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

[Owly]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The repeated accusations of strawmanning are tiresome. Your repeated evasiveness and avoiding questions is equally so.

Your stance was to stick up for a statement that there was just as much that affects "winning" as affects all stats and it's patently false.

Your stance here that winning should "be evaluated highly" (weighted heavily? I have to assume this meaning rather than the more literal meaning of closely evaluated/scrutinized) is what has been critiqued. In it's raw form, especially championships it is next to useless as illustrated above. This argument works whether it is somehow used in concert with stats or in isolation. Though fwiw, you entered into conversation with me in defending the statement ...

"You play to win the game."

If you dont win then stats are just a measure of how good of a loser you are.

which, IMO, leaves very little room for significant weighting of any stats.

I never "provided rapm as a replacement for considering championships as some stat as an be all end all stat to rank your atg". I noted it as a useful tool and an example of a statistic far less affected by teammates than "winning". Feel free to go back and check.

"I'm just asking if YOU are gonna put so much weight on that stat for ur ranking" Could you tell me how weight I put on RAPM, since you know? Feel free to use a quote.

RAPMs limitations have already been acknowledged if you actually read the posts you purport to respond to.

No moments are more important than others with the exception of genuine garbage time being less important. Well you could argue injuring a player is more impactful early than late. And maybe if you were in all players heads you could analyze psychological impacts. But points on the board don't have some game period multiplier so I'm not sure how you're deciding what "key plays" are. And I hope you have the NBA's entire history on tape library so you can systematically apply that criteria. You wouldn't want to use any tool that can't be used for the entire of the NBA's history.

The use of impact type stats and serious attempts to analyze impact upon winning - the thing largely under a players control and of relevance to evaluating a player. The fact that good play leads to titles, per the prior posts, doesn't justify any variation on a ring-count methodology because that confuses cause and effect.

If the end results in raw titles were such a great indicator of what went right for a player then you'd stand by that "winners" team I cited. You (presumably) don't because it's a horrendous clumsy tool and the same means that cut those players out of an atg conversation are the ones to continue analyzing the elite players.

Your arguments are bad, your assertions insulting and inaccurate and you've repeatedly mis-characterized, distorted or invented positions not offered. I therefore have decided to cease further engaging with you on this topic.

[mysticOscar]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because if ur going to argue that CP3 is a top 20 EVER just based on RAPM...then don't u think it's fair to show that CP3 is in the top 20 based on RAPM compared to all previous players? Isn't that how stats work?

If CP3 did not make the finals let alone a championship, doesn't that indicate that something has not gone right? This needs proper analysis and compare to other superstar in the past who has actually achieved more in terms of success.

Is championship what great players aim for? Does RAPM truly show CP3s impact in playoffs? Does RAPM show how he performed in crucial moments? Does RAPM show how he got injured in critical playoff series and missed games?
I think u place too much faith on RAPM when it requires a lot of context in itself

[mysticOscar]

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The repeated accusations of strawmanning are tiresome. Your repeated evasiveness and avoiding questions is equally so.

Your stance was to stick up for a statement that there was just as much that affects "winning" as affects all stats and it's patently false.

Your stance here that winning should "be evaluated highly" (weighted heavily? I have to assume this meaning rather than the more literal meaning of closely evaluated/scrutinized) is what has been critiqued. In it's raw form, especially championships it is next to useless as illustrated above. This argument works whether it is somehow used in concert with stats or in isolation. Though fwiw, you entered into conversation with me in defending the statement ...

"You play to win the game."

If you dont win then stats are just a measure of how good of a loser you are.

which, IMO, leaves very little room for significant weighting of any stats.

I never "provided rapm as a replacement for considering championships as some stat as an be all end all stat to rank your atg". I noted it as a useful tool and an example of a statistic far less affected by teammates than "winning". Feel free to go back and check.

"I'm just asking if YOU are gonna put so much weight on that stat for ur ranking" Could you tell me how weight I put on RAPM, since you know? Feel free to use a quote.

RAPMs limitations have already been acknowledged if you actually read the posts you purport to respond to.

No moments are more important than others with the exception of genuine garbage time being less important. Well you could argue injuring a player is more impactful early than late. And maybe if you were in all players heads you could analyze psychological impacts. But points on the board don't have some game period multiplier so I'm not sure how you're deciding what "key plays" are. And I hope you have the NBA's entire history on tape library so you can systematically apply that criteria. You wouldn't want to use any tool that can't be used for the entire of the NBA's history.

The use of impact type stats and serious attempts to analyze impact upon winning - the thing largely under a players control and of relevance to evaluating a player. The fact that good play leads to titles, per the prior posts, doesn't justify any variation on a ring-count methodology because that confuses cause and effect.

If the end results in raw titles were such a great indicator of what went right for a player then you'd stand by that "winners" team I cited. You (presumably) don't because it's a horrendous clumsy tool and the same means that cut those players out of an atg conversation are the ones to continue analyzing the elite players.

Your arguments are bad, your assertions insulting and inaccurate and you've repeatedly mis-characterized, distorted or invented positions not offered. I therefore have decided to cease further engaging with you on this topic.

Didn't mean to offend u in our conversation. If I have mischaracterized u in any if my post, just know it wasn't intentional. Takes a bit of time to understand some of ur post due to the way it's written.

Let's leave it at that

[limbo]

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

So, you're going to completely disregard the fact that Wade has a significantly shorter prime and several seasons worse than Paul worst season?

