#11 Highest Peak of All Time (Garnett '04 wins)

[thizznation]

so let's put those things together and Dr J anchored one of the best teams in the world, but his Nets weren't likely to win the title in merged leagues as there were probably couple of better teams. his numbers look great but they weren't against a great defensive team or against a great defender. if anything, Denver got exposed and this series should be the argument for why Bobby Jones is extremely overrated.

Why is this relevant in the discussion of Dr. J's individual peak?





On a seperate note: I don't see how people can twist the fact that Dr. J was aging and changed teams to a much more offensive capable 76er team where he would get less touches, into the assertion ABA wasn't as good competition.

[bastillon]

Well this is a good post DS. You're bringing new things to the table.

You overstate things though. "Only 3 rotation players"?

First off, the 3 guys you're talking about are the nucleus. They are the 3 stars on the '76-77 team. EVERYBODY else is a journeyman just happy to be playing somewhere. All you are talking about is depth man. That's it.

I'll also mention that Webster was on both teams, and that Williams and Gerard were in the rotation in '77 until they got traded, and that Denver's record was better before the trade.

I won't claim though that Denver's moves for depth were of no importance, so it's good point you make.

And 1976 Nuggets weren't anything special on defense. Only -0.7 drtg, so just below league average. 1977 team changed most of the roster and improved a lot defensively: -3.4 drtg. Completely different teams. 1976 version was offensively oriented, 1977 defensively.

You're missing a huge point though here. What's so remarkable about defense in these two years is how much the ABA influenced the elite defense in the NBA post-merger.

1. The best defensive team in the ABA was the Nets. They got broken up by the merger of course. Their best defensive player, Erving, gets moved to Philly, and they see their defense improve to Top 5 levels. The hapless Erving-less Nets fall apart...but their defense is STILL better than NBA average (defense fell hard, but it was the offense that turned into a total joke).

2. The second best defensive team in the ABA was the Colonels. They of course weren't allowed into the NBA, because the Bulls' had NBA rights to their star player Artis Gilmore and wouldn't agree to the merger if Kentucky was allowed in the league. Gilmore would lead the Bulls to the #2 defense in the NBA that next year.

3. The third best defensive team in the ABA was the NUGGETS! Think about what that means. This is a 6 team league (for most of the season). How good would you expect the Nuggets relative DRtg to look if they are only 3rd of 6? Not very good obviously.

The Nuggets were a roughly average team in the ABA...but they were the best ABA defense that got to keep it's core together going into the merger, and that turned our to be good enough to be better than any other defense still existing on the planet....and we're seriously debating whether Erving torching that core should be treated as if it was a minor league defense?

How am I the only one who sees this as crazy?

One last point getting into the numbers here: You're really using some small numbers as if they're big.

You're talking about a difference of 2.7 between Nugget defenses. The Nets' offense by comparison dropped off by over 7 points in between those years, which is not too far difference from what happened to the Cavs when they lost LeBron (that was over 8 though). So the number you're talking about is small, and when you then remember that the median points for the two different leagues have no reason to be considered equal, it's pretty hard for me to fathom acting like these are two completely different teams.

we're talking about the defense so Issel and Skywalker are in no way, shape or form "star players". those guys they brought up were often defensive specialists who shouldn't be considered "journeyman" but "defensive stars". you're way off on this one. then you go on to make conclusions based on this categorically false assumption. they didn't keep their core together. there were rather major changes to those Nuggets and there were a lot of acquisitions of NBA players as well.

you're also using wrong piece of information. instead of looking at team rank, you should be talking about the difference between team DRTG and league avg. Nuggets don't look like a typical #1 team and they're surely nowhere near elite level in 76. Nuggets should be considered as good defensive team, but they weren't elite by any means in '76.

Erving dominating dominant defense is a narrative based on several wrong assumptions. Doc was great but he doesn't need factually false narrative to boost his ratings.

