What would Duncan have had to do to be seen in the same category as Kareem?

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Kareen peak defense being better than duncan peak defense is a fairly unusual opinion, wont say you are fpr sure wrong, but most posters will be starting from the idea duncan has somedge on kareem defensively so that is where part of your disagreement with the board opinion may come

I also would ask how much kareem and duncan rebounded -per 100 possesions- rather than by minutes

Remember the 70's were a much higher pace era with lower efficiency than duncan 00's. So there were just more rebounds to grab (before even getting into how duncan usually played in big lineups with another 7 footer like robinson, nesterovic or oberto)

I think people have mythologized Duncan's defense. I don't remember Duncan's defense as being that much better than Robert Parish's defense and I prefer peak Robinson's defense to Duncan's defense.

Young mobile Kareem was a defensive force but would he have looked as good vs modern teams.Did the 1970s make Kareem look better than he was?

Well, that's why we should find a way to evaluate defense better. We have a lot of reasons to pick Duncan over Parish defensively. He has one of the best impact profile ever. He looks significantly better on the tape.

Sometimes I wonder if you base your defensive evaluation of high flying blocks. I bet you'd take Parish over Draymond on defense as well.

I do like the blocks that leave shooters looking arround for the shot blocker the next time they have the ball because that messes up shooter. How many points is a block worth.I think a block is worth more than 2 points.

But no, Warriors are my hometown now and the Celtics were my home town then. I do think Parish gets underrated but I have Draymond's defense above Parish. Me liking shot blocking works in Duncan's favor with me but it isn't enough. I just watched Amar'e Stoudemire make Duncan look bad. Until I see evidence to the contrary I think you all are overrating Duncan's defense.

[70sFan]

I think people have mythologized Duncan's defense. I don't remember Duncan's defense as being that much better than Robert Parish's defense and I prefer peak Robinson's defense to Duncan's defense.

Young mobile Kareem was a defensive force but would he have looked as good vs modern teams.Did the 1970s make Kareem look better than he was?

Well, that's why we should find a way to evaluate defense better. We have a lot of reasons to pick Duncan over Parish defensively. He has one of the best impact profile ever. He looks significantly better on the tape.

Sometimes I wonder if you base your defensive evaluation of high flying blocks. I bet you'd take Parish over Draymond on defense as well.

I do like the blocks that leave shooters looking arround for the shot blocker the next time they have the ball because that messes up shooter. How many points is a block worth.I think a block is worth more than 2 points.

But no, Warriors are my hometown now abpnd Celtics were my home town then. I do think Parish gets underrated but I have Draymond's defense above Parish. Me liking shot blocking works in Duncan's favor with me but it isn't enough. I just watched Amar'e Stoudemire make Duncan look bad. Until I see evidence to the contrary I think you all are overrating Duncan's defense.

Can you show me exact examples in that game when Amar'e made Duncan look bad?

Well, you can start with watching peak Duncan games.

[falcolombardi]

I think people have mythologized Duncan's defense. I don't remember Duncan's defense as being that much better than Robert Parish's defense and I prefer peak Robinson's defense to Duncan's defense.

Young mobile Kareem was a defensive force but would he have looked as good vs modern teams.Did the 1970s make Kareem look better than he was?

Well, that's why we should find a way to evaluate defense better. We have a lot of reasons to pick Duncan over Parish defensively. He has one of the best impact profile ever. He looks significantly better on the tape.

Sometimes I wonder if you base your defensive evaluation of high flying blocks. I bet you'd take Parish over Draymond on defense as well.

I do like the blocks that leave shooters looking arround for the shot blocker the next time they have the ball because that messes up shooter. How many points is a block worth.I think a block is worth more than 2 points.

But no, Warriors are my hometown now abpnd Celtics were my home town then. I do think Parish gets underrated but I have Draymond's defense above Parish. Me liking shot blocking works in Duncan's favor with me but it isn't enough. I just watched Amar'e Stoudemire make Duncan look bad. Until I see evidence to the contrary I think you all are overrating Duncan's defense.

Nash and amare duo made every team look bad back then

Duncan was also 31 and post- 2006 injury issues, it would be like judging kareem defensive peak on his 1980 campaign

[f4p]

Well, that's why we should find a way to evaluate defense better. We have a lot of reasons to pick Duncan over Parish defensively. He has one of the best impact profile ever. He looks significantly better on the tape.

Sometimes I wonder if you base your defensive evaluation of high flying blocks. I bet you'd take Parish over Draymond on defense as well.

I do like the blocks that leave shooters looking arround for the shot blocker the next time they have the ball because that messes up shooter. How many points is a block worth.I think a block is worth more than 2 points.

But no, Warriors are my hometown now abpnd Celtics were my home town then. I do think Parish gets underrated but I have Draymond's defense above Parish. Me liking shot blocking works in Duncan's favor with me but it isn't enough. I just watched Amar'e Stoudemire make Duncan look bad. Until I see evidence to the contrary I think you all are overrating Duncan's defense.

