Real GM Top 100 List #27

[Gongxi]

Isiah vs. Bird? Isiah vs. Jordan? Were they playing table tennis or something?

[JordansBulls]

Consensus rating of players nominated

17 John Havlicek SG/SF
21 Isiah Thomas PG
23 Rick Barry SF
26 John Stockton PG
36 Jason Kidd PG
39 Patrick Ewing C
41 Gary Payton PG
42 Clyde Drexler SG
38 George Gervin SG
72 Artis Gilmore C

Why would Jason Kidd be ahead of Ewing or Payton or Drexler????

[Doctor MJ]

Okay so,

Vote: John Havlicek

Nomination: still figuring it out

I'm still open to arguments for Ewing over Hondo, but people will have to sway me. I find it tough to compare the two of them, but I have a lot of faith in Hondo being a guy who finds a way to be valuable for my team and I don't see a clear peak difference.

The nomination, let me just go stream of conscious a bit...

First off, I'm feeling rather lost. Just having a really hard time weighing peak & longevity among all the candidates right now.

Re: Howard. Yup, could see going for him now. Longevity's obviously an issue, but not as bad as you might think. However, then I compare him to McAdoo, and Mac does stronger by my POY metrics, while still really having the longevity edge (as many all-star appearances, more career WS, found a way to thrive as a role player on a title winner later on). Of course if you have Howard with a glaring edge at peak you go with him, but I respect Mac's peak a lot.

Re: McGrady vs Pierce. I'm inclined to go with Pierce. McGrady's got the clear superior peak, but quite literally Pierce has outperformed him easily for the past 6 years, and gap between them earlier outside of McGrady's very top performance isn't that huge. Also, while I'm wary of giving Pierce too much credit for the Big 3 years, and while people go overboard with saying McGrady couldn't get out of the first round, the fact remains that Pierce really did adapt to fit in quite well with the talent around him helping create the biggest year-to-year improvement in NBA history and maintaining strength ever since, meanwhile McGrady's Rockets underperformed whenever they were healthy and overperformed whenever they were hurt. I won't say he couldn't have made it work with other talent around him, but he's certainly less proven than Pierce, and he did have some opportunity on that front.

Re: Miller. Glad to see him brought up. This was a guy who's done well in previous Top 100's with much controversy. In retrospect, his huge edge over Pierce and Ray Allen seems crazy, but as we're already talking about Pierce as nominee now, that seems to be saying more about how we whiffed on Pierce & Allen than Miller.

If you're like me, then I'd imagine that you have Pierce ahead of Allen, but Allen not too far behind. Not saying he's only 5 spots back, but I'd expect his name to start coming up shortly unless there's someone Allen-like who should come in before Allen.

Enter Miller. Allen is of course the new Miller as far as being the best off ball shooter in the business. A comparison between the two seems inevitable. Allen's clearly got the edge by all-star accolades, but I'd argue that has a lot to do with luck. Allen in Seattle played in the West at a time when the West was very shallow at guard, and then he went to the East right when the West's guards got stronger than the East's. The two players got comparable All-NBA love.

It's true that Allen in Seattle took on a role of being less off ball than Miller ever did and this gave him bigger volume numbers, but for the most part the team sucked. I'm more impressed with what Allen's done as an off ball guy in Milwaukee and Boston anyway.

You look at their two numbers in that role, and they're quite similar except that Miller was even more efficient, and this has a lot to do with why Miller is at 170+ in career WS (14th all time) while Allen is down at 130 (which is still the best of any active player not yet nominated). Okay, maybe you think the efficiency mania has gone too far, but then you've also got to remember that Miller made his name based off his playoff performance. This wasn't a Stockton or Gilmore type of guy who seemed to ensure efficiency by not uping his volume too much. Come playoff time he broke 25 PPG 5 times, with a TS% north of 60 each time. By comparison, Pierce broke 25 PPG in the playoffs only once, and his TS% was at around 55 when he did it. Allen broke 25 PPG twice and did it with a TS% of 60 only once.