I also think his '77 run gets underrated. Sixers might have won those finals if it wasn't for McGinnis playing injured in that postseason. dude went from 21/11/4/2 @ 46% FG in the RS to 14/10/4/1 @ 39% in the postseason... and his struggles peaked in the NBA finals. meanwhile Doc was putting up 30/7/5/2/1 @ 60.4% TS. what more do you want ? he was clearly at his very best in those finals. particularly when you consider that Portland's defense with Walton playing huge mins was monstrous - they were -5.9 in the postseason.

[thebottomline]

Orlando's ORtgs relative to opp. DRtg w/o T-Mac

2001 (5g): +4.8 (finished the season -1.7)
2002 (6g): -7.6 (finished the season +0.2)
2003 (7g): -6.8 (finished the season +1.9)
2004 (15g): -2.9 (finished the season +1.6)

In 2005 they were back down to -1.2. Small samples but aside from 01 (where their avg. opp. DRtg in those 5 games was 104.8) they are generally looking dreadful offensively w/o him

[Doctor MJ]

The Nuggets were a roughly average team in the ABA...but they were the best ABA defense that got to keep it's core together going into the merger, and that turned our to be good enough to be better than any other defense still existing on the planet....and we're seriously debating whether Erving torching that core should be treated as if it was a minor league defense?

The core you are talking about is: Skywalker, Issel and Jones. First two weren't good defenders. Jones obviously has great defensive reputation, but seriously, I don't see his impact, I think he is overrated as defender and I think '77 Nuggets defense was so good more because of Silas than Jones.

Anyway, I don't know how you can still repeat that Erving torched that "great" (not so great looking at drtg relatively to LA) Nuggets defense, when in fact he faced completely different team in 1976 (offensively oriented).

Hmm, so first and foremost: Another good point.

My takeaway from out conversation is going to be that the parity of the era led to some wacky things. I've been making some arguments for a long time, and that tends to cause some drift. My initial point was never "Look what Erving did against a GOAT level defense" but merely "By any reasonable analysis, Erving did his signature performance against a defense more than solid enough that people need to take it seriously." I need to get back on track there.

I maintain that the team was still basically in the same ballpark from year to year, but the reason why I can say that, and you can say some of your points, is because Denver in '77 is one of the least dominant #1 defenses in history. No matter how you look at it then, it does not make sense to trumpet that performance out of proportion, and fixating on their #1 status does just that.

Jones obviously has great defensive reputation, but seriously, I don't see his impact, I think he is overrated as defender and I think '77 Nuggets defense was so good more because of Silas than Jones.

I'm listing this part out separately because I feel like I've responded to you in detail on this more than once, and I don't recall any response from you. Have you seen my arguments before? What did you think?

In brief:

-Jones has the reputation and the box score stats, so to me what you're asking for is team evidence.
-The team evidence shows that the #1 peak came with Jones best defensive stats.
-4 factor analysis shows that the #1 peak came and went with the team steal and turnover creation.
-Jones was the primary engine behind both of those things, and the team falloff comes when Jones' falls off.
-Jones isn't the only factor to this, but for anyone doing this analysis without any knowledge of Jones reputation, it would be Jones numbers that stood both as the leader of the team's strength and in paralleling the team's defensive arc.

When I go against existing thought, I do so only when I see things that make me say, "The contemporary experts were just wrong here. There's no way around it." To me more detailed analysis in this case just seems to support the narrative that the other factors are painting, so I don't really see wiggle room for the skepticism.

[Doctor MJ]

[quote="bastillon']then in '80 Doc's health improved a lot and so his numbers went back up. as a matter of fact his 80-82 numbers are right in line with his pre-merger production. the only difference is mins/pace. so what we're seeing from Doc in 80-82 (awesome playoff performer, outplayed Bird in the postseason, might as well be the best finals performer of those years, lost to LA/BOS who were the eventual champs) is pretty much what we would be expecting from '76 Doc. there's no need to mythologize ABA Doc.[/quote]

This is a worthwhile point to consider, but I'm not really convinced.

You say that mins/pace adjust for everything, but his TRB% is better in all his ABA years than in any NBA year.

Even if you grant the adjustment, when an older player plays less minutes, isn't that being done because he has to conserve energy?

