RealGM Top 100 LIST- 2014

[colts18]

I wonder what happened to some of the guys who participated in the project early on, like Dr Spaceman or rico381. Both were IMO excellent posters, and neither seemed to have an agenda. I don't know if the answer is simply "life happens" or what, but both definitely seemed like they could contribute...

Same thing happened to Shaqattack. Awesome poster with no agenda, but he hasn't posted on this forum in a while. Would be great to have his insight in the project

[ardee]

My apologies. I just got back to school and the last couple of weeks have been insane. Mostly been browsing on my phone in between classes so really can't make huge posts. I'll try and get back into this in the next day or so. Sorry guys.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[Clyde Frazier]

Originally posted this in the #28 thread, but maybe this is the better place:

Just wanted to get people's thoughts on billups as it relates to this project since he announced his retirement yesterday. I see he ranked 83rd in 2011, and looking back on his career now, maybe he has a case for being higher?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... uch01.html

His production from 03-11 is pretty impressive, and probably fell under the radar at times when accolades were given out. I've never been a HUGE billups fan, but his game translated to a long stretch of playoff success, and he played the whole leadership PG role as well as anyone.

Since i'm doing my rankings as I go along, I really don't know where i'd rank him yet. Just not in that mindset.

[Texas Chuck]

yeah Billups is one of those guys who was never a top 5 or maybe even ever a top 10 player(I think he probably was) but when you look back on his career as a whole its pretty impressive. 127 playoff games over a 7 year period in his prime shows him leading his team to the ECF over and over again. His ability to shoot the 3 over volume and a decent draw rate while shooting 90% from the line made him an efficient scorer and he was certainly a plus defender.

Im not sure where I have him either, but I think he certainly belongs somewhere on the list. Still a number of PGs that need to be dealt with first imo but a very quality player.

[Doctor MJ]

Originally posted this in the #28 thread, but maybe this is the better place:

Just wanted to get people's thoughts on billups as it relates to this project since he announced his retirement yesterday. I see he ranked 83rd in 2011, and looking back on his career now, maybe he has a case for being higher?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... uch01.html

His production from 03-11 is pretty impressive, and probably fell under the radar at times when accolades were given out. I've never been a HUGE billups fan, but his game translated to a long stretch of playoff success, and he played the whole leadership PG role as well as anyone.

Since i'm doing my rankings as I go along, I really don't know where i'd rank him yet. Just not in that mindset.

Something I've notice through the iterations of this project is that when you start getting deeper in the project a guy can rise or fall drastically depending on who is actively engaged in the project and what their perspective is.

Most drastic example is possibly Reggie Miller. Here are Miller's ranking's in the last 3 Top 100s:

2006 - 51
2008 - 86
2011 - 42

That's a pretty insane fall and rebound, that really makes clear how arbitrary this all can be.

Disclosure: I was heavily involved in 2006 and 2011 the whole way through, but wasn't on RealGM much in 2008. I would never say that to "claim credit" for his 2006 & 2011 rankings, but from a perspective of bias & blame, certainly if you thought the 1st & 3rd rankings were way off, I would be one of the things you'd look at (though certainly not the only one, and hopefully not the main thing).

So yeah, it's entirely possible for Billups to see his ranking change quite a bit this time. On the other hand, in terms of guys who at this point have jumped up a lot on the latest versions of my personal list, Billups isn't really one of them. At least not so far.

[Basketballefan]

I wonder what happened to some of the guys who participated in the project early on, like Dr Spaceman or rico381. Both were IMO excellent posters, and neither seemed to have an agenda. I don't know if the answer is simply "life happens" or what, but both definitely seemed like they could contribute...

I think Realgm is just less important to some. I mean i'm sure the majority of us are busy with "life" but those of us that care enough about it find the time to post.

[Owly]

Just curious do we have any contingency plan for if voting finishes something like this

Vote count:

Elgin Baylor (2) - GC Pantalones, trex_8063
Isiah Thomas (2) - JordansBulls, drza
Rick Barry (2) - ronnymac2, SactoKingsFan
Chris Paul (2) - DQuinn1575, Owly
Artis Gilmore (1) - Quotatious

Really, doesn't seem like we have a clear favorite...