CP3's worst season in his career was '19 with HOU

Wade has at least 8 seasons worse than that... '04, '08, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18, '19... And then there's '13 which is up for debate. I think Wade was slightly better and played more during the RS in '13, but compared to Paul in '19, CP3 proved more valuable in the postseason. It would be one thing if all the best Wade seasons were firmly ahead of Paul's... but they weren't, under any medium of measurement. Except the ''WELL HE WON DA RANG, SO THAT SEETLES IT.'' I know most people can't believe it, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was a better player than Paul at his peak.

If i had to rank their seasons together, the outcome would be something like this:

'05 Wade
'12 Wade
'07 Wade
'10 Paul
'06 Paul
'07 Paul
'13 Wade
'19 Paul
'14 Wade
'16 Wade
'04 Wade
'08 Wade (injury setback year)
'15 Wade
'17 Wade
'19 Wade
'18 Wade

THEN, THE TOP 14 CONSISTS OF:

10 CP3 SEASONS

'08 Paul
'09 Paul
'11 Paul
'12 Paul
'13 Paul
'14 Paul
'15 Paul
'16 Paul
'17 Paul
'18 Paul

4 WADE SEASONS
'06 Wade
'09 Wade
'10 Wade
'11 Wade


Now, from here out. You can make an argument '09 to '11 Wade was better than any season of Paul. But you'd be going against mountains of data saying otherwise. So good luck. In any case, we're looking at like 10 seasons of Paul's prime vs. 4 seasons of Wade's prime... Yeah, you guessed it. The longevity and quality of prime is not even close. If you want to hang your hat on Wade having better teams, less completion and didn't get injured at the worst possible time, or had his teammates injured at the worst possible time (which was down to luck more than anything else) that's why Wade deserves to be ranked ahead of Paul, then congrats, i guess, but to me, it's clear as water who had a better career and played at a higher level for MUCH longer. And that's CP3.

Bottom line is Wade has arguably 8 seasons worse than CP3's worst season. And Paul occupies 10 out of the best 15 seasons from each dude. That closes the case in my book.

[No-more-rings]

Now, from here out. You can make an argument '09 to '11 Wade was better than any season of Paul. But you'd be going against mountains of data saying otherwise.

I’d love to hear the mountains of data saying Paul was better than 09 or 10 Wade.

Oh yeah you’re probably referring to “ortgzzzz”.

[limbo]

Tell me what data points towards Wade being better?

I could only come across a select few RAPM versions in single years that have Wade ahead of Paul. That's about it. And even then i believe some priors were involved.

Gitlab RAPM single year favors Paul in '09, '11 and every year after that with a bigger and bigger gap. Only year Wade ranked over Paul was '10, and '06 of course, when Paul was a rookie.

20-year PLAYOFF '98-'18 RAPM favors Paul over Wade easily as well, as the more impactful playoff performer.

Bball Ref +/- has Paul '15-'17 (which i believe to be peak Paul) all ahead of '09-'11 Wade... and '09 Paul ahead of any of those Wade years as well...

Advance stats puts MULTIPLE prime Paul seasons well above Wade both in RS and PS...

There's ESPN RPM... which only exists from the '14 season onward, thus capturing less than half of Paul's prime, but it does capture his peak, which he is ranked #3rd in '16, #2nd in '17 and #1st in '18... most of these times only behind LeBron, and Draymond in '16 with an outlier year on a supremely talented team.

I mean you tell me...

you write ''ortgzzz'' facetiously, but don't actually put any concrete evidence or a single explanation as to why you believe Wade was a better player than Paul at his peak or in his prime when both were healthy.

I gave you plenty to work with, and you failed to address ANY of it time and time again. I can give you +/- studies (you ignore them), i can give you advance stats (you ignore them), i can specifically break down context since i watch Wade and Paul's career from start to finish, but you will ignore that as well... Everything i give you ignore, but then write you'd 'love' to hear mountains of data...

There is literally MOUNTAINS of data arguing Paul > Wade... Will you address ANY of it, or will you just post non-sense, because we're done here otherwise.

[ShotCreator]

2018 Paul was injured 1 game into the season and the Rockets still ended up with 65 wins. The 71 Bucks had a comfortable 15 game lead over the #2 seed, and were around +8 SRS in 72/73 when Oscar was out. They are not missing the playoffs and there is no team that year that can stop a Kareem/Paul duo in the postseason.

You don't need to stop a Kareem/Paul duo because Chris Paul wouldn't be healthy enough to play.

Chris Paul played 11-14 healthy playoff games 4 times in his career. He went through 15 even in 2018.

The Bucks won the title after 14 games.

You can win a title in 12 games back then.

[limbo]

@ShotCreator

Why did you delete your last post? It had a good point i wanted to bounce off.

You said Paul was way better on more talented teams. I agree, while also confessing that we got robbed of a much fairer chance for Wade to demonstrate this on the Heatles, because his injuries robbed a lot of his potential to blossom under those circumstances like we've seen in 2011.

WITH THAT SAID, this only showcases the gap in ability/skill between Paul and Wade. Paul also was hampered by injuries and gradual lose of athleticism, but due to the nature of his skill and game, has been able to be effective without it, in various roles. Wade... not so much. You take away his godlike athletic ability and durability and he was a shell of his former self.

[Sign5]

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

So, you're going to completely disregard the fact that Wade has a significantly shorter prime and several seasons worse than Paul worst season?

CP3's worst season in his career was '19 with HOU

Wade has at least 8 seasons worse than that... '04, '08, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18, '19... And then there's '13 which is up for debate. I think Wade was slightly better and played more during the RS in '13, but compared to Paul in '19, CP3 proved more valuable in the postseason. It would be one thing if all the best Wade seasons were firmly ahead of Paul's... but they weren't, under any medium of measurement. Except the ''WELL HE WON DA RANG, SO THAT SEETLES IT.'' I know most people can't believe it, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was a better player than Paul at his peak.