When we look at a player who so depended on athleticism, how can anyone say that seeing him healthy at 30 means we saw the equivalent of him at 25? Even if his stats are the roughly the same, don't there have to be significant differences?

I tell you what though, I've thought a lot about this because, as you say, Erving's regular season number in the early '80s look like they are in the ballpark of what he did before. It seems like a good baseline. But then you get to the playoffs and you realize that if you're using that as a baseline, it might make one hell of a difference.

For perspective, while Erving's best NBA seasons happened in the '80s, when was his best NBA playoffs statistically?

By pretty much any measure, it was his very first one, '77. That being on the team where he took the backseat to McGinnis through the season, but Erving had to take over more and more as the playoffs went on and McGinnis fell off a cliff. So if Erving's rather maligned '77 season is where he looked best in the NBA playoffs, how reasonable is it to say that we are confident Erving in the '80s tells us everything the man ever had been capable of?

Still though, you've got a point. Erving in the '80s didn't seem to have that extra gear that the very best of the best had. If that's all Erving was, then maybe he shouldn't be this high. I just have a tough time looking at the time when most felt he burned brightest and dismiss it, particularly given the transitions he was forced to make that really no other superstar ever has. (Sounds like a hyperbolic statement but think about it: Has there ever been a time where a player is considered by many the best in the world and he's FORCED to go to another team and completely change his game? It's mind-boggling that it even happened once.)

[Doctor MJ]

we're talking about the defense so Issel and Skywalker are in no way, shape or form "star players". those guys they brought up were often defensive specialists who shouldn't be considered "journeyman" but "defensive stars". you're way off on this one. then you go on to make conclusions based on this categorically false assumption. they didn't keep their core together. there were rather major changes to those Nuggets and there were a lot of acquisitions of NBA players as well.

you're also using wrong piece of information. instead of looking at team rank, you should be talking about the difference between team DRTG and league avg. Nuggets don't look like a typical #1 team and they're surely nowhere near elite level in 76. Nuggets should be considered as good defensive team, but they weren't elite by any means in '76.

I'll say it a bit more clearly with no room for caveat: DS was right, I was wrong.

I also think his '77 run gets underrated. Sixers might have won those finals if it wasn't for McGinnis playing injured in that postseason. dude went from 21/11/4/2 @ 46% FG in the RS to 14/10/4/1 @ 39% in the postseason... and his struggles peaked in the NBA finals. meanwhile Doc was putting up 30/7/5/2/1 @ 60.4% TS. what more do you want ? he was clearly at his very best in those finals. particularly when you consider that Portland's defense with Walton playing huge mins was monstrous - they were -5.9 in the postseason.

Glad you pointed that out.

[Doctor MJ]

This is a funny thread, because there's so much I feel like I have to bring up relating to Erving, that I find myself arguing for him before I've even decided that's who I want to vote for.

Let me go in another direction for a bit. Pardon me while I ramble:

I don't feel entirely comfortable using the standard deviation line of thinking that someone else used explicitly, and a lot of us are using implicitly. I understand that you can't understand how big of an accomplishment an outlier is until you know how the typical variance is, but to some degree, doesn't extreme parity in a sport so capable of individual domination imply that the individuals of the time were lacking something in how they went about things?

That being the case, while we can talk about how modern strategies improve things, that does lead to something rather bizarre happening:

We find ourselves not merely "adjusting" for time period by acknowledging changes in competition (to help the modern players) and equipment, etc (to help the historical players), but actually finding reasons to forgive why older players didn't have the impact on the score differential when they played that players do today.

This is clearly a weird phenomenon, and just as clearly, it doesn't apply to everyone. We sure as hell don't have to do this for Russell. And yet his contemporaries on offense, and even guys in the pre & post-merger phase still are often seeming to have relatively small impact in terms point differential.

So then we look at a guy like Garnett, who has huge point differential impact for very long periods of time, but hasn't been able to win titles for a variety of reasons, one of which is that other players are successfully having significant point differential impact as well, and aren't there some compelling arguments that say that he should rank ahead of pretty much everyone from the '60s or '70s not named Russell?

