RealGM Top 100 List #14

[NO-KG-AI]

Dwight Howard is very close to matching Hakeem in first teams, has already matched Robinson, and can very easily surpass Shaq.

Color me skeptical on all NBA selections.

[Sedale Threatt]

I don't think they need to be categorically thrown out. But even if we're measuring just All-NBA quality seasons instead of actual selections, Malone still measures out fantastically.

[mysticbb]

No I didn't. Frankly, I don't see how it matters considering Malone's contemporaries, the players he was competing for honors with, would have been playing under the same conditions.

Indeed, but when we compare that we are getting a lower seperation to the average for Moses Malone than for Nowitzki, for example, for the most parts of their respective seasons.

Take, for example, the year he missed out to Kareem and Walton: 19 points, 15 boards, 21 PER. That's clearly an All-NBA quality season. It was just a numbers game. That would have been good enough to earn second-team honors in many recent seasons, including 02, when the second-team center was...Dirk Nowitzki???

Nowitzki had 23/10 that season and played indeed most times as center. And no, Moses Malone should have not been selected ahead of Nowitzki with those kind of numbers. It is like arguing for Kevin Love for an All-NBA team right now. Do you see the problem here? Malone for the most part wasn't much more than that. He made some difference, but not a huge one. He came to a +5.7 team and the team was +7.3 after that. You mentioned "beating the Celtics", but that's exactly what the 76ers did the year before too. And when we look at the overall result in the finals we see that the 76ers actually scored 1 point more in those 6 games than the Lakers.
Moses Malone made a smaller difference than many suspect. We see that for other seasons too, when the teams are playing like 3 or 4 points worse at best. When we take the minutes played into account that is like a +6 guy, not a +10.

It's the same with 86, when he put up similar numbers to 87, yet was not selected. How does one count as an All-NBA quality season, yet not the other?

In both seasons he was worse than Nowitzki from 2001 on anyway, thus I have no idea what the point is.

How do you figure this?

Well, I checked the numbers. If we go year by year, his PER and WS/48 dropped to 0.92 from regular season to postseason. For Nowitzki it is 0.99. So, Moses Malone performed worse in the playoffs.

So where do Malone's MVPs factor in? If you're willing to use All-NBA teams in Dirk's favor, actual or not, surely it's fair to use a substantially more important award in Malone's.

Again, I judge the performance and don't just count awards. Moses Malone won 3 MVPs, but were those MVP seasons really better than say Nowitzki in 2005 or 2006? In 1978/79 Malone was basically Kevin Love with slightly better defense plus playing more minutes. I don't see how Nowitzki's 2006 or 2005 season are any different than Malone's MVP seasons. And I would even add 2003 as another season for Nowitzki in which he had a MVP season, if Moses Malone's MVP seasons are the measuring stick here.

[therealbig3]

Dwight Howard is very close to matching Hakeem in first teams, has already matched Robinson, and can very easily surpass Shaq.

Color me skeptical on all NBA selections.

They can be useful, but you have to take competition into account. Howard is playing in a notoriously C-depleted league. Hakeem and Robinson played in a notoriously C-deep league. Shaq played in both. I don't think Ewing has a first team...if he played in this era, with Howard being his only real competition, they'd be battling it out every year and probably split first team selections.

Knowing that, we can say that Howard's first teams aren't as impressive as those guys'.

But when guys like KG, Duncan, and Nowitzki were getting first teams, that's legit, because they played in the Golden Age of PFs...and since PFs aren't differentiated from SFs on All-NBA teams, they also competed with the elite SFs, like LeBron, Pierce, Carter, and McGrady.

Personally, I don't differentiate between 1st teams, 2nd teams, or 3rd teams. If you made an All-NBA team, then it counts just the same. Voters are biased and favor certain players over others (ie, Kobe over Wade this past season for first team), but they can't snub a great player completely, so he's bound to make a team at some point, if he deserves it.