If i had to rank their seasons together, the outcome would be something like this:

'05 Wade
'12 Wade
'07 Wade
'10 Paul
'06 Paul
'07 Paul
'13 Wade
'19 Paul
'14 Wade
'16 Wade
'04 Wade
'08 Wade (injury setback year)
'15 Wade
'17 Wade
'19 Wade
'18 Wade

THEN, THE TOP 14 CONSISTS OF:

10 CP3 SEASONS

'08 Paul
'09 Paul
'11 Paul
'12 Paul
'13 Paul
'14 Paul
'15 Paul
'16 Paul
'17 Paul
'18 Paul

4 WADE SEASONS
'06 Wade
'09 Wade
'10 Wade
'11 Wade


Now, from here out. You can make an argument '09 to '11 Wade was better than any season of Paul. But you'd be going against mountains of data saying otherwise. So good luck. In any case, we're looking at like 10 seasons of Paul's prime vs. 4 seasons of Wade's prime... Yeah, you guessed it. The longevity and quality of prime is not even close. If you want to hang your hat on Wade having better teams, less completion and didn't get injured at the worst possible time, or had his teammates injured at the worst possible time (which was down to luck more than anything else) that's why Wade deserves to be ranked ahead of Paul, then congrats, i guess, but to me, it's clear as water who had a better career and played at a higher level for MUCH longer. And that's CP3.

Bottom line is Wade has arguably 8 seasons worse than CP3's worst season. And Paul occupies 10 out of the best 15 seasons from each dude. That closes the case in my book.

I wouldn't take '19 Paul over a number of those Wade seasons so this argument already falls flat. We can waste time going back and forth on the season rankings (in which are again imo are generously touted towards Paul). Nevertheless, my point wasn't exactly refuted. You only admitted it, Paul "unluckily" got injured at the "wrong times"... multiple times.

Luck is part of the nba and unfortunately the facts remain that Paul got injured when he teamed needed him most while Wade was there for his and captured 3 rings. If we want to talk about luck and injuries, give both players super durability in their career timelines and I don't think this comparison would even be close. So lets drop the bad the luck talk. Peak-wise its not a huge disparity but again the resilience and take-overness is what gives Wade the edge and partly why one has has rings and the other doesn't.

[No-more-rings]

Tell me what data points towards Wade being better?



I could only come across a select few RAPM versions in single years that have Wade ahead of Paul. That's about it. And even then i believe some priors were involved.



Gitlab RAPM single year favors Paul in '09, '11 and every year after that with a bigger and bigger gap. Only year Wade ranked over Paul was '10, and '06 of course, when Paul was a rookie.

Google sites RAPM has Wade over Paul that year by .6, and honestly that's Paul's best season if we ignore his bad playoff performance that year.

20-year PLAYOFF '98-'18 RAPM favors Paul over Wade easily as well, as the more impactful playoff performer.

Yeah? I was only arguing Wade's 09 and 10 and about there's mountains of data for Paul's best years ahead of those. Paul has more prime seasons so of course he'll look better in an extended RAPM stretch like that.

Bball Ref +/- has Paul '15-'17 (which i believe to be peak Paul) all ahead of '09-'11 Wade... and '09 Paul ahead of any of those Wade years as well...

So firstly, It's painfully obvious that 2011 Wade's impact stats are heavily drug down by playing with Lebron and they aren't really indicative of what he was as a player. Also his advanced stats too.



Second if you're talking about Paul's on/off yeah it looks better but i don't know if it should be taken at face value we have a lot of sample of the Clippers doing quite well without him during stretches from 2014-2015.



In 2014 they went 13-7 without Paul and some of which were by good margins not just some scrap by type wins. If Blake had to pick up that slack again in 2015, I'm sure he could as evidenced by them beating a 56 win team in their own floor in the playoffs and nearly doing it a second time. You can call it a small sample, but prime Wade's teams without him(minus 2011) would've never beaten a 56 win team in a playoff game lol. The only playoff game he missed from 05-11 was game 6 against the Pistons and the Heat got blown out and only scored 66 points. Small samples, but i don't see any reason to ignore it though.



Then i guess you can use that but ignore that Wade was only 2nd to Lebron in RAPM in 2010 and had a large lead over anyone else.



Or that by the google sites source was behind Lamar Odom a 31 mpg player, Lebron and KG who were 2 gods of RAPM so to speak in 2009.



The gitlab source has been mostly proven as a junk or at least inconsistent source for RAPM, i mean they have Durant 1st in 2010 over Wade and Lebron(Lebron WTF?), where on goole sites he's 12th. Which sounds more accurate gauge on Durant's impact as a 21 year old who at the time was literally just a scorer? He was like Melo level that year roughly. I mean the gitlab source you hang your hat on has Nash outside the top 100 in both 05 and 06



Meanwhile Wade grades out great by any RAMP source, Paul may as well but i wouldn't side with gitlab for years where theur primes intersect. And even if you did, his gap over Wade that year was so small it's barely even worth mentioning.

Advance stats puts MULTIPLE prime Paul seasons well above Wade both in RS and PS...

I guess so? Though he has so many 1st and 2nd round exits its hard to compare them. I honestly think Wade has probably 3 or 4 series better than anything Paul put up and i;m sure it's defensible by stats.