Nash and amare duo made every team look bad back then

Duncan was also 31 and post- 2006 injury issues, it would be like judging kareem defensive peak on his 1980 campaign

amare dropping 37 ppg on duncan was in the 2005 WCF.

[Texas Chuck]

Nothing needed. His career stacks up just fine with Kareem's.

Sent from my SM-A125U using RealGM mobile app

[LAL1947]

I dunno man, Duncan wasn't considered a GOAT level player when he was actually in his prime, and I don't think we were wrong or viewing him through the wrong lense at the time either. I just don't think he was individually as dominant as Kareem was, he would have needed a lot more years like 2002-2003 to make it a real discussion. Duncan is a well rounded player without a ton of like true weaknesses, but I do think some of the weaker parts of his game do get glossed over a lot more than other guys get the benefit of the doubt in similar tier of players.

Frankly, I just don't think Duncan has a claim to GOAT in his prime, and Kareem does.

Agreed with this. Duncan was never considered GOAT level in his prime when he was playing. All of this is retrospective statistical evaluation trying to make him seem like he was better than he actually was. Duncan was also only considered best player in the league (BPOTL) for 1 year when he was playing, i.e., 2002-03... and even in 2002-03, it was more like everyone considered Duncan, Kobe and KG on the same level but rightfully gave Duncan the nod in that 1 season because of the Spurs title win. For 1998-99 to 2001-02, Shaq was just so dominant, it would be hard to put anyone else over him even if they were actually better or more efficient. In 2003-04, KG and Kobe were better than Duncan. In 2004-05, KG was better, while Kobe was injured and Lakers were dealing with the impact of Shaq trade. Then from 2005-06 to 2009-10, Kobe was clearly BPOTL, and it could be said Lebron and Dirk were better too. From 2010 onwards, Lebron took over as clear BPOTL. I honestly do not understand how a player who was BPOTL for just 1 year can have a GOAT case, or even a case for Top 5 All-Time.

[LAL1947]

I do like the blocks that leave shooters looking arround for the shot blocker the next time they have the ball because that messes up shooter. How many points is a block worth.I think a block is worth more than 2 points.

But no, Warriors are my hometown now abpnd Celtics were my home town then. I do think Parish gets underrated but I have Draymond's defense above Parish. Me liking shot blocking works in Duncan's favor with me but it isn't enough. I just watched Amar'e Stoudemire make Duncan look bad. Until I see evidence to the contrary I think you all are overrating Duncan's defense.

Nash and amare duo made every team look bad back then

Duncan was also 31 and post- 2006 injury issues, it would be like judging kareem defensive peak on his 1980 campaign

amare dropping 37 ppg on duncan was in the 2005 WCF.

Agreed with SinceGatlingWasARookie and F4P. Amar'e was a bad matchup for Duncan in 2004-05 because he was big and quick, while Duncan had become slower even though he was still only 28yo. Duncan was a great player on both ends (truly top class between 1997-98 and 2002-03)... but he was not as transcendent as some of y'all are trying to make it seem like he was.

Here is the Suns vs Spurs matches from 2004-05 season.

Dec. 28, 2004: Amar'e 37 pts, Duncan 16 pts
Jan. 21, 2005: Amar'e 35 pts, Duncan 30 pts
May. 22, 2005: Amar'e 41 pts, Duncan 28 pts
May. 24, 2005: Amar'e 37 pts, Duncan 30 pts
May. 28, 2005: Amar'e 34 pts, Duncan 33 pts
May. 30, 2005: Amar'e 31 pts, Duncan 15 pts
Jun. 01, 2005: Amar'e 42 pts, Duncan 31 pts

Total: Amar'e 257 pts, Duncan 183 pts (scored 71% of what Amar'e did).

So IF Amar'e was so bad on defense and Duncan was so great on defense... AND they generally guarded each other... THEN how come Amar'e outscored Duncan in every single game? Every. Single. Game.

And do y'all think Amar'e would have done this to 28yo Kareem? Or to 28yo Hakeem?

When Timmy's bells ring, ting-a-ling-a-ling,
Ting-a-ling-a-ling, that's Amar'e!

Watch on YouTube

[kcktiny]

Jabbar is arguably the greatest player in the history of the NBA - along with Chamberlain, Russell, and Jordan.

Duncan was a great player, but there's even a question as to whether he is the greatest PF ever.

I'm guessing most on RealGM when they think of Jabbar think of his years with Magic Johnson. But he played a full decade in the league prior Magic's rookie season.

If you compare Jabbar/Duncan from the ages of 22-31 you'll see that Jabbar:

- played 41 min/g his first decade in the league (Duncan 37 min/g)
- scored over 6000 more points (28.6 pts/g vs. 21.7 pts/g for Duncan)
- shot 55% on 2s vs. 51% for Duncan
- grabbed 2600+ more rebounds (14.8 vs. 11.8 reb/g)

Duncan would had to have done a lot more to be on Kareem's level.

[tsherkin]

Nothing needed. His career stacks up just fine with Kareem's.

