RealGM 2017 Top 100 List: #42 (Reggie Miller)

[zimpy27]

I think Bob Lanier needs to be discussed more. Box plus minus master from back then.

[Outside]

In this post, I'll compare Nate Thurmond to other contenders in this thread.

Versus Willis Reed. This is a natural comparison because they were contemporaries (Reed entered the league one year after Thurmond) and they played the same position, but they were very different players, with Reed being better offensively and Thurmond defensively.

Where Thurmond has the edge:

-- Longevity. Thurmond played 964 games and 35,881 minutes over 14 seasons, while Reed played only 658 games and 23,073 minutes over 10 seasons.

-- Defense. Reed was a good defender, but Thurmond was exceptional. As mentioned in a prior thread, both Kareem and Wilt said Thurmond was their toughest defender. Thurmond was one of the greatest shot blockers of all time, but we don't have stats from that era to put in black and white what a dominating force Thurmond was.

-- Rebounding. Reed's best season was 14.5 RPG. Thurmond had eight seasons better than that, including two seasons of over 20 RPG.

-- Reed's advantage on offense isn't that big. Reed was clearly a better offensive player, but his career average of 18.7 PPG isn't that much more than Thurmond (15.0). Thurmond had five 20 PPG seasons with a high of 21.9; Reed had five 20 PPG seasons with a high of 21.7.

Versus Reggie Miller. This is a difficult comparison because of the differences in position and era. For most people voting in this project, it probably comes down to a combination of criteria and familiarity, with familiarity making this a difficult matchup for Thurmond to overcome.

Reggie has the advantage in longevity (1,389 games and 47,619 minutes).

Where I give Nate the advantage is in impact. Reggie was all-time great at three-point shooting, while Nate was all-time great at defense, rebounding, and blocking shots.

Another area I give Nate the advantage is in their weaknesses. For Nate, that was his shooting, but he was still able to be productive offensively. For Reggie, his defense was more of a liability than Nate's defense.

Versus Paul Pierce. Like with Reggie, this is a difficult comparison. As I mentioned in a previous thread, how you rank Pierce depends on how you characterize his nine seasons prior to the arrival of KG and Ray Allen. I personally think he was a selfish player on bad teams for much of that time, maturing into a quality player interested in team objectives by the start of the big 3 era. He had five elite years, from 2007-08 to 2011-12.

While Pierce has the longevity advantage in games and minutes, to me, Pierce doesn't rise to the quality and impact that Thurmond demonstrated over a longer period of time. I understand that others may view Pierce more favorably than I do,

Versus Wes Unseld. Back to a center-center comparison. Their longevity is almost identical when comparing games and minutes. Unseld got a lot of reputational mileage out of his ROY/MVP season, but it was one of the most underwhelming MVP seasons statistically (13.8 PPG, 18.2 RPG, 2.6 APG, 51.5 TS$). Thurmond's stats from that same season -- 21.5 PPG, 19.7 RPG, 3.6 APG, 45.7 TS%, while also being All-Defense 1st team.

Unseld was his team's 5th leading scorer in his ROY and MVP season and the 9th leading scorer the year Washington won the title. Unseld averaged at least 15 PPG only once (16.4), while Thurmond did it nine times, including five seasons of over 20 PPG. Unseld had five seasons of 15 RPG or more with a high of 18.2, while Thurmond had eight seasons of 15 RPG or more with two seasons over 20 RPG.

Unseld's advantage in offensive efficiency is more than outweighed by Thurmond's advantage in defense, shotblocking, and rebounding.

Versus Bob Cousy. I love the Cooz as a leader and assist man, and he has an MVP, but his shooting efficiency was worse than Nate's and his defense was bad. In total, Thurmond was the better player.


Sorry, running out of steam here and have to get to bed. I brought up negatives regarding many of these players, but I lke many of them and think many deserve to get voted in soon.

Looking forward to any responses you may have regarding Nate. He's a great player who doesn't get his due because so many fans aren't old enough to be familiar with him, the video of him is sparse, and the amazing shotblcoing stats that would make his case compelling aren't available. Plus he's a character guy who teammates and opponents alike respected. Wish I could do a better job making the case for him.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Re: Nate

I think Artis sort of mysteriously went a little high there, and it opens the door to the next group of centers. But I think Nate is largely capped by Dwight Howard, who is a player working on a similar theory who was the dominant center of his day (and yes, I myself argue that's a least partially timing luck -- if he's drafted in 1991 he's just part of the 90s pack). And that's before we get to Reed, Unseld and Cowens, all in-era MVPs, or the offensively superior numbers of Lanier and Bellamy and McAdoo (another MVP). There's also Zo, who's career got cut short, but who really had a prime only a few years short of Nate, and was a stronger offensive player. And there's the Walton question, as he seemed to be another level guy who just never had a full career.

