RealGM Top 100 List #29

[Owly]

Leaning heavily towards Gilmore here. I'll have to take a closer look at his defensive impact in the NBA (he missed almost a half of the 79-80 season with a knee injury, which may have limited his mobility a bit), because at first glance, it seems somewhat questionable (considering that Chicago had really poor defensive teams after 1977 - in the 76-77 season, they had the second best defense in the league, during A-Train's first season there, but after that, just 20th of 22, 16th of 22, 15th of 22 even with Gilmore out for half a season in 79-80, 14th of 23, and finally 17th of 23 in 1982), and then in San Antonio, he didn't seem to anchor good defensive teams - just 15th of 23 in 1983, then 21st of 23, and 17th of 23 in both 1985 and 1986.

Anyway, Artis may just fall into the same category as peak Ewing (Knicks finished just 13th in DRtg in 1990, and 12th in 1991), or KG in Minnesota, where his teams were just about average defensively, except for 2004. May be as simple as playing on weak teams, which didn't allow them to give as much effort defensively as they otherwise would have given, if they had good teams around them.

Still, Gilmore's ABA defensive impact is irrefutable - he anchored the best (three times) or the second best (two times) defense in the ABA in each of his five seasons.

Gilmore's numbers and longevity, combined with his defensive impact during his first six pro seasons, IMO makes him as good a candidate as you can have at this point in the project.

Gilmore was the only center in the gosh darn league when he was in the ABA - an over-the-hill and never great
Zelmo Beaty was the league's 2nd best center.
He was barely in the Top 10 players in the NBA at any time -
Before his last season at age 38 in Boston - He won 2 playoff series

One was a 2-0 series
The other he was 4th on his team in minutes played.

Only elite center perhaps. Beatty pretty clearly wasn't over the hill in Gilmore's first year. Then there's Daniels a first round pick in the NBA who choose to go to the ABA (and two time ABA MVP albeit a weak one at a time the the C position more genuinely was weak). By the time those two are dropping off (and before there plenty of guys who didn't destroy the ABA but nonetheless managed productive years in the ABA (very young) Moses, Dan Issel (mostly as a teammate), Caldwell Jones, Swen Nater, Billy Paultz, Jim Chones, Dave Robisch and Tom Owens. That's not counting bigs who played some C like Maurice Lucas. It's clearly not the same as the NBA for centers at that time, but it isn't bereft of bigs who are at least competent NBA players.

His first year in the NBA was at age 27 and has 5 NBA top ten WS/48 (1 peripheral i.e. 8th, 9th or 10th); 7 top ten NBA WS seasons (2 peripheral), 5 top ten PER seasons (2 peripheral) . WARP too, whilst not fully available, (what we have) suggests he aged reasonably well http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=728.

Then too there's problems with the "didn't win series" reasoning. Which series should he have won and why? Should he have refused to play for the Bulls (a powerhouse in the early 70s, but by '76 the worst team in the league, hence getting the first pick in the dispersal draft)? I didn't know the '83 WCSF minutes numbers were out there but in any case the "fourth in minutes" is a nonsense. All 5 starters are within 39 minutes of one another over the totality of the playoffs (11 games, or within 3.5454 mpg of one another; the gap being smaller if you remove slight outlier Gervin). Then you look at how 3 of the four wins in their winning series were blowouts (by 19, 17 and 40) and the minutes tells us pretty much nothing.

Then highlighting a short series when you're then one creating this arbitrary measure of playoff series wins.

[Owly]

Im curious why someone would mention Kidd or CP3 before Bob Cousy. When you look at Bobs resume it screams that he accomplished more than both of them combined. I just dont see how you can vote for a PG who is a worse shooter and has less success than Bob or a player in CP3 who is much more about stats than winning. Every bad thing ever said about Wilt and his stat padding is CP3 squared.

The problem with Cousy has always been that while he was THE great playmaker of the early NBA, (a) he was a decent enough shooter for much of the 50s, but he was not great then, and as the 60s rolled in he fell further and further off the curve; (b) his playoff performances in the Celtic championship generally sucked (while teammates like Ramsey particularly, and Heinsohn to a lesser extent stepped up to cover); and (c) his defense was generally considered poor too, though much of that rep comes from Red Auerbach's comments when he said he didn't want Cousy on the Celtics when he got stuck with him because he was a flashy, no defense type.

I saw in an interview of Red that he had the 3rd pick of that dispersal draft and that in order to get Cousy he had to bad mouth him and tell other GMs that he was a flashy no defense type. Red liked him because he was the most talented player and that he was elite at drawing fouls and could run the up tempo style that he wanted with fewer TOs.

I don't know what evidence there is that he was a bad defender. But then if Red did say this, he was just making things up. In any case they didn't know the order they were going to be picking in so Red was just running this guy down in case? Through that time Zaslofsky had been a superstar in the BAA/NBA (4 times all-BAA/NBA 1st team, and always top 10 in win-share (once 2nd and claimed the scoring title). The consensus at the time, according to pretty much all reports are that it would go as it did. Even Auerbach in Tall Tales says

I had real interest in Zaslofsky and Philip because they had been in the pros and were all-stars. Cousy didn't have their track record.

[Doctor MJ]

but a "Kidd Triple Double" is not a compliment.

Triple Doubles are obviously an arbitrary achievement and have no inherent value. That said Kidd's ability to to contribute in so many areas to help his teams seems like it should be complimented, no?

I mean take just that fact that for his career he averages 6 rebounds( 5 def) and 2 steals a game. This is one of the best transition PG's of all time and that's 7 possessions a game where he's not having to wait on an outlet pass. And in terms of the steals most of those lead immediately into fast break opportunities and we all know Kidd was always extremely aggressive in looking to advance the ball very quickly looking for easy offense.


I think we all know what he was not, and that's why he's going to end up in the 30's and not up there with Nash and Stock, but what he was, well that was pretty darn special too.

I'm going to leave this here because I think it makes a good example of the sort of things Jason Kidd was doing on the regular in terms of his high B-ball IQ:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB8KtMOnGvY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnV8BhDbDrg[/youtube]

A ball dominant on ball player scoring 10 points is basically a given. It's not an accomplishment on it's face, and that's my point. The classic Kidd triple double is just a "double double" in terms of him truly excelling in different areas.

Now, fine to point out that I'm being jaded when I act so dismissively of that when it's a good thing. I'm honestly trying to remember what I was talking about before that justified such an attitude. Maybe it was inappropriate.

[Doctor MJ]

On Cousy, the funny thing to me is that whenever I go to look at him and those Celtics, I come away marveling at Sharman. He frankly seems to me to have a been a considerably higher BBIQ player than Cousy. He didn't take shots he couldn't make as a player, and as a coach he had phenomenal success transforming his teams play and elevating their effectiveness tremendously. Meanwhile, Cousy is a point guard who shot too much as a player, and then didn't get along with his better-than-he'd-ever-been point guard as a coach and basically never proved he had any idea what he was doing.

So the story of Red being skeptical of Cousy initially always amazed me given that if anything he seemed to give Cousy too much primacy given the other scoring talent on the roster.

And so yeah, it's tough to see Sharman thriving in the NBA today unless he turned into a great point guard rather than an off-guard given his size, but I don't know if I'd bet against him doing just that. I could easily see him being better than Cousy in pretty much any era, including his own, if we make that assumption. Even as is, I have to wonder at times if Sharman's take-nothing-off-the-table role even with its constraints was more valuable to the Celtics in a lot of years than the Cousy show.