I guess it depends on what you value, and how you look, right? Duncan doesn't approach Kareem in personal accolades. He certainly doesn't have the scoring titles, the FG% title, the rebounding or shot blocking titles, you know? So there's a divide in terms of individual stats, MVPs, time on court... It's not hard to see why some people continue to look at them as being in different categories.

Appreciating Duncan requires some context. For example, his per-possession scoring is actually about the same as Kareem's. He's a career 29.7 PTS100 guy and Kareem is at 29.9. Of course, taking the load management, he didn't actually score at that level across the same minutes, but still. Something that his raw PPG doesn't really show through. And he's actually around 3 REB100 higher than Kareem. And the same for BLK100, fairly similar in BLK% (though of course we don't have Kareem's first several seasons). Kareem led the league in OBPM a half-decade straight, but Duncan actually had several years in his prime at a comparable +5.0-ish level.

But as you say, his career stacks up fine if you look at the right spots. If you're entranced by MVPs, it's a little different, and if you value minutes played, then it's a little different, but Duncan was pretty amazing.

[Blame Rasho]

It is clear who doesn’t see games and who did.

I have countless clueless posters say omg 37 ppg amare series…ummm do you even bother to see the series and why it didn’t matter?

You want to give a glance at box score since everyone now just sees highlights and see Marion’s ppg and total no show? How about the outcome of the series? How about the fact when the 4th qtr the suns always folded and couldn’t score enough? How about the fact that the suns were better off when amare was off the court during the series?

I was here when the series happened and no was saying omg Duncan was EXPOSED like people do for every stupid argument on realm.

I get it, nuisances and reality kinda sucks when they don’t fit your predetermined argument.

Anyways Robert Parrish is now better than Tim Duncan’s defense because of umm “reasons” nowadays.

The bigger question is about Kareem, he was just a better player. Duncan was an all time great but never could claim being the best player of all time. You don’t need to give it much thought at least from my perspective. Outside of playing what if games, there is a distance between those two players in terms of greatness.

[drza]

Nothing needed. His career stacks up just fine with Kareem's.

I guess it depends on what you value, and how you look, right? Duncan doesn't approach Kareem in personal accolades. He certainly doesn't have the scoring titles, the FG% title, the rebounding or shot blocking titles, you know? So there's a divide in terms of individual stats, MVPs, time on court... It's not hard to see why some people continue to look at them as being in different categories.

Appreciating Duncan requires some context. For example, his per-possession scoring is actually about the same as Kareem's. He's a career 29.7 PTS100 guy and Kareem is at 29.9. Of course, taking the load management, he didn't actually score at that level across the same minutes, but still. Something that his raw PPG doesn't really show through. And he's actually around 3 REB100 higher than Kareem. And the same for BLK100, fairly similar in BLK% (though of course we don't have Kareem's first several seasons). Kareem led the league in OBPM a half-decade straight, but Duncan actually had several years in his prime at a comparable +5.0-ish level.

But as you say, his career stacks up fine if you look at the right spots. If you're entranced by MVPs, it's a little different, and if you value minutes played, then it's a little different, but Duncan was pretty amazing.

Late to the party, but for my 2 cents, I've currently got Duncan ahead of Kareem. To the best that I can determine, Duncan had a larger impact on games than Kareem did. His defensive and rebounding advantages over Kareem aged well on the longevity front, allowing Duncan to maintain that impact advantage into the twilights of their respective (long) careers. Kareem's primary advantages over Duncan were centered around his ability to score at high volume and efficiency, but with any sort of attempt to account for pace and situation, the difference in their volume scoring is minimal. Kareem was clearly the more efficient scorer, but further examination there shows that the difference between Kareem's 59.5% TS% and Duncan's 55.1 TS% during the years that tsherkin alluded to (1974-89 for Kareem, career for Duncan) is not as important as many give it credit for.

Bluntly, Duncan's defensive advantages seem to have a larger impact on games than Kareem's offensive advantages. And they did it for a similar amount of time. So, advantage Timmy...is how I'm currently seeing it.

[Joao Saraiva]

It feels like KAJ kept his top game for a bit longer, while Duncan ended up adapting earlier. Maybe that's some difference.

Then there are all the records.... the 6 times MVP, the oldest FMVP, the scoring champion... KAJ has a very unique career that separates him from almost everyone else.

[capfan33]

Nothing needed. His career stacks up just fine with Kareem's.

I guess it depends on what you value, and how you look, right? Duncan doesn't approach Kareem in personal accolades. He certainly doesn't have the scoring titles, the FG% title, the rebounding or shot blocking titles, you know? So there's a divide in terms of individual stats, MVPs, time on court... It's not hard to see why some people continue to look at them as being in different categories.

Appreciating Duncan requires some context. For example, his per-possession scoring is actually about the same as Kareem's. He's a career 29.7 PTS100 guy and Kareem is at 29.9. Of course, taking the load management, he didn't actually score at that level across the same minutes, but still. Something that his raw PPG doesn't really show through. And he's actually around 3 REB100 higher than Kareem. And the same for BLK100, fairly similar in BLK% (though of course we don't have Kareem's first several seasons). Kareem led the league in OBPM a half-decade straight, but Duncan actually had several years in his prime at a comparable +5.0-ish level.

