RealGM Top 100 List #9

[colts18]

2) I'm happy as long as the team failure can be explained. In this case an adequate explanation is "ok, so they weren't going as hard in the regular season because of limited talent, but when they got to the playoffs they got serious. Since the Bulls were only losing to the Pistons from 88-90 (and deep in the playoffs usually) it's hard to be tough on them for that. The situation with Hakeem is way less explainable; he was losing to dog teams in the playoffs (or ones he plainly should have beaten if he had a Bird like impact), and to compound that the team isn't winning enough in the regular season either. Nor is this a few years into Hakeem's career, Hakeem is having these problems through years 3-8, even missing the playoffs. If a guy doesn't have the impact he's supposed to have, I want good explanations why. Jordan's mild underachievement early on is easily explainable (and part of it is on Jordan in the early years). For Hakeem it really isn't.

How do you explain Bird's team failures in the playoffs? Why did his teams lose 7x with HCA in the playoffs?

[FJS]

Sometimes people forget that to lose with HCA first, you have to win your HCA seed.
People don't punish Garnett or Olajuwon for their failures playoffs due to most of times they were losing without HCA.
Excuse me, if you don't have HCA it's because you aren't able to make your team as good as to have HCA.
Then they punish Karl Malone or Larry Bird for lost some series with HCA. C'mon, let's be serious.
If you lost with HCA, at least you played a good regular season. There's only one champion. But if you lose early in playoffs, you didn't make your job. Not enough good RS, not good PO.

At least Olajuwon overcome some of their not pretty good RS with their PO, and this show he was truly great.

[Purch]

Sometimes people forget that to lose with HCA first, you have to win your HCA seed.
People don't punish Garnett or Olajuwon for their failures playoffs due to most of times they were losing without HCA.
Excuse me, if you don't have HCA it's because you aren't able to make your team as good as to have HCA.
Then they punish Karl Malone or Larry Bird for lost some series with HCA. C'mon, let's be serious.
If you lost with HCA, at least you played a good regular season. There's only one champion. But if you lose early in playoffs, you didn't make your job. Not enough good RS, not good PO.

At least Olajuwon overcome some of their not pretty good RS with their PO, and this show he was truly great.

This project is different than anything I've seen, because it seems to be punishing people for being on good teams. If a player has more post season success, it's because of his team situation, but if a player loses with home court or against teams they should have beat it's a negative reflection on them. But then guys like Garnett don't get criticized for missing the playoffs, but also don't get the potential criticism that comes with losing or underperforming in the playoffs (since they didnt make the post season), it's a win-win. It's almost like in this project, it's better to be a high impact player on a losing team, because you get "Benifit of the doubt" on what you could do in a different situation, which protects you from any criticism; rather than being a guy who has made the playoffs throughout his career and has upsets or failures that can be used against them.

[MacGill]

Run-Off Vote Hakeem

I really enjoyed the posts about Bird and really would have no problem seeing him here but I just can't seem to get onside with the fact that there isn't that much difference between Duncan/Shaq/Wilt to an extent where outside of different players in a different time, results may vary.

Everyone has a peak, which is the highest level of play a player achieves, yet some are trying to make it sound like Hakeem only was a top talent for 2 years out of his long career? This doesn't make sense to me and I am not buying into it. There is no player who has a top 5 peak and yet isn't considered an ATG talent and Hakeem's basketball ability has always been great from the day he stepped onto the court.

Like many other ATG's he had growing pains, mentally needing to grow, and situations that may not have benefited his style of play to the maximum. I am always one here to place huge focus around fitment as absolute talent isn't always the best way to get the job jdone in a team game. In reviewing older Hakeem footage, it is clear by how the announcers are talking about him that he was a top league talent, despite what others want to say about his offense or defense. Fact of the matter is, Hakeem showed that you could build a team around him as the general, and while scoring in the nba isn't very hard to replicate, could also anchor your defense.

