. When their defense is worse, they are less likely to have deep playoff runs. 1986 is also influencing the results a lot. Was Sampson better on defense too that year in the playoffs?

I just thought I'd introduce the theory because generally when players put in more effort somewhere, they lose effectiveness somewhere else.

Yes, the Best Offensive players make more of an impact than the Best Defensive players (outside of Russell). But having the best player of your team be a positive on both sides of the ball absolutely allows you more options when it comes to building a team around him. Bird wasn't a terrible defensive player but he was bailed out by McHale's superior ability to guard SF's during the 80s. Bird had quick hands and played smart team D but overall he wasn't making a huge impact on D. Parish/McHale being a dominant 2-way frontcourt aided Bird tremendously.

Hakeem shut down opposing Centers. He protected the rim against guard penetration. He switched out onto the perimeter and made guards work. He anchored very good defenses in Houston despite a rotating cast of characters including several coaches.

You didn't have to worry about hiding Hakeem on defense like you did with Bird. And that matters. Just like it matters when you're talking about Nash vs. Payton who you brought up. But Bird, like Nash in his comp, was the superior offensive player and that makes it a tough argument. But Hakeem was clearly a good enough offensive player to anchor a Championship offense and he was a more consistent offensive force in the playoffs than Bird was. Bird struggled in the playoffs at times whereas Hakeem basically roasted everyone he came across in the playoffs in his prime. And I know that Bird made a FAR superior non-scoring impact on offense than Hakeem even in the playoffs. But Bird's shot just was off more than usual in the playoffs against tougher teams. If Offense is Bird's case over Hakeem, I just can't give it to him based on his playoff shortcomings at times.

[Clyde Frazier]

With all the talk about Hakeem's struggles against the Sonics from 93-96 I decided to look at Hakeem's RS FG% vs Sonics compared to his teammates and the league average. As shown in the table below, Hakeem consistently shot above league average, while his teammates were shooting well below the league average.

93-96 Rockets RS FG% vs. Sonics

Code: Select all

Season    Hakeem’s FG%    Teammates FG%      League Avg. FG%

93          .530                    .422                  .473

94          .686                    .408                  .466

95          .520                    .429                  .466

96          .544                    .396                  .462



Are you sure people aren't just referring to the fact that hakeem was 1-4 all time against SEA in the playoffs? As far as I can tell, he played quite well in the majority of the playoff games against them. Series stats below:

87 loss -- http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#SEA-HOU

89 loss -- http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#SEA-HOU

93 loss -- http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#SEA-HOU

96 loss (essentially terrible relative to the rest of the series) -- http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#SEA-HOU

97 win -- http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#HOU-SEA

Houston had HCA in all 4 series they lost, so that might be another factor they're referencing.

[shutupandjam]

It seems that the Sonics argument has lost sight of the original point, which was this: The Sonics usually beat the Rockets in the mid-90s - they beat them in the playoffs in 93 and 96, for example. In 94 and 95 the Sonics lost to vastly inferior opponents in the first round. If they had just taken care of business, there's a decent chance they would have beat the Rockets one of those years. And if the Sonics had beat the Rockets in those years and Hakeem hadn't won those two titles, we might look at him in a different light.

[Clyde Frazier]

It seems that the Sonics argument has lost sight of the original point, which was this: The Sonics usually beat the Rockets in the mid-90s - they beat them in the playoffs in 93 and 96, for example. In 94 and 95 the Sonics lost to vastly inferior opponents in the first round. If they had just taken care of business, there's a decent chance they would have beat the Rockets one of those years. And if the Sonics had beat the Rockets in those years and Hakeem hadn't won those two titles, we might look at him in a different light.

Got it. I said I wondered how hakeem would've fared against jordan's bulls in 94 and 95 if he never retired, but that didn't factor into my ranking for him.

The sonics had a tendency to perform below expectations after having excellent regular seasons, so this hypothetical shouldn't be a defining characteristic of hakeem's career. It's clear there's a few posters who like to cling to certain arguments, though.

[Doctor MJ]

[

The fact that Garnett's ALSO more portable than perhaps any other player we've ever seen though, does make his case even stronger.

