RealGM Top 100 List #14

[magicmerl]

So for contrast, here's how he compares to Dr J and K.Malone:
K.Malone from 88-93 had per 100 scoring of 33.4, 32.6, 31.4, 35.0, 36.1 and 31.3. Karl Malone records 4 other playoffs of 37-38pp100... and regular season Karl is even better. Dr J also kills West on a per100 scoring basis (32.3 in 74, 30.6 in 75 and a whooping 37.4 in 76, he posts 30.6 again in 77, drops to 27 and 28 the next 2 postseasons, and kicks it back up to 30.7 and 30.3 again in 1980 and 81), and both Karl (56TS%) and Erving (haven't calculated his TS through that stretch, but it looks to be notably higher, going up to 61% in 1976) are far more efficient, so West isn't a better scorer than either of them, not even in the playoffs.

Well, If you're going to zero in on scoring like that you should include 1964 for West, since he had 32.6 per100, which is better than his 1970 campaign.

I voted for DrJ too, but I think it's an exaggeration to say that 'Dr J kills West' based on playoff scoring. Looking at a 5 year period (giving West 6 to account for his injured 1967 campaign) ordered by highest scoring to lowest scoring, and you have
West 64-69: 40.0 32.6 31.1 30.7 30.1
DrJ.. 74-79: 37.4 32.3 30.6 30.6 26.8

West looks like a better scorer just looking at PtsPer100 in their putative primes in every single year.

You should know that confirmation bias was the only reason he asked you in the first place. If what you told him matched his "pre-conceived views," then he'd say, "Yes!" and then use it as evidence for his agenda. Had what you said not matched up, he would have discarded it and come up with a rationalization for why what you said didn't matter. That's how cognitive biases work. The fact that you—who provided the numbers—don't use them like that or draw that conclusion from it doesn't matter.

I guess you're right, since he appears to be using it as a "Yes!" stat when the numbers don't actually support the arguement he is making.

[Basketballefan]

It's odd that one would expect a guard to be "Barkley efficient." Jordan, the consensus GOAT, wasn't Barkley efficient, yet I'm 100% certain that if I go back to the #1 thread that I won't see that being held against him.

I think you took what i said too literal.

I hate when people do this.

Because invariably they do it to backtrack.

I go by the words I read on the screen. I do not add anything. I simply go by what is there. Just as when I type a post, people don't need to "infer" anything or presume to "think" what I meant, all they have to do is go by the words that I've typed. I stand by whatever I say. If—despite being able to compose one's thoughts when writing unlike when speaking face-to-face—you still didn't mean what you said (with it not even being a deep statement that lends itself to multiple interpretations), then that's your fault for not being able to communicate clearly. (This is a written medium. One's words are all we have to go by.)

I suppose though, it's my fault for actually thinking people say what they mean and mean what they say, when that so often isn't the case.

It's a player comparison board don't get all bent out of shape.

If you don't like what i said then too bad get over it.

[trex_8063]

My run-off vote: Julius Erving

Erving had the higher peak, imo (though not by a huge margin), clearly holds the longevity/durability card, too.
I've also been swayed somewhat (nearly changed my initial vote) by some of the narrative wrt his being a GOAT-level teammate, as well as noting how close he got the Sixers in '80 and '82 (while facing the Bird Celtics and Magic Lakers).....then immediately upon obtaining M.Malone the '83 Sixers become one of the GOAT teams in history.

No rub on West, who would have been coming up very shortly for me.
On a side-note: this section of the list is super-close for me. Given the 13 already voted in, there's very very little separating who I would have at #14 and #17; to me it's literally splittin' hairs between the individual places. Even the gap between #14 and #19/20 is not very big, imo. This is arguably the most interesting section of the list, if you ask me.

[penbeast0]

Realbig3 forgot to vote this time around, and a lot of Dr J voters didn't get around to voting at #13 (or he might have been chosen ahead of Malone).