It's just too valuable to me to give up here. This is nothing against Bird at all but I'll take the balance of offense and defense versus a higher offense lower defense. You look at a team like my Raptors and can see that you don't need a player of Bird or Hakeem's value to put up a good offense and score against the elite teams. But when I consider what adding Hakeem to our team would do defensively, that is the additional value a player of his skill set provides. Some great posts have been made but I can't seem to be talked off the Hakeem edge.

[ardee]

Sometimes people forget that to lose with HCA first, you have to win your HCA seed.
People don't punish Garnett or Olajuwon for their failures playoffs due to most of times they were losing without HCA.
Excuse me, if you don't have HCA it's because you aren't able to make your team as good as to have HCA.
Then they punish Karl Malone or Larry Bird for lost some series with HCA. C'mon, let's be serious.
If you lost with HCA, at least you played a good regular season. There's only one champion. But if you lose early in playoffs, you didn't make your job. Not enough good RS, not good PO.

At least Olajuwon overcome some of their not pretty good RS with their PO, and this show he was truly great.

This is a very good post.

For what it's worth, this board usually doesn't care about losses with HCA except this one guy....

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[Purch]

Sometimes people forget that to lose with HCA first, you have to win your HCA seed.
People don't punish Garnett or Olajuwon for their failures playoffs due to most of times they were losing without HCA.
Excuse me, if you don't have HCA it's because you aren't able to make your team as good as to have HCA.
Then they punish Karl Malone or Larry Bird for lost some series with HCA. C'mon, let's be serious.
If you lost with HCA, at least you played a good regular season. There's only one champion. But if you lose early in playoffs, you didn't make your job. Not enough good RS, not good PO.

At least Olajuwon overcome some of their not pretty good RS with their PO, and this show he was truly great.

This project is different than anything I've seen, because it seems to be punishing people for being on good teams. If a player has more post season success, it's because of his team situation, but if a player loses with home court or against teams they should have beat it's a negative reflection on them. But then guys like Garnett don't get criticized for missing the playoffs, but also don't get the potential criticism that comes with losing or underperforming in the playoffs (since they didnt make the post season), it's a win-win. It's almost like in this project, it's better to be a high impact player on a losing team, because you get "Benifit of the doubt" on what you could do in a different situation, which protects you from any criticism; rather than being a guy who has made the playoffs throughout his career and has upsets or failures that can be used against them.

Also, just to expand on this, KG is like the extreme of this losing player bias. Because looking at how Garnett has been argued, when you break it down it basically means he has one playoff year in which he could have potentially been critized if things had not worked out.

From 1997-2007- They say that Garnett's lack of success from First round eliminations, to missing the playoffs was his teammates fault. And the year they made it to the conference finals was all due to KG and his loss was due to his teammates.

Then he goes to Boston In 2008 with a great team and great coach

2008- They win the championship


Then from 2009-2014 they don't win but Garnett is now labeled as past his prime and 2008 was apparently his last prime season.

So basically by being a great player on a bad team, he had a 1 year window in which he could have potentially been criticized in his whole career.

Yet guys like Bird and Malone are criticized about losing in the playoffs, because they made the playoffs their whole career, far long enough to build up playoff failures and disappointments.

When you break it down, winning players are at a huge disadvantage with this kind of thinking

[Doctor MJ]

Sometimes people forget that to lose with HCA first, you have to win your HCA seed.
People don't punish Garnett or Olajuwon for their failures playoffs due to most of times they were losing without HCA.
Excuse me, if you don't have HCA it's because you aren't able to make your team as good as to have HCA.
Then they punish Karl Malone or Larry Bird for lost some series with HCA. C'mon, let's be serious.
If you lost with HCA, at least you played a good regular season. There's only one champion. But if you lose early in playoffs, you didn't make your job. Not enough good RS, not good PO.

At least Olajuwon overcome some of their not pretty good RS with their PO, and this show he was truly great.

The concern makes plenty of sense though. If a player is less effective in the playoffs because of some regular season advantage that evaporates when things get serious, then using the regular season and its accolades to start your analysis doesn't actually make much sense.