But as you say, his career stacks up fine if you look at the right spots. If you're entranced by MVPs, it's a little different, and if you value minutes played, then it's a little different, but Duncan was pretty amazing.

Late to the party, but for my 2 cents, I've currently got Duncan ahead of Kareem. To the best that I can determine, Duncan had a larger impact on games than Kareem did. His defensive and rebounding advantages over Kareem aged well on the longevity front, allowing Duncan to maintain that impact advantage into the twilights of their respective (long) careers. Kareem's primary advantages over Duncan were centered around his ability to score at high volume and efficiency, but with any sort of attempt to account for pace and situation, the difference in their volume scoring is minimal. Kareem was clearly the more efficient scorer, but further examination there shows that the difference between Kareem's 59.5% TS% and Duncan's 55.1 TS% during the years that tsherkin alluded to (1974-89 for Kareem, career for Duncan) is not as important as many give it credit for.

Bluntly, Duncan's defensive advantages seem to have a larger impact on games than Kareem's offensive advantages. And they did it for a similar amount of time. So, advantage Timmy...is how I'm currently seeing it.

Want to push back a bit on this. When comparing Kareem and Duncan as scorers, you note that their per 100 possession scoring is similar, but of course Duncan didn't have as many minutes. I think the problem with this thinking is that I highly doubt Duncan could have maintained his scoring averages in more minutes, while also maintaining his rebounding and defense.

I think this is one aspect about impact and players that rarely gets talked about which is that they rarely actually do everything they're capable of on the court all the time. Bigs have more limited stamina (especially as they age) and have to pick and choose there spots on either side of the ball. Kareem in the 80s, especially in the 1st half, focused most of his energy on half-court offense at the expense of rebounding especially as well as defense. Duncan sacrificed minutes and scoring for rebounding and defense. As such, I don't think it makes much sense to try and equate Duncan and Kareem as scorers while simultaneously giving Duncan credit for his defense/rebounding as is.

If you want to argue that Duncan's longevity curve was better because bigs are inherently more valuable as defensive lynchpins specifically as they age, that's perfectly reasonable, but throwing in the scoring aspect of it is overkill IMO.

Moreover, I think that the idea Duncan was comparable to Kareem as a scorer or overall offensive engine is pretty questionable. 1st, the pace estimates underrate bigs like Kareem because he didn't really benefit from transition, and moreover when you factor in spacing differences and efficiency relative to the league, the gap grows wider. This is illustrated by the fact that Kareem's 1986 season was about equal to Duncan's 2003 season in terms of per75 relative TS%. Essentially, a 38 year old Kareem was as good a scorer as peak Duncan, which I think has as much to do with scoring becoming easier per possession over the course of Kareem's career as it does with his incredible longevity.

[Texas Chuck]

Want to push back a bit on this. When comparing Kareem and Duncan as scorers, you note that their per 100 possession scoring is similar, but of course Duncan didn't have as many minutes. I think the problem with this thinking is that I highly doubt Duncan could have maintained his scoring averages in more minutes, while also maintaining his rebounding and defense.

I'm not big on giving players credit for what they didn't do. So the reality is the Spurs were good enough for Duncan to play less regular season minutes and we have to acknowledge the additional minutes Kareem logged.

But worth noting that in the playoffs when Duncan's minutes would go up significantly in this portion of his career, his scoring didn't fall off much on a per 100 basis outside of 2011, but that's a one series sample so hard to put a ton of stock into it.

Now could Duncan have kept that up if he had to play those minutes all season, your guess is as good as mine(though likely different. ) But I think without question Duncan benefited from not having to carry as big of an offensive/minutes load once Manu/Parker ramped up and then the eventual arrival of Kawhi.

Still we can only fairly evaluate him on what he actually did. So each of us have to decide how much to dock him in comparison with Kareem for the lower minutes(hard for me personally to justify docking him much since his teams were still winning at a very high clip and there simply wasn't a need for it and he increased his minutes in the playoffs every year). And for those who feel like their projections of what he could or couldn't have done in different circumstances is more than just a guess, can include that too. I'm never comfortable with this personally because one, I'm just guessing, and two, this is where potential biases really come into play. Duncan killed my little Mavs for 2 decades and I don't want to let that negatively influence me. Much like how I have to watch that with Kobe and Wade for instance.

And of course Duncan's value is far less dependent on his scoring than Kareem's in the latter part of both careers. Just like I wouldn't heavily focus on Kareem's defense during this period which wasn't at the level it was in the 70's either.

[drza]

Spoiler:

I guess it depends on what you value, and how you look, right? Duncan doesn't approach Kareem in personal accolades. He certainly doesn't have the scoring titles, the FG% title, the rebounding or shot blocking titles, you know? So there's a divide in terms of individual stats, MVPs, time on court... It's not hard to see why some people continue to look at them as being in different categories.