Now in general Miller naysayers are people who I think tend to disparage off ball perimeter guys in general. They see the relatively low rebounding and assist numbers and say "Yeah, but all he does is score, those other guys give you way more." I've personally been trying to fight for these off ball guys in general because I think they are essentially wrongly penalized for their role.

Don't get me wrong, the very best offensive perimeter players are indeed on ball guys. You can do more with the ball in your hand than when it's not in your hand, and so a player who is a wizard at making things happen is incredibly valuable. See: Magic, Nash, etc. However, if you've got a rather ball dominant guy, he's going to rack up assists to some degree simply because he's the one who has the ball, so he's the one who'll make the pass to the open man. Key thing: If he's not any better at distribution than other guys, then he's getting assists instead of those other guys simply because the team has decided to put the ball in his hand...which they did primarily because he's a guy whose good at creating his own shot.

Off ball guys like Miller, or Allen, or Dirk though have their own inherent benefit in creating inherent spacing problems for the defense. They don't get the box score credit for this, but I'd wager it's at least a significant as the distribution impact of a lot of on ball guys, and often "scales" better when working on teams with better talent.

Re: KJ. Glad to see him mentioned. Love him, and his prime isn't nearly as short as some think. Yes, he made only 3 all-star games, but that was really a fluke. Dude made 5 All-NBA teams, and then had an additional resurgence a couple years later.

I'm personally having a bit of a CP vs KJ debate.

Last, Rodman hasn't been brought up, and I'm interested people's thoughts on him. One blogger did a really astoundingly detailed analysis on him that I think everyone should ponder:

http://skepticalsports.com/?page_id=1222

[drza]

Consensus rating of players nominated

17 John Havlicek SG/SF
21 Isiah Thomas PG
23 Rick Barry SF
26 John Stockton PG
36 Jason Kidd PG
39 Patrick Ewing C
41 Gary Payton PG
42 Clyde Drexler SG
38 George Gervin SG
72 Artis Gilmore C

Why would Jason Kidd be ahead of Ewing or Payton or Drexler????

I've got Kidd ahead of Payton too. I think he was a better point guard, larger impact on games.

[drza]

Last, Rodman hasn't been brought up, and I'm interested people's thoughts on him. One blogger did a really astoundingly detailed analysis on him that I think everyone should ponder:

http://skepticalsports.com/?page_id=1222

I just did a quick drive-by on that site, and...



I don't have the time to really go at it in depth right now, but his assertions certainly sound confident and his graphs were beautiful (one of them looked remarkably like things I've seen in molecular biology or genetics lectures). His assertions were also incredibly bold, ironically most similar to things that I've seen Dave Berri espouse.

Oh, and I enjoyed this from his bullet-point semi-chapter review headings:

*Player Efficiency Rating ranks Dennis Rodman as the 7th best player on the 1995-96 Bulls championship team
*Player Efficiency Rating is terrible



[ETA]: Oh yeah, and I liked the rest of your post as well. Especially the part about Reggie Miller. I saw him get a vote before, and also saw someone quickly semi-ridicule it. Your post makes him someone that I'm all of a sudden thinking more about here. Also, the Dwight Howard vs McAdoo longevity point was another eye opener, and one that moves McAdoo further up my "to consider" list as well.

[lorak]

re: McAdoo vs Dwight

I wonder how much valuable are McAdoo's extra seasons? I mean, even looking by simple WS he have 89 and Dwight already 80.

I would rather see McAdoo vs Iverson comparisons than vs Dwight.

[JerkyWay]

Isiah vs. Bird? Isiah vs. Jordan? Were they playing table tennis or something?

“I have no problem saying this at all,” he says. “[Magic Johnson and Larry Bird are] all 6-(feet)-9 and Jordan was 6-6 and a half. If they were all 6-1, it wouldn’t even be a question. They wouldn’t even f—ing rate. If they were all my size, s—, they wouldn’t even be talked about.

