RealGM Top 100 List #43

[ElGee]

I'm confused about something with Bob Cousy. I thought the rules of the project were start in the shot clock season (1955). That gives Cousy 9 seasons in this project, yet I keep people citing his accolades from outside the scope of the project (when they shouldn't really be citing accolades at all this point). For me, I see 3 good years of Bob Cousy in this project and then an all-star level PG for a few more years...not close to him yet.

You misunderstood.

The rules are that we include only guys who proved they were good players in the shot clock era. That's not the same as saying we should disregard their earlier accomplishments.

The examples so far are Pettit in, Mikan out.

Umm...I think you just made that up, actually.

This is the first post where this was discussed: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1125757#p28601752

I am seriously tempted to start the project at the 24 second clock so I don't have to figure out where Mikan (and Mikkelson/Pollard/Martin/Fulks etc.) should be but none of the other ones we have done did that so I guess no shortcuts.

To which there was much discussion as to 54-55 being the "cutoff" season, to which baller responded

Let's go ahead and have the cut-off

Not sure where you came up with the criterion you just stated.

[penbeast0]

Why are people only concerned about offensive impact and ignoring defensive impact? Looking at team offensive rating KJ's Suns were better than Moncrief's Bucks who were better than Paul's Hornets; but looking at team defensive rating Moncrief's Bucks were MUCH better than either of the other two through their peaks and this without consistent interior defensive presence (the C's changed from old Lanier to Lister to Breuer, the PFs from Mickey Johnson to PF by committee to Terry Cummings). And of course Moncrief's individual defensive reputation blows away KJ or Paul while his scoring is also superior to either (volume levels are about the same, efficiency is superior)

Kevin Johnson's impact in his prime 89-97.

89:
Suns: +5.3 Ortg above LA, 2nd, 55 wins
Johnson: 20-12, .597 TS%

90:
Suns: +5.0 Ortg, 3rd, 54 wins
Johnson: 23-11, .585 TS%

91:
Suns: +4.7 Ortg, 4th, 55 wins
Johnson: 22-10, .604 TS%

92:
Suns: +3.9 Ortg, 5th, 53 wins
Johnson: 20-11, .561 TS%

93: Add Barkley
Suns: +5.3 Ortg, 1st, 62 wins
Johnson: 16-8, .576 TS%

94:
Suns: +5.4 Ortg, 1st, 56 wins
Johnson: 20-10, .566 TS%

95:
Suns: +6.2 Ortg, 3rd, 59 wins
Johnson: 16-8, .561 TS%

96:
Suns: +2.7 Ortg, 7th, 41 wins
Johnson: 19-9, .617 TS%

97: No Barkley
Suns: +2.6 Ortg, 6th, 40 wins
Johnson: 20-9, .631 TS%

Average: Suns, +4.6 Ortg above League Average, 3.6 average finish in O rtg, 52.8 wins. To put the +4.6 number into perspective, it would be the equivalent of finishing 2nd in the NBA last season in O rating. But Johnson did that for 9 years. Suns finished in the top 5 7 out of 9 years and Top 3 5 out of 9 years.

Johnson did have Barkley for 4 years and it helped, but the average numbers in the non-Barkley years are +4.0 Ortg and 4.3 finish in O rating, 51.4 wins. That is about the equivalent of last year's Thunder and Rockets.

[ElGee]

[quote=lukekarts"]But we had no qualms including him to this point despite no better career accolades.[/quote]

Accolades have nothing to do with it...and obviously the group thinks Howard has a better career.

Interesting, I am somehow being accused of overvaluing peak AND longevity at the exact same time.

Why peak matters: Individuals CAN have massive impact in influencing winning in basketball
Why longevity matters: Each relevant season raises the odds a team wins a title in a given window

They are mutually exclusive ideas.

[therealbig3]

I have McAdoo behind English and Allen in terms of nominations right now.