Not that I expect that it will, but I'm presently assuming 4 way runoff.

[Texas Chuck]

I see the strategic voting and politics are in full swing so Ill change my vote here.

.

Im confused. I looked at everyone's vote ahead of yours in the thread you posted this in and I can't see any evidence of strategic voting or politics. Care to explain?

[Quotatious]

Lately, ronnymac mentioned that he thinks Penny Hardaway could've had the best peak of any remaining players, and I disagreed with him, saying that Walton, Durant and McGrady were clearly better.

Now, I feel like we may be overlooking one player who seems to be very comparable to Penny at his peak, and also seems to have better longevity - Tiny Archibald. His peak was absolutely spectacular (34/3/11 on 55.5% TS, led the best offense in the league, in 1972-73). What do you think guys?
Honestly, I'd take Kevin Johnson over both Penny and Tiny, career-wise, as far as point guards with great peaks but poor longevity, but I feel like Archibald deserves some consideration in the late 40s/early 50s, maybe even early/mid 40s, for those who value peak/prime play a lot.

[penbeast0]

Originally posted this in the #28 thread, but maybe this is the better place:

Just wanted to get people's thoughts on billups as it relates to this project since he announced his retirement yesterday. I see he ranked 83rd in 2011, and looking back on his career now, maybe he has a case for being higher?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... uch01.html

His production from 03-11 is pretty impressive, and probably fell under the radar at times when accolades were given out. I've never been a HUGE billups fan, but his game translated to a long stretch of playoff success, and he played the whole leadership PG role as well as anyone.

Since i'm doing my rankings as I go along, I really don't know where i'd rank him yet. Just not in that mindset.

Something I've notice through the iterations of this project is that when you start getting deeper in the project a guy can rise or fall drastically depending on who is actively engaged in the project and what their perspective is.

Most drastic example is possibly Reggie Miller. Here are Miller's ranking's in the last 3 Top 100s:

2006 - 51
2008 - 86
2011 - 42

That's a pretty insane fall and rebound, that really makes clear how arbitrary this all can be.

Disclosure: I was heavily involved in 2006 and 2011 the whole way through, but wasn't on RealGM much in 2008. I would never say that to "claim credit" for his 2006 & 2011 rankings, but from a perspective of bias & blame, certainly if you thought the 1st & 3rd rankings were way off, I would be one of the things you'd look at (though certainly not the only one, and hopefully not the main thing).

So yeah, it's entirely possible for Billups to see his ranking change quite a bit this time. On the other hand, in terms of guys who at this point have jumped up a lot on the latest versions of my personal list, Billups isn't really one of them. At least not so far.

I don't think it's arbitrary but I do agree that having an advocate who will explain a player's strengths is a big key. The poll is a sense of the board to a large degree and that's true on the board as well. I think Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett ranking so high this year is an excellent example of that. Without, among others, your advocacy, these players wouldn't have done as well. Last time, I remember Paul Pierce and Paul Arizin being the ones that seemed to get pushed in earlier based on passionate advocacy from one or two posters convincing others where most people were like, "yeah, they seem nice but . . . " when the advocacy began.

[Quotatious]

I decided to take a look at our project's participation, and here's what it looks like:

#1 - 381 posts
#2 - 491
#3 - 125
#4 - 675
#5 - 718
#6 - 407
#7 - 396
#8 - 426
#9 - 394
#10 - 483
#11 - 626
#12 - 464
#13 - 403
#14 - 376
#15 - 175
#16 - 273
#17 - 222
#18 - 242
#19 - 146
#20 - 201
#21 - 234
#22 - 214
#23 - 222
#24 - 173
#25 - 256
#26 - 115
#27 - 121
#28 - 120
#29 - 144
#30 - 122
#31 - 155
#32 - 91
#33 - 106

9697 total posts in the first 33 threads, so about 294 posts per thread. The last time we had that many posts was at 14, and then 16 and 25 come relatively close. A significant drop in terms of participation can be seen after #25. Right now, at 34, we have just 69 posts so far, so it seems like we're heading for a record-low number of posts, even lower than #32, which was the only thread so far with less than 100 votes..Step it up, guys!