“I beat the s— out of them when they were that big. If we were all the same size, f—.” He stops to laugh good-naturedly. “Make them 6-1 and let’s go on the court.” - Isiah Thomas

I think it's a tad high for Ewing, but he's probably on his way. For me, the next tier should include Hondo, Isiah, and Stockton.

I pretty much agree.

On Isiah, it's problematic because I don't believe stats tell the whole story on him

That's true. Isiah has shown he's able to put up great numbers ( 21/5/14 on 46% in 1984-85), no doubt he was an amazingly skilled player.
That's a similar case to 2007/2009 and 2011 Chris Paul. First put up big numbers on incredible efficiency (30 PER for PG, that's sick), the second sacrificed his individual stats and led a pretty average team to suprisingly good playoff performance ( it's possible that with David West, they could beat the Lakers).

And this site is pretty stats oriented.

You know, that's hard to be oriented on something different.There's no other way to compare players in order to make such list when we're not exactly aware of certain circumstances. When can't know everything, every single player's situation, especially throughout different eras...Estimated stats ( accordingly to pace ) aren't really that accurate because of totally different way of playing the game 50 or even 30 years ago.

We've also taken on a "best prime as an individual" type criteria.

In my opinion, that's the only viable way to make such lists. There's a problem with old-timers, though. Anyway, there should be a little weight given to titles because of how many aspects has to be taken into consideration in that regard. Player's role on a team is also very important, of course - for instance, stats doesn't tell you that Isiah was significantly more important than Dumars, but it's commonly agreed that he was the leader of these Piston teams. Kind of similar case between Billups/Hamilton or Parker/Manu or even Pierce/Ray. That's why I think we should mainly focus on player's individual peak play. Think of John Havlicek - his early 70s play is my picture of him and I don't give much impact on his play during Russell/Auerbach dynasty. Every player has a period of time in his career when his true value was shown, some cases (like Pippen's) are just harder to deal with than other.

BTW. Most likely, Isiah's impact wasn't nearly as big as any of these guys you've mentioned. I think that the real sign of an all-time great player is that he doesn't need to sacrifice his individual production, no matter how good are his teammates - see, for that instance, at Kobe - no matter if he played with Shaq or Odom as his best teammate - he was scoring 30 PPG all the time. Bird was an ultimate team player but still, he was getting his fair share in his prime, even though his teammates were amazing.
Of course, that's not exactly accurate in all cases, that's all relative.

The arguments made against Russell - Titles are team accomplishments. Wilt had great individual teammates but Russell had deep, well-coached, perfectly constructed teams. Wilt was a greater individual talent.

Thanks for admitting that.
Personally, I'd always take Wilt over Russell, because he was just a better basketball player. Even Russell said that Wilt could do his role on the Celtics better than himself.
I will not argue about Wilt vs Russell because I can't deny Russell's 11 titles, though...That's just an evidence that everything is relative and there's no way to avoid controversies. There's no ideal criterion when it comes to judging players.

[therealbig3]

My case for Pierce over T-Mac is longevity and durability, and the fact that you're not getting a worse player necessarily.

T-Mac could do things Pierce couldn't do, true. But T-Mac has that edge over a lot of players in history, and I'd say he has that edge over guys we've already voted in. But he didn't really utilize that talent to its fullest outside of 1 season.

And Pierce could do things T-Mac couldn't do...namely hit the the 3-point shot consistently, hit the midrange jumper consistently, get to the line and shoot a high percentage consistently, and overall, just score at a much higher efficiency.

Again, outside of 03, can you say T-Mac was clearly the better player?

01-more or less equal imo
02-more or less equal imo
03-T-Mac
04-T-Mac
05-more or less equal imo
06-Pierce, but T-Mac was injured
07-T-Mac, but Pierce was injured
08-Pierce, but T-Mac was injured
09-Pierce, but T-Mac was injured
10-Pierce, but T-Mac was injured
11-Pierce

So you have 3 seasons in which T-Mac holds a significant edge (03, 04, and 07), but even in 07, the only reason T-Mac holds the edge is because Pierce misses half the season, which is an aberration for him. Meanwhile, in 01, 02, and 05, Pierce and T-Mac are pretty equal imo, while due to T-Mac's injury history, Pierce holds clear advantages over him in 06, 08, 09, and 10, and by 11, it didn't matter anymore, because Pierce is clearly the better player now.