[Sedale Threatt]

Nowitzki had 23/10 that season and played indeed most times as center.

I'll take your word on that. Moses wouldn't have beat that out, but he sure would have beaten out the likes of Ben Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo and the other chaff that was getting picked for a big part of the 00s.

It is like arguing for Kevin Love for an All-NBA team right now. Do you see the problem here? Malone for the most part wasn't much more than that.

Wow -- Moses Malone as the original Kevin Love. That's a new one. It wasn't just that they beat the Celtics. They beat everybody, in emphatic fashion. Philly went from having been perennial bridesmaids, repeatedly failing in the Finals, to ripping off the most dominant playoff run in NBA history, capped off by Malone crushing the still-respectable Kareem.

I know the numbers would indicate a minor impact, but I don't find that to be a coincidence. Numerous advanced measures pinpoint him as the best player in basketball that season.

In both seasons he was worse than Nowitzki from 2001 on anyway, thus I have no idea what the point is.

The point is, if you're measuring All-NBA quality seasons, instead of actual selections, Moses clearly had several seasons that qualify that aren't being recognized. He had 14 seasons where he averaged at least 18.8 points and 10 rebounds, with PERs of 19.6 or better. Clearly that is top-flight stuff.

Well, I checked the numbers. If we go year by year, his PER and WS/48 dropped to 0.92 from regular season to postseason. For Nowitzki it is 0.99. So, Moses Malone performed worse in the playoffs.

I guess I'm looking at different numbers. What I see is a guy whose PER dropped minimally, from 22 to 21.6, whose WS/48 improved minimally, from 0.174 to 0.176, whose offensive/defensive ratings remained static, and whose raw statistical production improved slightly, from 20.5 ppg and 12.3 rpg to 22.1 ppg and 14.0 rpg. That doesn't fit my definition of worse.

Again, I judge the performance and don't just count awards. Moses Malone won 3 MVPs, but were those MVP seasons really better than say Nowitzki in 2005 or 2006? In 1978/79 Malone was basically Kevin Love with slightly better defense plus playing more minutes. I don't see how Nowitzki's 2006 or 2005 season are any different than Malone's MVP seasons. And I would even add 2003 as another season for Nowitzki in which he had a MVP season, if Moses Malone's MVP seasons are the measuring stick here.

This was pretty much the point I was getting at with the All-NBA seasons. You were using raw, static selections in Dirk's favor, when in fact Moses had pretty much 14 seasons when he could have made it depending on his competition.

[Baller 24]

I'm down to either Malone or Robertson. David Stern & drza have put together a few fantastic posts in helping me sway my attention towards Robertson over West.

Nominations still look a little gloomy, but Fraizer I feel like has the best combination of impact, peak, and leadership to help me sway my vote towards him.

[Sedale Threatt]

Question for Frazier nominees: How is he better than Gary Payton?

[ElGee]

Again, I judge the performance and don't just count awards. Moses Malone won 3 MVPs, but were those MVP seasons really better than say Nowitzki in 2005 or 2006? In 1978/79 Malone was basically Kevin Love with slightly better defense plus playing more minutes. I don't see how Nowitzki's 2006 or 2005 season are any different than Malone's MVP seasons. And I would even add 2003 as another season for Nowitzki in which he had a MVP season, if Moses Malone's MVP seasons are the measuring stick here.

I just ran Dr J's with/without numbers. In 1983 He missed 10 games - I can only find 9. In those 9 games, Philly was +1.7. In the other 73 games, +8.4 for a net of +6.7.

The perception on that team was that Moses had some superhuman year. I'm not sure that's really true. I agree with mystic here - I'd take Moses 1982 season over Dirk's best year (06 IMO), but I don't think I'd take his other seasons over Dirk's best ones. At least 1983 is comparable.

That said, I have these guys as a near coinflip around the No. 18 spot.

[Baller 24]

Question for Frazier nominees: How is he better than Gary Payton?