This is a common thought--and it's of course tied directly to his highly versatile game. But what's interesting to me is that Dirk played in the same era and while he never left Dallas, he played for a minimum of 3 distinct teams: Nellie/Nash, Avery, and Carlisle/Kidd and was hugely successful both individually and from a team standpoint with all of them. Maybe KG could be as portable, but Dirk actually proved it. 05-07 suggest that his portability from a team standpoint has some limits. Dirk's teams in that same period while better constructed aren't actually much more talented and Avery Johnson is one of the worst coaches of all-time so that's not an edge either.

And there are other players as well who have proven more portable than KG. We need to be careful not to assume versatile=portable and that less versatile players automatically aren't.

In which of those teams did he have superstar impact where he was asked to take on a secondary role on offense?

Garnett's shift in role from Minnesota is vastly bigger than anything Dirk did in his prime, and he had superstar impact both before and after. This is what i mean, who else did this? Certainly not Dirk.

I quite agree with you that versatility is not portability though, and yet I'd agree that Dirk's game adds portability to him relative to his limited versatility, and for that I get the perspective of essentially seeing Dirk in a kind of "100% portable" club. Meaning: You effectively see Dirk being able to take on some superstar role in every realistic scenario, and the fact that he can do this while actually changing his game less than Garnett does only goes to show how dominant his standard game is.

If we're really getting precise though, it's not illogical in any way to rank portability between high portability stars based on looking at more and more extreme scenarios. And if each of these guys were put next to Jordan or LeBron, clearly they are both going to take a secondary role on offense relative to those guys, and who is going to be able to weather that better? Garnett who will focus more on defense.

Similarly, you may remember I brought up portability for Larry Bird with respect to Magic & Nash. Magic & Nash are so good on offense in there standard role it's hard to imagine ever moving them (ahem, Dirk?), but Bird's portability takes it to another level: His motor and quick thinking mean he'll make impact all over the place even if he lets someone else take on the role actually dictating the play. In that sense his portability certainly seems north of those two or of Dirk.

As far as how much these more extreme scenarios should weight to you, I'm not going to say, but I don't think they should weigh nothing.

[Baller2014]

And if you blame him for his attitude (and can bring up decent enough support for that position), that's a very fair criticism. I would have no problem with someone who docks him for his early career based on his attitude, if they can show that his attitude is why the team struggled/didn't use him properly.

The Jason Kidd example does not equate, because Kidd himself did not actually have the skillset of being an elite 3pt shooter earlier in his career. His mediocre outside shooting had nothing to do with coaching.

My point is quite clear...Hakeem improved in 93, but he was still a damn good player before then. He had all the ability to be a great player...and it's not like he wasn't, and I'm projecting a role player to be great. He was still a routine AS selection, he was still making All-Defensive 1st teams, and he was still making All-NBA teams. He was still a very high impact player before then...I would put pre-93 Hakeem on the same level as a prime Garnett and a prime Duncan. At the absolute height of his career (93-95), he was a better player than Duncan and Garnett ever were.

Like I said, you're trying to mind read again. You have no idea why or how Kidd learnt to shoot 3's, just like you have no idea why Hakeem started playing better. Maybe one of Kidd's coaches just told him "shoot more like this every day", and suddenly he could shoot, just as maybe one of Hakeem's coaches said "from now on, focus more on playing like this". Alternatively, maybe something inside them just clicked. We don't know. That's why Jason Kidd becoming a 3 pt shooter is exactly the same as Hakeem suddenly impacting games a lot more. If you won't give Kidd retrospective credit for the skill set of 3pt shooting that he could have had all along, if only circumstances had been different, then you can't credit Hakeem for how he might have played, if things had gone differently.

Hakeem was indeed a great player, I'll be voting for him next if he doesn't get in this go around, but we should only be giving him credit for how his career actually panned out, and you guys are trying to prop him for a skill set and impact he never consistently displayed pre-93. That's not going to fly with me.

[DannyNoonan1221]

I don't believe my vote will matter because I am coming into this late- and at this point I thought I would vote for Bird but as hard as I am trying to decide, I can't choose between these two.

[Baller2014]

I don't believe my vote will matter because I am coming into this late- and at this point I thought I would vote for Bird but as hard as I am trying to decide, I can't choose between these two.

Actually it looks like your vote will definitely count:

So far I have the vote at Hakeem 15, Bird 14, Kobe 2, KG 1, Moses 1 and Oscar 1, with several posters yet to vote. Are we in the run off now?