I'm finding Reed to be kind of overrated...taking pace into account, he would be a 20/10, or even worse, big man today. He had 6 prime seasons (his 2nd year was a down year). He wasn't a dominant defensive anchor, and the main guy who should get credit for making those Knicks teams go is Walt Frazier.

I think a lot of the love going Reed's way is a result of him being a warrior, battling Wilt, and winning 2 Finals MVPs. But he wasn't a better player than someone like Alonzo Mourning.

Obviously, my opinion can change, but that's my initial impression of Willis Reed. I have him top 50, but right now, he's at 48, behind Paul, KJ, Moncrief, English, and Zo.

[Dr Positivity]

Yeah, I guess it depends on just how much you like Paul. I mean if I liked 08 and 09 Paul as much as say, 09 and 10 Lebron, 03, 04 Garnett, 00 to 02 Shaq, 94 and 95 Hakeem, etc., then I could argue "I don't care if it's two years, I'm getting a completley insane player and if I put competent players around him, I'm going to contention" I feel that way about Walton's 1 year

But my personal view is those Hornets did have that competent team. They had a good secondary scorer in West, lots of 3pt shooters and floor spacers every year, a coach with a good defensive history, and in 08 and the first month of 10 (where they sucked) they had Chandler/Okafor backing them up at C too. All of it led to very good results and a 50-55 W team which proves Paul is a franchise player and top 40 peak guy... But nothing to make me think I can plug this guy on average rosters and expect to contend *that* much more than prime KJ, Zo and Reed, enough to make him more valuable with just *2* seasons at that peak level.

And while I'm not a huge injuries +/- guy, I punched out the +/- for the Hornets minus Paul in 2010 and got -3.45 and a 14-23 record, which translates to about 31 Ws by both pythagorean and extrapolating the W%. That makes sense to me - that the Hornets supporting case was average enough to be a 30 W team without Paul instead of 50 - which gives him huge impact, but it was not a Lebron and his Cavs/KG and his Wolves/Wade and his pre Decision Heat type of "it'd be a complete bloodbath if they weren't there and it's a tragedy this all-time year had to be wasted with such garbage teammates" relationship. My rough estimation of Paul's impact on the Hornets and what the Hornets would look like without Paul - looks a lot closer to what I'd guess happens to the Suns without KJ from 89-92 or the Heat without Zo in the mid late 90s. I do think Paul is better than those players, but maybe 5 or 10% better and on the same tier. Just MO

[therealbig3]

My count:

Vote:

Reed-4 (lukekarts, Dr Mufasa, drza, TMACFORMVP)

Paul-3 (therealbig3, ElGee, ronnymac2)

Cousy-2 (Fencer reregistered, JordansBulls)

Moncrief-1 (penbeast0)



Nominate:

Rodman-4 (penbeast0, Fencer reregistered, lukekarts, drza)

McAdoo-3 (ronnymac2, Dr Mufasa, TMACFORMVP)

English-1 (therealbig3)

Lanier-1 (ElGee)

Penny-1 (JordansBulls)

[Laimbeer]

Vote: Cousy
Nominate: Schayes

One heckuva resume

Dolph Schayes


NBA Champion (1955)
12× NBA All-Star (1951–1962)
6× All-NBA First Team (1952–1955, 1957–1958)
6× All-NBA Second Team (1950–1951, 1956, 1959–1961)
NBA 25th Anniversary Team
NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team

[drza]

I'm finding Reed to be kind of overrated...taking pace into account, he would be a 20/10, or even worse, big man today. He had 6 prime seasons (his 2nd year was a down year). He wasn't a dominant defensive anchor, and the main guy who should get credit for making those Knicks teams go is Walt Frazier.

I think a lot of the love going Reed's way is a result of him being a warrior, battling Wilt, and winning 2 Finals MVPs. But he wasn't a better player than someone like Alonzo Mourning.

Obviously, my opinion can change, but that's my initial impression of Willis Reed. I have him top 50, but right now, he's at 48, behind Paul, KJ, Moncrief, English, and Zo.