Personally I feel he's more of a complete player when you take into account leadership abilities. Fraizer usually always showed up for the big moments, and in terms of impact you can even look at the '72 season, even with Willis Reed playing in just 11 games (none in the playoffs), the team had a similar style of dominance and he carried them on his shoulder all the way to the finals (where they ultimately lost to an all-time great favored team). If we're comparing the two, they're very similar (defensive minded, solid at running an offense, very flashy, can light it up in bunches), but in terms of leadership abilities I feel like he's on another level IMO.

[ElGee]

Surprised that there is absolutely no discussion about LeBron. Again, I'm not sure how much effort to put in for a guy right in the heart of his career, but I definitely have him here or next.

Ballpark measures
James has 8 top-10 MVP finishes. That's more than the guy we just voted in, Kevin Garnett. So the incredulity over lack of longevity isn't really needed. Heck, this is someone who could easily have 3 or 4 MVPs.

Specific Seasons
2004 barely matters - AS level season at best
2005 Sort of all-nba ish to me. Again, not a hugely important year
2006 You get a pretty damn good season here. Better than his 07 year to me and not too far off from say, Dirk Nowitzki's 2006 season (his peak).
2007 See above
2008 The mini-leap season for James to me. I thought his defensive impact and all-around game were starting to come together. This season is already better than all but 20 guys ever achieved and I thought he was the best player in the game (coinflip with Kobe)
2009 Full leap - historically good season. Puts him in the sacred peak club.
2010 Similar quality to 2009, maybe slightly worse with the end of the Boston series
2011 Again, maybe slightly worse. He sort of exposed himself by showing a slight lack of versatility and whatever happened in the Finals.

Question Mark
Now, people might have pause because of those last two descriptions. I do too. I don't know if we need to slightly re-evaluate LeBron. I believe he was tired and that fatigue contributed to a mental failure. He is a player of immense swagger -- when he stopped trusting his shot, he lost that. If he improves in the future and rectifies this issues, I still think we're talking about a guy who will go down somewhere in the top 4-7 potentially. If not, who knows. His defense is the best I've seen from a perimeter guy since Pippen, but his lack of a jumper might fail to complete his game.

The point is, between peak, 4 year prime, 7 good seasons (6 really good)...this guy is right here. I think people not realize that...

[Sedale Threatt]

I probably would have been ready after 09, but the past two seasons really left a sour taste in my mouth. Especially the Finals. Think about that -- the guy gets to the Finals, with an opportunity to force all the critics who have been dogging him all year to eat a gigantic dick...and he disappears? Because he's tired? That's a pretty epic black mark. He's definitely in the teens, probably only a couple of slots down. But right now, I have a tough time putting him quite this high.

[Sedale Threatt]

The perception on that team was that Moses had some superhuman year.

He was pretty clearly the best player in the league that season, and he got better in the playoffs as the Sixers had the most dominant run in league history. So if it doesn't qualify as superhuman, it was definitely in the ballpark.

[mysticbb]

I'll take your word on that. Moses wouldn't have beat that out, but he sure would have beaten out the likes of Ben Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo and the other chaff that was getting picked for a big part of the 00s.

I don't want to argue about specific years here, but Mutombo and Ben Wallace had both impact on the defensive end beyond anything Moses Malone provided. Thus I still don't see it.

Wow -- Moses Malone as the original Kevin Love. That's a new one.

Well, it sounds harsh and in his peak seasons Moses Malone was more than Kevin Love, but in essence we have a player with impressive rebounding numbers not making that big of an impact. We can accept that for Love, because the Timberwolves sucked with him playing too, but I guess we can't accept that for supposed to be All-Time greats like Moses Malone. And the evidence we have doesn't make it look like that Moses Malone had insane impact. After his last MVP season with the Rockets he improved a good/great team by a small amount. If Moses Malone would have been such a high impact player the result would have been closer to those 10+ SRS Bulls teams. And that is peak Moses Malone here. We saw bigger improvements by past peak players like Garnett in 2008.