Anyway, I agree that it's reasonable to argue West might be more valuable today. He could hit the 3 for one thing (I'm a lot less convinced about his D at the 1 spot, or even the 2 spot today). That said, people have quoted his stats verbatim, and it's annoying, because they obviously can't be taken literally. People spent ages telling me West was a far superior playoff scorer to Karl Malone... except when we give them an adjustment so they have the same number of shots West scores less than Malone or Dr J on worse efficiency. So while West beats his regular season self in the playoffs, he's still worse than the playoff versions of K.Malone and Dr J.

It is theoretically possible to shoot close to the amount West actually did (some years) in the modern setting... it's just that when it happens it's invariably a bad thing. It tends to happen either in cases where the player has no help on a bad team (e.g. T-Mac in Orlando), or the player is determined to shoot that much irrespective of whether it's in the flow of the offense and advisable (e.g. Kobe). If West was on successful teams today he'd never be asked to shoot that much. Clyde posted a table on page 10 suggesting with pace adjustment West would be shooting 17 shots in the modern game through his prime (2 less than Malone). I'm not sure where Merl's figures are from, but he cited West as scoring 28pp100. Karl Malone's playoff prime sees him get between 31 and 38 pp100, closer to 38 on average than 31, so he's well ahead. Ditto Dr J at 36.

OF course, as has been brought up repeatedly, there are so many more shots taken in the high pace 60s . . .

but then shooting as much as West does might not be such a bad thing as it's not such a high percentage of team shots

As I posted earlier, I do believe that Karl Malone's point % (like rebound % or assist % -- the percentage of his team's points he scored) is clearly higher than West's (or Ervings for that matter). However, West's efficiency % (the efficiency of his points relative to his team's -- or any team at his time) is appreciably higher. And this disparity increases in the playoffs while the scoring disparity decreases as Karl's numbers decrease while West's increase or stay the same.

This is not to disparage Karl Malone in any way; if anything, his scoring is underrated because the 90s were a low scoring era of NBA history. But it is important also to recognize that just as scoring equivalent volumes in a low volume era is more impressive; scoring at equivalent efficiency in a low efficiency era is also more impressive.

[tsherkin]

I have no problem assuming West would get 25-27ppg in the modern context... so less than Malone or Dr J would, on worse efficiency (even in the playoffs). It's a far cry from the 32.9ppg that was cited over his 65-70 playoff stretch.

Right, but from 65-70, he played 42.8 mpg, which is entirely reasonable for the playoffs. That still happens a lot. He averaged 32.5, not 32.9 ppg over that stretch. He took 24.2 FGA/g to get there, and such increases remain quite possible come the playoffs in the contemporary period.

If you look at KD, Lebron and Kobe, you see the same stuff happening for the most part, even into this era. Lebron has been shooting less in Miami, of course, but he has the depth around him which affords him that luxury. Durant has taken over 22 FGA/g in the postseason in each of the past two postseasons (13 and 14, 22.4 and 22.2 FGA/g in 44.1 and 42.9 mpg), which sunders your point completely. You are wrong, and badly so.

It is entirely possible for stars to get to that kind of volume, even with decent teams around them, playing those kind of minutes in the modern era. It is possible because it continues to happen even as you proclaim the sheer unlikelihood of it occurring. You can quibble as you like, but you are definitively incorrect in asserting that the volume and/or minutes are unattainable come the postseason. If your contention is that West wouldn't do that over the course of a regular season, then we are in agreement. If your contention is, however, that he couldn't do that over a 15- to 20-game stretch in the playoffs, then we've nothing further to discuss because logic will not sway you from your errant opinion.

His rebounds (and arguably his assists) would drop as well with pace adjustment, all before we look at era adjustment for weaker opposition.

His assists aren't likely to go down, they're likely to rise, or at least remain the same.

Pace adjustment isn't magic; not everyone or everything suddenly diminishes as a result of the game going from 120 possessions per to 95 or whatever (scaled appropriately for minutes played). West played the game in a manner which emulates a lot of modern standards and conventions of the game, so it's unlikely that he'd port out a ton differently than he did then.