Top 5 most popular threads:

#5 (718, Duncan beat Shaq in runoff, Magic 3rd)
#4 (675, Wilt beat Shaq in runoff, Magic 3rd)
#11 (626, KG beat Kobe in runoff, Oscar 3rd)
#2 (491, Kareem beat Russell in runoff)
#10 (483, Bird beat Kobe and KG)


Any other observations?

[colts18]

I decided to take a look at our project's participation, and here's what it looks like:

#1 - 381 posts
#2 - 491
#3 - 125
#4 - 675
#5 - 718
#6 - 407
#7 - 396
#8 - 426
#9 - 394
#10 - 483
#11 - 626
#12 - 464
#13 - 403
#14 - 376
#15 - 175
#16 - 273
#17 - 222
#18 - 242
#19 - 146
#20 - 201
#21 - 234
#22 - 214
#23 - 222
#24 - 173
#25 - 256
#26 - 115
#27 - 121
#28 - 120
#29 - 144
#30 - 122
#31 - 155
#32 - 91
#33 - 106

9697 total posts in the first 33 threads, so about 294 posts per thread. The last time we had that many posts was at 14, and then 16 and 25 come relatively close. A significant drop in terms of participation can be seen after #25. Right now, at 34, we have just 69 posts so far, so it seems like we're heading for a record-low number of posts, even lower than #32, which was the only thread so far with less than 100 votes..Step it up, guys!

Top 5 most popular threads:

#5 (718, Duncan beat Shaq in runoff, Magic 3rd)
#4 (675, Wilt beat Shaq in runoff, Magic 3rd)
#11 (626, KG beat Kobe in runoff, Oscar 3rd)
#2 (491, Kareem beat Russell in runoff)
#10 (483, Bird beat Kobe and KG)


Any other observations?

How does that compare to the 2011 thread? I remember going back to one of the threads in the teens in that project and it only had 4 pages. Based on my memory, it seemed like 2011 had more participation.

[Doctor MJ]

What I notice is that in a local context - relative to near by threads - what drives up post count is a debate where people feel really passionate about at least one of the parties in the runoff.

It's not an unexpected thing really, but I have to say it's really weird to me how Paul vs Kidd turned into such a fierce thing...and then afterward Kidd wasn't able to get in the runoff in either of the next two threads. Just looking at it objectively it seems to say that Kidd's someone people see in a pile of other guys in a particular tier while Paul is a source of much more varied, and high profile opinion.

But I detect a trend also of "challengers" seeming to gain traction based on their ability to beat the guy in the lead. The comparison between Paul & Kidd is very simple. They both play roughly the same role, so people can truly make it a peak vs longevity debate more cleanly than they could in other situations.

In the case where the contender loses, this is basically moot after the fact. But when the challenger wins, what you can have is an effect where one player essentially inflates the ranking of other candidates.

Have we seen this? Worth pondering.

[tsherkin]

I love this side discussion on the theory of the project, hehehe.

[ceiling raiser]

I've been pretty busy, and haven't voted in the last couple threads (apologies; my participation has been kinda spotty in general since #25). The discussions have been pretty good though, love reading the conversation.

Here and there I've tried to do some research on Nate Thurmond. I'll try and put something together to post about him in one of the next few threads.

[SideshowBob]

Any word on mystic possibly returning?

[trex_8063]

Top 5 most popular threads:

#5 (718, Duncan beat Shaq in runoff, Magic 3rd)
#4 (675, Wilt beat Shaq in runoff, Magic 3rd)
#11 (626, KG beat Kobe in runoff, Oscar 3rd)
#2 (491, Kareem beat Russell in runoff)
#10 (483, Bird beat Kobe and KG)


Any other observations?

Well first off: they're all high (top 11), which isn't exactly surprising. Other thing I note is that they all involve at least one player who is--to some degree--polarizing (Kobe, KG, Duncan, Russell).