One of the things that I both hated and loved about this project was the concept of ranking players across generations. They never played with each other, some of them played under drastically different rules and strategies, and the further back you go the worse the stats are that we have to work with. These aren't easy issues to solve, if solvable they are.

I'm a big stats guy, specifically +/- stats. On the other hand, I also recognize that any type of stat (or any type of analysis) is only a single piece of the puzzle, often flawed in and of itself, and that we have to both account for the flaws and also leave some uncertainty space as well when making any kind of statistical conclusion.

I say all of that as preface, to point out that I am exactly the type of person that I am about to take a dig at. Nevertheless, this concern has been with me for awhile in this project and it continues to bother me: I think we're being arrogant and judging players as though they all played under the conditions of today. As such, I do think we are giving short shrift to some of the older players.

For example, Reed is treated as though he was just an average player that lucked onto a championship team and is thus forever overrated. But as I've pointed out before, not only was he an MVP (which is a HUGE, singular recognition accomplishment) but he also led the league in win shares at his peak. He led the league in defensive win shares one year, then was second in offensive win shares the next. He was top-5 in PER several times. And during this period he finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th in three straight MVP votes as part of a string of 5-straight years named All-NBA (two 1st teams, three 2nd teams).

I say this to point out that not only did Reed's peers and the voters of the 70s recognize him as one of THE best players of his time, but the two box-score based stats that we have for that time ALSO recognize his peak as one of THE top of his time. That's independent corroboration, folks, as the voters of that time knew nothing about win shares and win shares could care less about MVP votes. So unless your argument is that players from the early 70s just couldn't compete today, which I can at least understand as a line of attack when I've seen it used for folks in the 50s, I don't see how Reed being on top of his league in both accolades AND stats (not even accounting for his postseason awards or intangibles) can be overlooked.

So with that said, I can't for the life of me see how we could vote Paul Pierce, Reggie Miller and possibly Chris Paul over Reed and have it be anything OTHER than pure present-day hubris. There's no other explanation. To the extent that we can reasonably estimate, in my opinion, Reed's peak was clearly higher than the former two and also higher than Paul's. And despite having read all of the reams of arguments, and participating heavily in them from the opposing side, I haven't seen anything remotely convincing to me that having a borderline-All Star caliber player for 10 or 15 years gives a team a better chance at a title than a 7-year prime with a legit multi-year "possibly best in game" level peak. It frankly doesn't make sense to me. I question my own TMac and Nique votes, to be honest, but they were kind of "lesser of 2 evils" type votes for me and at least I can feel like, at their best, they deserved to be mentioned with players like Reed. And maybe, MAYBE Paul fits into that category too...but he's the only one of this crew with even a shorter prime/peak period than Reed's was.

I guess we're all in this project with different POVs, and we all have our own ranking systems. And I'm far from a rah rah accolades guy, you all know that. But I frankly can't relate to the reasons why Reed would be so much lower than many of the players being voted above him.

Oh, and I'll be nominating Walton really soon. I kind of feel like he should have already been in, but I've been talked down a few times and now I'm pushing for Rodman/Ginobili. But it's time for the big RedHead to be in here.

[Fencer reregistered]

I'm confused about something with Bob Cousy. I thought the rules of the project were start in the shot clock season (1955). That gives Cousy 9 seasons in this project, yet I keep people citing his accolades from outside the scope of the project (when they shouldn't really be citing accolades at all this point). For me, I see 3 good years of Bob Cousy in this project and then an all-star level PG for a few more years...not close to him yet.

You misunderstood.

The rules are that we include only guys who proved they were good players in the shot clock era. That's not the same as saying we should disregard their earlier accomplishments.

The examples so far are Pettit in, Mikan out.

Umm...I think you just made that up, actually.

This is the first post where this was discussed: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1125757#p28601752

I am seriously tempted to start the project at the 24 second clock so I don't have to figure out where Mikan (and Mikkelson/Pollard/Martin/Fulks etc.) should be but none of the other ones we have done did that so I guess no shortcuts.