Now, rebounding? Consider that he was a 5 to 5.5% TRB player (estimated) over his final four seasons. In era, that left him a 5.8 rpg player. Today, Goran Dragic posted a 5.2% TRB in 35.1 mpg and averaged 3.2 rpg at a pace of 95.8. So yeah, his rebounding is likely to decline, though his prime TRB% is probably closer to 6%, which means you're looking more at something like 4 to 4.5 rpg out of West, except maybe in the postseason, when it could rise (somewhat based on MPG, somewhat from improved effort).

[tsherkin]

"Average-ish"? No. I absolutely cannot get behind that statement; in fact, this is the kind of hyperbole about post-season Malone that drives me crazy.

But again, it's definitive. His primary role was to score in volume, and he did it poorly compared to his peers. When I say "average-ish," I don't mean that he's Lance Stephenson. I mean that compared to his peers in this discussion, the stars of the league and the greats in contention for the various spots over which we are conversing, Malone rates out as mediocre. This is not a debatable issue, he's much worse on offense in the postseason than a lot of his peers, even those who labored under similarly limp offensive roster support.

Increased usage generally leads to decreased efficiency; this is largely regarded as true (within reasonable constraints, and obv not a perfectly linear relationship). Roughly speaking, an "average" offensive player is generally capable of one of the following (against average defense): a) low volume on excellent efficiency (think Tyson Chandler '11 thru present), b) average volume on average efficiency, or c) high volume on crap efficiency.

While true, this isn't relevant, because plenty of his peers worked at a similar level of usage without blowing out as badly as did he, and those who did are penalized to a similar degree (here we can look mostly at D-Rob and Ewing, though the former ended up playing more effectively in the PS than did Malone).

Again, take the Bryon Russell hypothetical I proposed. You didn't address that or attempt to refute it (likely because it's a reasonably sound assumption of the outcome). Bryon Russell was an "average" offensive player.

Bryon Russell is a reductio ad absurdum, though, and not a relevant point of comparison, so this isn't a meaningful comment to discuss so much as a logical fallacy. We aren't discussing roleplayers, we're discussing all-time greats, and I've never debated the point that Malone belongs in that discussion, so such trivial commentary isn't really necessary, and I've been very clear about what I'm saying.

[Baller2014]

Erving's TS% from the years you cited comes in at 610 (on 37.4pp100), 570 (on 32.3pp100), 577 (on 30.6pp100), 507 (on 30.6pp100) and 533 (on 26.8pp100).
West's TS% from the years you cited comes in at 534 (on 40pp100), 564 (on 32.6pp100), 542 (on 31.1pp100), 581 (on 30.7pp100) and 596 (on 30.1pp100).

So on a more nuanced inspection Dr J is putting up his best efficiency at the same time that he is putting up the most points, while West's worst efficiency coincides with his largest point outputs. Another wrinkle is that these are by no means Dr J's best 5 years, they're just the first 5 playoff years. It includes his best couple of years, but he had others on a per 100 and TS% basis that easily beat some of these years. Dr J is handicapped by worse team mates also, meaning he has more defensive pressure on him.

I'll admit it's closer than I thought initially, but it's still Dr J on scoring (and of course, on rebounding, D, etc as well). Interestingly Malone wins the per 100/TS% comparison by a surprisingly large margin, so if Dr J wins here I'm not sure what West's argument is going to be next thread.

[penbeast0]

If you look at ratios, the pace pushes up the assist numbers a little more than the lesser awarding of assists pushed them down so if West averaged about 9.7 assists as he did when he led the league in 1972, as a percentage of assists it would be equivalent to averaging about 9.5 assists in the late 90s. Not that significant but still a slight drop.