[Doctor MJ]

There is a correlation. Just not a damning one or strong one but its there.

That's what people mean when they say "no correlation". Correlation is a numerical quantity that in any complex analysis will never be exactly zero. To say there's no correlation is to say there's was no statistically significant correlation.

[Owly]

This is the exact opposite impression of CP3. Guy has no desire to win or try or do anything for fear of messing up his TS% or Asst to TO ratio. Just no BBIQ or imagination whatsoever. The inability to make your teammates better and your backups put up the same stats when you exit. He is a robot that can only play 1 way and has no ability to create. At least Stockton had an excuse in that he played for the worst offensive minded coach in the history of the game.

Todays era favor the PG more than Mikans era favored big man. Yet he has no success. His resume is more along the lines of a Doc Rivers or Pete Maravich. The more I think about it CP3 does remind me of Pistol for his impact on the game.

Bob Cousy

Well we are talking about the 1st PG who was the MVP. He essentially invented the PG position, fast break, behind the back pass, maybe the GOAT dribble, When Russell was hurt and Pettit went off for 50pts Cousy was the guy who was playing C for Russell and had a triple double. A huge stud at drawing fouls and getting teammates into the bonus.

10x all NBA 1st team
8x led the NBA in apg

Oh and yes he has 6 rings (like that is a bad thing)


If CP3 was 1st team all NBA had led the league in apg the last 8 yrs and had won 6 of the last 7 titles would he be already voted in?

People have covered the Paul BB-IQ stuff.

Regarding Cousy. 1st PG MVP ... not really. Certainly far from unequivocal. Bob Davies won the NBL MVP when that was the better league. Not that being the 1st PG MVP means anything to me (who happened to be first, combined with opinion based / best player on the best team accolade, and it's hardly clear cut that he's better than the more accurate and better defending Sharman). Invented the pg position and behind the back pass there's at least a couple of sources that have Davies as the creator of the behind the back pass (I suspect I could dig up more)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLAqMZNBqhE&feature=player_detailpage#t=88[/youtube]
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Qlk_ ... ss&f=false

and with regard to the pg thing, what makes Davies not a pg?

Cousy did not play the center when Pettit scored 50 that was game 6 (and then it is suggested "Slater Martin shut down Bob Cousy in the game to help the Hawks." http://webuns.chez-alice.fr/finals/1958.htm ). Indeed it is somewhat misleading to say he played center. In their game 4 victory he sometimes played the pivot role/floor position on offense but was guarded by pg Slater Martin (and presumably guarded him at the other end. I say sometimes because The Winners notes "In the second half Sharman took over as pivot and scored 19 of his 21 total", whilst King of the Court says he "took turns in the pivot"

Nobody thinks Cousy having 6 rings is a bad thing. But if you are just about winning in the playoffs then you might want to look at how Cousy performed in those runs (he had some impressive albeit relatively short runs earlier in his career.


At this point I'm voting for ...

Chris Paul

pretty much every metric I see concurs he has an epic peak and those that do measures of cumulative value generally suggest he's doing well there too. For what its worth he appears to be well liked by teammates, competitive and has very strong career playoff metrics.

[Texas Chuck]

A ball dominant on ball player scoring 10 points is basically a given. It's not an accomplishment on it's face, and that's my point. The classic Kidd triple double is just a "double double" in terms of him truly excelling in different areas.

Now, fine to point out that I'm being jaded when I act so dismissively of that when it's a good thing. I'm honestly trying to remember what I was talking about before that justified such an attitude. Maybe it was inappropriate.

If your point was solely about his scoring then sure, I agree nothing about Kidd's scoring is much of a noteworthy accomplishment other maybe than the raw total of 3s he managed to make, but even that is simply a reflection of his longevity and for much of his career taking that many 3s should actually be seen as a negative since he didn't shoot them well enough to justify his attempts.. I didn't understand that to be your point and as you acknowledge the benefits he brings in the other categories, we clearly agree. Sorry for the confusion.

[tsherkin]

This is exactly what I mean when people want to say the reason why Phoenix lost was because they didn't have interior defense/rebounding, a big man to bang in the paint. What big man can run at that tempo all game? What big man wants to run at that tempo all game? This is why I do not think Nash as the best player Phoenix' poor defense was not all because of personnel, much of it was their mentality and approach to the game. Phoenix/Nash wanted to play a wide open game, with lots of possessions. That type of approach is not conducive to defense, a defensive team does not want a lot of possessions. A good defensive team values each possession and tries to slow down the tempo. In the playoff's good defensive teams slow down the pace. This is why the Suns could have had Russell or Mutumbo back there and there defense would still not have been elite. The Suns did not value possessions, they believed the more possessions the better and that they would be able to outscore your or outshoot you. This is why I say the Spurs beat the Suns at their own game.....

His post is full of inaccuracies. There are decades of basketball with bigs playing at paces up to 25% faster than Nash's Suns and a litany of athletic players who were able to keep up. Then a mid/late-30s Shaq was also able to keep up enough for the Suns to be hugely effective on O.

Tactically, the Showtime Lakers were also fond of letting the big trail and/or iust get there in time for HCO, just like Gentry'a offense in 09, and they played faster than the Suns ever did.

Meantime, the Suns were an average defense with Amare Stoudemire playing Bargnani-level defense that had nothing to so wih the pace of the game. We've seen good defensive teams play fast-paced basketball and you're basically incorrect across the breadth of this post.

You're also ignoring the tactical premise of strong defensive rebounding and good passing bigs can key transition opportunities, which is another element of consideration.

Possession value is a relevant concept, but there is a balance between elite O and D to be found. The Suns were a competent defensive 5 away from a possible dynasty, and even still had some opportunities blown by bad luck, but you're treating them as if they were perennial second round outs, which is nonsense.

[DQuinn1575]

Gilmore was the only center in the gosh darn league when he was in the ABA - an over-the-hill and never great
Zelmo Beaty was the league's 2nd best center.
He was barely in the Top 10 players in the NBA at any time -
Before his last season at age 38 in Boston - He won 2 playoff series

One was a 2-0 series
The other he was 4th on his team in minutes played.

Only elite center perhaps. Beatty pretty clearly wasn't over the hill in Gilmore's first year. Then there's Daniels a first round pick in the NBA who choose to go to the ABA (and two time ABA MVP albeit a weak one at a time the the C position more genuinely was weak). By the time those two are dropping off (and before there plenty of guys who didn't destroy the ABA but nonetheless managed productive years in the ABA (very young) Moses, Dan Issel (mostly as a teammate), Caldwell Jones, Swen Nater, Billy Paultz, Jim Chones, Dave Robisch and Tom Owens. That's not counting bigs who played some C like Maurice Lucas. It's clearly not the same as the NBA for centers at that time, but it isn't bereft of bigs who are at least competent NBA players.

Here are the WS/48 for 4 ABA all-star centers who played in both league in the early years:


Beaty 69.71 .264/.156

Jim McDaniels 72.73 .153/.001
Spencer Haywood 70.71 .216/.131 (excluded partial NBA year 71 .091 33 games)
Connie Hawkins 69.71 .293/.147



Daniels best WS/48 was 1971 where he was .173 - well below Haywood, Hawkins, or Beaty in the ABA.
He was a good rebounder, and the center of the best team in the league - his balance team won 3 ABA titles.

