Rank all time great offensive players by tiers

[Elpolo_14]

My ranking of all time offensive player ( BY CAREER ) with this specific tier
1-Goat tier
- Bron
- Curry
- MJ
- Nash
- Magic
- Jokic
2-Borderline Goat ( IF GOAT TIER DIDN'T EXIST )
- Oscar
- Kareem
- Shaq
- Harden
- Kobe
- CP3
3-All time great
- KD
- West
- Dirk
- Luka
- Bird

HM - Barkley / K.Malone / Wilt / Wade / SGA( for his peak ) / AI

[penbeast0]

I see Euroleague has trolled some more younger, open minded folks.

Eventually you realize certain posters have their cemented view points and will never change said view points. It's often best to never engaged with said posters and instead interact with people who are looking to learn rather than flex their blow-up dolls.

Try not to be this type of poster who attacks other posters and provides no content. Engage with posts, and if you really feel a poster has no value to you, put him on ignore.

[Top10alltime]

My ranking of all time offensive player ( BY CAREER ) with this specific tier
1-Goat tier
- Bron
- Curry
- MJ
- Nash
- Magic
- Jokic
2-Borderline Goat ( IF GOAT TIER DIDN'T EXIST )
- Oscar
- Kareem
- Shaq
- Harden
- Kobe
- CP3
3-All time great
- KD
- West
- Dirk
- Luka
- Bird

HM - Barkley / K.Malone / Wilt / Wade / SGA( for his peak ) / AI

No problems with the top 16, I have a nearly identical list to that. What I like to focus on is Bird.

If Bird is there, I see no reason to exclude Dr J, and Miller from the HMs.
I also don't see a case for Bird ahead of Wade or Barkley. Even ahead of K. Malone or Wilt is questionable? Can you say why Bird is this high?

Also I don't see how AI can be this high, but then you don't include Embiid or Giannis. Even Westbrook might be better

[penbeast0]

I don't think Iverson makes my top 100. He scores a lot but does so inefficiently compared to other ATGs and has some of the worst tunnel vision I've seen in an ATG small guard.

[jalengreen]

I see Euroleague has trolled some more younger, open minded folks.

Eventually you realize certain posters have their cemented view points and will never change said view points. It's often best to never engaged with said posters and instead interact with people who are looking to learn rather than flex their blow-up dolls.

Try not to be this type of poster who attacks other posters and provides no content. Engage with posts, and if you really feel a poster has no value to you, put him on ignore.

Having your post used as a moderation example more than 3 years later has to be some sort of record

[lessthanjake]

My ranking of all time offensive player ( BY CAREER ) with this specific tier
1-Goat tier
- Bron
- Curry
- MJ
- Nash
- Magic
- Jokic
2-Borderline Goat ( IF GOAT TIER DIDN'T EXIST )
- Oscar
- Kareem
- Shaq
- Harden
- Kobe
- CP3
3-All time great
- KD
- West
- Dirk
- Luka
- Bird

HM - Barkley / K.Malone / Wilt / Wade / SGA( for his peak ) / AI

This seems roughly right to me. Of course, I don’t agree entirely but my quibbles are relatively minor. One thing I do want to note is that I think Barkley is underrated by merely being listed as a honorable mention. I think he’s actually in that “Borderline Goat” category or at least the one below it. Barkley’s offense was extremely good.

Even past his prime in the late 1990s, Barkley’s three-year ORAPM from 1997-1999 was 2nd only to Jordan (according to the NBArapm website). Other RAPM measures that are only based on regular season (NBArapm’s measure includes playoffs too) have him slightly lower than that in that timeframe, but still one of the very top few offensive players in terms of impact. And, again, these are not in prime years from him, aside from maybe 1997.

We don’t have a whole lot of RAPM data outside of that, but we do have some other RAPM-related info for earlier years. Squared’s 1985-1996 RAPM has Barkley with the 3rd highest ORAPM of that era, behind only Jordan and Magic, and with Bird being the only other person even close. Meanwhile, Engelmann’s RAPM approximation for the 1990s using quarter-by-quarter box data has Barkley behind only Jordan and Kevin Johnson. He’s actually barely ahead of Magic, though obviously the sample in the 1990s for Magic isn’t as high as for others.