Scoring is tougher because not only is scoring easier for guards today (no handchecking, 3 pointers, more open driving lanes, ignoring carry rule, more favoring of the offensive player in block/charge calls), offenses today tend to be more star oriented while offenses in the 60s and 70s tended to share the shooting burden more so a simple pace adjustment would probably understate the amount of points a Jerry West would score fairly significantly while ignoring pace adjustment would be even less accurate.

If these questions were cut and dried . . . what fun would they be to talk about?

[Baller2014]

If you look at KD, Lebron and Kobe, you see the same stuff happening for the most part, even into this era. Lebron has been shooting less in Miami, of course, but he has the depth around him which affords him that luxury. Durant has taken over 22 FGA/g in the postseason in each of the past two postseasons (13 and 14, 22.4 and 22.2 FGA/g in 44.1 and 42.9 mpg), which sunders your point completely. You are wrong, and badly so.

No modern player has averaged 24.2 shots a game over the playoffs over a 5 year stretch. 22 shots (over 2 seasons) is a pretty good distance from that. Now of course, is it technically attainable? Sure. And if we gave the guys West is being compared to that many shots per playoff game, they'd have higher volume stats too. That's the point here. Looking at per 100 playoff scoring and TS% K.Malone actually kills J.West, so with 24.2 shots a game he'd post even bigger numbers than West would. That is what is so frustrating. West is being claimed to have a big playoff advantage, that compensates for his huge disadvantages of longevity and regular season play when he is contrasted to guys like Dr J, K.Malone, etc, and yet he doesn't even have that. Never mind that D.Rob and Barkley, who peaked well above West, haven't even gotten a vote yet.

[trex_8063]

It's odd that one would expect a guard to be "Barkley efficient." Jordan, the consensus GOAT, wasn't Barkley efficient, yet I'm 100% certain that if I go back to the #1 thread that I won't see that being held against him.

I think you took what i said too literal.

I hate when people do this.

Because invariably they do it to backtrack.

I go by the words I read on the screen. I do not add anything. I simply go by what is there. Just as when I type a post, people don't need to "infer" anything or presume to "think" what I meant, all they have to do is go by the words that I've typed. I stand by whatever I say. If—despite being able to compose one's thoughts when writing unlike when speaking face-to-face—you still didn't mean what you said (with it not even being a deep statement that lends itself to multiple interpretations), then that's your fault for not being able to communicate clearly. (This is a written medium. One's words are all we have to go by.)

I suppose though, it's my fault for actually thinking people say what they mean and mean what they say, when that so often isn't the case.

I hears ya.
I think tsherkin and I just wasted a lot of time on a semantic debate, because I interpreted his words literally. I'm a literal guy, and when one is reading my posts, he won't need to intuit context or inflection. With rare exception, I will say EXACTLY what I mean (to the best of my ability, at least), and mean what I say. I get side-tracked when I fail to realize that everyone else isn't always doing the same.

[penbeast0]

No modern player has averaged 24.2 shots a game over the playoffs over a 5 year stretch. 22 shots (over 2 seasons) is a pretty good distance from that. Now of course, is it technically attainable? Sure. And if we gave the guys West is being compared to that many shots per playoff game, they'd have higher volume stats too. That's the point here. Looking at per 100 playoff scoring and TS% K.Malone actually kills J.West, so with 24.2 shots a game he'd post even bigger numbers than West would. That is what is so frustrating. West is being claimed to have a big playoff advantage, that compensates for his huge disadvantages of longevity and regular season play when he is contrasted to guys like Dr J, K.Malone, etc, and yet he doesn't even have that. Never mind that D.Rob and Barkley, who peaked well above West, haven't even gotten a vote yet.

Read the post right before yours, it's directed at you.

[ElGee]

The 107 refers to his postseason ORtg, too (just in the years I had specified---'88-'03---which I assumed you were replying directly to, given the quoting of my post).

You quoted me, so I was just pointing out that I was not wrong, since you implied that your b-ref stat was more accurate than mine, which was not true. That's all.