I myself, haven't quite been willing to go there. Obviously I'm known as a pro-Garnett guy for the most part in these parts of the basketball universe, but my pro-Garnett mentality has largely been restrained to re-evaluation compared to his own contemporaries. But what if I'm unfairly penalizing modern players because of an implicit quota-based rationing of GOAT credits that I like to have between eras?

Okay, I'm going to leave it at that. Alcohol may or may not have been involved in the stream of consciousness being recorded for posterity.

[Dr Positivity]

Still though, you've got a point. Erving in the '80s didn't seem to have that extra gear that the very best of the best had.

Why not? To use one example Erving almost won Game 5 in 1980 by himself for the Sixers by turning on the jets in the 4th and scoring 11 of their last 13 points.

IMO Kareem, Erving, and Magic (and throw in Wilkes too I guess) all give the signature/greatest performance of their NBA careers in 2 combined games in 1980. Pretty stunning.

[colts18]

I would love to hear an argument why Dr. J, KG, or Walton's playoff performances were better than 06 Wade. Since the playoffs is the most important thing, that should be valued the most. I want to hear why those guys had more impact and had more impact in the later rounds/finals than Wade. If you look at in terms of pure value added for a championship, Wade's peak clearly rises above the rest.

[GrangerDanger]

Why is Wade's playoffs better than West in 65 or 66? (not even sure I would call that his peak). wade had the MDE drawing doubles/triples every game, played 8 on 5 in the Finals, and the rules made it illegal to guard him. was a good season, but not as good as a lot of others. not so sure it's better than his 09 season either

[Doctor MJ]

I would love to hear an argument why Dr. J, KG, or Walton's playoff performances were better than 06 Wade. Since the playoffs is the most important thing, that should be valued the most. I want to hear why those guys had more impact and had more impact in the later rounds/finals than Wade. If you look at in terms of pure value added for a championship, Wade's peak clearly rises above the rest.

Truthfully, I too am looking forward to what other say about Wade.

Here's the one thing I'll say though: It's not like Miami beat Dallas because their offense was unstoppable. Even if ignore the two losses and just take the wins into consideration, Miami against Dallas averaged around 104 ORtg for the series, which is better than Dallas' average performance for the season, and worse than Miami's typical performance.

I'm not going to claim I didn't find Wade to be very impressive in that series, but this definitely isn't the case of everything going to plan except Wade making the Miami offense unstoppable. If the Heat defense wasn't great, they don't win the series. And while we note that, the Heat had Zo Mourning coming off the bench - how crazy is that?

All that to say that when considering Wade in terms of him going insane on a possibly all-time level, I don't think it makes sense to look at him with quite so reckless enthusiasm.

[Revv]

Well, I've got T-Mac, Kobe, and Wade as pretty inseparable in terms of peak, and I'd barely take Dirk ahead of all of them.

BTW, I am getting a little concerned though about T-Mac's unimpressive RAPM in 03. It doesn't make much intuitive sense to me, because when Kobe and Wade had to carry poor teams, they had big RAPM values. How does someone like peak T-Mac, who plays pretty much just like them, and does many important things superior than them (scoring, passing, taking care of the ball), end up with unimpressive RAPM as opposed to them?

I can't help but think it has something to do with only partial season data from 02 being used, or maybe something about his team that year. Like, if RAPM is about scoring margin on the court, if no matter what the lineups were that they put out there around T-Mac, they would still be unimpressive in terms of scoring margin.

Or is it really the case that T-Mac simply wasn't on their peak level, despite the box score and the eye test very clearly telling us that he was?

Tmac didn't really carry the Magic anywhere, so I'm not surprised that his utility rating was low. I really wish the old BSPN boards were still around so people could see how Tmac was viewed back then.

But for those who think Tmac carried the Magic, look at their record before he got there.

2000 - No Tmac, yet Orlando goes 41-41, 0.43 SRS. Doc Rivers wins COY

2001 - Tmac joins, Orlando goes 43-39, 0.38 SRS. So we see that the Magic win only 2 more gmaes, and their SRS actually drops.

2002 - Orlando goes 44-38, 1.25 SRS. Tmac is peaking, but they're still not much better than they were 2 years before without him.