There's ESPN RPM... which only exists from the '14 season onward, thus capturing less than half of Paul's prime, but it does capture his peak, which he is ranked #3rd in '16, #2nd in '17 and #1st in '18... most of these times only behind LeBron, and Draymond in '16 with an outlier year on a supremely talented team.

Paul is a highly impactful basketball player, i agree.

I mean you tell me...



you write ''ortgzzz'' facetiously, but don't actually put any concrete evidence or a single explanation as to why you believe Wade was a better player than Paul at his peak or in his prime when both were healthy.

I gave you plenty back to show Wade holds his own in terms of impact stuff, RAPM is more reliable than raw +/- or on/off, especially since on/off goes by per 100 possessions so a team playing a faster pace like Paul's could allow for a bigger discrepancy in ORTG drop offs with each guy.

I gave you plenty to work with, and you failed to address ANY of it time and time again. I can give you +/- studies (you ignore them), i can give you advance stats (you ignore them),

What's this time and time again stuff? I think this is the first time i ever had a Wade vs Paul exchange with you? If there's something else i missed in this thread, well ok i didn't read every page in here.

i can specifically break down context since i watch Wade and Paul's career from start to finish, but you will ignore that as well... Everything i give you ignore, but then write you'd 'love' to hear mountains of data...



There is literally MOUNTAINS of data arguing Paul > Wade... .

You didn't provide mountains of data. You used his on/off from 2015-2017, and a junk RAPM source to go with it and called it a day basically.



If you want to claim(which you did) that Paul:



a) Has a longer prime



b) has a better overall prime with data to back it up



Then..i already know that's a battle i won't win since Wade had too many injured years like 07 and 08, then as you put it declined after 2011.



But no, i don't think there's mountains of data besides raw on/off to support Paul's best 3-4 years being better than Wade's. And lets say even if there was, is data the only thing you care about when ranking players? Or is it just this case because you're a mavs fan and so many of them on this board tend to downplay and disrespect Wade's legacy.



Or...do you take impact stats+ raw and advanced production, apply context to it along with results and eye test. Because doing all those there's just no reasonable way to think Paul is clearly better than Wade when he was healthy and on his game. You can argue it i guess, but you can do it by not pooping on Wade's peak and legacy.



So even if you want to take Paul's career that's fine.. thought you still need to reconcile a few things.



a) As i pointed out early in the thread, Paul was hurt like essentially half of his prime years in the playoffs give or take and it in some of the cases flat out ruin their hopes of advancing.



09- Got hurt played like complete garbage

10- Hurt season wasn't there

11- Great performance but against a Lakers that weren't themselves and run down by that point in the season, as shown by the Mavs Massacre of them.

12- Got hurt, trash performance against the Spurs, got swept in embarrassing fashion

13- Good performance but anything that special

14- Hurt hamstring against the Warriors, series had no business going 7 with Bogut out

15- Misses 2 games, team got a win without him and still can't hold onto the 3-1 lead

16-Got hurt, ruined team's chances

17- Great performance sure, but still a winnable series and shooting 6-19 for 13 points hardly counts a clutch game 7 from Paul.

18- Has his most team success ever in a shared and lowered offensive role, ruins what could've been a legit shot at a title with his usual untimely injuries



Now, i'm not saying Wade's health or playoff performances are perfect either but i don't get how anyone can pick Paul if you give both guys good supporting casts and you want to win a title.



When Wade had contending casts he did this:



05- game 7 of an ECF, his own injury arguable cost them a title just like 18 Paul

06- Dominant title run

11- Finals appearance, and would've been 2 time mvp if not for Lebron's pathetic disappearance



His window was shorter than Paul's but i don't know how much it matters when Paul couldn't really stay healthy anyway.

Anyway I really didn’t want to have to do this again, considering how many times I have and my recent exchange with Bad Gatorade, but you had to attack my integrity for some reason.

[dygaction]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If "Winning" is not the ultimate goal, KLove should stay at Min for his year after year 26p/13r instead of becoming the 3rd option in Cleveland. Top 20 are not only having better statistics, but also winning the bling bling.

[Owly]

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

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

If "Winning" is not the ultimate goal, KLove should stay at Min for his year after year 26p/13r instead of becoming the 3rd option in Cleveland. Top 20 are not only having better statistics, but also winning the bling bling.

If you had read my posts in this thread you would realize that not only have I never denied titles as the ultimate goal (for a team and hopefully the individuals playing for it), I had explicitly stated that it was.

And the former "you play to win" isn't the point [or a point since we all know it]

It is that it is a truly dreadful measure of individual players, as I have shown it to be. How you have failed to grasp this is beyond me, and further engagement seems useless so I'll cease further engagement with you on this.

[dygaction]

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

Jazz got upset more and delivered more only because Malone crushed CP3 in longevity. Again, 6 wcf finals and 2 finals belittle 0 wcf.

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

Yes, he had Sloan and Sloan became HOF coach because of him. Similarly, had the GS became a lottery team, Kerr would be joke of the century. Now all of a sudden Curry won because he had Steve Kerr? A fun fact, winning elevates everyone.

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

That I agree, and that is why he is not in top 15 or even 20 of most ranking. If he had one FMVP, he would have been top 15. If he had 2, top 10 locked.

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

It would make a difference, then there is a high chance CP3 could pass the second round, multiple times, maybe 6 WCF and 2 finals like Stockton did or even better. Even that way, Stockton still has overwhelming longevity advantage. Also use your own words, when Griffin and Harden were healthy in their prime (likely peak), the best player played along them was CP3, who was incredibly injury prone, the polar opposite of John Stockton.