Appreciating Duncan requires some context. For example, his per-possession scoring is actually about the same as Kareem's. He's a career 29.7 PTS100 guy and Kareem is at 29.9. Of course, taking the load management, he didn't actually score at that level across the same minutes, but still. Something that his raw PPG doesn't really show through. And he's actually around 3 REB100 higher than Kareem. And the same for BLK100, fairly similar in BLK% (though of course we don't have Kareem's first several seasons). Kareem led the league in OBPM a half-decade straight, but Duncan actually had several years in his prime at a comparable +5.0-ish level.

But as you say, his career stacks up fine if you look at the right spots. If you're entranced by MVPs, it's a little different, and if you value minutes played, then it's a little different, but Duncan was pretty amazing.

Spoiler:

Late to the party, but for my 2 cents, I've currently got Duncan ahead of Kareem. To the best that I can determine, Duncan had a larger impact on games than Kareem did. His defensive and rebounding advantages over Kareem aged well on the longevity front, allowing Duncan to maintain that impact advantage into the twilights of their respective (long) careers. Kareem's primary advantages over Duncan were centered around his ability to score at high volume and efficiency, but with any sort of attempt to account for pace and situation, the difference in their volume scoring is minimal. Kareem was clearly the more efficient scorer, but further examination there shows that the difference between Kareem's 59.5% TS% and Duncan's 55.1 TS% during the years that tsherkin alluded to (1974-89 for Kareem, career for Duncan) is not as important as many give it credit for.

Bluntly, Duncan's defensive advantages seem to have a larger impact on games than Kareem's offensive advantages. And they did it for a similar amount of time. So, advantage Timmy...is how I'm currently seeing it.

Want to push back a bit on this. When comparing Kareem and Duncan as scorers, you note that their per 100 possession scoring is similar, but of course Duncan didn't have as many minutes. I think the problem with this thinking is that I highly doubt Duncan could have maintained his scoring averages in more minutes, while also maintaining his rebounding and defense.

I think this is one aspect about impact and players that rarely gets talked about which is that they rarely actually do everything they're capable of on the court all the time. Bigs have more limited stamina (especially as they age) and have to pick and choose there spots on either side of the ball. Kareem in the 80s, especially in the 1st half, focused most of his energy on half-court offense at the expense of rebounding especially as well as defense. Duncan sacrificed minutes and scoring for rebounding and defense. As such, I don't think it makes much sense to try and equate Duncan and Kareem as scorers while simultaneously giving Duncan credit for his defense/rebounding as is.

If you want to argue that Duncan's longevity curve was better because bigs are inherently more valuable as defensive lynchpins specifically as they age, that's perfectly reasonable, but throwing in the scoring aspect of it is overkill IMO.

Moreover, I think that the idea Duncan was comparable to Kareem as a scorer or overall offensive engine is pretty questionable. 1st, the pace estimates underrate bigs like Kareem because he didn't really benefit from transition, and moreover when you factor in spacing differences and efficiency relative to the league, the gap grows wider. This is illustrated by the fact that Kareem's 1986 season was about equal to Duncan's 2003 season in terms of per75 relative TS%. Essentially, a 38 year old Kareem was as good a scorer as peak Duncan, which I think has as much to do with scoring becoming easier per possession over the course of Kareem's career as it does with his incredible longevity.

Fair responses, based on what I wrote here. For me, my post was a bit of an extension to the conversation from a few weeks ago that I think indirectly led to this thread. In my last post in that thread, I think I touched on a lot of what you wrote here re: defensive impact more important to bigs than offensive impact, the scoring conversation being more tangential to my point than a key factor in it, necessity for some sort of pace adjustment despite the conversations on fast break/iso/scaling effects, etc. I was going to just paste the link to the post, but it's not super-long, so I'll also quote inset it here. https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100834900#p100834900

Spoiler:

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

Spoiler:

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

Short answer: yes. Defensive impact, especially among big men, is often a more important factor to their team's fortunes than scoring. Kareem is one of only a handful of big men in history that really had an all-history impact as a score-first player (Kareem, Shaq, Dirk, arguably Jokic, maybe a few others). Typically, I'd much rather my big man be defensively dominant and good offensively as opposed to vice versa.

Plus, elephant in the room, if you're going to compare volume boxscore stats you have to, in some way, account for pace. I've been in all the arguments through the years about pace adjusting, and whether it's accurate for high-volume/iso scorers because there are questions about scaling iso vs pace, and all that. I get all that. But just, KISS, you can't IMO make any sort of reasonable volume-based comparison of what a player produces in 110 possessions per game vs what another produces in 90 possessions/game. It's not viable. So, I'm one that (if I'm going to factor in volume box score stats) will often utilize either the per-100 numbers, or sometimes I'll look at the ratio of each player's volume vs their team's volume to try to get them on a similar level.