After Beaty and Daniels, the best centers in 72 ABA were guys like Byron Beck, Jim Eakins, Willie Sojourner, Tom Owens, Dave Robisch, Randy Denton

After Wilt and Kareem, the NBA had Cowens, Bellamy, Unseld, Lanier, Thurmond, Hayes

1973 - add Willis Reed to the NBA

1973 ABA - Dave Robisch is 2nd center to Kentucky in WS/48 -

his WS/48 numbers were

age 23/.184
age 24/.176
age 25/.214
age 26/.208
age 27/.122
age 28/.086

The big drop at age 27?

Switching leagues

This was the talent level when Gilmore arrived in the league at the center position.
Artis's ABA WS/48 was .259 his first year and .253 his second year-

similar to Beaty, ahead of Spencer, below the Hawk

They get better at the end with Nater, Paultz, Owens, etc.

His first year in the NBA was at age 27 and has 5 NBA top ten WS/48 (1 peripheral i.e. 8th, 9th or 10th); 7 top ten NBA WS seasons (2 peripheral), 5 top ten PER seasons (2 peripheral) . WARP too, whilst not fully available, (what we have) suggests he aged reasonably well http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=728.

Then too there's problems with the "didn't win series" reasoning. Which series should he have won and why? Should he have refused to play for the Bulls (a powerhouse in the early 70s, but by '76 the worst team in the league, hence getting the first pick in the dispersal draft)? I didn't know the '83 WCSF minutes numbers were out there but in any case the "fourth in minutes" is a nonsense. All 5 starters are within 39 minutes of one another over the totality of the playoffs (11 games, or within 3.5454 mpg of one another; the gap being smaller if you remove slight outlier Gervin). Then you look at how 3 of the four wins in their winning series were blowouts (by 19, 17 and 40) and the minutes tells us pretty much nothing.

Then highlighting a short series when you're then one creating this arbitrary measure of playoff series wins.

He joined a lousy Bulls team, which had 23 year old Mickey Johnson and a still prime Norm Van Lier.
They added Wilbur Holland and John Mengelt 2 solid guys, and Scott May - who played well his rookie year.
The team finished out the year 20-4, only to face Portland in the playoffs.

In terms of WS/48 he finished behind Kareem,Walton,Issel, and tied Lanier for 4th - not an all-star, but good
case for 4th best center in league.

Starting the next year the team didn't do anything despite having guys like Theus, Greenwood, Mickey Johnson, Kenon
He goes to the Spurs for Corzine, Olberding and cash - they have one decent year, the defense gets worse, and then fade.

1978 - Kareem, Lanier, Walton, Issel all ahead in WS/48 - so probably 5th best center
1979 - Kareem, Moses, Walton (hurt) - good case for 3rd best center
1980 - Kareem, Tree Rollins, Issel, Moses - Artis only played 48 games and was barely ahead of Lanier - so 6th
best center behind Lanier who played 63 games - Lanier was pretty close to Artis each year.
1981 - Kareem, Parish, Gilmore is barely ahead of Moses for 3rd in WS/48 - to be fair Ill give Artis 3rd

During this time period 1977-1981 WS

Kareem .242
Walton .205
Artis .191
Issel .189
Lanier .186

- So he is real similar with Lanier and Issel in this period.
His advantage over Lanier is the fact he played in the ABA while Lanier faced much better competition in the NBA.

Lanier's WS/48 from 1972-1976 is .183 - almost exactly the same.
Now Lanier is basically done, as is Cowens, Unseld, McAdoo - great centers who entered the league together.

Artis has 6 more years of starting, 3 as an all-star

WS/48 1982-1987

Moses .197
Kareem .185
Parish .173
Artis .165
Cartwright .163
Sikma .163


1982 - Is where he starts to outlast people - he is a little of ahead of Sikma and Kareem
1983 - Falls to 5th behind Moses, Parish, Kareem, Cartwright - a little ahead of Sikma again
1984 - Falls even more - Cartwright, Laimbeer, Moses, Chief, Kareem, Lanier - only plays 64 games and barely
beats Dawkins and Sikma - so gets a 9th
1985 - Resurgence - finishes 3rd behind Kareem and Moses - beats out rookie Hakeem.
1986 - 9th and a big drop down to .134 - pretty darn good for his age

so center ranking each year:

77/4
78/5
79/3
80/6
81/3
82/3
83/5
84/9
85/3
86/9



So he spent 77-83 as generally the 3-6 center in the league.
Probably ranks in that range from 72-76 overall - he comes in behind Wilt and Jabbar, and isn't as good as Cowens,
McAdoo - probably trades with Lanier, Reed. Probably ahead of Unseld,

He has great longevity - basically he is Bob Lanier who starts in the ABA instead of the NBA,
and plays more-

He never was a top 10 player in the league, never had an impact on a contending team, but dominated a weak ABA - ESPECIALLY AT THE CENTER POSITION, and played a long time.

A decent rebounder, real good shot blocker, terrible ball-handler, great percentage shooter, real good longevity.

Just so many guys - Gervin, Barry, Havlicek, Durant, Paul, Baylor - definitely ahead of him.
This exercise makes me rank him definitey above Lanier.
Ill have to think more about how/where I put him versus Cowens - who I think has been overlooked so far, and guys like Mourning, Howard, and Walton.

[drza]

Driving me crazy that I haven't had time to get my teeth into this for a few threads. I was really hoping to do a Frazier vs Zeke comp in the last thread, but just didn't get to it. Zeke's still on my radar, as well as Kidd. Paul is interesting because I do think there are a lot of similarities between him and Isiah (and comparing them, I think, would really help me illustrate how much I don't like the over-reliance-on-scoring-efficiency that I see in the win shares/PER type stats). And then, I really think there could be some meat in the Kidd vs Paul comparison, since both are in the databall era and therefore we can use things besides just the efficiency-based stats to compare them. But I just haven't been able to daggone do the analysis. Ugh, it's frustrating.

I also am glad to see the Baylor/Barry/Hondo conversation. I spent some time looking at Elgin back when Pettit was going in, and I still feel like Baylor was the more impressive of the two at their best. I wasn't ready to vote for either of them when Pettit went in, but if I were I'd have voted for Baylor first.

Having not done the analysis that I want to, I'll go ahead and vote for Isiah Thomas. I don't think Paul has the longevity to mess with him yet (the win shares argument didn't do much for me, because it didn't demonstrate longevity and as I've mentioned I think it (grossly) over-relies on scoring efficiency in evaluating). I'm not at all sure that Kidd isn't better...in fact, if I were going to be around tomorrow with time to post I wouldn't vote yet and would instead let it play out. But I'm on the road tomorrow (going to celebrate my grandpa's 99th birthday), so I've got to vote now.

I grew up watching Isiah Thomas, and always thought that he was just a step below the Magics and Birds of the world. In the last project I spent some time going back through those Pistons, and it seemed clear to me that he was the key to their offensive success over his full tenure there and that he (along with Daly and later Rodman) were the dominant figures on that team. He could create for both himself and others, ran very strong offenses through his prime (peaked at #1 in the league, in the mid-80s where the Lakers and Celtics roamed), and stepped up big multiple times in the playoffs. For now, that's enough to get my vote here:

Vote: Isiah Thomas

[SactoKingsFan]

Just found a short documentary on Rick Barry and his underhanded free throw style.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/video/v316 ... free-throw

[RayBan-Sematra]

Kidd has a lot of intangibles that do not play out as well on the PC board but for those that like a player who doesn't play for stats and plays for wins Kidd is a great option.....