We also actually have Pollack’s plus-minus data for Barkley’s years with the 76ers. It’s not RAPM, but it does provide some info. Starting in 1986 (i.e. the first year Barkley was a star), his offensive on-off was (in chronological order): +8.2, +3.2, +4.2, +10.6, +8.9, +11.9, and +14.3. That averages out to just below +9 offensive on-off in those years with the 76ers. That sort of number falls short of the best timespans we see for the GOAT-tier guys. They tend to have spans above +10 and sometimes even around +15. But it’s still really good, and the last several years in Philadelphia actually averaged being in that range.

More generally, we also know that Barkley took the 1989 and 1990 Sixers to the 2nd and 3rd best ORTGs in the NBA, which should be regarded as a really impressive achievement if you take a look at their rosters. He then led the league’s #1 offense in Phoenix his first two years there, though that team was already good offensively before he got there, so I think the 2nd and 3rd with the Sixers is even more impressive.

Barkley’s overall impact gets mitigated a good bit by the fact that he was genuinely a negative defender, but as an offensive player I think he’s got an argument to be as high as somewhere near the bottom of the top 10.

[OhayoKD]

We don’t have a whole lot of RAPM data outside of that, but we do have some other RAPM-related info for earlier years. Squared’s 1985-1996 RAPM has Barkley with the 3rd highest ORAPM of that era, behind only Jordan and Magic, and with Bird being the only other person even close.

Alright there's some points of clarity I think that should be made for posterity

1. That RAPM is far far away from completion and Barkley's "sample" here is basically non-existent


Barkley's 10-year rapm comes from a sample of 178 games (so a little more than 2 seasons worth). Moreover since this is rapm, the off-sample is not 178 games, but 178 small snippets of game spread across 10 seasons.

2. The two MJ's are massively oversampled at the moment which means their scores are being pulled further from the mean artifically. Would more even sampling propel Barkley to a tie with Jordan like it did for Magic? Probably not, but it's worth keeping in mind.

[Ambrose]

All I know is my top tier, no order.

LeBron James
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Nikola Jokic
Steph Curry
Steve Nash

[lessthanjake]

We don’t have a whole lot of RAPM data outside of that, but we do have some other RAPM-related info for earlier years. Squared’s 1985-1996 RAPM has Barkley with the 3rd highest ORAPM of that era, behind only Jordan and Magic, and with Bird being the only other person even close.

Alright there's some points of clarity I think that should be made for posterity

1. That RAPM is far far away from completion and Barkley's "sample" here is basically non-existent


Barkley's 10-year rapm comes from a sample of 178 games (so a little more than 2 seasons worth). Moreover since this is rapm, the off-sample is not 178 games, but 178 small snippets of game spread across 10 seasons.

I definitely wouldn’t say over 2 seasons worth of data is a “basically non-existent” sample size. It’s not a large enough sample that noise isn’t a concern, but it’s enough to be meaningful. In terms of noise, it’s akin to how we’d treat normal 2-year or 3-year RAPM—which is that it’s not as high a sample size as we’d like but does likely give us a good understanding of the general zone a player landed in.

Of course, with Squared, leaving aside the sample size itself, it’s not complete data, but that’s always a necessary caveat with Squared’s data, and it’s why I said “we don’t have a whole of lot RAPM data outside of [play-by-play era RAPM data].” It’s possible that Barkley would look worse with complete data (though the opposite is true too, and this sort of thing is also true in general when we look at 2-year or 3-year RAPM instead of longer-term RAPM). But he’s most likely to actually be somewhere in the zone Squared’s data has him in. That’s the case not just because the sample size actually isn’t tiny, but also because the other data I talked about in my post is pretty consistent with it.

2. The two MJ's are massively oversampled at the moment which means their scores are being pulled further from the mean artifically. Would more even sampling propel Barkley to a tie with Jordan like it did for Magic? Probably not, but it's worth keeping in mind.

We have been over this before, and your view has essentially no real backing to it, at least when it comes to the players who don’t have genuinely tiny samples here (which doesn’t really apply to any top player of the era).

With no prior, it is true that RAPM takes some games to actually be able to get someone to a high estimate, but we can look at other RAPMs with no priors and see that top one-year RAPMs are typically about as high as top three-year and five-year RAPMs, so even just one year of data is pretty much enough for that issue to be unimportant.