I know the numbers would indicate a minor impact, but I don't find that to be a coincidence.

Well, we like to find a reason, some explanation for everything, but sometimes it is just coincidence, especially when it isn't something happened regularely. Like for Malone, it never happened like that again. And Moses Malone was 28 in 1993, not 33 or so.

The point is, if you're measuring All-NBA quality seasons, instead of actual selections, Moses clearly had several seasons that qualify that aren't being recognized. He had 14 seasons where he averaged at least 18.8 points and 10 rebounds, with PERs of 19.6 or better. Clearly that is top-flight stuff.

But not All-NBA like seasons I would consider. To make that point more clear:

If we take the 8 best seasons for Moses Malone we are getting in average 24.2 PER and 0.201 WS/48. For Nowitzki's 8 best seasons we are getting 25.4 PER and 0.235 WS/48. For Moses Malone's next 6 best seasons we are getting 20.7 PER and 0.157 WS/48, for Nowitzki's 5 worst seasons (in that case his clearly worse rookie and sophomore seasons are included) we are getting 20.8 PER and 0.175 WS/48. If we would order the seaons, we should pick 11 seasons for Nowitzki before we are taking the 9th best season of Malone.
So, we can call 14 of Malone's seasons as All-NBA worthy, but we just lowered the entry level in order to do so, at least in my books.

I guess I'm looking at different numbers. What I see is a guy whose PER dropped minimally, from 22 to 21.6, whose WS/48 improved minimally, from 0.174 to 0.176, whose offensive/defensive ratings remained static, and whose raw statistical production improved slightly, from 20.5 ppg and 12.3 rpg to 22.1 ppg and 14.0 rpg. That doesn't fit my definition of worse.

I do that season by season. I compare 1982 rs with 1982 ps and so on. Malone's regular season numbers got worse due to playing a lot of minutes late in his career, but he hadn't quite as much playoff minutes anymore. After 1990 he played 11% of his regular season minutes, but only 2% of his playoff minutes. Not adjusting for that would give us a misleading picture. Because in such a case we can argue Nowitzki became clearly better in the playoffs, thus we would still have the advantage in playoff performance for Nowitzki.

This was pretty much the point I was getting at with the All-NBA seasons. You were using raw, static selections in Dirk's favor, when in fact Moses had pretty much 14 seasons when he could have made it depending on his competition.

Well, I understand your argument about the competition, but I rather make the argument about their performance level. As I said, we can declare 14 of Malone's seasons as "All-NBA seasons", but that would mean we just decrease the entry level and increase the amount of player's seasons being All-NBA worthy overall.

In the comparison between Malone and Nowitzki, we are getting 11 seasons by Nowitzki on a higher quality than everything Malone did except of his 8 best season. Now we are looking at the average for those 11 seasons and the average performance level for Nowitzki is actually higher. Nowitzki peaked higher, had a better and longer prime. Malone has additional seasons on a lower level than anything Nowitzki provided since 2001. And even if we compare Nowitzki's worst 5 seasons with Moses Malone's 9th to 14th best, we are getting a better result for Nowitzki despite the fact that Nowitzki sucked badly in his rookie season.

[ElGee]

I probably would have been ready after 09, but the past two seasons really left a sour taste in my mouth. Especially the Finals. Think about that -- the guy gets to the Finals, with an opportunity to force all the critics who have been dogging him all year to eat a gigantic dick...and he disappears? Because he's tired? That's a pretty epic black mark. He's definitely in the teens, probably only a couple of slots down. But right now, I have a tough time putting him quite that high.

I think people need to free themselves from this preconceived notion of how someone FEELS they SHOULD be. Its simply relative to who else has played basketball.

For example, based on my list, when Julius Erving retired he was the 4th best player in NBA history. Now he's 12th. Someday he might be 40th and it will feel really weird. Sometimes player like Karl Malone end up with better careers than Charles Barkley, who in 1992 clearly outdid him Barcelona.