Agree 100%.
Kidd was just a winner and a great leader.
He had a confidence and agressiveness about him when he played that definitly rubbed off on his teammates. I even saw this to some extent in Dallas when he was in a smaller role.

He was also a badly underrated athlete.
A stocky 6'5 point who could go end to end with the ball faster then almost anyone else I have seen.
He was a master of forcing transition play even in very slow paced games.
He really improved those around him and made the most out of his abilities not letting his weaknesses take away from his strengths.

[john248]

Saw Cousy mentioned, I don't see him here yet. Known for his offense yet team offense wasn't exactly stellar. Not great in the post season either where the Celts continued to win after his retirement. Cousy's 1st MVP came when Russell played half a season as a rook. I don't see his case over Kidd either. Celtics played a fast paced game and transition is something Kidd is great at where both weren't efficient scorers.

I saw Gilmore get a few mentions too, but I'm struggling to put him way ahead of Dwight, who I'm not considering now. I'd have to put a lot of stock in Gilmore's longevity which he was known as Rigor Artis towards the end of his career. Some of Gilmore's NBA teams were underwhelming defensively, but his teammates look like end of the bench types. Like what I see from his offensive game: dunks, hook, up and under, drop step. No issues with shot selection. 7'8" with the fro. I see him as a similar player like Dwight except Dwight has more success in the NBA.

At this point, looking at Barry, Baylor, Paul, and possibly Hondo. Rather uninformed about pre-3pt players, so I've generally sat out those threads though I have been reading up when I have some free time.

[Moonbeam]

Very glad to see Frazier get in. The next bunch of guys on my radar are Gilmore, Baylor, McHale, Paul, Miller, Drexler, Barry, Havlicek, and Durant.

I'll have to dive more deeply into both posts and analysis before I make my vote, but the shortlist for now is Gilmore, Baylor, Paul, Barry, and Havlicek.

[penbeast0]

Spoiler:

Gilmore was the only center in the gosh darn league when he was in the ABA - an over-the-hill and never great
Zelmo Beaty was the league's 2nd best center.
He was barely in the Top 10 players in the NBA at any time -
Before his last season at age 38 in Boston - He won 2 playoff series

One was a 2-0 series
The other he was 4th on his team in minutes played.

Only elite center perhaps. Beatty pretty clearly wasn't over the hill in Gilmore's first year. Then there's Daniels a first round pick in the NBA who choose to go to the ABA (and two time ABA MVP albeit a weak one at a time the the C position more genuinely was weak). By the time those two are dropping off (and before there plenty of guys who didn't destroy the ABA but nonetheless managed productive years in the ABA (very young) Moses, Dan Issel (mostly as a teammate), Caldwell Jones, Swen Nater, Billy Paultz, Jim Chones, Dave Robisch and Tom Owens. That's not counting bigs who played some C like Maurice Lucas. It's clearly not the same as the NBA for centers at that time, but it isn't bereft of bigs who are at least competent NBA players.

Here are the WS/48 for 4 ABA all-star centers who played in both league in the early years:


Beaty 69.71 .264/.156

Jim McDaniels 72.73 .153/.001
Spencer Haywood 70.71 .216/.131 (excluded partial NBA year 71 .091 33 games)
Connie Hawkins 69.71 .293/.147



Daniels best WS/48 was 1971 where he was .173 - well below Haywood, Hawkins, or Beaty in the ABA.
He was a good rebounder, and the center of the best team in the league - his balance team won 3 ABA titles.

After Beaty and Daniels, the best centers in 72 ABA were guys like Byron Beck, Jim Eakins, Willie Sojourner, Tom Owens, Dave Robisch, Randy Denton

After Wilt and Kareem, the NBA had Cowens, Bellamy, Unseld, Lanier, Thurmond, Hayes

1973 - add Willis Reed to the NBA

1973 ABA - Dave Robisch is 2nd center to Kentucky in WS/48 -

his WS/48 numbers were

age 23/.184
age 24/.176
age 25/.214
age 26/.208
age 27/.122
age 28/.086

The big drop at age 27?

Switching leagues

This was the talent level when Gilmore arrived in the league at the center position.
Artis's ABA WS/48 was .259 his first year and .253 his second year-

similar to Beaty, ahead of Spencer, below the Hawk

They get better at the end with Nater, Paultz, Owens, etc.

His first year in the NBA was at age 27 and has 5 NBA top ten WS/48 (1 peripheral i.e. 8th, 9th or 10th); 7 top ten NBA WS seasons (2 peripheral), 5 top ten PER seasons (2 peripheral) . WARP too, whilst not fully available, (what we have) suggests he aged reasonably well http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=728.

Then too there's problems with the "didn't win series" reasoning. Which series should he have won and why? Should he have refused to play for the Bulls (a powerhouse in the early 70s, but by '76 the worst team in the league, hence getting the first pick in the dispersal draft)? I didn't know the '83 WCSF minutes numbers were out there but in any case the "fourth in minutes" is a nonsense. All 5 starters are within 39 minutes of one another over the totality of the playoffs (11 games, or within 3.5454 mpg of one another; the gap being smaller if you remove slight outlier Gervin). Then you look at how 3 of the four wins in their winning series were blowouts (by 19, 17 and 40) and the minutes tells us pretty much nothing.

Then highlighting a short series when you're then one creating this arbitrary measure of playoff series wins.

He joined a lousy Bulls team, which had 23 year old Mickey Johnson and a still prime Norm Van Lier.
They added Wilbur Holland and John Mengelt 2 solid guys, and Scott May - who played well his rookie year.
The team finished out the year 20-4, only to face Portland in the playoffs.

In terms of WS/48 he finished behind Kareem,Walton,Issel, and tied Lanier for 4th - not an all-star, but good
case for 4th best center in league.

Starting the next year the team didn't do anything despite having guys like Theus, Greenwood, Mickey Johnson, Kenon
He goes to the Spurs for Corzine, Olberding and cash - they have one decent year, the defense gets worse, and then fade.

1978 - Kareem, Lanier, Walton, Issel all ahead in WS/48 - so probably 5th best center
1979 - Kareem, Moses, Walton (hurt) - good case for 3rd best center
1980 - Kareem, Tree Rollins, Issel, Moses - Artis only played 48 games and was barely ahead of Lanier - so 6th
best center behind Lanier who played 63 games - Lanier was pretty close to Artis each year.
1981 - Kareem, Parish, Gilmore is barely ahead of Moses for 3rd in WS/48 - to be fair Ill give Artis 3rd

During this time period 1977-1981 WS

Kareem .242
Walton .205
Artis .191
Issel .189
Lanier .186

- So he is real similar with Lanier and Issel in this period.
His advantage over Lanier is the fact he played in the ABA while Lanier faced much better competition in the NBA.

Lanier's WS/48 from 1972-1976 is .183 - almost exactly the same.
Now Lanier is basically done, as is Cowens, Unseld, McAdoo - great centers who entered the league together.