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

Stats and winning should have a good correlation, otherwise it would be empty stats. We have seen it from Love, KAT, and Melo. They are arguing whether Trae Young should be an all star now. 29p/8.5a, better than Paul's stats, right?

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

Playing with peak EWing and Hill they might be able to get to the finals, similar to John Stockton and Karl Malone. Never get injured you need to rewrite history. That's his built and way of play, and that's the main reason keeping him from being top 20. Why CP3 wants to pick fight with Malone (Two-time NBA MVP, 11-time All-NBA first team, second all-time scoring in NBA history) instead of Stockton? He really not in that category.

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

Exactly. If you do not want to consider team results in evaluating a professional player in professional team sports, you should watch boxing, tennis (singles), or MMA. Then nobody will argue with you on looking only at personal stats anymore.

[iggymcfrack]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No they aren’t. By either PER or WS/48, Chris Paul has 8 seasons that are better than West’s best.

[70sFan]

Why people compare 1960s PER to 2010s PER? These are two different stats...

[limbo]

I wouldn't take '19 Paul over a number of those Wade seasons so this argument already falls flat

Nah, bro... now you're straight up capping.

If you had claimed that you think '14 Wade was better than '19 Paul, i would at least entertain it, even though you'd be clearly wrong. But to say you'd take multiple seasons of Wade from '14-'19 over Paul's last season in Houston you are straight up trolling me...

'19 Paul had way better advanced stats, finished #12 in RPM IN THE ENTIRE LEAGUE and had a very good On and On/Off court rating...

'14 Wade played less RS minutes, had worse +/- and completely fumbled in the Playoffs...

There's no way Wade was better in '14 than Paul last season... AND DEFINITELY NOT EVERY VERSION THAT FOLLOWED '14 WADE, WHERE HE WAS FURTHER DECLINING INTO OBLIVION...

And then you have the audacity to claim that my argument falls flat because you can't even identify no-brainer seasons where Paul was better than Wade...

I'm out, man. This is intellectual dishonesty at it's finest.

[Sign5]

I wouldn't take '19 Paul over a number of those Wade seasons so this argument already falls flat

Nah, bro... now you're straight up capping.

If you had claimed that you think '14 Wade was better than '19 Paul, i would at least entertain it, even though you'd be clearly wrong. But to say you'd take multiple seasons of Wade from '14-'19 over Paul's last season in Houston you are straight up trolling me...

'19 Paul had way better advanced stats, finished #12 in RPM IN THE ENTIRE LEAGUE and had a very good On and On/Off court rating...

'14 Wade played less RS minutes, had worse +/- and completely fumbled in the Playoffs...

There's no way Wade was better in '14 than Paul last season... AND DEFINITELY NOT EVERY VERSION THAT FOLLOWED '14 WADE, WHERE HE WAS FURTHER DECLINING INTO OBLIVION...

And then you have the audacity to claim that my argument falls flat because you can't even identify no-brainer seasons where Paul was better than Wade...

I'm out, man. This is intellectual dishonesty at it's finest.

Indeed I would. TYPING IN CAPS & in the condescending tone doesn't shift your argument at all
I also like how you chose the 18 words on which out of prime years are better to emphasize on and then completely ignore the main points on why Paul's fragility in the playoffs cost him and his team from advancing... repeatedly. So again Paul's longevity in the regular season doesn't make up for his unavailability and lack of post season success. You can scream DER RINGZ or whatever other term you please but the top 20 list encompasses everything, not just focusing on regular season longevity (which weren't even a string of Malone/Lebron durable years anyways).

As you know, upper echelon players are heavily penalized for not winning titles (hence Dirk's reputation before and after '11). Harden is currently going through the same and Paul isn't any exception to that rule sorry. The 'b-b-but Paul had freak injuries/ailments!' argument can work both ways and would strengthen Wade's career MORE. Fact of the matter is Paul failed to deliver a number of times. More than enough for it to be considered a coincidence or fluke. Whether its his body that just decided to break down after lengthy battles, it's been made clear you can't rely on him to lead a team to a title and that's where Wade gets the edge.

[limbo]

Google sites RAPM has Wade over Paul that year by .6, and honestly that's Paul's best season if we ignore his bad playoff performance that year.

Google sites has '08 Paul at 27th, behind his teammate Peja Stojakovic... Yeah, you guessed it, there weren't 27 players better than Paul that year... and Peja wasn't the best player for the New Orleans Hornets.

It's prior informed data and Paul suffers from it because he doesn't have a lot of mileage to reinforce his impact up to this point, as he only played two seasons which, while he was very good in '06, '07, were clearly well below his the jump he made in 2008.

As you pointed out. We can observe Paul making a significant leap the very next year and is only 0.6 behind Wade at this point.

'10 is a down year for Paul and he was injured for half the season. His team was further deteriorating... So it's really no surprise he takes a hit in the metric.

in '11, he's ahead of Wade

in '12, he's ahead of Wade

in '13, he's ahead of Wade

I think you get the message...

If i'm indeed hanging my hat, i'm doing so on multiple racks... You're hanging it on specifically two years... '09, where Wade was a measly 0.6 points ahead of Paul. And '10 which is one of the worst years of Paul's prime (and he was injured half the season) vs. arguably the best year of Wade... And both of these are prior informed...

Yeah? I was only arguing Wade's 09 and 10 and about there's mountains of data for Paul's best years ahead of those. Paul has more prime seasons so of course he'll look better in an extended RAPM stretch like that.