I do object to the recency bias of raising a guy like Deke before Nate, but there is a giant scrum for that next center spot, and while Nate has a chip there with his defense, the offense is a big drawback. Yeah, he could score a bit, but largely because he was in an era which demanded all centers shoot. Even guys who were going to only shoot 41%. He played a ton of minutes to get those numbers, a good thing for the horse anchoring your team, but again emphasizes that offensively he was not prolific. He carries a career 16.5 PER, and he continued his inefficient offense well into the 70s at a time when those sorts of shooting numbers were beginning to be winceworthy for bigs. In his last couple of All Star seasons in 72 and 73 his TS% was still .499 and .492 on pretty low volume (same observation would go for him vs. Cousy btw -- Cousy's low FG% were understandable for his era, and he came around 15 years before Nate).

I don't have a clear progression of all the remaining centers from that era. I do think that none of them have slam dunk resumes and there's a bit of mythology attached to some guys that the numbers struggle to justify.

[scrabbarista]

42. Elvin Hayes
43. Dolph Schayes

*For combined (RS) points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals, Elvin Hayes is 9th in the history of the NBA and ABA combined. If you aren't giving him consideration around the 42nd spot, then career totals should probably not enter into your thought at any point on this list.

*Hayes was the most productive player on the '78 Bullets title team, although Unseld was generally more heralded. By my count, there is only a handful of players remaining who were the best player on a title team, so Hayes at least needs to start receiving consideration.

*Hayes' MVP finishes, in spite of the fact that apparently not a single person with a vote actually liked him:

1971-72 NBA 0.006 (17)
1972-73 NBA 0.021 (10)
1973-74 NBA 0.082 (5)
1974-75 NBA 0.299 (3)
1975-76 NBA 0.018 (8)
1976-77 NBA 0.020 (7)
1978-79 NBA 0.126 (3)

*Hayes also led the league in scoring in '69, and was a 12x All-Star.

For me, his combination of longevity and production for a championship team make him too hard to ignore.

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: Reggie Miller
Alt: Paul Pierce

Been voting for these guys for a while. I'm used to that. I expect it at certain times in these projects.

I like to think I don't get frustrated, but that's not really true. I don't get frustrated because people disagree, just some of the reasons people give for disagreeing. In the end I really feel like what we do by default is base our opinions on what we thought the game was when we were younger. Typically that means traditional stats, prestigious accolades, and rings. Even when readily speak to the nuance that makes a player so clearly more than these things, we tend to merely slide the original assessment over a bit rather than starting over from whole cloth.

So with Miller what we get is a lot of people essentially saying "I see why you're saying Miller would be underrated because of his lack of volume stats, but c'mon, he can't be THAT underrated." There's an utter disbelief to the objection that to me has no rational basis because people know full well these award voters are far from perfect and none of us has done any kind of rigorous analysis confirming a maximum possible error they could have. It's an incidence where one can find a poster trash an authority and then appeal to that same authority in argument in the span of a few paragraphs.

Reggie was playing a role that nowadays we basically recognize as a must-have for a championship team. It's a role that allows the player to constantly have small but significant amounts of positive effect all throughout the possession, and among players who truly play that role, Reggie has had the best career in history. The idea that someone like that wouldn't be a lock for Top 50 is frankly strange to me.

Me and pavlo voted cousy something like 20 straight threads. Literally all my Alts and HMs have been voted in 3x over.

And I'm sure that's a little frustrating for you.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: Reggie Miller
Alt: Paul Pierce

Been voting for these guys for a while. I'm used to that. I expect it at certain times in these projects.

I like to think I don't get frustrated, but that's not really true. I don't get frustrated because people disagree, just some of the reasons people give for disagreeing. In the end I really feel like what we do by default is base our opinions on what we thought the game was when we were younger. Typically that means traditional stats, prestigious accolades, and rings. Even when readily speak to the nuance that makes a player so clearly more than these things, we tend to merely slide the original assessment over a bit rather than starting over from whole cloth.

So with Miller what we get is a lot of people essentially saying "I see why you're saying Miller would be underrated because of his lack of volume stats, but c'mon, he can't be THAT underrated." There's an utter disbelief to the objection that to me has no rational basis because people know full well these award voters are far from perfect and none of us has done any kind of rigorous analysis confirming a maximum possible error they could have. It's an incidence where one can find a poster trash an authority and then appeal to that same authority in argument in the span of a few paragraphs.

Reggie was playing a role that nowadays we basically recognize as a must-have for a championship team. It's a role that allows the player to constantly have small but significant amounts of positive effect all throughout the possession, and among players who truly play that role, Reggie has had the best career in history. The idea that someone like that wouldn't be a lock for Top 50 is frankly strange to me.

Actually, unless you are just referring to 3pt shooting and flopping, I would say the role Reggie played is practically obsolete now. His weakness with the ball is the complete opposite with the way the vast majority of perimeter play has trended. Nobody has the patience to wait for an off the ball guy to run around in circles for 15 seconds trying to get open anymore. Why should they when it's perfectly acceptable now for any guard to pull up at any time and chuck his own shot off the dribble? Reggie was the purest of "off" guards, but those have largely gone the way of the pure points. Now everybody wants to be a tweener, and the one great SG plays the game like a chucking PG and in fact was called a PG all last season.

Hmm.

The fact that guys who play the 1 are now more ball dominant than they used isn't a rebuttal against the assertion that the 2 has become more off-ball, the two things by definition happen at the same time.