Anyway. As quick datapoints, I'll see your 12,000 more total points in their careers and raise you their scoring rate per 100 possessions:

Kareem: 29.9 PP100 (1974 season till retirement; 16 seasons (all they have on B-R))
Duncan: 29.7 PP100 (entire 19 season career)

Now, again, I don't particularly care about their relative scoring volumes. I tend to evaluate by impact, and to the degree I've been able to determine, I'm comfortable that Duncan's impact was larger than Kareem's. With that said, and with the pace adjustment caveats of the above paragraph in place...I'm kind of surprised, myself, at how similar those numbers were. BECAUSE so much of Kareem's legacy in these GOAT talks is based on his role as the scoring king, while Duncan is often considered just a "good" scorer in a historic sense. But, it really is true that the era that Duncan played in was one of the slowest, most-difficult-to-amass-points eras in NBA history. Maybe pace adjusting isn't perfect, but I think it's conservatively fair to say that on the continuum of NBA history, Duncan was probably a much better relative scorer than his volume stats indicate.

This is a conversation that could go a lot of different ways, and could spark some fun analysis/revelations. I've said a few times that I've found Duncan's impact to be larger than Kareem's, but there hasn't been much of that conversation in this thread. But we could start with a question about mechanisms:

Kareem is on the short list of elite scoring threats in history. Does that make him one of the elite offensive impact players in history? That'd be unusual for a scoring big, but not unheard of. But I haven't necessarily seen the evidence that he had an offensive impact analogous to, for example peak Shaq's, or even current Jokic. In the absence of that, I'd argue that Duncan's demonstrated ability to have all-history level impacts on defense would put him in the driver's seat in an initial comp between the two. Want to start there, and push back with some evidence that I'm wrong, and that Kareem's offense was more impactful and/or that Duncan's defense was less impactful than I'm suggesting here?

[70sFan]

...

What makes you believe that Shaq was a better offensive player than Kareem?

[Dutchball97]

Jabbar is arguably the greatest player in the history of the NBA - along with Chamberlain, Russell, and Jordan.

Duncan was a great player, but there's even a question as to whether he is the greatest PF ever.

I'm guessing most on RealGM when they think of Jabbar think of his years with Magic Johnson. But he played a full decade in the league prior Magic's rookie season.

If you compare Jabbar/Duncan from the ages of 22-31 you'll see that Jabbar:

- played 41 min/g his first decade in the league (Duncan 37 min/g)
- scored over 6000 more points (28.6 pts/g vs. 21.7 pts/g for Duncan)
- shot 55% on 2s vs. 51% for Duncan
- grabbed 2600+ more rebounds (14.8 vs. 11.8 reb/g)

Duncan would had to have done a lot more to be on Kareem's level.

You'd be guessing wrong. If there is one place where the 70s don't get forgotten it's here.

[No-more-rings]

Late to the party, but for my 2 cents, I've currently got Duncan ahead of Kareem. To the best that I can determine, Duncan had a larger impact on games than Kareem did. His defensive and rebounding advantages over Kareem aged well on the longevity front, allowing Duncan to maintain that impact advantage into the twilights of their respective (long) careers. Kareem's primary advantages over Duncan were centered around his ability to score at high volume and efficiency, but with any sort of attempt to account for pace and situation, the difference in their volume scoring is minimal. Kareem was clearly the more efficient scorer, but further examination there shows that the difference between Kareem's 59.5% TS% and Duncan's 55.1 TS% during the years that tsherkin alluded to (1974-89 for Kareem, career for Duncan) is not as important as many give it credit for.

Bluntly, Duncan's defensive advantages seem to have a larger impact on games than Kareem's offensive advantages. And they did it for a similar amount of time. So, advantage Timmy...is how I'm currently seeing it.

Not to get off topic, but would you also have Garnett over Kareem all time?

[capfan33]

Spoiler:

Late to the party, but for my 2 cents, I've currently got Duncan ahead of Kareem. To the best that I can determine, Duncan had a larger impact on games than Kareem did. His defensive and rebounding advantages over Kareem aged well on the longevity front, allowing Duncan to maintain that impact advantage into the twilights of their respective (long) careers. Kareem's primary advantages over Duncan were centered around his ability to score at high volume and efficiency, but with any sort of attempt to account for pace and situation, the difference in their volume scoring is minimal. Kareem was clearly the more efficient scorer, but further examination there shows that the difference between Kareem's 59.5% TS% and Duncan's 55.1 TS% during the years that tsherkin alluded to (1974-89 for Kareem, career for Duncan) is not as important as many give it credit for.

Bluntly, Duncan's defensive advantages seem to have a larger impact on games than Kareem's offensive advantages. And they did it for a similar amount of time. So, advantage Timmy...is how I'm currently seeing it.

Want to push back a bit on this. When comparing Kareem and Duncan as scorers, you note that their per 100 possession scoring is similar, but of course Duncan didn't have as many minutes. I think the problem with this thinking is that I highly doubt Duncan could have maintained his scoring averages in more minutes, while also maintaining his rebounding and defense.