After that was pointed out, you shifted to a different argument about what percent of the overall sample a player was. You’ve never been able to explain how your theory works except by just quoting a purported quote of BadGatorade briefly mentioning this concept without any explanation (which, I’ll note is a quote that cannot actually be found on these forums, so it’s unclear where you got it from). And as we’ve previously talked about, the theory is not really consistent with there being lots of players at the higher ends of the list with much smaller samples than other players. Perhaps because you don’t actually understand the claim you’re parroting, your argument on this has often gotten really muddled. For instance, you’ve tried to say that proof of this is other Bulls players doing well in Squared’s RAPM, despite the fact that (1) other Bulls players didn’t do well in the year when the Bulls were a relatively high percent of the sample but the team didn’t do great, (2) other Bulls players doing well in years where the Bulls were a relatively high percent of the sample and the team did great is consistent with the same thing being true in actual RAPM (both for those Bulls but also just highly successful teams in general), and of course no team is oversampled in normal RAPM, so your evidence does not at all require your conclusion to be right; and (3) some of the Bulls players that did well in the years you pointed to actually didn’t play much, so they were not at all an abnormally high portion of the sample (Kukoc is a good additional example of this here). Meanwhile, even just a simple glance at this list should tell us that there’s really not much of a correlation here between the sample for a player and where they rank. It’s true that the players at the very top are sampled a good deal, but that is to be expected because Squared hasn’t oversampled random teams. Rather, Squared has purposely oversampled teams with the era’s best players. In other words, you’re basically confusing correlation with causation, and justifying it with mumbo-jumbo that you can’t actually explain.

Anyways, you are of course saying this because it bothers you how well Jordan does in Squared’s data, so you can’t help yourself but try to discredit Squared’s RAPM data for Jordan anytime it is mentioned—even when, as here, it was mentioned in a post about a different player.

The fact that my post was about a different player (Barkley) bears repeating here. Squared’s data was a small piece of my post. There’s a lot more there about him and it’s all generally consistent—with him looking really great but not quite at the level of the GOAT-tier offensive guys. I’m actually not overly high on Barkley for purposes of all-time lists, since I think his defense was a real weakness (he’s like Nash in this regard), but his offense was genuinely great.

[Top10alltime]

My ranking of all time offensive player ( BY CAREER ) with this specific tier
1-Goat tier
- Bron
- Curry
- MJ
- Nash
- Magic
- Jokic
2-Borderline Goat ( IF GOAT TIER DIDN'T EXIST )
- Oscar
- Kareem
- Shaq
- Harden
- Kobe
- CP3
3-All time great
- KD
- West
- Dirk
- Luka
- Bird

HM - Barkley / K.Malone / Wilt / Wade / SGA( for his peak ) / AI

This seems roughly right to me. Of course, I don’t agree entirely but my quibbles are relatively minor. One thing I do want to note is that I think Barkley is underrated by merely being listed as a honorable mention. I think he’s actually in that “Borderline Goat” category or at least the one below it. Barkley’s offense was extremely good.

Nice one. Barkley doesn't even have a case over Kobe, CP3 offensively. Not even better than Dirk or Luka and I don't see why you would say otherwise.

[lessthanjake]

My ranking of all time offensive player ( BY CAREER ) with this specific tier
1-Goat tier
- Bron
- Curry
- MJ
- Nash
- Magic
- Jokic
2-Borderline Goat ( IF GOAT TIER DIDN'T EXIST )
- Oscar
- Kareem
- Shaq
- Harden
- Kobe
- CP3
3-All time great
- KD
- West
- Dirk
- Luka
- Bird

HM - Barkley / K.Malone / Wilt / Wade / SGA( for his peak ) / AI

This seems roughly right to me. Of course, I don’t agree entirely but my quibbles are relatively minor. One thing I do want to note is that I think Barkley is underrated by merely being listed as a honorable mention. I think he’s actually in that “Borderline Goat” category or at least the one below it. Barkley’s offense was extremely good.

Nice one. Barkley doesn't even have a case over Kobe, CP3 offensively. Not even better than Dirk or Luka and I don't see why you would say otherwise.

You “don’t see why [I] would say otherwise” but I explained in significant detail in the post you’re quoting…

I also think it shouldn’t be surprising for Barkley to be an extremely impactful offensive player. He was a virtually unstoppable post player, an incredible player in transition, an elite offensive rebounder, and a very good passer. He had a fantastic offensive skill set!