Back in Reggie's era the ideal 2 guard was an iso scorer and a 2 guard who played off-ball shooting 3's was basically not a thing. Now it's flipped.

The idea that you'd say Reggie's style is obsolete because of the "run around in circles for 15 seconds" is just weird. The whole point is that you don't have to wait for that player because you're not trying to get him a shot every possession. Rather, with every move he makes he distorts the defense and you attack the moment there's an opening.

Franky it makes no more sense to bring up waiting for 15 seconds for Reggie than it does for a guy who just stands in a corner. Yeah, you don't pass it to the guy in the corner unless there's an opening, but that doesn't mean you're standing around without any other means of attack.

It's also just so damn weird to me to say that the guy who until recently was the all-time leader in 3's, in a sport where now 3's basically define modern strategy, is obsolete. Basically all perimeter players who didn't shoot 3's back then are obsolete now. The ones who did are the archetypes for modern play.

BTW, volume stats ARE stats, and for a reason. While the number varies a bit through the ages, generally speaking there are about 95-100 possessions per team per game. It gets increasingly hard to say if you are Reggie, that hey, I know you guys had 80 other possessions, but it was my 13 shots and 3 assists a game that made you guys winners! He contributed to his team's success on a much smaller percentage of their possessions than let's say a Russell Westbrook did last season.

Career Per 100 Possessions:
Iverson 33.7pts 4.7reb 7.8ast
Wilkins 34.7pts 9.3reb 3.5ast
Westbrook 33.8pts 9.2reb 11.8ast
Miller 27.5pts 4.5reb 4.5ast

Without even taking into account minutes, where Iverson in particular was famous for ironmanning 40+ min a night, Reggie's lack of "volume stats" is precisely leaving a whole hell of a lot more for his teammates to do to earn a victory.

Production is not impact. Extreme primacy for a star means extreme predictability unless he's an expert passer.

From my perspective, Reggie didn't "leave" work to be done by others, he enabled them to play at their best instead of just standing around passively underachieving like a typical Iverson teammate. This is in the realm of basketball philosophy here so we're not going to settle this, and that's fine, but know that the arguments you're making are basically the same ones I used to make back in the day. It's not some mystery here. I understand your view, which was the dominant view among fans in the '90s, but basketball is not baseball. One player dominating the action is rarely good for his teammates.

[trex_8063]

Vote Paul Pierce

Pierce has a high value offensive role as a ball handler, passer, creator and floor spacer with solid defense. His longevity is tremendous still going strong 15 years into his career and has good moments in the playoffs.

Who's your alternate?

[Winsome Gerbil]

I am a little fuzzy on how exactly the myth of the lesser guys who are "winners" compared to the MVP candidates who are "losers" has sprung up. Well, I'm not that fuzzy actually. I know how it springs up -- a guy gets on a winning team with a bunch of other top players, and suddenly that bleeds over and they become "winners" because they have talented teammates. Nonetheless I want to illustrate the dubiousness of that myth.

So here are the team records of guys who "do it right" vs. guys who "do it wrong" when they are in a one star/clearly their franchise's #1 type of setting:

Reggie Miller
period of clear #1ness: 1989-90 to 1998-99 (from 1999-00 onward Jalen Rose and then Jermaine O'Neal took over as leading scorers)
89-90: 42-40
90-91: 41-41
91-92: 40-42
92-93: 41-41
93-94: 47-35
94-95: 52-30
95-96: 52-30
96-97: 39-43
97-98: 58-24
98-99: 33-17 (54-28 pace)
------------------
Avg: 46.6 wins

Allen Iverson
period of clear #1ness: 1998-99 to 2005-06 (97-98 can be argued, but was only a 22pt scorer at time, so not the A.I. of legend)
98-99: 28-22 (46-36 pace)
99-00: 49-33
00-01: 56-26
01-02: 43-39
02-03: 48-34
03-04: 33-49 (only played in 48 games)
04-05: 43-39
05-06: 38-44
------------------
Avg: 44.5 wins

Paul Pierce
period of clear #1ness: 2000-01 to 2006-07 (could have been 99-00, Antoine Walker's chucking blurs the beginning date)
00-01: 36-46
01-02: 49-33
02-03: 44-38
03-04: 36-46
04-05: 45-37
05-06: 33-49
06-07: 24-58 (only played in 47 games)
------------------
Avg: 38.1 wins

Russell Westbrook
period of clear #1ness: 2016-17, and largely 2014-15
14-15: 45-37 (Durant plays in 27 games, Westbrook plays in 67, team goes 40-27 when he plays, 5-10 when he does not)
16-17: 47-35
------------------
Avg: 46.0 wins (with the messy 14-15 asterisk of course, otherwise 47.0 for the single 16-17 season)

Ray Allen
period of clear #1ness: 2003-04 to 2006-07 (was the best of Big 3 in Milwaulkee, but not clear cut #1)
03-04: 37-45 (only played in 56games, but only 25-31 with him)
04-05: 52-30
05-06: 35-47
06-07: 31-51 (only played in 55games, but only 22-33 with him)
------------------
Avg: 38.8 wins