This was just to illustrate Paul was a better playoff performer than Wade. We are, in fact, comparing who deserves to be ranked ahead of the other in an all-time ranking, aren't we? I don't know if you are one of them, but a lot of people are siding with Wade do to him 'dominating' the Playoffs en route to winning multiple championships, while Paul is labeled as a Playoff choker.

This data clearly dispels this myth. If you wanna argue '06 Wade was a greater Playoff run than anything we've seen from Paul. Fine. I'll allow it. But it's a minuscule difference in any case. I guess you can't stop people from taking one/two series worth of samples sizes where an elite player goes supernova (like Wade last two series in '06) and wins the title... and those two series immortalize him over arguably better but definitely more consistent players with longer primes and better impact over larger samples of size... There's nothing i can do here.

So firstly, It's painfully obvious that 2011 Wade's impact stats are heavily drug down by playing with Lebron and they aren't really indicative of what he was as a player. Also his advanced stats too.

You are putting Wade alongside the greatest, most versatile player of all-time and saying it's natural to expect his impact to suffer. I see this as at least a yellow flag.

Granted, i don't expect his on/off to be insane, because those teams were more talented than what he had prior in Miami for obvious reasons. But here's the catch. Chris Paul underwent a similar transition in '18, where he was arguably put in an even tougher position playing with the most ball-dominant guard in NBA history and his impact translated far better than Wade alongside LeBron. In fact, Paul finished #1 in RPM that year, which is insane, in a significantly different role that what he was used to during most of his career.

This simply tells me Paul's skill and basketball ability is more portable, less volatile and more adaptable, thus putting another father in his cap when compared to Wade.

In 2014 they went 13-7 without Paul and some of which were by good margins not just some scrap by type wins. If Blake had to pick up that slack again in 2015, I'm sure he could as evidenced by them beating a 56 win team in their own floor in the playoffs and nearly doing it a second time. You can call it a small sample, but prime Wade's teams without him(minus 2011) would've never beaten a 56 win team in a playoff game lol. The only playoff game he missed from 05-11 was game 6 against the Pistons and the Heat got blown out and only scored 66 points. Small samples, but i don't see any reason to ignore it though.

Ok? In 2007, the Heat went 17-14 without Wade in the RS... Then Lol Deng and Ben Gordon swept them in the 1st round of the Playoffs. Of course the excuse here will be that Wade was coming off an injury, so it doesn't count. But when Chris Paul is playing on one leg no one cares.

In 2013, the Heat were 11-2 without Wade in the RS... Then he proceeded to get carried to a title... You think CP3 could put up 16/4.5/5 on 50%TS over 22 games and win a ring? No. You can keep tooting Blake's horn but you know every team CP3 has ever been on has been in trouble as soon as he wasn't playing like one of the best players in the league. LeBron basically resurrected a couple more passable years out of Wade and gave him 2 rings. For all the talk about CP3's body not holding up, Wade would collapse into oblivion if LeBron wasn't there to take on all the responsibilities he did and gave Wade plenty of time to rest between games and taking games off during the RS.

Then i guess you can use that but ignore that Wade was only 2nd to Lebron in RAPM in 2010 and had a large lead over anyone else.

Only one metric, prior-informed. I've given you several. Again we go into hanging hats. You need more hats or racks to put them on. Also, i don't consider late 00's Paul to be his peak. He was very good, make no mistake, but there's plenty out there suggesting he was even better in '15-'17. And you can put '18 in there, if you value completely dominating to a historical degree as a 2nd fiddle.

Or that by the google sites source was behind Lamar Odom a 31 mpg player, Lebron and KG who were 2 gods of RAPM so to speak in 2009.

So Odom is the GOAT. I guess this settles it because Google RAPM says so.

The gitlab source has been mostly proven as a junk or at least inconsistent source for RAPM, i mean they have Durant 1st in 2010 over Wade and Lebron(Lebron WTF?), where on goole sites he's 12th. Which sounds more accurate gauge on Durant's impact as a 21 year old who at the time was literally just a scorer? He was like Melo level that year roughly. I mean the gitlab source you hang your hat on has Nash outside the top 100 in both 05 and 06

Fair enough. It definitely looks like there are better models of RAPM floating around there.

Advance stats puts MULTIPLE prime Paul seasons well above Wade both in RS and PS...

I guess so? Though he has so many 1st and 2nd round exits its hard to compare them. I honestly think Wade has probably 3 or 4 series better than anything Paul put up and i;m sure it's defensible by stats.

So you won't acknowledge this as relevant at all? A stat that has a proven track record of relatively accurately parsing out the most dominant individual seasons and players in NBA history, at least in terms of production... Are advanced stats only good when they tell us MJ, LeBron, Wilt, Kareem etc. are some of the best players of all-time... but when it comes to Paul, NOPE, there must be an aberration in the stat. Scratch that. It's one thing if Paul had an abnormally good outlier season, or if he finessed some of the stats like Enes Kanter. But dude has MULTIPLE seasons of some of the best advanced stats in NBA history as the clear-cut best player on his team... This dude isn't even Westbrook stat-padding rebounds and playing torpedo basketball with unprecedented usage. He's out there averaging 16 points and 8 assists per game... But i guess since Paul has many 1st and 2nd round exists, that disqualifies that metric as having relevancy.

Paul is a highly impactful basketball player, i agree.

Cool way of conceding an argument and not saying anything of value to the discussion of why he's better than Wade.

I gave you plenty back to show Wade holds his own in terms of impact stuff, RAPM is more reliable than raw +/- or on/off, especially since on/off goes by per 100 possessions so a team playing a faster pace like Paul's could allow for a bigger discrepancy in ORTG drop offs with each guy.