So you have 3 comparable seasons, and then 5 superior seasons for Pierce compared to 3 superior seasons for T-Mac. This doesn't even mention the fact that T-Mac always missed at least a handful of games every year, and the fact that Pierce likely holds the advantage on defense. And Pierce is a comparable rebounder too.

Let's rank their best seasons and compare them head to head:

1. 03 T-Mac vs 06 Pierce: clearly T-Mac
2. 02 T-Mac vs 02 Pierce: about even
3. 01 T-Mac vs 01 Pierce: about even
4. 05 T-Mac vs 05 Pierce: about even
5. 04 T-Mac vs 03 Pierce: about even
6. 07 T-Mac vs 08 Pierce: about even
7. 08 T-Mac vs 11 Pierce: clearly Pierce

Keep in mind that a lot of these "about even" seasons also take into account how many games they played.

That's pretty much McGrady's career, while Pierce also gives you great 04, 09, and 10 seasons, as well as a solid 00 season.

Like I said before, outside of 03, Pierce is as good for longer, so he's my choice over T-Mac. But obviously, people will disagree with Pierce being about even with T-Mac a lot of those years, so that's why they'll think it's T-Mac. I do think it's pretty close and you can go either way.

[Fencer reregistered]

I have weird problems with my computer and I'm not sure if it'll still work later today or tomorrow, so my next vote is Clyde Drexler.

On what theory do you vote for Drexler and not even nominate Pierce?

[therealbig3]

Thanks for admitting that.
Personally, I'd always take Wilt over Russell, because he was just a better basketball player. Even Russell said that Wilt could do his role on the Celtics better than himself.
I will not argue about Wilt vs Russell because I can't deny Russell's 11 titles, though...That's just an evidence that everything is relative and there's no way to avoid controversies. There's no ideal criterion when it comes to judging players.

Wilt also said that he couldn't do Russell's role as well as Russell, so who to believe?

Doctor MJ has made a lot of great posts about Wilt and his actual impact (which is a lot lower than you'd expect), and I have to say that I agree with a lot of what he says. It's why I have Wilt lower than most (I have him #9 on my all-time list, behind Jordan, Russell, Kareem, Magic, Duncan, Hakeem, Shaq, and Bird). I think his astronomical stats covered up how little he was actually influencing the game.

Russell on the other hand, had more pedestrian numbers, but they kind of distract people from how astronomically he was influencing the game.

[Laimbeer]

Why would Jason Kidd be ahead of Ewing or Payton or Drexler????

I've got Kidd ahead of Payton too. I think he was a better point guard, larger impact on games.

Agree on Payton, and I think he's ahead of Drexler - same reason, bigger impact.

[Fencer reregistered]

I really question the claim that McHale offered "mediocre rebounding".

McHale's offensive rebounding looked quite good to the eye test, and I think the stats back that up.

On the defensive side:

1. Unlike almost everybody else regarded as a "big", McHale commonly played perimeter defense and wasn't in position to get the rebound.

2. McHale played next to TWO outstanding rebounding bigs, where by "outstanding" I include the fact that they were great guys to start the break, whereas McHale was a guy to run the floor. Parish was a strong outlet passer -- not Walton/Russell/Unseld special, but strong. Bird was an outstanding outlet passer AND a pretty good guy to start the break. They were the default guys to get defensive rebounds, and rightly so.

Even when you look at the other bigs McHale played with, few were soft offense-first guys. They were Cedric Maxwell, Rick Robey, Bill Walton, Greg Kite, Joe Kleine (although he had the "hands of a sturgeon), ...