[penbeast0]

You “don’t see why [I] would say otherwise” but I explained in significant detail in the post you’re quoting…

I also think it shouldn’t be surprising for Barkley to be an extremely impactful offensive player. He was a virtually unstoppable post player, an incredible player in transition, an elite offensive rebounder, and a very good passer. He had a fantastic offensive skill set!

I think you overrate his passing; from what I saw he was capable but often careless and at times had tunnel vision. I'm perfectly good with one of the most unstoppable post players in league history, great hands and athleticism in the open court, elite offensive rebounder, and overall fantastic offensive skill set though.

[Top10alltime]

This seems roughly right to me. Of course, I don’t agree entirely but my quibbles are relatively minor. One thing I do want to note is that I think Barkley is underrated by merely being listed as a honorable mention. I think he’s actually in that “Borderline Goat” category or at least the one below it. Barkley’s offense was extremely good.

Nice one. Barkley doesn't even have a case over Kobe, CP3 offensively. Not even better than Dirk or Luka and I don't see why you would say otherwise.

You “don’t see why [I] would say otherwise” but I explained in significant detail in the post you’re quoting…

I also think it shouldn’t be surprising for Barkley to be an extremely impactful offensive player. He was a virtually unstoppable post player, an incredible player in transition, an elite offensive rebounder, and a very good passer. He had a fantastic offensive skill set!

Not good detail enough to overwrite what Luka does as a basketball player.
As a passer (lob, bounce, outlet, behind the back), facilitator, court vision, and gravity Luka takes. Luka also takes scoring and on ball vs Chuck.
Luka, a better playmaker and scorer than Charles, really shouldn't be debatable if you watched the games that Luka is a better offensive player.

As for Dirk, he's just better than Barkley as a basketball offensive force, this describes it in great detail.

Dirk was a soft trait monster, everything he did was within the flow. Constantly in early action as a screener setting drags and attacking mismatches, running off pin downs and zippers into quick hitting Js, they also loved getting into horns and quick DHOs where Dirk thrived as a hub. Through all this he promoted more flow and dispersement of touches, there were many initiators in all of his offenses and everyone stayed involved and in rhythm. Everything Dirk did was within 1-2 dribbles or even none, he perfectly exemplifies the concept of 0.5 decision making in hoop; much of Dirk’s even seemingly on-ball reps were more akin to those of a play finisher because he manufactured his looks so quickly. There’s also all that jazz with the spacing and his scoring traits but I’m sure you know the positive effects of that cus it’s talked about to death

Next up, if you have him over Kobe/CP3/Durant/West offensively, this is what I have to say to you:

I have him at 17th best offensive, clear of everyone below Wilt. So it's not like I'm hating.

[lessthanjake]

Nice one. Barkley doesn't even have a case over Kobe, CP3 offensively. Not even better than Dirk or Luka and I don't see why you would say otherwise.

You “don’t see why [I] would say otherwise” but I explained in significant detail in the post you’re quoting…

I also think it shouldn’t be surprising for Barkley to be an extremely impactful offensive player. He was a virtually unstoppable post player, an incredible player in transition, an elite offensive rebounder, and a very good passer. He had a fantastic offensive skill set!

Not good detail enough to overwrite what Luka does as a basketball player.
As a passer (lob, bounce, outlet, behind the back), facilitator, court vision, and gravity Luka takes. Luka also takes scoring and on ball vs Chuck.
Luka, a better playmaker and scorer than Charles, really shouldn't be debatable if you watched the games that Luka is a better offensive player.

As for Dirk, he's just better than Barkley as a basketball offensive force, this describes it in great detail.

Dirk was a soft trait monster, everything he did was within the flow. Constantly in early action as a screener setting drags and attacking mismatches, running off pin downs and zippers into quick hitting Js, they also loved getting into horns and quick DHOs where Dirk thrived as a hub. Through all this he promoted more flow and dispersement of touches, there were many initiators in all of his offenses and everyone stayed involved and in rhythm. Everything Dirk did was within 1-2 dribbles or even none, he perfectly exemplifies the concept of 0.5 decision making in hoop; much of Dirk’s even seemingly on-ball reps were more akin to those of a play finisher because he manufactured his looks so quickly. There’s also all that jazz with the spacing and his scoring traits but I’m sure you know the positive effects of that cus it’s talked about to death

Next up, if you have him over Kobe/CP3/Durant/West offensively, this is what I have to say to you:

I have him at 17th best offensive, clear of everyone below Wilt. So it's not like I'm hating.