2003 - Orlando goes 42-40, -0.39 SRS. Tmac is a big primadonna this year, and played little defense. HIS numbers get better, but at the expense of his team. People can look at his PER, or WS, or whatever, BUT the guy was a horrible leader, took credit when things went well, and threw his teammates under the bus when it went wrong.

2004 - Orlando goes 21-62, -7.25 SRS. Tmac actually sits out games at the end just to preserve his scoring title. Says it all. he then wants out of ORl.

The problem is that people look at Orlando and assume it was a crappy team without Tmac, but they were a 40+ win team before he even got there. In fact, Toronto did better without Tmac too, in 2001.

I'm just baffled why people overrated Tmac so much.

whats ridolous is guys like wade/t-mac/erving being discussed but not peak Kobe, who was better than all of them. but its not too surprising with the bias in this place.

[colts18]

I would love to hear an argument why Dr. J, KG, or Walton's playoff performances were better than 06 Wade. Since the playoffs is the most important thing, that should be valued the most. I want to hear why those guys had more impact and had more impact in the later rounds/finals than Wade. If you look at in terms of pure value added for a championship, Wade's peak clearly rises above the rest.

Truthfully, I too am looking forward to what other say about Wade.

Here's the one thing I'll say though: It's not like Miami beat Dallas because their offense was unstoppable. Even if ignore the two losses and just take the wins into consideration, Miami against Dallas averaged around 104 ORtg for the series, which is better than Dallas' average performance for the season, and worse than Miami's typical performance.

I'm not going to claim I didn't find Wade to be very impressive in that series, but this definitely isn't the case of everything going to plan except Wade making the Miami offense unstoppable. If the Heat defense wasn't great, they don't win the series. And while we note that, the Heat had Zo Mourning coming off the bench - how crazy is that?

All that to say that when considering Wade in terms of him going insane on a possibly all-time level, I don't think it makes sense to look at him with quite so reckless enthusiasm.

The offense was bad because the players other than Wade were terrible on offense. Wade's cast had a .504 TS%. Wade's 2nd leading scorer was post-prime Antoine Walker who is arguably the worst big minute player ever on offense. He took over 5 more shots per game than Shaq. Think about how ridiculous that is. Walker took the most shots and had a .456 TS% and only 1.5 FTA/game. That right there probably took 5-10 pts/100 off the Heat. Of course Shaq was decent except for the fact that he went 14-48 from the line. His next leading scorer after that was Jason Williams who was at .483 TS%. Haslem was .523 TS% and Payton at .482 TS%. The only guy who played well offensively was Posey but he did it on 5 FGA/game.

In the playoffs, the Heat were 109.2 O rating offensively with Wade on the court and 86.0 without him (+23.3 O rating) in 150 minutes of action (small sample) (+25.2 overall).

[bastillon]

vote: Garnett 04

[drza]

All I've got is his single year RAPM from 03 (T-Mac):

ORAPM: +1.4
DRAPM: -0.5

Overall: +0.9

That's way below guys like Duncan and Garnett, who he was being compared to, and a lot lower than Kobe as well, who was +3.0 that year (+2.5 offense, +0.5 defense).

For what it's worth, the original 2-year APM study from Rosenbaum for the seasons from 2002 - 2004 was much more favorable towards TMac. Here's the link for that study ( http://www.82games.com/comm30.htm ), though the article states that the study was tilted towards 2003-04: " Observations from 2003-04 are weighted twice as heavily as those in 2002-03 and clutch time is given a higher weight and garbage time is given a lesser (or zero) weight"

If you follow the link, you'll see that among big minute players TMac finished 10th overall (+8.6, with a standard error of 2.7) that made him essentially statistically indistinct from any of the others that finished 2 - 20. That group included Duncan (6th overall with an APM of +10.3, standard error 3.3). The only player that this particular APM study says that TMac was clearly behind was Garnett, who was kind of on an island by himself.