Dominique Wilkins
period of clear #1ness: 1984-85 to 1992-93 (actually was still clear #1 in 1993-94, but traded midseason)
84-85: 34-48
85-86: 50-32
86-87: 57-25
87-88: 50-32
88-89: 52-30
89-90: 41-41
90-91: 43-39
91-92: 38-44
92-93: 43-39
------------------
Avg: 46.4 wins

Kevin Garnett
period of clear #1ness: 1998-99 to 2006-07 (Starbury still there in 98-99, but only played in 18 games)
98-99: 25-25 (41-41 pace)
99-00: 50-32
00-01: 47-35
01-02: 50-32
02-03: 51-31
03-04: 58-24
04-05: 44-38
05-06: 33-49
06-07: 32-50
------------------
Avg: 45.1 wins



So...excuse me if I don't quite see this myth of "winners" doing it right and "losers" doing it wrong play out when guys are in somewhat comparable situations. What I do see is some stars getting lucky enough to go somewhere else and play with other stars and get their reputations burnished with "being a winner", while other guys get left behind and therefore declared "losers" for doing it wrong.

[mikejames23]

^ If we go by that list, Reggie Miller would be voted #1 after all. I suppose Dr. MJ was right all along.

[mikejames23]

Production is not impact. Extreme primacy for a star means extreme predictability unless he's an expert passer.

From my perspective, Reggie didn't "leave" work to be done by others, he enabled them to play at their best instead of just standing around passively underachieving like a typical Iverson teammate. This is in the realm of basketball philosophy here so we're not going to settle this, and that's fine, but know that the arguments you're making are basically the same ones I used to make back in the day. It's not some mystery here. I understand your view, which was the dominant view among fans in the '90s, but basketball is not baseball. One player dominating the action is rarely good for his teammates.

Dean Oliver's Team O-Rating analysis - rather simple one, showed we need stars with high usage rates after all. Even if that meant producing at lower individual O-Ratings. Frankly, it just means that you need a 120 O-Rating type player in Dikembe Mutombo to make up for your lack of efficiency. The immense benefit Iverson gives to a team without good spacing isn't impressive to you? (relative to competition in the 40's). When playoff defenses get tighter, and role players begin to disappear, the value of high usage players becomes all the more apparent.

[dhsilv2]

Guys like Manu, and to a lesser extent Reggie, are hard to assess because they never faced much adversity. They always had strong teammates, good coaches. They were on winning teams from the moment they entered the league. It's almost a separate class of guys. I'm very open to the idea that Manu was more talented than many guys. I flat think he WAS more talented than Reggie. If you wanted to argue he was more talented than Richmond or Allen I wouldn't think you were crazy. Its an unproven hypothesis, but the eye test always suggested such a thing. But the thing is he never had that pressure on him to perform while other teams keyed on him. To carry sad sack teammates. To overcome shoddy coaching. As he's aged he's been able to drift back into a low minutes role player. At this point he's played in 992 games, and averaged only 25.8min and 13.6pts. My eye test and numerous metrics suggest he was much better than those numbers -- indeed on numbers alone he probably does not even belong in this Top 100 project. But I can't put a guy like that way up the charts over guys who were perennial All NBA types and MVP candidates and as their team's #1.

Are we not more or less moving into all number 2s or guys who should have been? McHale was mostly a bench guy, was never the man, and we have him in. He played more minutes at his peak but manu has him beat in all nba count.

And if diversity matters, well McHale played on the celtics lol.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Guys like Manu, and to a lesser extent Reggie, are hard to assess because they never faced much adversity. They always had strong teammates, good coaches. They were on winning teams from the moment they entered the league. It's almost a separate class of guys. I'm very open to the idea that Manu was more talented than many guys. I flat think he WAS more talented than Reggie. If you wanted to argue he was more talented than Richmond or Allen I wouldn't think you were crazy. Its an unproven hypothesis, but the eye test always suggested such a thing. But the thing is he never had that pressure on him to perform while other teams keyed on him. To carry sad sack teammates. To overcome shoddy coaching. As he's aged he's been able to drift back into a low minutes role player. At this point he's played in 992 games, and averaged only 25.8min and 13.6pts. My eye test and numerous metrics suggest he was much better than those numbers -- indeed on numbers alone he probably does not even belong in this Top 100 project. But I can't put a guy like that way up the charts over guys who were perennial All NBA types and MVP candidates and as their team's #1.

Are we not more or less moving into all number 2s or guys who should have been? McHale was mostly a bench guy, was never the man, and we have him in. He played more minutes at his peak but manu has him beat in all nba count.

And if diversity matters, well McHale played on the celtics lol.

Well frankly I have always thought McHale was ranked too high, because again, being on a big winner etc. He's also of course got the post game of all post games to hang his hat on, and it truly was a thing of beauty. But I have long since relooked and relooked at his career and you see less of a complete player. He spent half of his career as a 6th man. He wasn't a strong rebounder, which given his build is no shock. He notoriously even in the day was an utter blackhole, so you got his scoring, but there was not much synergy beyond it. Even if you were open on the kick the ball wasn't coming. And he really failed the big test when Bird went down. People miss that. But when Bird went down people were hoping/expecting that McHale was going to be unleashed to show his own superstardom. But that's not how it worked. Without Bird his efficiency plummeted, and the Celtics sunk all the way toward .500. Which raises some real red flags about how McHale would have done without Bird's passing and all the attention he drew away. He's clearly a major big in history, and what he did well he did magnificently, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of him being ranked up with guys who carried their franchises, because McHale never did, and there is some evidence he might not have really been able to.