See, I don't necessarily agree with the bolded (NOTE: unless the efficiency is truly awful). You take both into consideration, while also factoring in circumstance/context. To me, getting elite level volume on generally average (or slightly above average) efficiency is still fairly impressive when you're facing a lot of elite defenses (which as my prior post perhaps indicated Malone faced "more than his fair share" of elite defenses), AND you don't have any other isolation scorers (not even a Jamal Crawford or similar) to take some of the heat off.

I immediately disagree. It's very clear that having him in that role, producing at that level, killed their offense at important times in the playoffs.

Really? Are you sure?

[magicmerl]

The 107 refers to his postseason ORtg, too (just in the years I had specified---'88-'03---which I assumed you were replying directly to, given the quoting of my post).

You quoted me, so I was just pointing out that I was not wrong, since you implied that your b-ref stat was more accurate than mine, which was not true. That's all.

See, I don't necessarily agree with the bolded (NOTE: unless the efficiency is truly awful). You take both into consideration, while also factoring in circumstance/context. To me, getting elite level volume on generally average (or slightly above average) efficiency is still fairly impressive when you're facing a lot of elite defenses (which as my prior post perhaps indicated Malone faced "more than his fair share" of elite defenses), AND you don't have any other isolation scorers (not even a Jamal Crawford or similar) to take some of the heat off.

I immediately disagree. It's very clear that having him in that role, producing at that level, killed their offense at important times in the playoffs.

Really? Are you sure?

Yeah, I could have sworn watching those Jazz teams that the pick and roll with the mailman was the start of their flex offense and that all of their other stuff fed off of that.

[tsherkin]

Looking at per 100 playoff scoring and TS% K.Malone actually kills J.West,

PS TS%

Malone: 52.8% in Utah
West: 54.1%

Given the way he draws free throws and/or the potential for him to add even a middling 3pt shot, there isn't an adjustment wherein it makes sense that his efficiency would drop enough to even go down as far as Malone's, let alone below. He's actually more efficient than playoff Malone, so your forward projection of volume to points actually favors West over Malone.

[RSCD3_]

In the 1984 season, 33-year-old Julius Erving played 77 games and played 34.8 MPG. He averaged 1.8 blocks and 1.8 steals. That is one of the most incredible stats I've ever seen.

Here's another fun one (I lowered the MPG as much as possible):

http://bkref.com/tiny/qoFba

I looked at total number of seasons with your criteria and this is what I found

Hakeem and Erving both have 7
Kirilenko has 5
Horry has 4 ( surprising to me )
Ben Wallace and Dwyane Wade have 3

In fact only 27 guys have ever done it ( 16 if you increase the MPG to 24 mpg ) and only 9 guys who have done it multiple times

http://bkref.com/tiny/sLgyh

[90sAllDecade]

One note about Dr. J, he did have high offensive stats (and as I'll post later excellent defensive ones) in the ABA.

But I personally value it less because it was lesser competition, and the league average Ortg in the the ABA shows it was a better offensive environment to produce those stats versus the NBA at the same time.

ABA:



http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... stats.html

NBA (Ortg only available for the last few seasons):



http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... stats.html

Of course the thee pointer helps this, but it wasn't used as predominantly as modern times and the league was just more offensive oriented imo. Perhaps it was more fast break, run and gun for entertainment value to help sell tickets and compete with the NBA? I don't know, but it was easier imo. (although pace in the NBA was slightly faster the first year with data.)

Also in those last few years of comparable numbers, the ABA has less turnovers, more FGAs, higher EFG%, higher OReb% and even a tiny assist per game advantage offensively. All these factors and watered down competition for both leagues in the 70s helped inflate Erving's ABA impact somewhat in comparison to West imo (who also had weaker competition, but less so since the league talent pool was intact for a little over half of his career). So I don't overly value Erving's peak stats there.