Similar for players who seem to get better in the playoffs.

Certainly there are people here who I think go a bit overboard with the concern, and seem to see relative performance between the regular & post seasons as the true litmus test of a player. That doesn't make sense at all.

In the case of Larry Bird, his team got upset a lot in the playoffs, and stats like PER showed a pretty clear falloff. There certainly may be arguments to explain this that have nothing to do with Bird, but short of them, why would you ignore this information?

And of course, in this particular comparison, he's up against a guy in Hakeem whose playoff individual and team performance only seems to get better.

[HeartBreakKid]

Sometimes people forget that to lose with HCA first, you have to win your HCA seed.
People don't punish Garnett or Olajuwon for their failures playoffs due to most of times they were losing without HCA.
Excuse me, if you don't have HCA it's because you aren't able to make your team as good as to have HCA.
Then they punish Karl Malone or Larry Bird for lost some series with HCA. C'mon, let's be serious.
If you lost with HCA, at least you played a good regular season. There's only one champion. But if you lose early in playoffs, you didn't make your job. Not enough good RS, not good PO.

At least Olajuwon overcome some of their not pretty good RS with their PO, and this show he was truly great.

This project is different than anything I've seen, because it seems to be punishing people for being on good teams. If a player has more post season success, it's because of his team situation, but if a player loses with home court or against teams they should have beat it's a negative reflection on them. But then guys like Garnett don't get criticized for missing the playoffs, but also don't get the potential criticism that comes with losing or underperforming in the playoffs (since they didnt make the post season), it's a win-win. It's almost like in this project, it's better to be a high impact player on a losing team, because you get "Benifit of the doubt" on what you could do in a different situation, which protects you from any criticism; rather than being a guy who has made the playoffs throughout his career and has upsets or failures that can be used against them.

Also, just to expand on this, KG is like the extreme of this losing player bias. Because looking at how Garnett has been argued, when you break it down it basically means he has one playoff year in which we could have potentially potentially been critized.

From 1997-2007- They say that Garnett's lack of success from First round eliminations, to missing the playoffs was his teammates fault. And the year they made it to the conference finals was all due to KG and his loss was due to his teammates.

Then he goes to Boston In 2008 with a great team and great coach

2008- They win the championship


Then from 2009-2014 they don't win but Garnett is now labeled as past his prime and 2008 was apparently his last prime season.

So basically by being a great player on a bad team, he had a 1 year window in which he could have potentially been criticized in his whole career.

Yet guys like Bird and Malone are criticized about losing in the playoffs, because they made the playoffs their whole career, far long enough to build up playoff failures and disappointments.

When you break it down, winning players are at a huge disadvantage with this kind of thinking

Are you implying that KG didn't have bad teammates for most of his tenure in Minny and that in 2010-2014 he wasn't in his prime?

[Doctor MJ]

Also, just to expand on this, KG is like the extreme of this losing player bias. Because looking at how Garnett has been argued, when you break it down it basically means he has one playoff series in which we could have potentially potentially been critized.

From 1997-2007- They say that Garnett's lack of success from First round eliminations, to missing the playoffs was his teammates fault. And the year they made it to the conference finals was all due to KG and his loss was due to his teammates.

Then he goes to Boston In 2008 with a great team and great coach

2008- They win the championship


Then from 2009-2014 they don't win but Garnett is now labeled as past his prime and 2008 was apparently his last prime season.

So basically by being a great player on a bad team, he had a 1 year window in which he could have potentially been criticized in his whole career.

Yet guys like Bird and Malone are criticized about losing in the playoffs, because they made the playoffs their whole career, far long enough to build up playoff failures and disappointments.

When you break it down, winning players are at a huge disadvantage with this kind of thinking

Well, they would be if anyone thought like this. In reality the extreme HCA proponents aren't KG proponents. People who push this, whether they are being objective or biased, understandably end up bringing it up in favor of Jordan, Russell, Kobe, Hakeem, etc. Guys whose careers correlated with better than expected results both with and without HCA.