Also in the link, Rosenbaum introduces his own box score based "statistical plus minus" score, of which TMac edged KG. He then goes on to give a composite score that combines the APM and SPM results (which he reports to lower the standard errors) which left TMac in the 2nd slot overall, now statistically indistinct from those in slots 2 - 12 (still including Duncan) but statistically ahead of anyone slotted 13th or lower.

:Shrugs: I know APM isn't en vogue anymore, but it's not useless either (especially over 2 years). At least it's a datapoint that, along with him finishing 5th in the NBA in on/off +/- in 2003 (+11.8, behind KG/Dirk/Duncan/Finley and just ahead of Shaq/Kobe) suggests that not all non-boxscore studies were as unimpressed with TMac's '03 as RAPM was.

[ElGee]

I would love to hear an argument why Dr. J, KG, or Walton's playoff performances were better than 06 Wade. Since the playoffs is the most important thing, that should be valued the most. I want to hear why those guys had more impact and had more impact in the later rounds/finals than Wade. If you look at in terms of pure value added for a championship, Wade's peak clearly rises above the rest.

I just don't understand this line of thinking. It's so flabbergasting and out of nowhere to me that I've considered whether not to respond because something in your brain has taken you here and you might not be able to hear what I'll say. Here goes:

There has been endless discussion about the small-sampled nature of the PS and whether to treat that in a results-oriented manner. There's no "wrong" answer, although the most vocal crowd has been "how can you really trust what you see in 5-10 games against 1 or 2 opponents?" and they haven't been met with a single rebuttal that I know of. So right up front, when you say "impact in the later rounds/finals" goes to Wade, well why weren't you bringing up Wade at the start of the project then?

Second, you get into an obvious problem with this line of reasoning because Kevin Garnett never played in the Finals, obviously due to his circumstance. So how can you compare his performance to Wade's?

Third, you are limiting Wade's peak (or any player's?) to his CF and Finals performance, which implies that his peak must be the year he was on the best team. Hopefully it's obvious why this line of reasoning is totally specious. It implies 77 Jabbar couldn't be better than 80 Jabbar. It really makes my head itch because I don't have 2006 as Wade's peak.

So why would you start doing this now and why wouldn't you do it earlier?

[ElGee]

I still don't see why Dirk is not being discussed. He beat 7 All-NBA players, he beat a 5+ SRS team and 3 7+ SRS teams. he did this with no other all-stars on his team. He had similar regular season impact to Walton and better than Dr. J or KG. In the postseason he was better than KG and similar to Walton/Dr. J. You have to go back to 94 to find a champion with a supporting cast as weak as Dirk's.

You're saying this because you think that makes Nowitzki look better, right? So, can you prove to me since 1994, Dallas has the weakest performing team around its best player, adjusted for opponent quality, of any other NBA champion?

And please do not tell me that you believe individuals beat other teams. TEAMS beat teams, individuals don't beat individuals. This is "HCA" level stuff...

[ElGee]

vote: Kevin Garnett 2004

Almost a toss-up with Walton. If I had to fashion a tie-breaker, I'd say it what was mentioned earlier: I'm slightly less confident in what I saw from Walton, not even because it was for only a year and half, but because I can't get a great grasp on situationally-dependent his impact was.

On a sad note, I've been waiting 10 years to have all out KG-Duncan war with smart, analytical basketball minds and I deprived us of that opportunity. Unless people continue to hash it, I'll leave this project just as murky on Duncan-KG as when I began, still wondering whether I'm overrating Duncan from 2003 (and signs point to yes). I'm starting to sympathize with 2002 Duncan as his peak, and I wonder if everyone would think it such a clear debate if we pitted 2002 Duncan and 2004 Garnett.

[Doctor MJ]

The offense was bad because the players other than Wade were terrible on offense. Wade's cast had a .504 TS%. Wade's 2nd leading scorer was post-prime Antoine Walker who is arguably the worst big minute player ever on offense. He took over 5 more shots per game than Shaq. Think about how ridiculous that is. Walker took the most shots and had a .456 TS% and only 1.5 FTA/game. That right there probably took 5-10 pts/100 off the Heat. Of course Shaq was decent except for the fact that he went 14-48 from the line. His next leading scorer after that was Jason Williams who was at .483 TS%. Haslem was .523 TS% and Payton at .482 TS%. The only guy who played well offensively was Posey but he did it on 5 FGA/game.