But Julius was still dominant in the NBA, less so and he had a new team situation, but I think certain years we see a better idea of how his numbers translated with a complete league of NBA competition. I'm leaning towards Dr. J in this runoff as I see more data of how good his defense was and I think he might translate across eras better, but I have to be honest that his numbers dominance did trend downward as competition improved.

His age (although he was 26 when he joined the NBA) and changing teams has to be considered as well.

[RayBan-Sematra]

I am kind of confused by all this pp stuff.
Let us say we have two players, Kobe & West.

Kobe uses 23 possessions to score 30pts in a league that averages 100 possessions a game.
West uses 23 possessions to score 32pts in a league that averages 115 possessions a game.

Isn't it nothing more then an assumption that West would use less possessions in a 100 possession league?
Why is it necessarily more logical to assume that he'd use less possessions then it is to assume that he'd simply use a slightly higher percentage of his teams possessions in a slower paced league?

Clearly West was an elite scorer/shot creator who could torch elite defenses (Boston).
I doubt many teams would want him in a smaller role rather then having him in a typical volume scoring role we've seen guys like T-Mac, Kobe & Wade often accept and I see no reason why he would lack the ability to take his usual number of shot attempts in the league today especially when we've seen guys like Jordan & Kobe (modern day elite guards) use just as many attempts and often far more.

I do value pace adjustment when comparing players but moreso when it comes to rebounding and passing.
I don't usually use pace by itself to degenerate scorers. I don't think West in today's league would average 7-8 less ppg then Kobe Bryant which is what I would have to believe if I simply accepted pace adjustments as fact (which is obviously illogical since they are purely hypothetical).

[trex_8063]

I am kind of confused by all this pp stuff.
Let us say we have two players, Kobe & West.

Kobe uses 23 possessions to score 30pts in a league that averages 100 possessions a game.
West uses 23 possessions to score 32pts in a league that averages 115 possessions a game.

Isn't it nothing more then an assumption that West would use less possessions in a 100 possession league?
Why is it necessarily more logical to assume that he'd use less possessions then it is to assume that he'd simply use a slightly higher percentage of his teams possessions in a slower paced league?

Because we must ask that EXACT same question for each of his teammates (i.e. increasing his proportion means decreasing everyone else's). It's reasonable to assume that their relative proportions will be fairly consistent (not exactly linear, but probably not particularly divergent, especially for the guy who had the ball in his hands a lot regardless): His usage was presumably already fairly high and ball in hand a lot already, so if he wanted or if was in his team's best interest to be shooting more frequently than he already did, it's reasonable to assume he would have done so. Not that I presume he shot an exactly optimal amount for his team, but I'll give him/them the benefit of the doubt that it was probably pretty close to optimal. Slowing the pace doesn't magically alter that balance greatly (edit: again, at least not for the guy who's often bringing the ball up and directing the offense).

[Baller2014]

Looking at per 100 playoff scoring and TS% K.Malone actually kills J.West,

PS TS%

Malone: 52.8% in Utah
West: 54.1%

Given the way he draws free throws and/or the potential for him to add even a middling 3pt shot, there isn't an adjustment wherein it makes sense that his efficiency would drop enough to even go down as far as Malone's, let alone below. He's actually more efficient than playoff Malone, so your forward projection of volume to points actually favors West over Malone.

That's Malone's career TS%, sure, which suffers slightly from his having played so long. His playoff TS% in his physical, statistical and actual prime, from 88-93, comes in at 56%, along with notably superior numbers. This includes plainly superior pp100 scoring (with the exception of one wacky playoffs for West in 1965 which is a clear anomaly, and Malone even equals and exceeds that number in 2 of his regular season campaigns).

So West can't even beat Malone in the one area he's supposed to have a big advantage; playoff scoring. Needless to say, Malone clubs him mercilessly in other areas like longevity, RS, D, etc.

[ElGee]

People spent ages telling me West was a far superior playoff scorer to Karl Malone... except when we give them an adjustment so they have the same number of shots West scores less than Malone or Dr J on worse efficiency. So while West beats his regular season self in the playoffs, he's still worse than the playoff versions of K.Malone and Dr J.