To which there was much discussion as to 54-55 being the "cutoff" season, to which baller responded

Let's go ahead and have the cut-off

Not sure where you came up with the criterion you just stated.

Well, that's how I interpreted it. The discussion we've had before of Cousy supports the idea that people shared my interpretation. Ditto the brief discussions of Arizin and Schayes.

[Fencer reregistered]

I'll strategically switch to Reed. drza's argument is pretty persuasive that he deserves to go around here.

That Cousy deserves to be in already seems beside the point, as he isn't getting in this round.

And by the way, the idea of breaking a guy's career in half at some point in time is weird. There are guys were choose to evaluate and guys we don't, but if we do evaluate them, then we should evaluate their entire NBA careers.

[Doctor MJ]

Walton could/should be in the running at this point too; I was using Reed as an example as he's currently nominated. Yeah it's a team game but with only 5 vs 5 a single player can have a huge impact, and that should be recognised. People at the time acknowledged guys like Walton, Reed etc were All 1st Team players. Similar level to Dwight today. For all we know, Dwight might snap a cruciate ligament tomorrow and he'd be done. But we had no qualms including him to this point despite no better career accolades.

Miller never achieved as much as any of these guys but gets in mainly due to longevity. If his career was shorter he wouldn't even get a sniff at this point and that's not right. It's not as if we're talking about one season wonders; we're talking about MVP and Finals MVP level players.

Anyway that's just my 2 cents. I think longevity is being overrated here, and older players getting slightly overlooked. I'm not for one minute suggesting an equally talented guy like Sampson be included tho, as individual achievements have to take precedent.

I think part of what needs to be brought out in the open is exactly how much esteem people have for these guys.

It's easy to look at accolades and think "Yeah, Walton & Reed, both MVP level players, and Reed's longevity wasn't as bad." In reality while I'll take Reed's peak over Miller's, the gap between Walton & Reed is much bigger than the gap between Reed & Miller's.

Walton wasn't an MVP level player, he was a GOAT candidate level player.

Meanwhile, Reed wasn't an MVP level player either. The notion that he was the best player of 1970 is just silly, he was barely (and only arguably) the best player on his own team, and as of 1971 when Reed was only 28, he was cleanly surpassed by his teammate.

So basically, Walton at his peak was better than a typical #1 player in the league. Reed at his peak was a top 5 player in the league and it lasted only for 2-3 years, and then he was too injured to be relied upon.

Now, I'm not actually hugely anti-Reed here. It won't bother me terribly if he gets elected soon. However, I don't think there's any doubt that people looking at accolades very much overrate his peak play.

[Snakebites]

Vote: Reed
Nominate: Mcadoo

Honestly, there are a number of little-offense type players I'd pick over Rodman. And I'm a Piston fan.

[lorak]

nominate: Rodman

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: Chris Paul

Nominate: Bob McAdoo

So, probably not a surprise I'm voting for Paul. As I've been saying, I just don't see a huge gap between Howard & Paul.

As I was thinking about the two contenders for nomination Rodman & McAdoo, I just kept thinking more about Reed vs McAdoo, and it's really bizarre to me Reed may get voted in while McAdoo isn't even nominated.

Some things to consider:

1. Here's a list of players who have had 17+ Win Share seasons in the shot clock era:

http://bkref.com/tiny/dkPEB

There are 15 of these players. All of them are in our Top 25 here except Paul and McAdoo.

2. There's this tendency to dismiss McAdoo because he did what he did on mediocre teams. First people say that means he must not have helped his team that much. Well, look at the franchises's index:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/LAC/

Buffalo had an 8+ SRS improvement when McAdoo entered superstar mode, and a 5 SRS drop in the year they traded him. In terms of improvement by TS%, the team improved by 3.9%. By contrast, when the '67 76ers went through their epiphany of changing Wilt's role creating a far bigger improvement than any team had seen with Wilt before, the 76ers' TS% improved by 3.8%. The notion that he wasn't having impact as big as his stats sure isn't supported by that.