You didn't give me plenty at all. You keep harping over Wade doing better in prior-informed RAPM in '09 and '10. That's your only proof of why he's better than Paul. Wade being one of the best players and simultaneously having one of the worst teams in the league made him extremely valuable in those years. Great. Now can we move on?

I even said that peak Wade has an argument over peak Paul. However, the original discussion here was who deserves to be ranked above the other. And that's Paul. Why? Because the difference in high/low end primes between the two is gigantic. Like i showcased earlier in this thread. Wade has arguably 8 seasons worse than Paul's worst season... And in some of those seasons, he was an average player AT BEST, and i'm probably being generous. There's no season of Paul where he was even anywhere close to how bad Wade was from '15 until he retired (and that's 5 seasons AT LEAST, which is not a negligible amount at all). Not to mention i'd take every season of Paul over '14 and rookie Wade as well.

Then if we look at the top half. Paul occupies 10 out of the 15 best seasons between the two. You can argue Wade '09 and '10 should be #1 and #2, ok, if it is, we're literally bickering over millimeters of difference here. After that, there's a whole bunch of CP3 seasons coming with '06 Wade sprinkled somewhere in there and '11 Wade coming on the back half.

What's this time and time again stuff? I think this is the first time i ever had a Wade vs Paul exchange with you? If there's something else i missed in this thread, well ok i didn't read every page in here.

I coming at everyone. I'm explaining the same things in this thread over and over again, and getting the same insufficient arguments thrown back. You just put yourself in the line of fire sort to speak.

You didn't provide mountains of data. You used his on/off from 2015-2017, and a junk RAPM source to go with it and called it a day basically.

I took advanced stats, RAPM from multiple sources, ESPN RPM, BBall ref +/- etc.

You keep giving me the same thing, you keep hanging the same hat.

So even if you want to take Paul's career that's fine.. thought you still need to reconcile a few things.


a) As i pointed out early in the thread, Paul was hurt like essentially half of his prime years in the playoffs give or take and it in some of the cases flat out ruin their hopes of advancing.

[/quote][/quote]

And Wade is innocent?

05 - Not good enough to beat the Pistons

06 - Supernova for 2 series, Dallas chokes the Finals.

07 - Gets hurt, team still goes 17-14 without him. Gets back for the Playoffs and plays like complete garbage

08 - His team literally won 15 games with him playing 51 games and being hurt the rest. I never seen Paul win 15 games per calendar year in his life.

09 - Peak Wade loses to 1.70 SRS Joe Johnson Hawks... At least CP3 is out here losing some of the best teams in the league (Spurs, Thunder, Grizz, Houston, Golden State)... The only thing comparable to this from CP3 was that Portland series where the Clippers were without Griffin and Paul played only 4 games. And he still almost advanced.

10 - I mean, he got hot against the post-prime Celtics who were taking it easy in the 1st round. Big deal

11 - Let's be honest. Man got saved by LeBron and Bosh against the Bulls. Absolutely atrocious performance that CP3 would be burried alive if he performed like that. Like i said multiple times in this thread. Paul simply couldn't afford to have these types of series. His teams were absolutely demolished if he did. Wade could afford to go 19 ppg on 50%TS with twice as many turnovers as assists and still advanced against an elite team. Under normal circumstances, that is, not playing with the GOAT, he would've been eliminated right here and wouldn't have the opportunity to do what he did vs. Dallas and this would've been seen as a flop season for Wade. But since LeBron was there, the tables and narrative completely turns from one series to another. This is why i don't like small sample sizes from the Playoffs. If a few bounces go differently, Wade is seen as a flop in 2011 and LeBron as the best player. But now the narrative is LeBron choked in the Finals while Wade was brilliant.

12 - Hurt in the Playoffs. CP3 would've been eliminated in his shoes. But LeBron + Bosh + weaker conference = ring

13 - Hurt + bad in the Playoffs. CP3 would've been eliminated in his shoes. But LeBron + Bosh + weaker conference = ring

14 - Hurt + bad in the Playoffs. If you swapped CP3 and Wade, the Clippers don't even make the postseason. You needed 50 wins to get the 8th seed in the West that year. No way is Blake/DeAndre and hobbled Wade who only played 54 games enough for that. You can keep capping about how Paul was 'hurt', but at the end of the day, he played the whole series vs. the Thunder AND WAS THE BEST PLAYER IN THAT SERIES. You put '14 Paul on the Heat and they have a very good chance of winning the title.

15 - Irrelevant, not good enough

16 - Irrelevant, not good enough

17 - Irrelevant, not good enough

18 - Irrelevant, not good enough

19 - Irrelevant, not good enough


I think i said all that needs to be said.

I don't think there's any room to debate here. You're going to keep harping over those two prior-informed RAPM results from '09 an '10 and ignore everything else.

CP3 > Wade

I rest my case.

[trex_8063]

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Using championships confuses cause and effect.

Not to drag you [Owly] back in (as I see you've [probably wisely] opted to disengage from this conversation), but I want to comment that the confusing of cause and effect (or what I've elsewhere referred to as "results-oriented thinking") is a major problem in many analytical disciplines (slightly lengthy semi-derail follows, though I promise it loops back to basketball analysis ).

Instances of this can sporadically be seen in scientific research and/or reporting of same. Though I can also speak from my own experiences in another hobby/pastime I used to spend a lot of time in: poker, and poker strategy.