You can rationalize it all you want to suit your agenda. The fact of the matter is, Malone in his era was not a comparable postseason performer as West was in his. West is in a category that includes Jordan as far as postseason performers. It's about their performance in the respective eras that they played in. Eras change, players face various challenges in their respective era, but players who perform well in the postseason can be found in any era. Malone didn't have postseason performances in his era as Dr. J did in his, either. He doesn't have to put up the exact numbers that Erving did in '76, for example, just have that caliber of performance in his own era, at whatever pace he's playing, against his own opponents. That's all. Level of performance is what matters, not specific numbers.

I've seen people say that Malone wasn't as "bad" of a postseason performer as he's made out to be. What's relevant is that he isn't as good as some of his competition as this stage. It doesn't even have to be made into a false dichotomy of "good" and "bad," he simply wasn't as good as others on the board.

Using this post to piggy-back some thoughts off of:

-The notion of someone being a "postseason" performer is currently unsubstantiated. I've seen a small amount of evidence to suggest that a very small handful of Reggie players Miller can Reggie Miller raise their Reggie game in the Miller playoffs. But I've yet to see the study that demonstrates a statistically significant change. Malone has a huge TS% falloff relative to the other greats, and still, there's huge evidence that the Jazz wilted around him offensively and he simply took on a larger burden (e.g. the team ORtg correlates to his strongly, his teammates TOV% plummets in the PS, Stockton has a massive decline in postseason numbers).

-I would agree -- independent of some of the box numbers being thrown around -- that Malone is not as good of an offensive players (RS or PS) as West or Dirk or Barkley. But Malone is a mirror to one's rankings criteria. He will lose, by a small but clear amount, most peak-to-peak battles against every other player in this range. So what? If you value career value, this is literally irrelevant. I think this is where having a clear ranking rubric is paramount, not for anything to do with egos or fandom of rankings but so you are clearly communicating what exactly you are ranking.

Ironically, Dr. J is in the runoff with West and I would not quickly concede that Malone is a worse offensive player Erving. I think Erving's defense is phenomenal -- think peak LeBron as an athletic force -- but there are some issues with his offensive game that are not readily overcome with incredible slashing. Malone, OTOH, is probably the most misrepresented player statistically I can think of on real gm. Even from 92-98, he was a 27 ppg player at +1.8 TS% against 103.9 defenses in the PS. Malone played 85 prime games against sub-105 defenses, averaging 23/36 on 52.5% TS with 2.9 ast/36 and 2.4 tov. (+2.3 OBEV). Compare that to other all-timers:

vs. Sub-105 defenses in prime, PS, per 36
Olajuwon (29g) 20.6 | 55.1% TS | 3.1 ast | 3.1 tov | +2.2 OBEV
Malone (85g) 23.0 pts | 52.5% TS | 2.9 ast | 2.8 tov | +2.3 OBEV
Kobe (105g) 23.3 pts | 52.6% TS | 4.3 ast | 2.6 tov | +2.7 OBEV
Duncan (85g) 20.5 pts | 54.6% TS | 3.3 ast | 2.9 tov | +2.9 OBEV

Finally, while it's true that a 30 ppg/60% TS can be an average offensive player, a player can also be a 25 ppg/50% TS and be an elite offensive player. He does this with creation. With passing. With spacing. By bearing a role around teammates that sees him take more shots late in the clock, etc. By shooting more in the half-court (where expected pts/pos are lower). By not stopping the ball for no reason and by not passing the ball late in the clock when he's the best option. As a good example, in 2005, Tracy McGrady (an excellent creator himself) led a +6.3 offense (after the Wesley trade) while averaging 27 ppg and 53.2% TS, 0.3% over league average. Malone, of course, was a phenomenal passer.

The only bigs left on the board who could do more with that offense -- Dirk and Barkley -- give something back on defense anyway.