[Sedale Threatt]

I think people need to free themselves from this preconceived notion of how someone FEELS they SHOULD be.

I definitely get this point; it's probably what I'm succumbing to with Malone right now.

But I don't really feel like that's playing a role with LeBron.

Simply put, I have a tough time putting him quite this high, over guys like Moses and Dirk (who I will vote for 15), after his recent PS flameouts.

Like I said, post 09, I'd strongly consider it. But these last two years have really left a bad taste in my mouth.

At any rate, if Karl Malone can get all the way to 12 or wherever he did, LeBron's eventually going crack the Top 10 at some point on longevity alone, even if he continues to roll over.

[mysticbb]

I just ran Dr J's with/without numbers. In 1983 He missed 10 games - I can only find 9. In those 9 games, Philly was +1.7. In the other 73 games, +8.4 for a net of +6.7.

Basically the expectations we could have had after the numbers for previous seasons. Thanks for doing it. I looked through the archives a bit, but got tired and couldn't figure out when Erving missed games.

The perception on that team was that Moses had some superhuman year. I'm not sure that's really true. I agree with mystic here - I'd take Moses 1982 season over Dirk's best year (06 IMO), but I don't think I'd take his other seasons over Dirk's best ones. At least 1983 is comparable.

Well, I disagree with you about the value of Nowitzki here. I think Nowitzki peaked higher than Moses Malone and the data we have so far is backing that up. I doubt that Moses Malone was some crazy high impact player like Garnett, James or Duncan, and Nowitzki is not that far behind those players, at least not that far as some people seem to think.

Nowitzki should be in over Moses Malone (and as I pointed out before over Oscar Robertson). There is still the myth out here that Nowitzki had always some crazy great teams, but somehow those teams got outscored in all seasons we have data when Nowitzki wasn't on the court? Even in 2004 when the Mavericks used Antawn Jamison as backup for Nowitzki.

And I still don't quite get your reasoning for James here. We have two seasons in which he was better than peak Nowitzki. After that we have them basically equal for about 4 seasons, and then we have Nowitzki being better for the remainder while providing 5 seasons in which he can be used as the best player on a championship team. No, no, no, James should not be in here just based on his higher peak. You didn't argue for Garnett over Karl Malone either.

[shawngoat23]

Vote: Jerry West
Nominate: John Havlicek

I'm shocked that Karl Malone and Kevin Garnett went over Moses, and Moses wasn't even #13 on my list.

[Sedale Threatt]

I don't want to argue about specific years here, but Mutombo and Ben Wallace had both impact on the defensive end beyond anything Moses Malone provided. Thus I still don't see it.

One of them was a total liability on an entire half of the court, and the other was slightly better. At no point in their careers were either of them better than Moses.

Well, it sounds harsh and in his peak seasons Moses Malone was more than Kevin Love, but in essence we have a player with impressive rebounding numbers not making that big of an impact. We can accept that for Love, because the Timberwolves sucked with him playing too, but I guess we can't accept that for supposed to be All-Time greats like Moses Malone. And the evidence we have doesn't make it look like that Moses Malone had insane impact. After his last MVP season with the Rockets he improved a good/great team by a small amount. If Moses Malone would have been such a high impact player the result would have been closer to those 10+ SRS Bulls teams. And that is peak Moses Malone here. We saw bigger improvements by past peak players like Garnett in 2008.

I guess this comes down to marriage with the plus/minus stats. Which I appreciate but don't hold as the end all/be all.

I think Love's a quality player whose reputation would vastly improve if he played on a better team. I also think there are differences outside of the statistical similarities, especially the fact that Moses got to the foul line a ton and, despite his rep as a mediocre defender/shot blocker, was better than Love on that end. Like, not even in the same league better.