On a poker forum I was quite active on years ago, I recall [more than once] a new poster relating how one time he’d had pocket aces (or kings, or similar) which he [appropriately, btw] played aggressively at the start of the hand, but ultimately lost a large pot (to which he’d contributed a significant amount) after being drawn out on by some weak(ish) speculative hand (e.g. J9-offsuit, or similar). He then hypothesized [based on this result] that one should never play these monster starter hands aggressively at the start [because they can be drawn out on later], and instead declared they should be played tentatively until you see the flop [and maybe the turn] and see if anyone else is betting aggressively.

I recall another time we were analyzing a *hand history presented by another new poster…….

*proper hand-histories should never reveal [or even imply] the opponent’s hand, btw, so as not to bias the opinions of those doing the evaluating; we should only be given the information the opponent had [including info gathered in prior hands played against the opponent, table dynamics, etc] at the time of the decision-point in question.

…..and got down to the river [final] decision where he was facing a single bet (in fixed-limit Hold 'Em) against a single opponent, while holding a somewhat weak made hand. He was getting I think >12:1 pot odds to call (e.g. the pot was something like $2.50, and it was going to cost him just $0.20 to call).
Based on the information we’d gleaned from the poster about his opponent and the way the hand had played out to this point, we established a likely **range for the opponent (**much of poker strat involves continually establishing and revising the range of possible hands your opponents could hold; a range which you then gauge your decisions against), and determined that our hero would have the best hand about a third of the time, and would lose about two-thirds of the time.

He says “this is a standard fold, right?” We all tell him God no! Don’t fold, you’re getting better than 12:1 from the pot. He says, “but I’m going to lose more often than I win. How is that not a fold?” We explain the amount he’s winning the times he’s best is SOOOO much more than the amount lost when he loses (like 12+ times more). But he wasn’t easily convinced.

I tried a simple hypothetical I sometimes use to illustrate the flaw in his thinking: suppose I have a standard 6-sided dice, and if you pay me $1, I’ll let you take a single roll of the dice. If you roll 1-5, you win nothing; game over. But if you roll a 6, I’ll give you $1,000,000. Is this a bad bet? After all, you’re going to lose more often than you win.

Now most [but surprisingly not all] people can understand the hypothetical dice game scenario; I guess because the “pot-size” vs odds of winning is so grotesquely exaggerated that it can hardly be missed. But the EXACT same principle applies to his river decision.

He nonetheless had trouble seeing it. And, of course, colouring his thinking was the fact [which he later revealed] that he did call the bet, and his opponent had one of the hands [which was in our constructed range] that beat our hero. If he’d won, he never would have posted this hand for discussion. Only the result (losing the pot) made him question whether he’d done the right thing (even after it was made clear he had).


We see this exact flaw in basketball analysis. Not just in player comparisons, but even in assessments of single plays. I recall instances on this forum where posters were scouting game footage and they classified the defense of an individual player on an individual play [which was exemplary, btw] as “poor” because the guy he was guarding scored. The actual defense on the play [which again: was exemplary] was not the take-away for them…..it was the result of the play (that the offensive player scored) that decided everything. No doubt if the player had missed the shot, the defensive play would have been graded excellent.

Likewise I’ve seen (just as one example) a Kobe highlight reel showing Kobe blowing by his defender (got him beat by about ¾ of step, and slightly off-balance to boot), giving himself a perfectly open pull-up from about 15 feet (which the defender has no chance of realistically recovering to block or even contest well, and no help until he gets to the restricted area).....or the option of attacking the help in the restricted area hoping to draw a foul.

Kobe does neither.
He picks up the dribble, pauses a split-second to allow his defender to fully recover him, does a head/shoulder fake, does another (the defender bites on neither, and is now chested right up on him), pivots around backwards (as though a spin-move is a legit threat, given he’s already picked up the dribble), pivots back to his original position, head/shoulder fakes one more time, then does a heavily contested two-footed pull-up from a dead-stop [Odom (I think it was) was half-open on the opposite baseline, still at least a few seconds on the shotclock]. The shot goes in, so it’s on a highlight reel and touted as a great play by the mainstream.
It was a horrid shot that even Kobe would miss at least two times out of three, and clearly displays an instance of terrible decision-making. But the play is defined by the outcome, so…...yay, great play.

And in similar fashion, we see individual player performance graded based on the team result. It’s a gigantic hurdle in really any field of analytic thought.


Now all of this is not to say one cannot question Paul’s ability to lead a contender (or, for that matter, to be seriously skeptical about whether or not he belongs in the top 20).
However, I think the first few responders hit upon the main crux of valid CP3 criticism: durability. There has been more than one season where one of the biggest obstacles in front of him as far as leading a contender was durability issues come playoff time. Although to be fair to him, sometimes it wasn’t his own durability [or at least ONLY his own] that was the issue [see: Griffin in ‘13, ‘16]. He shouldn’t be judged based upon Griffin’s durability, but to some degree he will be by some.

[E-Balla]

2018 Paul was injured 1 game into the season and the Rockets still ended up with 65 wins. The 71 Bucks had a comfortable 15 game lead over the #2 seed, and were around +8 SRS in 72/73 when Oscar was out. They are not missing the playoffs and there is no team that year that can stop a Kareem/Paul duo in the postseason.

You don't need to stop a Kareem/Paul duo because Chris Paul wouldn't be healthy enough to play.

Chris Paul played 11-14 healthy playoff games 4 times in his career. He went through 15 even in 2018.

The Bucks won the title after 14 games.

You can win a title in 12 games back then.

You're talking games... Oscar played 3700+ minutes with a terrible travel schedule in a more physical league. CP3 after leaving New Orleans has peaked at 3302 minutes and he missed 2 games in the playoffs and lost in 7 to Houston.