One might argue I suppose that by not playing with HCA, Garnett lucked out by avoiding the possibility of facing the wrath of HCA proponents, but I've yet to see this really have any kind of tangible import.

[Purch]

This project is different than anything I've seen, because it seems to be punishing people for being on good teams. If a player has more post season success, it's because of his team situation, but if a player loses with home court or against teams they should have beat it's a negative reflection on them. But then guys like Garnett don't get criticized for missing the playoffs, but also don't get the potential criticism that comes with losing or underperforming in the playoffs (since they didnt make the post season), it's a win-win. It's almost like in this project, it's better to be a high impact player on a losing team, because you get "Benifit of the doubt" on what you could do in a different situation, which protects you from any criticism; rather than being a guy who has made the playoffs throughout his career and has upsets or failures that can be used against them.

Also, just to expand on this, KG is like the extreme of this losing player bias. Because looking at how Garnett has been argued, when you break it down it basically means he has one playoff year in which we could have potentially potentially been critized.

From 1997-2007- They say that Garnett's lack of success from First round eliminations, to missing the playoffs was his teammates fault. And the year they made it to the conference finals was all due to KG and his loss was due to his teammates.

Then he goes to Boston In 2008 with a great team and great coach

2008- They win the championship


Then from 2009-2014 they don't win but Garnett is now labeled as past his prime and 2008 was apparently his last prime season.

So basically by being a great player on a bad team, he had a 1 year window in which he could have potentially been criticized in his whole career.

Yet guys like Bird and Malone are criticized about losing in the playoffs, because they made the playoffs their whole career, far long enough to build up playoff failures and disappointments.

When you break it down, winning players are at a huge disadvantage with this kind of thinking

Are you implying that KG didn't have bad teammates for most of his tenure in Minny and that in 2009-2014 he wasn't in his prime?

I'm arguing the point in my original message, that the way this project seems to be penalizing players on good teams, it's almost more beneficial to be a high impact player on a losing team. Thats because rather than going to the playoffs every year and having potential disappointments or losing with homecourt, all your teams failures are shifting on to your supporting cast, and you now have the "benifit of the doubt" about how you could perform in a different situation.

Whiles at the same time guys like Malone and David Robinson are ripped apart for playoff series in which they underperformed, because they played in the playoffs nearly every year of their careers.

If you don't see the issue here, then I can't say anything more

[Purch]

Also, just to expand on this, KG is like the extreme of this losing player bias. Because looking at how Garnett has been argued, when you break it down it basically means he has one playoff series in which we could have potentially potentially been critized.

From 1997-2007- They say that Garnett's lack of success from First round eliminations, to missing the playoffs was his teammates fault. And the year they made it to the conference finals was all due to KG and his loss was due to his teammates.

Then he goes to Boston In 2008 with a great team and great coach

2008- They win the championship


Then from 2009-2014 they don't win but Garnett is now labeled as past his prime and 2008 was apparently his last prime season.

So basically by being a great player on a bad team, he had a 1 year window in which he could have potentially been criticized in his whole career.

Yet guys like Bird and Malone are criticized about losing in the playoffs, because they made the playoffs their whole career, far long enough to build up playoff failures and disappointments.

When you break it down, winning players are at a huge disadvantage with this kind of thinking

Well, they would be if anyone thought like this. In reality the extreme HCA proponents aren't KG proponents. People who push this, whether they are being objective or biased, understandably end up bringing it up in favor of Jordan, Russell, Kobe, Hakeem, etc. Guys whose careers correlated with better than expected results both with and without HCA.

One might argue I suppose that by not playing with HCA, Garnett lucked out by avoiding the possibility of facing the wrath of HCA proponents, but I've yet to see this really have any kind of tangible import.

It doesn't matter if you guys are HCA proponents or not, It's all pieces to the same puzzle.