In the playoffs, the Heat were 109.2 O rating offensively with Wade on the court and 86.0 without him (+23.3 O rating) in 150 minutes of action (small sample) (+25.2 overall).

Understand that I'm not saying Wade was dragging the offense down. It's just that it's hard for me to swallow an argument of "They won because Wade was unstoppable" when in fact the people charged with stopping Wade's team were doing just fine at stopping Wade's team. It's absolutely possible for the best player to be on a team with a bunch of team with offensive players so terrible that the best he can do is drag them to mediocrity on offense - what I'm saying doesn't prove anything against Wade.

I simply doubt that anyone's making a Wade argument at this who isn't also viewing Wade through a lens where they seem him as proving himself utterly unstoppable on the biggest stages, and that's really not the way to look at it. A defense's job is to stop the other team, not their star. If they are doing fine stopping the team, then they are losing because their own offense is the problem.

[ElGee]

One more thing going forward, if I can channel my inner TrueLA...The Dirk talk just blows me away. It's this combination of Winning Bias and "Singlehanded-ness" that seems to trick the brain into just absolutely going Gung Ho over a player. There is no way on god's green earth anyone can convince a SINGLE person (not from Germany) would be arguing Dirk Nowitzki at the 14th slot before last year's NBA Finals. Furthermore, I don't see 2011 as his best season, and I've heard nothing yet that I find remotely persuasive on the matter to even make it clear that 2011 is > 2006, let alone being in the ballpark of the Sacreds. I can't help think that some of this is because I had a reasonable idea of how well Dallas was built from the get-go (and considered Chandler top-20, for instance) so they didn't surprise me. Others are surprised and instead of analyzing what happened, are making a huge, dichotomous shift and giving the stars all teh credit.

Again, if it's "impact" stats only that people champion -- and I'm not sure why you'd want to ignore context?? -- then why doesn't your list of GOAT peaks have Russell, Walton and Nash at the top. ITO of seemingly everything we can tell, these guys were the most "valuable" to their specific teams. KG as well. Maybe Oscar too. I just don't understand what gives with Dirk suddenly being pseudo-deified because he has big raw on-off stats and didn't have an all-star on his team (as if this is a remotely good way to evaluate team strength).

I very much consider Dwayne Wade to have the strongest argument after the Sacreds, if not David Robinson. Then West, then Barkley and probably Oscar...although I find Doc MJ's rant about adjusting for era-biases fascinating as it's something I've juggled around a lot and certainly thought about when evaluating Wilt in 1967. (eg +5 offense to lead league, not +8 or +9...but then again, as I said, West hit those marks the next year so it gets murk.)

And to weigh in quickly on Kobe and McGrady -- I have Kobe much closer to the group I just mentioned above while McGrady is a click down, closer to Dirk of all people (and Moses). Frankly, I'd lean toward McGrady just on offense over Kobe, although this is me assuming that his 448 3's that year were enough to confirm that he actually was ~38% from the arc (36.4% the year before FTR), because when you factor in how ridiculously low-turnover McGrady is, his excellent creation/passing, that jumper (like Kobe, had the 3 weapon covered, off the dribble) and a post game...the guy's offense was just all-time good as a wing. And to top it off, he did it in a league where wings struggled -- Mac's posting a 116 ORtg in the biggest unipolar act we can imagine, and 2003 Kobe a 113 ORtg playing next to prime Shaq.

I give a nod to Kobe though because although his offensive/defensive peak didn't overlap, I still believe his 2008 D to be better than T-Mac's 03 D. This raises another theoretical question...what kind of situation should we expect a player's defensive effort to reasonably excel in? If both Mac and Kobe are asked to do heavy lifting on offense, and as a result coast on different to similar impacts on the game, is that a better way to view their defense than "if these guys are on a good team where they can exert energy on D -- ala 2011 Wade -- then JUST. HOW. BIG. Can their defensive impact be? I give Kobe a clear nod there, even by 2008.