Artis has 6 more years of starting, 3 as an all-star

WS/48 1982-1987

Moses .197
Kareem .185
Parish .173
Artis .165
Cartwright .163
Sikma .163


1982 - Is where he starts to outlast people - he is a little of ahead of Sikma and Kareem
1983 - Falls to 5th behind Moses, Parish, Kareem, Cartwright - a little ahead of Sikma again
1984 - Falls even more - Cartwright, Laimbeer, Moses, Chief, Kareem, Lanier - only plays 64 games and barely
beats Dawkins and Sikma - so gets a 9th
1985 - Resurgence - finishes 3rd behind Kareem and Moses - beats out rookie Hakeem.
1986 - 9th and a big drop down to .134 - pretty darn good for his age

so center ranking each year:

77/4
78/5
79/3
80/6
81/3
82/3
83/5
84/9
85/3
86/9



So he spent 77-83 as generally the 3-6 center in the league.
Probably ranks in that range from 72-76 overall - he comes in behind Wilt and Jabbar, and isn't as good as Cowens,
McAdoo - probably trades with Lanier, Reed. Probably ahead of Unseld,

He has great longevity - basically he is Bob Lanier who starts in the ABA instead of the NBA,
and plays more-

He never was a top 10 player in the league, never had an impact on a contending team, but dominated a weak ABA - ESPECIALLY AT THE CENTER POSITION, and played a long time.

A decent rebounder, real good shot blocker, terrible ball-handler, great percentage shooter, real good longevity.

Just so many guys - Gervin, Barry, Havlicek, Durant, Paul, Baylor - definitely ahead of him.
This exercise makes me rank him definitey above Lanier.
Ill have to think more about how/where I put him versus Cowens - who I think has been overlooked so far, and guys like Mourning, Howard, and Walton.

When you compare Artis to Lanier or Issel, I'm not sure WS/48 picks up the defensive advantage enough. Issel in particular, great scorer that he was, was generally considered a weak spot on those Denver teams. They were always "a center away from competing," (Issel presumably would have moved to the 4).

[Owly]

Driving me crazy that I haven't had time to get my teeth into this for a few threads. I was really hoping to do a Frazier vs Zeke comp in the last thread, but just didn't get to it. Zeke's still on my radar, as well as Kidd. Paul is interesting because I do think there are a lot of similarities between him and Isiah (and comparing them, I think, would really help me illustrate how much I don't like the over-reliance-on-scoring-efficiency that I see in the win shares/PER type stats). And then, I really think there could be some meat in the Kidd vs Paul comparison, since both are in the databall era and therefore we can use things besides just the efficiency-based stats to compare them. But I just haven't been able to daggone do the analysis. Ugh, it's frustrating.

I also am glad to see the Baylor/Barry/Hondo conversation. I spent some time looking at Elgin back when Pettit was going in, and I still feel like Baylor was the more impressive of the two at their best. I wasn't ready to vote for either of them when Pettit went in, but if I were I'd have voted for Baylor first.

Having not done the analysis that I want to, I'll go ahead and vote for Isiah Thomas. I don't think Paul has the longevity to mess with him yet (the win shares argument didn't do much for me, because it didn't demonstrate longevity and as I've mentioned I think it (grossly) over-relies on scoring efficiency in evaluating). I'm not at all sure that Kidd isn't better...in fact, if I were going to be around tomorrow with time to post I wouldn't vote yet and would instead let it play out. But I'm on the road tomorrow (going to celebrate my grandpa's 99th birthday), so I've got to vote now.

I grew up watching Isiah Thomas, and always thought that he was just a step below the Magics and Birds of the world. In the last project I spent some time going back through those Pistons, and it seemed clear to me that he was the key to their offensive success over his full tenure there and that he (along with Daly and later Rodman) were the dominant figures on that team. He could create for both himself and others, ran very strong offenses through his prime (peaked at #1 in the league, in the mid-80s where the Lakers and Celtics roamed), and stepped up big multiple times in the playoffs. For now, that's enough to get my vote here:

Vote: Isiah Thomas

Bullet counterpoints/responses on Isiah/Paul

- WS total does reflect meaningful longevity because its a (semi-)accumulative rather than rate metric. You can argue how good it is but when you're multiplying rate productivity by minutes you're getting a total refleclecting cumulative goodness.

- 1st place offense was (a) an outlier (11th in '83, 9th in '85); (b) due to offensive rebounding and minimizing turnovers neither of which Thomas particularly did (at best you might claim he was creating shots for others so his his individual turnover numbers are misleading, but I'd be reticent to claim low turnovers as an Isiah caused strength)

- PER skewing pro-efficiency? Career PER has Baylor at 25; T-Mac at 26 Dominique at 33, Chris Webber at 47, AI at 48, Al Jefferson at 49, Jon Drew at 50. If there is a pro-efficiency skew it's hidden by a scoring volume skew which would give an artificial advantage to Isiah, not Paul. Yet Paul has only two years (his first two) when his PER is worse than Isiah's best year. And whilst WS might skew against Thomas with regard to scoring efficiency, it skews pro-him on defense. It over credits him for Detroits D based on his boxscore (gambling for steals) and the combination of being on a good defensive team and DWS's inability to split defensive credit accurately ('89 he's 2nd on Detroit in DWS, 1st in the playoffs; '90 he's 2nd and 2nd) part of that is minutes but still. This problem is particularly accute because Detroit's best defenders are primarily non-boxscore in their defensive impact.

- Regarding stepping up in the playoffs. True but stepping up is a relative thing. Shawn Kemp, Derrick Coleman, Baron Davis, Gus Williams and Johnny Moore stepped up the playoffs. So too, from a lower baseline, did Tim Thomas. How much does this matter?

[drza]

Driving me crazy that I haven't had time to get my teeth into this for a few threads. I was really hoping to do a Frazier vs Zeke comp in the last thread, but just didn't get to it. Zeke's still on my radar, as well as Kidd. Paul is interesting because I do think there are a lot of similarities between him and Isiah (and comparing them, I think, would really help me illustrate how much I don't like the over-reliance-on-scoring-efficiency that I see in the win shares/PER type stats). And then, I really think there could be some meat in the Kidd vs Paul comparison, since both are in the databall era and therefore we can use things besides just the efficiency-based stats to compare them. But I just haven't been able to daggone do the analysis. Ugh, it's frustrating.

I also am glad to see the Baylor/Barry/Hondo conversation. I spent some time looking at Elgin back when Pettit was going in, and I still feel like Baylor was the more impressive of the two at their best. I wasn't ready to vote for either of them when Pettit went in, but if I were I'd have voted for Baylor first.

Having not done the analysis that I want to, I'll go ahead and vote for Isiah Thomas. I don't think Paul has the longevity to mess with him yet (the win shares argument didn't do much for me, because it didn't demonstrate longevity and as I've mentioned I think it (grossly) over-relies on scoring efficiency in evaluating). I'm not at all sure that Kidd isn't better...in fact, if I were going to be around tomorrow with time to post I wouldn't vote yet and would instead let it play out. But I'm on the road tomorrow (going to celebrate my grandpa's 99th birthday), so I've got to vote now.