[Clyde Frazier]

This reggie vs. ray ray comparison has gotta be one of the closest in the entire project. 2 of the best shooters of all time, almost identical longevity, both had varying levels of playoff success, and each have 1 or 2 points in their favor. If this came to a runoff, i may slightly give reggie the edge given how effective he was carrying an offensive load with good, albeit not star packed teams around him. I don't think there's a wrong answer here, though.

[Dr Positivity]

Vote Paul Pierce

Pierce has a high value offensive role as a ball handler, passer, creator and floor spacer with solid defense. His longevity is tremendous still going strong 15 years into his career and has good moments in the playoffs.

Who's your alternate?

Oops, I edited in my vote (Miller)

[Winsome Gerbil]

This reggie vs. ray ray comparison has gotta be one of the closest in the entire project. 2 of the best shooters of all time, almost identical longevity, both had varying levels of playoff success, and each have 1 or 2 points in their favor. If this came to a runoff, i may slightly give reggie the edge given how effective he was carrying an offensive load with good, albeit not star packed teams around him. I don't think there's a wrong answer here, though.

I agree its very close, and a conversation I'd be happy to be having in about 15 votes.

[trex_8063]

Spoiler:

I am a little fuzzy on how exactly the myth of the lesser guys who are "winners" compared to the MVP candidates who are "losers" has sprung up. Well, I'm not that fuzzy actually. I know how it springs up -- a guy gets on a winning team with a bunch of other top players, and suddenly that bleeds over and they become "winners" because they have talented teammates. Nonetheless I want to illustrate the dubiousness of that myth.

So here are the team records of guys who "do it right" vs. guys who "do it wrong" when they are in a one star/clearly their franchise's #1 type of setting:

Reggie Miller
period of clear #1ness: 1989-90 to 1998-99 (from 1999-00 onward Jalen Rose and then Jermaine O'Neal took over as leading scorers)
89-90: 42-40
90-91: 41-41
91-92: 40-42
92-93: 41-41
93-94: 47-35
94-95: 52-30
95-96: 52-30
96-97: 39-43
97-98: 58-24
98-99: 33-17 (54-28 pace)
------------------
Avg: 46.6 wins

Allen Iverson
period of clear #1ness: 1998-99 to 2005-06 (97-98 can be argued, but was only a 22pt scorer at time, so not the A.I. of legend)
98-99: 28-22 (46-36 pace)
99-00: 49-33
00-01: 56-26
01-02: 43-39
02-03: 48-34
03-04: 33-49 (only played in 48 games)
04-05: 43-39
05-06: 38-44
------------------
Avg: 44.5 wins

Paul Pierce
period of clear #1ness: 2000-01 to 2006-07 (could have been 99-00, Antoine Walker's chucking blurs the beginning date)
00-01: 36-46
01-02: 49-33
02-03: 44-38
03-04: 36-46
04-05: 45-37
05-06: 33-49
06-07: 24-58 (only played in 47 games)
------------------
Avg: 38.1 wins

Russell Westbrook
period of clear #1ness: 2016-17, and largely 2014-15
14-15: 45-37 (Durant plays in 27 games, Westbrook plays in 67, team goes 40-27 when he plays, 5-10 when he does not)
16-17: 47-35
------------------
Avg: 46.0 wins (with the messy 14-15 asterisk of course, otherwise 47.0 for the single 16-17 season)

Ray Allen
period of clear #1ness: 2003-04 to 2006-07 (was the best of Big 3 in Milwaulkee, but not clear cut #1)
03-04: 37-45 (only played in 56games, but only 25-31 with him)
04-05: 52-30
05-06: 35-47
06-07: 31-51 (only played in 55games, but only 22-33 with him)
------------------
Avg: 38.8 wins

Dominique Wilkins
period of clear #1ness: 1984-85 to 1992-93 (actually was still clear #1 in 1993-94, but traded midseason)
84-85: 34-48
85-86: 50-32
86-87: 57-25
87-88: 50-32
88-89: 52-30
89-90: 41-41
90-91: 43-39
91-92: 38-44
92-93: 43-39
------------------
Avg: 46.4 wins

Kevin Garnett
period of clear #1ness: 1998-99 to 2006-07 (Starbury still there in 98-99, but only played in 18 games)
98-99: 25-25 (41-41 pace)
99-00: 50-32
00-01: 47-35
01-02: 50-32
02-03: 51-31
03-04: 58-24
04-05: 44-38
05-06: 33-49
06-07: 32-50
------------------
Avg: 45.1 wins



So...excuse me if I don't quite see this myth of "winners" doing it right and "losers" doing it wrong play out when guys are in somewhat comparable situations. What I do see is some stars getting lucky enough to go somewhere else and play with other stars and get their reputations burnished with "being a winner", while other guys get left behind and therefore declared "losers" for doing it wrong.