Probably also a tendency to say "Yeah, he could do good things on a bad team, but could he lead an elite team?" But do consider that in McAdoo's 3 big years, the team's offense was in the top 5 in the league each year. Seems quite solid to me. (And yes, just for some closure, we do have ORtg for the year McAdoo got traded, Buffalo's offense was bottom 5 in the league that year)

Now Mac get knocked for lack of longevity justifiably, but compare him to Reed. Reed's got a grand total of 4 years with more than 8 Win Shares. EVEN McAdoo has has more such seasons than that, and of course McAdoo took on a second life as role player that allowed him to keep helping teams far longer than Reed. Take away Reed's big 4 seasons and he has about 25 Win Shares left in his career. If you took away McAdoo's best 5 seasons, and he's still got about 35 WS left.

Have Reed supporters really looked at him vs McAdoo with fresh eyes?

[Snakebites]

As someone who admittadly doesn't really know enough about the 60s to talk, is there a reason Nate Thurmond isn't considered over someone like Rodman?

Heck, even Mutombo, now we come to it, had a bigger impact IMO.

[JordansBulls]

If it comes down to a nomination of Mcadoo and Rodman, I'm taking Mcadoo as he was at least good enough to win league mvp of the league.

[penbeast0]

It always seemed to me that Thurmond's outstanding defensive impact was countered by his really poor offense. He was a poor shooter and yet shot a lot; he was a poor passer but the ball went through him because the Warriors were looking at Thurmond as the next Wilt. The Warriors were never an elite team after Wilt left despite having Barry (already in), solid guards like Jeff Mullins, Guy Rodgers (the Mark Jackson of the 60s) and Al Attles, and some defensive PF types like Clyde Lee. They only had their one shining season the year after they traded Nate for solid (but not star) Clifford Ray from Chicago and Chicago didn't improve either. It's like Artis Gilmore only Thurmond was inefficient instead of efficient.

As for Mutombo, I loved him and really admire all he has done off the court as well as on it. If you give him a big share of credit for the Iverson Philly run to the finals (which I do) and for the upset of Seattle; you also have to wonder why his teams didn't do as much in the regular season as similar talents like Zo . . . were the other players that much worse?

Both of them are coming up but as people have said, the strata here is much more densely packed and there are a lot of worthy candidates (including Worthy); can you make the case that any of them have been better than Wes Unseld whose team was a playoff team for a decade with 3 finals appearances and a title (and a best second player in Hayes who seems to be considered well below the best second player for the other 60s/70s contenders . . . Frazier, Havlicek, Barry)? I'm not sure I can.

Rodman was one of my least favorite players (not at first, when I liked him in Detroit but the more I saw of him the less I liked it) but his impact on teams with his GOAT level rebounding and outstanding post defense (he quit defending out on the floor consistently when he saw that rebounding got him more press and money) is easier to make a case for. It may be too high for him, and I liked the KJ nomination too, but I am not seeing any support for the other players I see as the best remaining (Unseld, Bobby Jones, Alex English, Chauncey Billups) . . . all of whom I liked unlike Rodman.

[drza]

I actually would be more than fine with McAdoo getting in. I had initially considered him LONG ago now, and did a comparison between him, Howard and Mourning in which I thought Howard and Mourning were both a bit better, but Howard's actually voted in by now and Mourning is on the list so no objections here. There are so many worthy candidates that I'll sometimes end up championing one, but that doesn't mean that I don't support others as well. I had been including "Doo" under my "70s stud big men" catch category that included Reed, Cowens, Hayes Unseld and Walton and once some of the others got in he kind of slipped under my radar.

But you can really take my "Reed vs Pierce/Reggie/Paul" rant and substitute McAdoo's name for Reed and most of my points would still stand. I DO think there's something wrong when we're voting in lesser players just because they have more years at that level.