[Doctor MJ]

Head's up: lorak was trying to work with this data himself and couldn't duplicate my 1998 results. Comparing our data we realized that he had way more players from 1998 than me. This was probably caused by me somehow deleting them, but regardless:

This would lower the data's standard deviation I recorded for that year, and thus cause individual player's results in that year to have inflated values compared to other years.

So you know how we seemed to see some big values for 1998 and we wondered about that? This might be the reason.

I've checked all my other years from 1999 to 2012, none of them have the same issue. So just be cautious with the 1998 numbers for now.

Thank you lorak!

I'll be further updates on the thread on the Stats board.

[ElGee]

I've had a hard time with the fuzzy criteria of this project and what it actually means for a list. I've done some more research on championship odds -- if you don't browse the stats board, it's here: viewtopic.php?p=41236747#p41236747 -- and that's leaving me even more fuzzy on "GOAT" lists. Here's why:

Forget for a second that people use different criteria and use me as a case study. I use the same criteria last month as i did this month. I evaluate players based on how well they played (as defined by how much they can help different teams win) and then figure out the worth of that value over their career. In other words, the stuff you do when you watch a game ("who was the best player tonight") I try and do over all-time, it's just the calculation is hard because the rules aren't as clear. You have a playoff, and series, and then the standings re-set.

But without changing a single valuation, I have players changing 10-15 spots on my so-called GOAT list based solely on some adjustments accounting for things like salary and ego. It really makes me question (even more than usual) the point of a GOAT list. It seems to me that people gravitate toward the simpler and clearer (and seemingly way sexier) PEAK concept. Yet, as hard as I've worked lately to refine my peaks (I basically re-constructed my GOAT list since the 2012 project around a player's peak), it's also clear that evaluating peaks can be very hard for people because they don't get to smooth out what they say...thus leading to guys who essentially make "GOAT" lists based on arbitrary set of prime years.

So, I'm not trying to be a naysayer of this project. Clearly it drives discussion better than any other project for many of the same reasons that people get so angry about the results of the GOAT list. One might think peaks would drive better discussion, but it somehow doesn't. And that leaves me wondering about basic methods of communication...just what exactly are people discussing in a GOAT discussion?

If August-ElGee had a discussion with September-ElGee, the best case scenario is that we get down to a clearly quantifiable comparison of a player like Reggie Miller and both realize that we have him in the +3.5 range and that we both seem to carry the same scale of players and thus realize our year-to-year valuations are identical! Then we'd have a long argument about the value of longevity, with August-ElGee spouting longevity that already rubs most people as "wrong" (K. Malone, Miller, Stockton, Kidd, etc. I have higher than most of the world on account of sustained value) and meanwhile September-ElGee would be telling August-ElGee that he's valuing peak too much.

Oh, and I'm not sure if the change in the numbers can even be counted as drastic...and yet we're talking about 15-spot changes in a GOAT list.

So, when I see people saying "yeah, I just can't get behind a guy in the top-40, but 55 is OK," or any kind of bracketing like this, I'm now starting to wonder if people even evaluate the player differently. It's one thing to realize you have the same valuation like August and September-ElGee might, but it's another not to realize it and have a bunch of framed discussions that essentially amount to poorly communicated criteria differences.

Spoiler:

PS -- My last thought on this is that it makes me want to do a peaks-only list or the kind of project where each player is analyzed individually year-by-year with comparisons to other players for points of clarity and contrast...but of course, that kind of project is not only really really hard and lengthy, but doesn't seem to drive conversation because there is no list people can identify with. I also think this is why RPOY works well -- it helps disambiguate the discussion.

[Clyde Frazier]

I have a "human nature" (for the lack of a better term) theory about current players getting voted in who lack longevity (mainly paul, durant, and soon to be howard, I'd assume).

Even if it's subconsciously, the fact that these guys haven't had any post prime declining seasons may put them in a better light than retired players who had similar primes, but fell off. Actually seeing the retired players decline may semi-devalue their worth in perception, even if the primes match up, or are close to current players.

Now, I know everyone has a different criteria, and some just weigh longevity more than others in this project. Just a thought that i've had over the last week or so that I wanted to put out there.