You guys arguing that KG doesn't deserve criticism due to his teammates performances, mixes in with the arguments criticizing Bird, Robinson and Malone for underachieving in certain playoff years. The result is that great players on losing teams become immune to criticism, whiles great players on good teams can have every year in the playoff microanalyzed and used against them.

It's a bias that is real

[HeartBreakKid]

Also, just to expand on this, KG is like the extreme of this losing player bias. Because looking at how Garnett has been argued, when you break it down it basically means he has one playoff year in which we could have potentially potentially been critized.

From 1997-2007- They say that Garnett's lack of success from First round eliminations, to missing the playoffs was his teammates fault. And the year they made it to the conference finals was all due to KG and his loss was due to his teammates.

Then he goes to Boston In 2008 with a great team and great coach

2008- They win the championship


Then from 2009-2014 they don't win but Garnett is now labeled as past his prime and 2008 was apparently his last prime season.

So basically by being a great player on a bad team, he had a 1 year window in which he could have potentially been criticized in his whole career.

Yet guys like Bird and Malone are criticized about losing in the playoffs, because they made the playoffs their whole career, far long enough to build up playoff failures and disappointments.

When you break it down, winning players are at a huge disadvantage with this kind of thinking

Are you implying that KG didn't have bad teammates for most of his tenure in Minny and that in 2009-2014 he wasn't in his prime?

I'm arguing the point in my original message, that the way this project seems to be penalizing players on good teams, it's almost more beneficial to be a high impact player on a losing team. Thats because rather than going to the playoffs every year and having potential disappointments or losing with homecourt, all your teams failures are shifting on to your supporting cast, and you now have the "benifit of the doubt" about how you could perform in a different situation.

Whiles at the same time guys like Malone and David Robinson are ripped apart for playoff series in which they underperformed, because they played in the playoffs nearly every year of their careers.

If you don't see the issue here, then I can't say anything more

If you only want to look at it one way, generally speaking winning does better for your reputation than losing. You could say that Kevin Garnett gets the benefit of the doubt (he hasn't even been voted in, so I don't even know what we're really talking about in regards to him), but you could just as easily say that he gets "ripped apart for playoff series" as well (I mean the #1 criticism against him is his playoff record...), and the under-performing thing is also a criticism toward Kevin Garnett, regardless if his team was an underdog or not.


Also, calling the situation an issue is a bit dramatic. What is your solution to this issue?

[Doctor MJ]

It doesn't matter if you guys are HCA proponents or not, It's all pieces to the same puzzle.

You guys arguing that KG doesn't deserve criticism due to his teammates performances, mixes in with the arguments criticizing Bird, Robinson and Malone for underachieving in certain playoff years. The result is that great players on losing teams become immune to criticism, whiles great players on good teams can have every year in the playoff microanalyzed and used against them.

It's a bias that is real

Well, this is where people tend to talk past each other. You say "you guys" to me, when I clearly am not part of a group doing what you say, but perhaps there are people doing this so protesting my innocence seems to miss the point.

I will just say, if someone were asking me the right way to do the analysis: Don't give Garnett bonus points because he didn't lose much with HCA, but certainly analyze both Garnett & Bird based on what you saw in the playoffs. If you find Bird in the playoffs less impressive than Bird in the regular season, but still more impressive than Garnett, well then in such a comparison clearly go for Bird.

[therealbig3]

The people supporting Garnett have not used winning or losing once in order to prop him up or to put down Bird. They just respond to the "he always lost" argument with the fact that his team wasn't very good. I don't see drza, Doctor MJ, PCProductions, ElGee, or myself (the only posters I see that have actually given support to Garnett) knocking Bird, Malone, or Robinson at all for losing in the playoffs, and none of the arguments have to do with Garnett not getting upset much.

I don't understand why people invent strawmen like this.

Some people use winning and losing for their argument...and those people are clearly not supporting Garnett in any way.