I grew up watching Isiah Thomas, and always thought that he was just a step below the Magics and Birds of the world. In the last project I spent some time going back through those Pistons, and it seemed clear to me that he was the key to their offensive success over his full tenure there and that he (along with Daly and later Rodman) were the dominant figures on that team. He could create for both himself and others, ran very strong offenses through his prime (peaked at #1 in the league, in the mid-80s where the Lakers and Celtics roamed), and stepped up big multiple times in the playoffs. For now, that's enough to get my vote here:

Vote: Isiah Thomas

Bullet counterpoints/responses on Isiah/Paul

- WS total does reflect meaningful longevity because its a (semi-)accumulative rather than rate metric. You can argue how good it is but when you're multiplying rate productivity by minutes you're getting a total refleclecting cumulative goodness.

- 1st place offense was (a) an outlier (11th in '83, 9th in '85); (b) due to offensive rebounding and minimizing turnovers neither of which Thomas particularly did (at best you might claim he was creating shots for others so his his individual turnover numbers are misleading, but I'd be reticent to claim low turnovers as an Isiah caused strength)

- PER skewing pro-efficiency? Career PER has Baylor at 25; T-Mac at 26 Dominique at 33, Chris Webber at 47, AI at 48, Al Jefferson at 49, Jon Drew at 50. If there is a pro-efficiency skew it's hidden by a scoring volume skew which would give an artificial advantage to Isiah, not Paul. Yet Paul has only two years (his first two) when his PER is worse than Isiah's best year. And whilst WS might skew against Thomas with regard to scoring efficiency, it skews pro-him on defense. It over credits him for Detroits D based on his boxscore (gambling for steals) and the combination of being on a good defensive team and DWS's inability to split defensive credit accurately ('89 he's 2nd on Detroit in DWS, 1st in the playoffs; '90 he's 2nd and 2nd) part of that is minutes but still. This problem is particularly accute because Detroit's best defenders are primarily non-boxscore in their defensive impact.

- Regarding stepping up in the playoffs. True but stepping up is a relative thing. Shawn Kemp, Derrick Coleman, Baron Davis, Gus Williams and Johnny Moore stepped up the playoffs. So too, from a lower baseline, did Tim Thomas. How much does this matter?

Rapid fire responses, because the time just isn't here and I'm about to get on the road:

*The #1 team offensive rating is a bit of an outlier in terms of relative finish, but from memory pretty much every Pistons offense of Zeke's prime was up around +110 in ORTG with all of the moving parts changing except for Isiah and Laimbeer. And the timing of the offensive improvements, when Isiah was clearly playing a larger role than Laimbeer, led me to conclude that Zeke (and Daily) were the main cogs needed to maintain the strong offense.

*Win shares...I don't hate it, but I do feel that it overly focuses on efficiency. Which leads to conclusions like 3 Chris Paul years are worth like 85% of the value of Isiah's career. It doesn't reflect longevity, it reflects that win shares DRAMATICALLY overvalues efficiency (IMO) and that it therefore can lead to conclusions that don't bear much resemblence to reality. Win shares, I believe, was derived on a type of regression that estimates some correlation with good team play. But when you're doing batch estimation/correlations over huge samples, outliers can break the system. Paul may very well be an outlier in the types of things that win shares measures, but the math then pushes his values based on that particular stat beyond what his actual impact is. And since Paul is in the databall era, we have other more direct measures of his impact to compare win shares to that helps point this out. Paul is great in the +/- stats, for example, but not the ridiculous outlier that he is in win shares (where measures out as bar-none the best player in the NBA, ahead of LeBron and every other player that is still active in win shares/48).

*Playoff step-ups. The players that you listed are starting from lower points than Zeke. My point wasn't that Zeke was relatively stronger in the postseason than the regular, it was that he had some really great playoffs in a vacuum. Which is an accomplishment worthy of mention. (By the way, of the players you listed as counter-points, I have interest in Baron Davis. He measures out better than expected in both RAPM and postseason on/off +/-, and I'll probably want to look further into that and him at some point before we get to 100).

[DQuinn1575]

Spoiler:

Only elite center perhaps. Beatty pretty clearly wasn't over the hill in Gilmore's first year. Then there's Daniels a first round pick in the NBA who choose to go to the ABA (and two time ABA MVP albeit a weak one at a time the the C position more genuinely was weak). By the time those two are dropping off (and before there plenty of guys who didn't destroy the ABA but nonetheless managed productive years in the ABA (very young) Moses, Dan Issel (mostly as a teammate), Caldwell Jones, Swen Nater, Billy Paultz, Jim Chones, Dave Robisch and Tom Owens. That's not counting bigs who played some C like Maurice Lucas. It's clearly not the same as the NBA for centers at that time, but it isn't bereft of bigs who are at least competent NBA players.

Here are the WS/48 for 4 ABA all-star centers who played in both league in the early years:


Beaty 69.71 .264/.156

Jim McDaniels 72.73 .153/.001
Spencer Haywood 70.71 .216/.131 (excluded partial NBA year 71 .091 33 games)
Connie Hawkins 69.71 .293/.147



Daniels best WS/48 was 1971 where he was .173 - well below Haywood, Hawkins, or Beaty in the ABA.
He was a good rebounder, and the center of the best team in the league - his balance team won 3 ABA titles.

After Beaty and Daniels, the best centers in 72 ABA were guys like Byron Beck, Jim Eakins, Willie Sojourner, Tom Owens, Dave Robisch, Randy Denton

After Wilt and Kareem, the NBA had Cowens, Bellamy, Unseld, Lanier, Thurmond, Hayes

1973 - add Willis Reed to the NBA

1973 ABA - Dave Robisch is 2nd center to Kentucky in WS/48 -

his WS/48 numbers were

age 23/.184
age 24/.176
age 25/.214
age 26/.208
age 27/.122
age 28/.086

The big drop at age 27?

Switching leagues

This was the talent level when Gilmore arrived in the league at the center position.
Artis's ABA WS/48 was .259 his first year and .253 his second year-

similar to Beaty, ahead of Spencer, below the Hawk

They get better at the end with Nater, Paultz, Owens, etc.

His first year in the NBA was at age 27 and has 5 NBA top ten WS/48 (1 peripheral i.e. 8th, 9th or 10th); 7 top ten NBA WS seasons (2 peripheral), 5 top ten PER seasons (2 peripheral) . WARP too, whilst not fully available, (what we have) suggests he aged reasonably well http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=728.

Then too there's problems with the "didn't win series" reasoning. Which series should he have won and why? Should he have refused to play for the Bulls (a powerhouse in the early 70s, but by '76 the worst team in the league, hence getting the first pick in the dispersal draft)? I didn't know the '83 WCSF minutes numbers were out there but in any case the "fourth in minutes" is a nonsense. All 5 starters are within 39 minutes of one another over the totality of the playoffs (11 games, or within 3.5454 mpg of one another; the gap being smaller if you remove slight outlier Gervin). Then you look at how 3 of the four wins in their winning series were blowouts (by 19, 17 and 40) and the minutes tells us pretty much nothing.

Then highlighting a short series when you're then one creating this arbitrary measure of playoff series wins.

He joined a lousy Bulls team, which had 23 year old Mickey Johnson and a still prime Norm Van Lier.
They added Wilbur Holland and John Mengelt 2 solid guys, and Scott May - who played well his rookie year.
The team finished out the year 20-4, only to face Portland in the playoffs.

In terms of WS/48 he finished behind Kareem,Walton,Issel, and tied Lanier for 4th - not an all-star, but good
case for 4th best center in league.