McHale didn't have the Russell skill of playing superb man defense AND going and getting all the rebounds -- but few guys did.

[Laimbeer]

We've also taken on a "best prime as an individual" type criteria.

In my opinion, that's the only viable way to make such lists. There's a problem with old-timers, though. Anyway, there should be a little weight given to titles because of how many aspects has to be taken into consideration in that regard. Player's role on a team is also very important, of course - for instance, stats doesn't tell you that Isiah was significantly more important than Dumars, but it's commonly agreed that he was the leader of these Piston teams. Kind of similar case between Billups/Hamilton or Parker/Manu or even Pierce/Ray. That's why I think we should mainly focus on player's individual peak play. Think of John Havlicek - his early 70s play is my picture of him and I don't give much impact on his play during Russell/Auerbach dynasty. Every player has a period of time in his career when his true value was shown, some cases (like Pippen's) are just harder to deal with than other.

BTW. Most likely, Isiah's impact wasn't nearly as big as any of these guys you've mentioned. I think that the real sign of an all-time great player is that he doesn't need to sacrifice his individual production, no matter how good are his teammates - see, for that instance, at Kobe - no matter if he played with Shaq or Odom as his best teammate - he was scoring 30 PPG all the time. Bird was an ultimate team player but still, he was getting his fair share in his prime, even though his teammates were amazing.
Of course, that's not exactly accurate in all cases, that's all relative. .

Pretty much agree. He wasn't the player Bird, Magic or Mike was, and his impact on a game wasn't all covered by stats. If he were. we'd be talking Top 10, but I think he at least belongs in the twenties.

Personally, I'd always take Wilt over Russell, because he was just a better basketball player. Even Russell said that Wilt could do his role on the Celtics better than himself.
I will not argue about Wilt vs Russell because I can't deny Russell's 11 titles, though...That's just an evidence that everything is relative and there's no way to avoid controversies. There's no ideal criterion when it comes to judging players.

Exactly. I've always felt you can't make the individual statistical argument for Russ over Wilt, and Wilt was the better player by the "just who was the better prime player" criteria that a lot here seem to be using. I feel just as strongly Russ belongs higher on a GOAT list.

Isiah was mini-Russell. Not the same impact and two titles aren't eleven, but he won them in a pretty competitive era and he did it in a way his stats don't totally capture.

[lorak]

Isiah was mini-Russell. Not the same impact and two titles aren't eleven, but he won them in a pretty competitive era and he did it in a way his stats don't totally capture.

Points, assists and rebounds aren't only stats that exists and other quantifiable facts (stats) capture Russell's great impact. The same can't be say about Isiah, his impact was lesser than his reputation.

And I completely agree with Fencer about McHale's rebounding.

[Doctor MJ]

Isiah vs. Bird? Isiah vs. Jordan? Were they playing table tennis or something?

“I have no problem saying this at all,” he says. “[Magic Johnson and Larry Bird are] all 6-(feet)-9 and Jordan was 6-6 and a half. If they were all 6-1, it wouldn’t even be a question. They wouldn’t even f—ing rate. If they were all my size, s—, they wouldn’t even be talked about.

“I beat the s— out of them when they were that big. If we were all the same size, f—.” He stops to laugh good-naturedly. “Make them 6-1 and let’s go on the court.” - Isiah Thomas

This type of stuff amuses and exacerbates me.

1) As a 6'9" guy, I have to fight the urge not to slug everyone who says "man if I had your height...". People seem to see height as something that's pure luck, but their own natural agility as something they earned. Man, back before I was this big I had well above average agility and hops for my size. You get bigger, most of us lose that. The Howards and Shaqs of the world are unreal freaks of nature.

2) Not only did Isiah not beat the s--- out of them because basketball is a team game, but he wasn't even the one tasked with slowing those guys down. He won because he had guys on his team closer to these other guys size remarkably skilled at defense which was the backbone behind arguably the best defensive team we've seen since the 60s.