One thing that is repeatedly stated or at least implied in the vast majority of your argumentation is whoever has the highest ppg is the team's best player or the "#1" (and presumably that we can roughly tell the hierarchy of 2nd/3rd/4th-best by similar standards). Now personally, I believe there are a wealth of examples that very clearly illuminate that this is not consistently the case (Bill Russell, Ben Wallace, Rudy Gobert, Steve Nash, etc). In some of these instances, the ppg premise would lead one widely off the mark.
fwiw, the absence of '08 Garnett in your above lists is an example of this tendency, as he was quite clearly the best player on that team.

I also interpret (maybe mistakenly, idk) a subtext or assumption in your posts that the superior scorer can easily be determined by the higher ppg (or points per whatever other unit of time/possessions).


I will again submit to you that these assumptions are not always correct. At any rate, suffice to say that many here don't agree with these foundational premises.


Beyond that, I want to take a look at some of the records that Paul Pierce had before the Boston Three Party, and perhaps view them in a new way.....

You've frequently championed DeMarcus Cousins on this forum, and iirc stated you may be giving him some support before the end of this project. I don't think the supporting casts Cousins had is much worse than the support Pierce had for the majority of the pre-Boston Three Party era (I don't care what Walker's ppg averages were, he was not a star-level player). Cousins' records in his first 7 seasons:

'11: 24-58
'12: 22-44 (27-55, prorated to full season)
'13: 28-54
'14: 28-54
15: 29-53
'16: 33-49
'17: 35-47

Avg: 29.2 wins

If that's good enough to warrant top 100 consideration, what about someone who managed a little better, and did so for approximately twice as long as Cousins has even been in the league?

[Winsome Gerbil]

Spoiler:

I am a little fuzzy on how exactly the myth of the lesser guys who are "winners" compared to the MVP candidates who are "losers" has sprung up. Well, I'm not that fuzzy actually. I know how it springs up -- a guy gets on a winning team with a bunch of other top players, and suddenly that bleeds over and they become "winners" because they have talented teammates. Nonetheless I want to illustrate the dubiousness of that myth.

So here are the team records of guys who "do it right" vs. guys who "do it wrong" when they are in a one star/clearly their franchise's #1 type of setting:

Reggie Miller
period of clear #1ness: 1989-90 to 1998-99 (from 1999-00 onward Jalen Rose and then Jermaine O'Neal took over as leading scorers)
89-90: 42-40
90-91: 41-41
91-92: 40-42
92-93: 41-41
93-94: 47-35
94-95: 52-30
95-96: 52-30
96-97: 39-43
97-98: 58-24
98-99: 33-17 (54-28 pace)
------------------
Avg: 46.6 wins

Allen Iverson
period of clear #1ness: 1998-99 to 2005-06 (97-98 can be argued, but was only a 22pt scorer at time, so not the A.I. of legend)
98-99: 28-22 (46-36 pace)
99-00: 49-33
00-01: 56-26
01-02: 43-39
02-03: 48-34
03-04: 33-49 (only played in 48 games)
04-05: 43-39
05-06: 38-44
------------------
Avg: 44.5 wins

Paul Pierce
period of clear #1ness: 2000-01 to 2006-07 (could have been 99-00, Antoine Walker's chucking blurs the beginning date)
00-01: 36-46
01-02: 49-33
02-03: 44-38
03-04: 36-46
04-05: 45-37
05-06: 33-49
06-07: 24-58 (only played in 47 games)
------------------
Avg: 38.1 wins

Russell Westbrook
period of clear #1ness: 2016-17, and largely 2014-15
14-15: 45-37 (Durant plays in 27 games, Westbrook plays in 67, team goes 40-27 when he plays, 5-10 when he does not)
16-17: 47-35
------------------
Avg: 46.0 wins (with the messy 14-15 asterisk of course, otherwise 47.0 for the single 16-17 season)

Ray Allen
period of clear #1ness: 2003-04 to 2006-07 (was the best of Big 3 in Milwaulkee, but not clear cut #1)
03-04: 37-45 (only played in 56games, but only 25-31 with him)
04-05: 52-30
05-06: 35-47
06-07: 31-51 (only played in 55games, but only 22-33 with him)
------------------
Avg: 38.8 wins

Dominique Wilkins
period of clear #1ness: 1984-85 to 1992-93 (actually was still clear #1 in 1993-94, but traded midseason)
84-85: 34-48
85-86: 50-32
86-87: 57-25
87-88: 50-32
88-89: 52-30
89-90: 41-41
90-91: 43-39
91-92: 38-44
92-93: 43-39
------------------
Avg: 46.4 wins

Kevin Garnett
period of clear #1ness: 1998-99 to 2006-07 (Starbury still there in 98-99, but only played in 18 games)
98-99: 25-25 (41-41 pace)
99-00: 50-32
00-01: 47-35
01-02: 50-32
02-03: 51-31
03-04: 58-24
04-05: 44-38
05-06: 33-49
06-07: 32-50
------------------
Avg: 45.1 wins



So...excuse me if I don't quite see this myth of "winners" doing it right and "losers" doing it wrong play out when guys are in somewhat comparable situations. What I do see is some stars getting lucky enough to go somewhere else and play with other stars and get their reputations burnished with "being a winner", while other guys get left behind and therefore declared "losers" for doing it wrong.