Starting the next year the team didn't do anything despite having guys like Theus, Greenwood, Mickey Johnson, Kenon
He goes to the Spurs for Corzine, Olberding and cash - they have one decent year, the defense gets worse, and then fade.

1978 - Kareem, Lanier, Walton, Issel all ahead in WS/48 - so probably 5th best center
1979 - Kareem, Moses, Walton (hurt) - good case for 3rd best center
1980 - Kareem, Tree Rollins, Issel, Moses - Artis only played 48 games and was barely ahead of Lanier - so 6th
best center behind Lanier who played 63 games - Lanier was pretty close to Artis each year.
1981 - Kareem, Parish, Gilmore is barely ahead of Moses for 3rd in WS/48 - to be fair Ill give Artis 3rd

During this time period 1977-1981 WS

Kareem .242
Walton .205
Artis .191
Issel .189
Lanier .186

- So he is real similar with Lanier and Issel in this period.
His advantage over Lanier is the fact he played in the ABA while Lanier faced much better competition in the NBA.

Lanier's WS/48 from 1972-1976 is .183 - almost exactly the same.
Now Lanier is basically done, as is Cowens, Unseld, McAdoo - great centers who entered the league together.

Artis has 6 more years of starting, 3 as an all-star

WS/48 1982-1987

Moses .197
Kareem .185
Parish .173
Artis .165
Cartwright .163
Sikma .163


1982 - Is where he starts to outlast people - he is a little of ahead of Sikma and Kareem
1983 - Falls to 5th behind Moses, Parish, Kareem, Cartwright - a little ahead of Sikma again
1984 - Falls even more - Cartwright, Laimbeer, Moses, Chief, Kareem, Lanier - only plays 64 games and barely
beats Dawkins and Sikma - so gets a 9th
1985 - Resurgence - finishes 3rd behind Kareem and Moses - beats out rookie Hakeem.
1986 - 9th and a big drop down to .134 - pretty darn good for his age

so center ranking each year:

77/4
78/5
79/3
80/6
81/3
82/3
83/5
84/9
85/3
86/9



So he spent 77-83 as generally the 3-6 center in the league.
Probably ranks in that range from 72-76 overall - he comes in behind Wilt and Jabbar, and isn't as good as Cowens,
McAdoo - probably trades with Lanier, Reed. Probably ahead of Unseld,

He has great longevity - basically he is Bob Lanier who starts in the ABA instead of the NBA,
and plays more-

He never was a top 10 player in the league, never had an impact on a contending team, but dominated a weak ABA - ESPECIALLY AT THE CENTER POSITION, and played a long time.

A decent rebounder, real good shot blocker, terrible ball-handler, great percentage shooter, real good longevity.

Just so many guys - Gervin, Barry, Havlicek, Durant, Paul, Baylor - definitely ahead of him.
This exercise makes me rank him definitey above Lanier.
Ill have to think more about how/where I put him versus Cowens - who I think has been overlooked so far, and guys like Mourning, Howard, and Walton.

When you compare Artis to Lanier or Issel, I'm not sure WS/48 picks up the defensive advantage enough. Issel in particular, great scorer that he was, was generally considered a weak spot on those Denver teams. They were always "a center away from competing," (Issel presumably would have moved to the 4).

Definitely agree with Issel - he was a get a lot of points give up a lot of points back type of guy - I haven't done a complete list, but he's probably in the 90s at best.

Lanier was not the shot blocker or leaper that Artis was, and Artis has an advantage there. But Bob had more range and could be fed into the post.
He had 5 seasons where he averaged more than Artis's top NBA average, and was a legit #1 threat instead of a #2 -
I put a fair amount of stock into that - at this level if you can't lead a team offensively or defensively, then what is your claim? Artis was a good defender, better than Lanier, but falls short of a lot of other guys.

I like Gilmore over Lanier - you have to give Artis some credit for longevity, and he gets something for the ABA title.

But I just think there are a lot of guys - Havlicek,Baylor, Gervin,Durant, Paul - who had major impact in the league - and should be ranked higher.

[penbeast0]

Issel has a great "because there are no 4s" quote of his own. When asked if he liked to take the last shot, he said, "I like to take all the shots."

[Owly]

snip

Spoiler:

Only elite center perhaps. Beatty pretty clearly wasn't over the hill in Gilmore's first year. Then there's Daniels a first round pick in the NBA who choose to go to the ABA (and two time ABA MVP albeit a weak one at a time the the C position more genuinely was weak). By the time those two are dropping off (and before there plenty of guys who didn't destroy the ABA but nonetheless managed productive years in the ABA (very young) Moses, Dan Issel (mostly as a teammate), Caldwell Jones, Swen Nater, Billy Paultz, Jim Chones, Dave Robisch and Tom Owens. That's not counting bigs who played some C like Maurice Lucas. It's clearly not the same as the NBA for centers at that time, but it isn't bereft of bigs who are at least competent NBA players.

Here are the WS/48 for 4 ABA all-star centers who played in both league in the early years:


Beaty 69.71 .264/.156

Jim McDaniels 72.73 .153/.001
Spencer Haywood 70.71 .216/.131 (excluded partial NBA year 71 .091 33 games)
Connie Hawkins 69.71 .293/.147



Daniels best WS/48 was 1971 where he was .173 - well below Haywood, Hawkins, or Beaty in the ABA.
He was a good rebounder, and the center of the best team in the league - his balance team won 3 ABA titles.

After Beaty and Daniels, the best centers in 72 ABA were guys like Byron Beck, Jim Eakins, Willie Sojourner, Tom Owens, Dave Robisch, Randy Denton

After Wilt and Kareem, the NBA had Cowens, Bellamy, Unseld, Lanier, Thurmond, Hayes

1973 - add Willis Reed to the NBA

1973 ABA - Dave Robisch is 2nd center to Kentucky in WS/48 -

his WS/48 numbers were

age 23/.184
age 24/.176
age 25/.214
age 26/.208
age 27/.122
age 28/.086

The big drop at age 27?

Switching leagues

This was the talent level when Gilmore arrived in the league at the center position.
Artis's ABA WS/48 was .259 his first year and .253 his second year-

similar to Beaty, ahead of Spencer, below the Hawk

They get better at the end with Nater, Paultz, Owens, etc.

His first year in the NBA was at age 27 and has 5 NBA top ten WS/48 (1 peripheral i.e. 8th, 9th or 10th); 7 top ten NBA WS seasons (2 peripheral), 5 top ten PER seasons (2 peripheral) . WARP too, whilst not fully available, (what we have) suggests he aged reasonably well http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=728.

Then too there's problems with the "didn't win series" reasoning. Which series should he have won and why? Should he have refused to play for the Bulls (a powerhouse in the early 70s, but by '76 the worst team in the league, hence getting the first pick in the dispersal draft)? I didn't know the '83 WCSF minutes numbers were out there but in any case the "fourth in minutes" is a nonsense. All 5 starters are within 39 minutes of one another over the totality of the playoffs (11 games, or within 3.5454 mpg of one another; the gap being smaller if you remove slight outlier Gervin). Then you look at how 3 of the four wins in their winning series were blowouts (by 19, 17 and 40) and the minutes tells us pretty much nothing.

Then highlighting a short series when you're then one creating this arbitrary measure of playoff series wins.