RE: Garnett. How do we chalk up ALL of Boston's significant improvement to him when the Celtics also added one of the great shooters in NBA history? Surely he played a big role, but he was not the only addition.

In contrast, the Sixers add only Malone, they improve by seven or eight wins and go from getting repeatedly beaten in the Finals to capping the best playoff run in league history (to that point) with a sweep of the Showtime Lakers.

Probably a little bit too much narrative there for your taste, but at some point the results have to matter, too, don't they?

]Well, we like to find a reason, some explanation for everything, but sometimes it is just coincidence, especially when it isn't something happened regularely. Like for Malone, it never happened like that again. And Moses Malone was 28 in 1993, not 33 or so.

That's where that Finals appearance in 81 comes in. His first year in Philly wasn't the only time he'd pushed a team over the top. That Rockets team was mediocre at best, and they not only beat the defending champs -- probably flukey with the 2 out of 3 format, but still -- before taking two from the Celtics in the Finals.

But not All-NBA like seasons I would consider. To make that point more clear:

If we take the 8 best seasons for Moses Malone we are getting in average 24.2 PER and 0.201 WS/48. For Nowitzki's 8 best seasons we are getting 25.4 PER and 0.235 WS/48. For Moses Malone's next 6 best seasons we are getting 20.7 PER and 0.157 WS/48, for Nowitzki's 5 worst seasons (in that case his clearly worse rookie and sophomore seasons are included) we are getting 20.8 PER and 0.175 WS/48. If we would order the seaons, we should pick 11 seasons for Nowitzki before we are taking the 9th best season of Malone.
So, we can call 14 of Malone's seasons as All-NBA worthy, but we just lowered the entry level in order to do so, at least in my books.

OK, I get your point. I still think you're shorting Moses, but I understand your criterion.

I do that season by season. I compare 1982 rs with 1982 ps and so on. Malone's regular season numbers got worse due to playing a lot of minutes late in his career, but he hadn't quite as much playoff minutes anymore. After 1990 he played 11% of his regular season minutes, but only 2% of his playoff minutes. Not adjusting for that would give us a misleading picture. Because in such a case we can argue Nowitzki became clearly better in the playoffs, thus we would still have the advantage in playoff performance for Nowitzki.

I'm not trying to compare Moses to Nowitzki in terms of playoffs. Nowitzki improves at that level like few players have; it's his best argument, in my opinion.

But otherwise, I'm just not seeing the picture of a guy, in Malone, who got worse in the playoffs. He didn't improve like Dirk, but neither did he dip like Karl or David Robinson. I guess I don't see how we can toss out the career numbers.

Well, I understand your argument about the competition, but I rather make the argument about their performance level. As I said, we can declare 14 of Malone's seasons as "All-NBA seasons", but that would mean we just decrease the entry level and increase the amount of player's seasons being All-NBA worthy overall.

In the comparison between Malone and Nowitzki, we are getting 11 seasons by Nowitzki on a higher quality than everything Malone did except of his 8 best season. Now we are looking at the average for those 11 seasons and the average performance level for Nowitzki is actually higher. Nowitzki peaked higher, had a better and longer prime. Malone has additional seasons on a lower level than anything Nowitzki provided since 2001. And even if we compare Nowitzki's worst 5 seasons with Moses Malone's 9th to 14th best, we are getting a better result for Nowitzki despite the fact that Nowitzki sucked badly in his rookie season.

I suppose it depends on your standards. I'm looking at a guy, in Moses, who managed to put up all those 20/10s, with 13 or so seasons with 20-plus PERs, and not understanding how those don't qualify.

[colts18]

RE: Garnett. How do we chalk up ALL of Boston's significant improvement to him when the Celtics also added one of the great shooters in NBA history? Surely he played a big role, but he was not the only addition.

In contrast, the Sixers add only Malone, they improve by seven or eight wins and go from getting repeatedly beaten in the Finals to capping the best playoff run in league history (to that point) with a sweep of the Showtime Lakers.