The reason that I champion Rodman and Ginobili is that I've become convinced that their actual impact was superstar level even if their style and roles aren't usually associated with superstars. But a guy like Ginobili leading the league in APM and consistently remaining top-5 for nearly a decade tells me that the impact is there. And similar arguments for Rodman from the pre-APM era on the Rodman-for-Hall-of-Fame website have convinced me of the same for him. And because their role and star imprint isn't established, I think there should be someone pointing out their virtues.

But all of that said, none of that means that I don't support a player like McAdoo. If he would have already been on the list, there's a reasonable chance that he may have gotten some voting consideration from me by now.

[Snakebites]

It always seemed to me that Thurmond's outstanding defensive impact was countered by his really poor offense. He was a poor shooter and yet shot a lot; he was a poor passer but the ball went through him because the Warriors were looking at Thurmond as the next Wilt. The Warriors were never an elite team after Wilt left despite having Barry (already in), solid guards like Jeff Mullins, Guy Rodgers (the Mark Jackson of the 60s) and Al Attles, and some defensive PF types like Clyde Lee. They only had their one shining season the year after they traded Nate for solid (but not star) Clifford Ray from Chicago and Chicago didn't improve either. It's like Artis Gilmore only Thurmond was inefficient instead of efficient.

As for Mutombo, I loved him and really admire all he has done off the court as well as on it. If you give him a big share of credit for the Iverson Philly run to the finals (which I do) and for the upset of Seattle; you also have to wonder why his teams didn't do as much in the regular season as similar talents like Zo . . . were the other players that much worse?

Both of them are coming up but as people have said, the strata here is much more densely packed and there are a lot of worthy candidates (including Worthy); can you make the case that any of them have been better than Wes Unseld whose team was a playoff team for a decade with 3 finals appearances and a title (and a best second player in Hayes who seems to be considered well below the best second player for the other 60s/70s contenders . . . Frazier, Havlicek, Barry)? I'm not sure I can.

Rodman was one of my least favorite players (not at first, when I liked him in Detroit but the more I saw of him the less I liked it) but his impact on teams with his GOAT level rebounding and outstanding post defense (he quit defending out on the floor consistently when he saw that rebounding got him more press and money) is easier to make a case for. It may be too high for him, and I liked the KJ nomination too, but I am not seeing any support for the other players I see as the best remaining (Unseld, Bobby Jones, Alex English, Chauncey Billups) . . . all of whom I liked unlike Rodman.

Yeah, I was sorta looking at other guys who's impact was largely not offensive and comparing them to Rodman. I think both Thurmond and Mutombo do compare favorably to Rodman in that regard.

Jones and Unseld are other guys in that vein I might consider over Rodman as well. This push for Rodman just seems really premmature, and this is coming from someone who liked him.

If his peak were a bit longer I'd want Ben Wallace over Rodman as well.

[penbeast0]

vote: Chris Paul
nominate: Bob Lanier

Going to switch to Allen if Lanier has no traction...however why is no one talking about Lanier? Just using a cursory glance (and I encourage analysis deeper than this, obviously, but how do you now start w Lanier...):

Win Shares
Lanier 117
Rodman 90
Cowens 86
Reed 75

MVP Shares
Cowens 1.33
Reed 1.07
Lanier 0.50
Rodman 0.04

Pace Adjusted Stats (per 75)
Lanier 22/10/3 +7%
Cowens 16/14/3 +0%
Reed 18/12/2 +4%
Rodman 10/18/2/ +4%

And Lanier did it a year or two longer than Reed and Cowens.

Wes Unseld 110.1 Win Shares with clearly superior defense and uncounted skills (outlet passing and pick setting) plus better intangibles than Lanier. MVP shares 0.64 (including 1 MVP). Am not set up to do the Pace adjusted Stats but I would guess they would look more like Rodman's with a bit less rebounding and more passing.