He joined a lousy Bulls team, which had 23 year old Mickey Johnson and a still prime Norm Van Lier.
They added Wilbur Holland and John Mengelt 2 solid guys, and Scott May - who played well his rookie year.
The team finished out the year 20-4, only to face Portland in the playoffs.

In terms of WS/48 he finished behind Kareem,Walton,Issel, and tied Lanier for 4th - not an all-star, but good
case for 4th best center in league.

Starting the next year
He goes to the Spurs for Corzine, Olberding and cash - they have one decent year, the defense gets worse, and then fade.

1978 - Kareem, Lanier, Walton, Issel all ahead in WS/48 - so probably 5th best center
1979 - Kareem, Moses, Walton (hurt) - good case for 3rd best center
1980 - Kareem, Tree Rollins, Issel, Moses - Artis only played 48 games and was barely ahead of Lanier - so 6th
best center behind Lanier who played 63 games - Lanier was pretty close to Artis each year.
1981 - Kareem, Parish, Gilmore is barely ahead of Moses for 3rd in WS/48 - to be fair Ill give Artis 3rd

During this time period 1977-1981 WS

Kareem .242
Walton .205
Artis .191
Issel .189
Lanier .186

- So he is real similar with Lanier and Issel in this period.
His advantage over Lanier is the fact he played in the ABA while Lanier faced much better competition in the NBA.

Lanier's WS/48 from 1972-1976 is .183 - almost exactly the same.
Now Lanier is basically done, as is Cowens, Unseld, McAdoo - great centers who entered the league together.

Artis has 6 more years of starting, 3 as an all-star

WS/48 1982-1987

Moses .197
Kareem .185
Parish .173
Artis .165
Cartwright .163
Sikma .163


1982 - Is where he starts to outlast people - he is a little of ahead of Sikma and Kareem
1983 - Falls to 5th behind Moses, Parish, Kareem, Cartwright - a little ahead of Sikma again
1984 - Falls even more - Cartwright, Laimbeer, Moses, Chief, Kareem, Lanier - only plays 64 games and barely
beats Dawkins and Sikma - so gets a 9th
1985 - Resurgence - finishes 3rd behind Kareem and Moses - beats out rookie Hakeem.
1986 - 9th and a big drop down to .134 - pretty darn good for his age

so center ranking each year:

77/4
78/5
79/3
80/6
81/3
82/3
83/5
84/9
85/3
86/9



So he spent 77-83 as generally the 3-6 center in the league.
Probably ranks in that range from 72-76 overall - he comes in behind Wilt and Jabbar, and isn't as good as Cowens,
McAdoo - probably trades with Lanier, Reed. Probably ahead of Unseld,

He has great longevity - basically he is Bob Lanier who starts in the ABA instead of the NBA,
and plays more-

He never was a top 10 player in the league, never had an impact on a contending team, but dominated a weak ABA - ESPECIALLY AT THE CENTER POSITION, and played a long time.

A decent rebounder, real good shot blocker, terrible ball-handler, great percentage shooter, real good longevity.

Just so many guys - Gervin, Barry, Havlicek, Durant, Paul, Baylor - definitely ahead of him.
This exercise makes me rank him definitey above Lanier.
Ill have to think more about how/where I put him versus Cowens - who I think has been overlooked so far, and guys like Mourning, Howard, and Walton.

When you compare Artis to Lanier or Issel, I'm not sure WS/48 picks up the defensive advantage enough. Issel in particular, great scorer that he was, was generally considered a weak spot on those Denver teams. They were always "a center away from competing," (Issel presumably would have moved to the 4).

This quite neatly covers what I was thinking.

Some additional specifics Issel is sometimes benefiting from an inability to credit individual defensive influence (whilst I suggest Gilmore is suffering from the same); in particular where you have him ahead in '77 a very aggressive defense with defensive specialists like Bobby Jones, Paul Silas, Ted McClain, Fatty Taylor, Marvin Webster, Jim Price and Willie Wise. These guys plus super athlete David Thompson and Dan Issel made up the rotation. A lot of respected defenders and good coaching make the team good on D and Issel gets disproportionate credit.

- I'm not sure where you're going discussing PFs who played in the ABA before Gilmore (Connie Hawkins, Spencer Haywood) though in any case the use of WS alone is dubious here as for instance Hawkins goes from his ABA recents champs to the worst team in the NBA (whose bad team level numbers artificially deflate his WS). McDaniels is worth acknowledging however the use in this context is a little unusual (as implicitly acknowledged he isn't in the same tier as other players being discussed). As noted before many ABA centers had productive years in the NBA. Particularly when (I think this is the point being put across) the ABA's early weakness

- Whilst I generally acknowledge the strong crop of NBA 70s centers (indeed this is suggested in the previous post) - the center listing you give are perhaps more about star name power than performance. Walt Bellamy - in mini renaissance - is productive by the boxscore, though he has traditionally been considered (perhaps substantially) less than sum of his boxscore contributions. Unseld is in what appears to be a down year. Hayes is Hayes, shooting (and missing) a lot, between his boxscore and his intangiables I'm not impressed. Lanier seems quite good by the boxscore, some have concerns about his D over his career and, whilst I'm unsure of how conclusive team level stuff isfor his career in general, when it chimes with negative reviews of his early career D, this suggests PER might overstate his impact (though WS probably understates it).

Then in '73 you note Reed (1876 minutes or 27.2 over 69 games)who isn't close to his name value either per minute, or especially in total productivity, you don't however note that Unseld and Cowens .

Then too it's worth noting the emphasis on top level talent, which was my main bugbear from the original post (see opening line)

Only elite center perhaps...

Particularly as the NBA, as the larger league would be expected to have a better list of top talent even if it were spread evenly throughout the teams in both leagues (which is not my contention).

- Your framing of numbers

During this time period 1977-1981 WS

Kareem .242
Walton .205
Artis .191
Issel .189
Lanier .186

- So he is real similar with Lanier and Issel in this period.

Or he is better than them (played quite a bit more than Lanier) and Moses and close per minute to Walton with vastly more minutes. You can screw around with it either way. But that the first response is that it suggests he's the second best regular (i.e. not Walton) center over that span (though, off that chart, Moses has 0.2 more WS over that span by playing more minutes), and that's without taking into account the earlier noted concerns about WS's ability to accurately credit D (a counterpoint to which might be WS overvalue shooting efficiency).

- In what universe were Reed and Gilmore comparable in the time period they were both pros. Reed was nothing like his peak performance and played limited minutes.

- If he's Bob Lanier with greater longevity (14-15 quality years, one of which at 48 games, usually at the league max 84/82), better ability to stay on the court and better D that's a hell of a player. Now obviously boxscore stuff doesn't capture everything (Lanier could space the floor, a very nice asset in a big man) but still.

- Regarding the guys you have ahead some I agree (I'm voting Paul), some I'm fine and if I disagree it isn't strongly. A couple I would tend to argue ... Barry: metrics which skew favourable to scorers (i.e. PER) suggest Gilmore was better per minute (maybe you can call it a tie because Artis spent a larger proportion of his career in the weaker league, though Barry played when it was weaker) and Gilmore played more minutes, has less negative intangiables and is the better defender. For Gervin, basically ditto the above except they played the same time frame ABA and career PER is equal. I'd need strong non-boxscore stuff when they play less and are basically equal, per minute, by their most favourable metric and are weaker on intangiables and D.