PooledSilver wrote:penbeast0 wrote:PooledSilver wrote:
I meant
Greatest = best amongst your peers
Best = better at basketball
Demar isn’t a greater basketball player than, let’s say Sam Jones, but he’s obviously better at basketball
Not obvious to me. IF you mean he takes more advantage of rules, refereeing, and training techniques that weren't available in the 1960s, sure. IF you mean a better understanding, consistency of effort, and skill set relative to the rules and world of their time, Sam Jones was probably the better player.
If what you want to ask is who would be the top 10 players in the world if everyone came to today's game with a time machine then yeah, you would get a list that's greatly loaded with the 10 best players of the last 10 years with maybe a couple of the greatest of their time sneaking onto the list like Jordan.
Demar derozan would be better in the 1960s than Sam jones would be if you have him a week and a few scrimmages to adjust. That’s like, the least controversial take ever
Basketball is positional, you can maybe argue that big play is much less skill based in comparison to guard play and you can get by more on physical tools in comparison, but guard play has evolved an extreme amount every year. 70 years from now I’m sure there will be multiple players who shoot better than curry did and finish better than bron, but even then you can argue it’s leveled off more as the league isn’t in its first 10-15 years.
Roughly as non-controversial as saying that Michael Jordan wouldn't be able to be a starting guard today because guard play has advanced another 30 years between young Jordan and today.
Derozan is a scorer, a good one. Would he be as effective in a league where there was less spacing and more emphasis on stopping the midrange? No, almost every player would be less effective offensively in any system before offenses were built 4 and 5 out around 3 point shooting. SImilarly, would he be better in a system where he was expected to shoot quickly and immediately when he got the ball like the Celtics of that era played or would he be the same type of methodical worker he is today? Would he be suddenly transformed into a player that worked hard on defense and had good defensive awareness or are you implying that Demar is a good defender?
Sam Jones was an efficient short to midrange scorer and finisher with a great variety of bank shots that gave him different looks and angles against defenders. He was above league efficiency despite playing in a system that promoted less efficient scoring and continued to be such after Cousy retired and KC Jones, a poor playmaker, because the point guard.
I think Derozan would continue to be an efficient scorer as well, but see no sign that he would be the clutch shotmaker that Sam Jones was or be a better defender. Ignoring the issue of whether Derozan could break a lifetime's habit of carrying the ball on his dribbles among other modern innovations that wouldn't be allowed then, Derozan's main advantage wouldn't be some systemic understanding of the game of basketball, because that requires the teammates to be on the same page. It would be his physical conditioning and understanding of training. Take that away and yes, I have Sam Jones as the better player.
“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination,” Andrew Lang.