I think this is one aspect about impact and players that rarely gets talked about which is that they rarely actually do everything they're capable of on the court all the time. Bigs have more limited stamina (especially as they age) and have to pick and choose there spots on either side of the ball. Kareem in the 80s, especially in the 1st half, focused most of his energy on half-court offense at the expense of rebounding especially as well as defense. Duncan sacrificed minutes and scoring for rebounding and defense. As such, I don't think it makes much sense to try and equate Duncan and Kareem as scorers while simultaneously giving Duncan credit for his defense/rebounding as is.

If you want to argue that Duncan's longevity curve was better because bigs are inherently more valuable as defensive lynchpins specifically as they age, that's perfectly reasonable, but throwing in the scoring aspect of it is overkill IMO.

Moreover, I think that the idea Duncan was comparable to Kareem as a scorer or overall offensive engine is pretty questionable. 1st, the pace estimates underrate bigs like Kareem because he didn't really benefit from transition, and moreover when you factor in spacing differences and efficiency relative to the league, the gap grows wider. This is illustrated by the fact that Kareem's 1986 season was about equal to Duncan's 2003 season in terms of per75 relative TS%. Essentially, a 38 year old Kareem was as good a scorer as peak Duncan, which I think has as much to do with scoring becoming easier per possession over the course of Kareem's career as it does with his incredible longevity.

Fair responses, based on what I wrote here. For me, my post was a bit of an extension to the conversation from a few weeks ago that I think indirectly led to this thread. In my last post in that thread, I think I touched on a lot of what you wrote here re: defensive impact more important to bigs than offensive impact, the scoring conversation being more tangential to my point than a key factor in it, necessity for some sort of pace adjustment despite the conversations on fast break/iso/scaling effects, etc. I was going to just paste the link to the post, but it's not super-long, so I'll also quote inset it here. https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100834900#p100834900

Spoiler:

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

Short answer: yes. Defensive impact, especially among big men, is often a more important factor to their team's fortunes than scoring. Kareem is one of only a handful of big men in history that really had an all-history impact as a score-first player (Kareem, Shaq, Dirk, arguably Jokic, maybe a few others). Typically, I'd much rather my big man be defensively dominant and good offensively as opposed to vice versa.

Plus, elephant in the room, if you're going to compare volume boxscore stats you have to, in some way, account for pace. I've been in all the arguments through the years about pace adjusting, and whether it's accurate for high-volume/iso scorers because there are questions about scaling iso vs pace, and all that. I get all that. But just, KISS, you can't IMO make any sort of reasonable volume-based comparison of what a player produces in 110 possessions per game vs what another produces in 90 possessions/game. It's not viable. So, I'm one that (if I'm going to factor in volume box score stats) will often utilize either the per-100 numbers, or sometimes I'll look at the ratio of each player's volume vs their team's volume to try to get them on a similar level.

Anyway. As quick datapoints, I'll see your 12,000 more total points in their careers and raise you their scoring rate per 100 possessions:

Kareem: 29.9 PP100 (1974 season till retirement; 16 seasons (all they have on B-R))
Duncan: 29.7 PP100 (entire 19 season career)

Now, again, I don't particularly care about their relative scoring volumes. I tend to evaluate by impact, and to the degree I've been able to determine, I'm comfortable that Duncan's impact was larger than Kareem's. With that said, and with the pace adjustment caveats of the above paragraph in place...I'm kind of surprised, myself, at how similar those numbers were. BECAUSE so much of Kareem's legacy in these GOAT talks is based on his role as the scoring king, while Duncan is often considered just a "good" scorer in a historic sense. But, it really is true that the era that Duncan played in was one of the slowest, most-difficult-to-amass-points eras in NBA history. Maybe pace adjusting isn't perfect, but I think it's conservatively fair to say that on the continuum of NBA history, Duncan was probably a much better relative scorer than his volume stats indicate.

This is a conversation that could go a lot of different ways, and could spark some fun analysis/revelations. I've said a few times that I've found Duncan's impact to be larger than Kareem's, but there hasn't been much of that conversation in this thread. But we could start with a question about mechanisms:

Kareem is on the short list of elite scoring threats in history. Does that make him one of the elite offensive impact players in history? That'd be unusual for a scoring big, but not unheard of. But I haven't necessarily seen the evidence that he had an offensive impact analogous to, for example peak Shaq's, or even current Jokic. In the absence of that, I'd argue that Duncan's demonstrated ability to have all-history level impacts on defense would put him in the driver's seat in an initial comp between the two. Want to start there, and push back with some evidence that I'm wrong, and that Kareem's offense was more impactful and/or that Duncan's defense was less impactful than I'm suggesting here?

I do remember that thread and yea, it's an interesting conversation for sure that can go many directions. On the offensive impact point, comparing Kareem to say Shaq isn't close to being an apples to apples comparison, and this is where impact metrics have limitations. Kareem definitely didn't have the offensive impact Shaq had, in era, but the spacing in Kareem's era alone puts him at a massive disadvantage in that regard. Just looking at their respective skillsets, if you put Kareem in Shaq's era I think he would be very close to if not slightly better than Shaq offensively. While I know hypotheticals are prone to bias, I do think it's inarguable that Kareem would have significantly more impact on offense in Shaq's era than he had in his own, but having Shaq over him is perfectly valid of course.