Probably a little bit too much narrative there for your taste, but at some point the results have to matter, too, don't they?

This is true. Malone took a team from 5.74 SRS to 7.53 SRS (historically good). While KG's 2008 Celtics were still a 6.29 SRS when he didn't play. KG was a missing piece from a Finals caliber team. Malone was the missing piece to propel a Conference finals caliber team.

]Well, we like to find a reason, some explanation for everything, but sometimes it is just coincidence, especially when it isn't something happened regularely. Like for Malone, it never happened like that again. And Moses Malone was 28 in 1993, not 33 or so.

That's where that Finals appearance in 81 comes in. His first year in Philly wasn't the only time he'd pushed a team over the top. That Rockets team was mediocre at best, and they not only beat the defending champs -- probably flukey with the 2 out of 3 format, but still -- before taking two from the Celtics in the Finals.

But not All-NBA like seasons I would consider. To make that point more clear:

If we take the 8 best seasons for Moses Malone we are getting in average 24.2 PER and 0.201 WS/48. For Nowitzki's 8 best seasons we are getting 25.4 PER and 0.235 WS/48. For Moses Malone's next 6 best seasons we are getting 20.7 PER and 0.157 WS/48, for Nowitzki's 5 worst seasons (in that case his clearly worse rookie and sophomore seasons are included) we are getting 20.8 PER and 0.175 WS/48. If we would order the seaons, we should pick 11 seasons for Nowitzki before we are taking the 9th best season of Malone.
So, we can call 14 of Malone's seasons as All-NBA worthy, but we just lowered the entry level in order to do so, at least in my books.

OK, I get your point. I still think you're shorting Moses, but I understand your criterion.

I do that season by season. I compare 1982 rs with 1982 ps and so on. Malone's regular season numbers got worse due to playing a lot of minutes late in his career, but he hadn't quite as much playoff minutes anymore. After 1990 he played 11% of his regular season minutes, but only 2% of his playoff minutes. Not adjusting for that would give us a misleading picture. Because in such a case we can argue Nowitzki became clearly better in the playoffs, thus we would still have the advantage in playoff performance for Nowitzki.

I'm not trying to compare Moses to Nowitzki in terms of playoffs. Nowitzki improves at that level like few players have; it's his best argument, in my opinion.

But otherwise, I'm just not seeing the picture of a guy, in Malone, who got worse in the playoffs. He didn't improve like Dirk, but neither did he dip like Karl or David Robinson. I guess I don't see how we can toss out the career numbers.

Well, I understand your argument about the competition, but I rather make the argument about their performance level. As I said, we can declare 14 of Malone's seasons as "All-NBA seasons", but that would mean we just decrease the entry level and increase the amount of player's seasons being All-NBA worthy overall.

In the comparison between Malone and Nowitzki, we are getting 11 seasons by Nowitzki on a higher quality than everything Malone did except of his 8 best season. Now we are looking at the average for those 11 seasons and the average performance level for Nowitzki is actually higher. Nowitzki peaked higher, had a better and longer prime. Malone has additional seasons on a lower level than anything Nowitzki provided since 2001. And even if we compare Nowitzki's worst 5 seasons with Moses Malone's 9th to 14th best, we are getting a better result for Nowitzki despite the fact that Nowitzki sucked badly in his rookie season.

I suppose it depends on your standards. I'm looking at a guy, in Moses, who managed to put up all those 20/10s, with 13 or so seasons with 20-plus PERs, and not understanding how those don't qualify.[/quote]

[Laimbeer]

Vote: Jerry West
Nominate: John Havlicek

I'm shocked that Karl Malone and Kevin Garnett went over Moses, and Moses wasn't even #13 on my list.

Particularly KG. And it's difficult to believe at least one of Moses, West or Oscar will not be top 15.

Is it me, or is there a herd instinct grabbing hold? Why all this Barry love at this level, above Hondo and Baylor? The list is taking some bizarre turns.