Dutchball97 wrote:Owly wrote:Dutchball97 wrote:
I still feel like you're arguing a different point. Kareem could've led a better cast to the title in 77 but just how much better that cast would need to be to beat the Blazers and 76ers is still up in the air and if that would make the season impressive enough to dethrone 91 MJ from my top spot is another maybe.
Noting the sweep though ... they're outscored by 23 over 4 games with three games being within 5 points or fewer. So it wouldn't take much to turn that.
An actual NBA starting power forward (Washington, then 2nd best player, injured, knee, absent playoffs and much of RS). Or a full series, healthy (new) second best player and playmaker would help (Allen misses two games, can't see the cause). 2nd top shooter/scorer shooting better than .387 from the field would help (arguably extra costly because Cazzie was regarded as a sieve defensively, so if he isn't scoring, there isn't a lot he adds).
Any one of those might put the series in the balance, give him two ...
I don't know where individual seasons rank all time. The Lakers weren't an elite, conventionally title level team (though you didn't need to be in the later half of the 70s). But I don't see much in those playoffs to imagine the team's performance as a black mark on him somehow. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Aren't you guys being a bit too dramatic here? I'm citing that Kareem being swept in the second round is keeping me from annointing Kareem's 1977 season as the very best season in NBA history. I'm going mental with how often I've said lately that the differences between the top peaks are insignificantly small. I'm arguing I'm not convinced enough by Kareem's 1977 season because of how the post-season went to put it over 1991 MJ, 2013 LeBron or, apparently controversially here, 2000 Shaq. How do people read into that like I'm trying to put a "black mark" on his career?
Okay so re-read the post and you'll note I'm not saying he has to be anywhere in particular, I'm arguing against the line of reasoning.
I think criteria clearly differed between voters. What remains the main discussion on these topics is ceiling raising vs floor raising. You can argue 91 MJ got lucky with his team construction and that he wouldn't have been able to do near as much with a bad team or that 77 Kareem could've won a dominant title if only he had some help. The problem with this approach to me is there is a bit too much speculation going on. 91 MJ could've done worse but are you sure he would? Same with 77 Kareem who could've gotten better results but would he have for sure? I'm not confident enough to make those leaps most of the time, especially when the differences are so relatively small for these all-time peak seasons.
The question isn't can Kareem raise the ceiling of a team, of course he can. It's more specific to the 77 season. How much more help would Kareem need to turn a 0-4 loss to the Blazers into a title run?
Is the implication not that he is worse because no title. That 0-4 so he's far away from a title. Is not the implication positive check for people on title teams, negative mark for those not?
The implication feels rather like "title isn't won ergo Kareem is flawed and needs 'more help' and because it's a sweep he needs a lot more", we haven't seen him win a title so he is default starting off behind a title winner. And wherever you rank him I think that's bad reasoning. Washington isn't a superstar or even an all-star but he's a decent starter and he's gone. Allen at this point isn't anything special but he's an NBA point guard. I don't think it's "dramatic" to note that this context is relevant and worthy of discussion. Do you think MJ wins in '91 with Pippen and then Grant out?
No we don't know what players would do in other contexts ... but just because of that it doesn't mean crude, binary team level performance is a worthwhile endeavor rather than looking at how the players played.
If one watches those games and tracks them closely and says, "Well, despite the production I think he was worse than that, he was lazy in transition, held the ball too long ..." or whatever, something actually wrong with his game. If serious study suggests he is less impactful than his boxscore suggests. Something more complex than ringz ....
If people actually were making assumptions "player X
would win a title" then "we can't know that" is a logical counter. But then that person doesn't seem to see probabilities and is arguing from a flawed position. But then you too seem to be arguing from a position lacking nuance about title probabilities where title, aside from any attempt to measure cause in driving title probability, but just the fact of the title is of importance to the standard of player. That at some point you give up evaluating the player holistically and stop "speculating" on "what could have happened", perhaps an attempt to neutralize where one might have been with all else equal and instead pull out title or not as a trump card.
It's not about where Kareem ranks. It's about a process that seems to heavily overvalue titles in that, unless there was someone posting with unwarranted certainty about titles that would have been won, this seems a flimsy cover for use of ringz, which I consider a badly flawed and lazy tool for player evaluation. Maybe this is a misreading but I'm struggling to parse another one out.