One thing that is repeatedly stated or at least implied in the vast majority of your argumentation is whoever has the highest ppg is the team's best player or the "#1" (and presumably that we can roughly tell the hierarchy of 2nd/3rd/4th-best by similar standards). Now personally, I believe there are a wealth of examples that very clearly illuminate that this is not consistently the case (Bill Russell, Ben Wallace, Rudy Gobert, Steve Nash, etc). In some of these instances, the ppg premise would lead one widely off the mark.
fwiw, the absence of '08 Garnett in your above lists is another example of this.

I also interpret (maybe mistakenly, idk) a subtext or assumption in your posts that the superior scorer can easily be determined by the higher ppg (or points per whatever other unit of time/possessions).


I will again submit to you that these assumptions are not always correct. At any rate, suffice to say that many here don't agree with these foundational premises.


Beyond that, I want to take a look at some of the records that Paul Pierce had before the Boston Three Party, and perhaps view them in a new way.....

You've frequently championed DeMarcus Cousins on this forum, and iirc stated you may be giving him some support before the end of this project. I don't think the supporting casts Cousins had is much worse than the support Pierce had for the majority of the pre-Boston Three Party era (I don't care what Walker's ppg averages were, he was not a star-level player). Cousins' records in his first 7 seasons:

'11: 24-58
'12: 22-44 (27-55, prorated to full season)
'13: 28-54
'14: 28-54
15: 29-53
'16: 33-49
'17: 35-47

Avg: 29.2 wins

If that's good enough to warrant top 100 consideration, what about someone who managed a little better, and did so for approximately twice as long as Cousins has even been in the league?

A few technical notes:

1) really what I did for all of the above players was not start the clock until they were clearly their team's #1, and hence that would have been 4 years ago in Cousins' case (in 2012-13 he was still a 17ppg scorer being held back by one of his numerous genius coaches in Keith Smart, who was busy telling anybody who would listen to his verbal vomit that the team didn't have any stars and therefore would feature nobody, despite having 2 of the eventual Top 5 scorers in the NBA on the same roster in Cousins and IT)
2) also, for that matter really the numbers after arriving in New Orleans shouldn't count as solo star stuff anymore, since he's now found his fellow star, and is likely to, magically of course, start winning a lot more. No doubt because he's suddenly learned how to win.
3) as I've also detailed repeatedly in the past on this site, one of the huge problems for Sac was always that they were basically the worst franchise in the NBA without Cousins. Everytime he got hurt, they'd damn near drop every game. In fact one year they DID drop every game he missed, and went 0-11 without him. It was pathetic and makes the overall numbers look worse in Cousins' case, especially in comparison to a guy like Pierce who rarely missed games in his early career. In any case, from what I recall the overall pace with a healthy Cousins was more like 33-34 wins. The pace without him was something like 16-17 wins.
4) for what it's worth Pierce's teams' sucked, but they were stable, and that was always the x-factor in Sac. Through his years as a #1 Pierce only had two coaches -- Jim O'Brien and Doc Rivers and his support crew was marginal, but full of long term steady pros, rather than being turned over wholesale every 12-18 months, coaches and GMs included, like Cousins' was.


But anyway, that stuff is all kind of beside the point because Pierce is not being compared to Cousins at this point, nor fighting to be included on the list at all. He's likely a first ballot HOF and obviously in. The problem is he's being elevated up past numerous MVPs and lower tier legends, and it's how he matches up to their accomplishments and comparisons that should matter. I don't mind at all a conversation of Pierce v. Miller v. Allen. It's a good one. The problem is it reeks of modern day hype and recency bias if it's being had so soon.

P.S. While I listed the average accumulated records just to demonstrate that no single team star short of an all timer of LeBron's stature is going to run around winning 60 and dominating the league, the particular totals weren't meant as a meaningful comparison. It's a much more fair comparison than comparing a solo star to a Big Three team, but there are still 1000 variables separating different players' teams and franchises. All I was pointing out is that everybody, hyped "white hats" or dumped on "black hats" alike, had similar luck and a natural cap on what they could accomplish alone. If the white hats were magically "winners" "doing it right" you would expect them to be winning significantly more in similar circumstances. They of course did not. Almost nobody could on a true single-featured guy team. Hakeem didn't do much better in the years between Sampson's decline and Drexler's arrival

[Doctor MJ]

Production is not impact. Extreme primacy for a star means extreme predictability unless he's an expert passer.

From my perspective, Reggie didn't "leave" work to be done by others, he enabled them to play at their best instead of just standing around passively underachieving like a typical Iverson teammate. This is in the realm of basketball philosophy here so we're not going to settle this, and that's fine, but know that the arguments you're making are basically the same ones I used to make back in the day. It's not some mystery here. I understand your view, which was the dominant view among fans in the '90s, but basketball is not baseball. One player dominating the action is rarely good for his teammates.