[Texas Chuck]

Forget teh HCA and Purch is making a solid point. David Robinson in particular was not blessed with strong teams pre-Duncan, but still had great RS performances and great RS team records. Then he gets killed for his supposed playoff failures when his stats really arent worse than KG's at all in the PS and we know just like KG there is no reason to believe his defense fell apart in the PS too. But because he had high seeds he's thought of as a terrible playoff performer in a way KG isnt. And its all based on the perception of their teams based on record.

We are focusing WAY TOO MUCH on teammates and attempting to go through all kinds of minutae trying to determine who had more help and who didnt. It absolutely is benefiting those who are perceived to have weak teams and is hurting those perceived to have strong ones. And despite my respect for ElGee and others who have attempted to put a statistical number on supporting casts its just not at all clear to me anyway that we can define the strength of casts with any real accuracy.

Take my boy Dirk as a great example: you can spin it that post-Nash Dirk never played with a single all-star or all-NBA player yet had great team success. Or you can spin it that Dirk had an owner willing to have a $90M payroll thus ensuring Dirk had a deep supporting cast filled with better than average role players. Which version is more representative? Maybe we are simply better served focusing more attention elsewhere.

[Purch]

The people supporting Garnett have not used winning or losing once in order to prop him up or to put down Bird. They just respond to the "he always lost" argument with the fact that his team wasn't very good. I don't see drza, Doctor MJ, PCProductions, ElGee, or myself (the only posters I see that have actually given support to Garnett) knocking Bird, Malone, or Robinson at all for losing in the playoffs, and none of the arguments have to do with Garnett not getting upset much.

I don't understand why people invent strawmen like this.

Some people use winning and losing for their argument...and those people are clearly not supporting Garnett in any way.

Again, you're missing the point. If the thread seems to be focusing on players losing with Home court, or losing when their teams are the favorites, at same time you can't reward players for not having homecourt or missing the playoffs altogether. It's like you're penalizing players for putting their teams in multiple opportunities in the playoffs, in which an upset can occur. It's similar to people harping on players finals records. Should you get more credit for not reaching the finals, simply because you didn't lose in them?

If you follow the conversation rather than speaking about imaginary stateman, you might realize that the original post I was responded to wasn't even in reference to KG. But I stated that Kg is the extreme example of losing bias, because due to the teammate argument, it narrows 2008 as the only season we could have potentially criticized his playoff performance due to having good teamates and being the last year of his prime. Which gives him dramatically less opportunity to be criticized for failing in the playoffs than guys who make the playoffs every year with the goal of winning.

But go ahead with the strawman angle

[therealbig3]

The people supporting Garnett have not used winning or losing once in order to prop him up or to put down Bird. They just respond to the "he always lost" argument with the fact that his team wasn't very good. I don't see drza, Doctor MJ, PCProductions, ElGee, or myself (the only posters I see that have actually given support to Garnett) knocking Bird, Malone, or Robinson at all for losing in the playoffs, and none of the arguments have to do with Garnett not getting upset much.

I don't understand why people invent strawmen like this.

Some people use winning and losing for their argument...and those people are clearly not supporting Garnett in any way.

Again, you're missing the point. If the thread seems to be focusing on players losing with Home court, or losing when their teams are the favorites, at same time you can't reward players for not having homecourt or missing the playoffs altogether. It's like you're penalizing players for putting their teams in multiple opportunities in the playoffs, in which an upset can occur. It's similar to people harping on players finals records. Should you get more credit for not reaching the finals, simply because you didn't lose in them?

If you follow the conversation rather than speaking about imaginary stateman, you might realize that the original post I was responded to wasn't even in reference to KG. But I stated that Kg is the extreme example of losing bias, because due to the teammate argument, it narrows 2008 as the only season we could have potentially criticized his playoff performance due to having good teamates and being the last year of his prime. Which gives him dramatically less opportunity to be criticized for failing in the playoffs than guys who make the playoffs every year with the goal of winning.

But go ahead with the strawman angle

Please refer me to the posts where someone is doing what you're saying. I have an idea which posters might do something like that, but it's clearly not the prevailing idea of the thread...it's 1 or 2 posters at best. Everyone else is trying to focus on them as individual players, not by whether their team won as the favorites or not.