[Doctor MJ]

Personally, I'd always take Wilt over Russell, because he was just a better basketball player. Even Russell said that Wilt could do his role on the Celtics better than himself.
I will not argue about Wilt vs Russell because I can't deny Russell's 11 titles, though...That's just an evidence that everything is relative and there's no way to avoid controversies. There's no ideal criterion when it comes to judging players.

You should really look more into the situation before accepting the individual vs team split. While Wilt at his very best was amazing, his year-to-year impact is astonishingly weak for a GOAT candidate. The RPOY project is a great place to start.

[ThaRegul8r]

“I have no problem saying this at all,” he says. “[Magic Johnson and Larry Bird are] all 6-(feet)-9 and Jordan was 6-6 and a half. If they were all 6-1, it wouldn’t even be a question. They wouldn’t even f—ing rate. If they were all my size, s—, they wouldn’t even be talked about.

“I beat the s— out of them when they were that big. If we were all the same size, f—.” He stops to laugh good-naturedly. “Make them 6-1 and let’s go on the court.” - Isiah Thomas

This type of stuff amuses and exacerbates me.

1) As a 6'9" guy, I have to fight the urge not to slug everyone who says "man if I had your height...". People seem to see height as something that's pure luck, but their own natural agility as something they earned.

While I'm not quite 6-9, this is true nonetheless.

[Laimbeer]

Points, assists and rebounds aren't only stats that exists and other quantifiable facts (stats) capture Russell's great impact.

If anyone has ever come close to capturing that in a post or an article, I'd be interested in seeing that.

[drza]

Points, assists and rebounds aren't only stats that exists and other quantifiable facts (stats) capture Russell's great impact.

If anyone has ever come close to capturing that in a post or an article, I'd be interested in seeing that.

El Gee had a great post in the RPoY project that got posted somewhere in the late 1960s threads. My home PC has trouble with this site so I can't look for it, but someone else might have it handy (especially ElGee if he's around today)

[penbeast0]

I really question the claim that McHale offered "mediocre rebounding".

McHale's offensive rebounding looked quite good to the eye test, and I think the stats back that up.

On the defensive side:

1. Unlike almost everybody else regarded as a "big", McHale commonly played perimeter defense and wasn't in position to get the rebound.

2. McHale played next to TWO outstanding rebounding bigs, where by "outstanding" I include the fact that they were great guys to start the break, whereas McHale was a guy to run the floor. Parish was a strong outlet passer -- not Walton/Russell/Unseld special, but strong. Bird was an outstanding outlet passer AND a pretty good guy to start the break. They were the default guys to get defensive rebounds, and rightly so.

Even when you look at the other bigs McHale played with, few were soft offense-first guys. They were Cedric Maxwell, Rick Robey, Bill Walton, Greg Kite, Joe Kleine (although he had the "hands of a sturgeon), ...

McHale didn't have the Russell skill of playing superb man defense AND going and getting all the rebounds -- but few guys did.

If we were talking an average league then yeah, McHale's rebounding might be considered average for a 6'11 F/C but we are talking about comparing him to some of the greatest rebounders in history. McHale v. Dwight Howard, v. Elvin Hayes, v. Dave Cowens, even v. Bob McAdoo, McHale comes up short. The only "great" PF I can think of that McHale is a better rebounder than is Bobby Jones and Jones played a lot more at SF than McHale did.

Is he still a top 50 all time player? Probably. After all, Cowens and Hayes are below average efficiency, McAdoo is weak defensively, Howard is a crappy post passer, Jones didn't score in volume the way McHale did, everyone left has some relative weakness . . . but it's still a real issue when comparing him to the great players we are comparing him to now.

PS -- oh and if you are going to say that his rebounding needs to be adjusted up due to playing next to two guys who rebounded at near 10 reb/36, then you have to also adjust his efficiency down because how many great scoring PFs even played with two frontcourt partners that scored and demanded coverage like Bird and Parish which means McHale probably faced single coverage in the low post more than any other great scorer in history (not always but more often).