Dean Oliver's Team O-Rating analysis - rather simple one, showed we need stars with high usage rates after all. Even if that meant producing at lower individual O-Ratings. Frankly, it just means that you need a 120 O-Rating type player in Dikembe Mutombo to make up for your lack of efficiency. The immense benefit Iverson gives to a team without good spacing isn't impressive to you? (relative to competition in the 40's). When playoff defenses get tighter, and role players begin to disappear, the value of high usage players becomes all the more apparent.

In general Iverson's +/- stats are rather stunningly mediocre for someone with such stature and I'm not aware of any evidence specifically from the playoffs changes that. So when you talk Iverson's "immense benefit", I don't actually see that.

Fundamentally here, I'm just not a believer that one-on-five is a way to try to beat good teams. Yes more onus is put on the alpha when things get tighter, but that doesn't mean that your alpha does the right things. In general if a guy can't tell whether he has a good shot or not then he's not good at deciding when to pass. If you have a player like that who prefers to play hero ball, then you're going to play right into the defense's hands with your predictability.

[SactoKingsFan]

Sticking with Pierce as my top candidate for his overall game, well-rounded skillset and great longevity. With prime Pierce you get volume scoring (pre Big 3) on good to very good efficiency (02-07: 55.5 TS%), great efficiency from 08-12 (59.7 TS℅) with reduced offensive load, solid/underrated defense, playmaking and rebounding. Pierce was also able to successfully adjust his game to fit within a co-starring role on a title contender. Also had some valuable post prime seasons for Nets and Wizards that add to his total career value.

His pre Big 3 Celtics usually weren't anything special on offense but I'm willing to give Pierce the benefit of the doubt since his offensive support was pretty unimpressive. From 99-03 his running mate was Antoine Walker, a very inefficient chucker that never saw a shot he didn’t like and regularly took more shots than Pierce.

Vote: Paul Pierce

Alt Vote: Reggie Miller

Next guys on my radar: Mutombo, Allen, P. Gasol, Howard, Thurmond, Mourning, Manu, Billups

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[Doctor MJ]

I am a little fuzzy on how exactly the myth of the lesser guys who are "winners" compared to the MVP candidates who are "losers" has sprung up. Well, I'm not that fuzzy actually. I know how it springs up -- a guy gets on a winning team with a bunch of other top players, and suddenly that bleeds over and they become "winners" because they have talented teammates. Nonetheless I want to illustrate the dubiousness of that myth.

So here are the team records of guys who "do it right" vs. guys who "do it wrong" when they are in a one star/clearly their franchise's #1 type of setting:

<snip>

So...excuse me if I don't quite see this myth of "winners" doing it right and "losers" doing it wrong play out when guys are in somewhat comparable situations. What I do see is some stars getting lucky enough to go somewhere else and play with other stars and get their reputations burnished with "being a winner", while other guys get left behind and therefore declared "losers" for doing it wrong.

I don't think in terms of "winners" and "losers", but I do put a lot of thought into scalability. That is, can this player play like this and it result in a great title contender?

Now, this doesn't mean Robert Horry is a "better" player than Iverson simply because his game was easy to fit in with stars as that's what role players are supposed to do, but some stars work better with talented teammates than others do. Most typically it's individualistic players who struggle to get the most out of their talented teammates. And more specifically, the classic red flag for something like this is a guy who shoots a lot of shots and does so inefficiently. Such a player in general is showing an inability to recognize a bad situation and get the ball to a player in a better situation.

Iverson is one of those players imho. He had talented teammates brought in who looked unbelievably bad with him, and frankly that just makes sense to me.

What about the fact that he's doing "more" than Miller. If doing more than Horry made comparison silly, why not Miller? Because Miller is doing star work with balanced primacy. Going heavier on the primacy than that to me isn't a clear cut good thing. It's often a bad thing.

What about the idea that Iverson did all the offensive work so his teammates can concentrate on defense? That's a decent theory, but from what I've seen over the years is that it doesn't actually ring all that true. Yes in theory a teammate can do that. In Boston KG quite clearly focused on defense because of Pierce and Allen and the team was better off for it. But most non-alphas out there are not limited primarily by getting tired.

You can't build an elite defense just by taking 4 of your 5 starters and having them focus on defense. You need defensive talent, and you need great coaching. How easy is that to get? Well, Iverson's 76ers only managed a short blip where their defense became elite and then spent a lot of years mired in a mediocrity which Iverson supporters blamed on the teammates...but the the +/- data has long been pretty clear: The team wasn't that much better with Iverson than without him.

What all that says to me is that the 1-on-5 offense, 4-on-5 defense thing isn't any easy model to pull off, which means that any offensive player that works best like that isn't very impressive even before you remember that teams almost never win titles by only being great on one side of the ball.

So yeah, whatever the actual records were, I know how to build teams that make use of a role like Miller's that can win championships, I find it hard to do the same with the Iverson role, and since I really have no reason to think Iverson was more impactful than Miller on their actual teams, and Miller continued that impact for far longer, and Miller had a great attitude while Iverson was toxic, the choice between them is easy.