And it is a strawman, because you're going on a semi-rant about KG not getting criticized, when NOBODY brought him up, and the people that have given him support during this project said NOTHING of the sort when they defended him.

[ardee]

Forget teh HCA and Purch is making a solid point. David Robinson in particular was not blessed with strong teams pre-Duncan, but still had great RS performances and great RS team records. Then he gets killed for his supposed playoff failures when his stats really arent worse than KG's at all in the PS and we know just like KG there is no reason to believe his defense fell apart in the PS too. But because he had high seeds he's thought of as a terrible playoff performer in a way KG isnt. And its all based on the perception of their teams based on record.

They're better actually. I did an analysis of his Playoffs career earlier, Robinson was a solid performer, and over the course of his career had several good to great offensive series'. His kryptonite was Malone and the Jazz, which probably dragged his averages down (Malone REALLY made his life difficult for some reason).

The more I think about it, I think it makes sense to vote D-Rob over KG. It's pretty clear to me Robinson had a better prime, the only thing holding things back was KG's longevity. But I'm questioning if KG's first four years really made such a difference when D-Rob was better than Minny KG pre-Duncan and just as good as Boston KG post-Duncan.

[DQuinn1575]

Fundamentally Bird won 3 championships as the best player on very good teams in a very competitive era, with very excellent 76er and Laker teams as competitors.

Hakeem won 2 championships as the best player on above average teams, both championships coming without very excellent teams as competitors.

That sums it up for me in one sentence - which is worth more? Not an easy answer, obviously.

[Doctor MJ]

The people supporting Garnett have not used winning or losing once in order to prop him up or to put down Bird. They just respond to the "he always lost" argument with the fact that his team wasn't very good. I don't see drza, Doctor MJ, PCProductions, ElGee, or myself (the only posters I see that have actually given support to Garnett) knocking Bird, Malone, or Robinson at all for losing in the playoffs, and none of the arguments have to do with Garnett not getting upset much.

I don't understand why people invent strawmen like this.

Some people use winning and losing for their argument...and those people are clearly not supporting Garnett in any way.

Again, you're missing the point. If the thread seems to be focusing on players losing with Home court, or losing when their teams are the favorites, at same time you can't reward players for not having homecourt or missing the playoffs altogether. It's like you're penalizing players for putting their teams in multiple opportunities in the playoffs, in which an upset can occur. It's similar to people harping on players finals records. Should you get more credit for not reaching the finals, simply because you didn't lose in them?

If you follow the conversation rather than speaking about imaginary stateman, you might realize that the original post I was responded to wasn't even in reference to KG. But I stated that Kg is the extreme example of losing bias, because due to the teammate argument, it narrows 2008 as the only season we could have potentially criticized his playoff performance due to having good teamates and being the last year of his prime. Which gives him dramatically less opportunity to be criticized for failing in the playoffs than guys who make the playoffs every year with the goal of winning.

But go ahead with the strawman angle

We may be missing a point of yours, but you're clearly missing ours, and ours ties directly into what you're saying.

Fundamentally here this is what I've seen:
1. You complaining about the type of thinking that HCA proponents have brought.
2. You talking about the absurdity of using that thinking with respect to Garnett.
3. You specifically attacking KG supporters for doing this.

But they didn't do this. It was other people. You've merged two groups of people who do things in different ways and then labeled this hypothetical confused person as confused. He would be if he existed, but we are not that dude.

The point about the possibility of a player getting hurt based on expectations is a reasonable one, but you've given no reason to think that KG supporters aren't aware of this and factoring that in.

As far as your point of "I wasn't even responding to a KG post", well yeah, that's why are issue is with you specifically. You're the one who really made this about KG, and then you made "you guys" statements that made it inescapable to conclude that you were talking about KG supporters. Had you instead said "I know you're not doing it, but it's just an example of what could happen", we'd be done by now.