There were also some interesting points brought up in another thread about how the Spurs defense didn't seem especially dependent on Duncan and how ideal a situation Duncan was brought up in. I can't pretend I've thoroughly studied Duncan's career enough to be able to say one way or the other, but it was an interesting counter-narrative to the general consensus that Duncan is a top-5ish level defender ever.

Kareem was an unstoppable force during his prime on offense.

Duncan was never a lock down defender, routinely was assigned the lesser big on defense and was freed up to cover defensively as a help defender. He never had a massive impact on any opposing big on defense that I could find.

Even with all of that. You would expect to see a significant impact on team defense based on Tim's presence. He joined a team that was 3rd defensively in the league the year before Robinson was out. SAS hung out in the 1-3 league DTRG rankings until 08-09 with Robinson and then Bowen being significant contributors on defense. Once Bowen's time dropped in 2009 they slid to 5thand then 8th, 11th, 10th until K Leonard became a starter and they jumped back into their 1-3 rankings for 4 years. Sure Duncan alone can't hold a team up on his shoulders defensively all by himself, but in 2017 without him SAS fell all the way to FIRST place defensively without him. They were first in 2016 as well even though he only played 1536 minutes.

Early in his career he was routinely putting in around 3200 minutes per season. Then in 2004 they reduced his minutes to around 2550. That's about 17 less games played at 39 MPG. Even with him missing that much time they continued to post league defensive rankings 1,1,1,2,3 then we hit Bowen leaving and drop to 5th.

SAS were a great defensive team that had a defensive culture before and after Duncan arrived.

I just don't see what measure anyone could hold up to suggest Duncan's defense was ATG compared to Kareem's offense. Duncan was absolutely a great defender, but he wasn't a stand out defender winning DPOY every year or in fact any year. (which is probably a crime in and of itself). The Tim love seems to do a lot of heavy lifting in discussions about him.

Lets not forget that Kareem was a fine defensive player in his own right

yeah, the falling off to 1st after duncan retired shows that no one was in a more career-long ideal situation than duncan. came in with a veteran team ready to win who had just added a GOAT coach, left with his best supporting cast, one that could win 67 games and have a 10+ net rating even with duncan playing 60 games and 25 mpg, and a team that could still win 61 and lead the league in defense after he left. i often wonder how much of the "longevity" argument for duncan is really just that he got the best supporting cast of his career at the end.

most guys are still trying to be the 20+ ppg scorers and/or defensive anchors they were as younger players while the supporting cast gradually falls off. we get to see them get older, less efficient, not be able to do it any more. we get to see them lose. duncan just got to skip that. it looked like he might experience that from 2008 to 2010, when the spurs were starting to look like a trio of aging hall of famers with a weaker supporting cast, which is why there were so many "are the spurs done?" conversations in those years. but then they added diaw and splitter and mills and green, and oh yeah, another hall of famer using a non-lottery pick. so now he could just show up on a random tuesday in january, put up 6 pts and 11 rebounds in 26 minutes, with 4 of those points coming off easy layups setup from parker/ginobili drives, while the spurs won by 20 and everyone would say how impactful he was. even though he was nowhere near the 25 ppg kind of guy he was at his peak who could carry everything. he could just play his ideal role with no pressure to step outside of it. take it easy on offense and focus on defense. could take off back to backs or nurse injuries for an extra game or two, instead of getting worn down like most greats. so his perfect situation just gets more perfect because he doesn't have to put up with the stuff that really tends to bring most great players down, which is never recovering from injuries and still having to have a huge role when you can't physically do it any more.

[LAL1947]

Kareem was a go-to guy for a heck of a lot longer than Duncan. Not just because Duncan got Manu and Parker... but because Kareem was just simply better. Duncan was kinda done being a top-level "go-to guy" by 2007-08, as you can see from how the Lakers unceremoniously dumped them out of the playoffs 4-1... despite the Spurs still having a good team, not a crap one like the Lakers teams of 2005-2007. Despite having Duncan + Parker + Manu, they were also dumped out by Dallas (4-1) in 2009, by Phoenix (4-0) in 2010, and even by Memphis (4-2) in 2011... until they got Kawhi. In all seriousness, it really should be 2006-07 when he was done being a top-level "go-to guy", because the Suns had the Spurs number too before the Suns were robbed. I think Kobe was kinda done being a top-level "go-to guy" by 2010-11, when his body first started breaking down... and I have no qualms admitting it... so why is this so hard for y'all to admit to when it comes to Duncan? Is it because the longevity argument is his main one?

The icing on the cake is that some are apparently trying to call Kareem a "volume box-scorer" and make it seem like the way he went about scoring or playing was a bad thing? (If I've misunderstood what you're trying to say there, well then correct me about that.) Anyway, instead of twisting history in this manner, how about simply being honest and admitting that Kareem had more ability + skill than Duncan to create his own offense more consistently... therefore that is what he did?? Is it so hard for the Timmy-troupe to admit even that?