With Luka, the RAPM data is just not all that great for him. I tend to think that when RAPM data isn’t very good but the box stats are great, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but that still wouldn’t result in a conclusion that Luka is better than Barkley offensively IMO. We can talk about their skill sets, but they’re very different players who play very different styles, so they are each quite a lot better than the other at certain things. Their styles are both more suited to their own era than the other guy’s era, since Barkley was an incredible post player, while Luka obviously plays a much more heliocentric style. But I think Barkley was more offensively impactful in his era than Luka is in this era, and I do think that conclusion is consistent with the available data.

More generally, I really don’t think you’re adequately appreciating how good Barkley was offensively. Barkley was genuinely unstoppable in the post. And he was one of the best transition scorers ever. The result was historically great scoring efficiency. To illustrate, Barkley had between a 122 and 124 TS+ for four straight years, while being a high-volume scorer. For reference, as efficient as the guys you’ve listed are, out of the 17 guys you listed in the three tiers (i.e. your “Goat tier,” “Borderline Goat” tier, and “All time great” tier), the only one that has ever had even one season with a TS+ as high as Barkley had for four straight years was Steph in 2016. That’s it. No one else did it once. Barkley did it four straight times. And this wasn’t a guy who just scored efficiently and nothing else. He was one of the very best offensive rebounders in history—ranked 4th in NBA history in offensive rebounds per game, behind only Moses Malone, Rodman, and Drummond. And, unlike some other major post threats in that era, he was a capable passer, averaging over 4 assists per game in his prime. This is a player where we can look at the box stats and think about his skill set and we would fully expect that the offensive impact would be massive.

[Top10alltime]

You “don’t see why [I] would say otherwise” but I explained in significant detail in the post you’re quoting…

I also think it shouldn’t be surprising for Barkley to be an extremely impactful offensive player. He was a virtually unstoppable post player, an incredible player in transition, an elite offensive rebounder, and a very good passer. He had a fantastic offensive skill set!

Not good detail enough to overwrite what Luka does as a basketball player.
As a passer (lob, bounce, outlet, behind the back), facilitator, court vision, and gravity Luka takes. Luka also takes scoring and on ball vs Chuck.
Luka, a better playmaker and scorer than Charles, really shouldn't be debatable if you watched the games that Luka is a better offensive player.

As for Dirk, he's just better than Barkley as a basketball offensive force, this describes it in great detail.

Dirk was a soft trait monster, everything he did was within the flow. Constantly in early action as a screener setting drags and attacking mismatches, running off pin downs and zippers into quick hitting Js, they also loved getting into horns and quick DHOs where Dirk thrived as a hub. Through all this he promoted more flow and dispersement of touches, there were many initiators in all of his offenses and everyone stayed involved and in rhythm. Everything Dirk did was within 1-2 dribbles or even none, he perfectly exemplifies the concept of 0.5 decision making in hoop; much of Dirk’s even seemingly on-ball reps were more akin to those of a play finisher because he manufactured his looks so quickly. There’s also all that jazz with the spacing and his scoring traits but I’m sure you know the positive effects of that cus it’s talked about to death

Next up, if you have him over Kobe/CP3/Durant/West offensively, this is what I have to say to you:

I have him at 17th best offensive, clear of everyone below Wilt. So it's not like I'm hating.

With Luka, the RAPM data is just not all that great for him. I tend to think that when RAPM data isn’t very good but the box stats are great, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but that still wouldn’t result in a conclusion that Luka is better than Barkley offensively IMO. We can talk about their skill sets, but they’re very different players who play very different styles, so they are each quite a lot better than the other at certain things. Their styles are both more suited to their own era than the other guy’s era, since Barkley was an incredible post player, while Luka obviously plays a much more heliocentric style. But I think Barkley was more offensively impactful in his era than Luka is in this era, and I do think that conclusion is consistent with the available data.

More generally, I really don’t think you’re adequately appreciating how good Barkley was offensively. Barkley was genuinely unstoppable in the post. And he was one of the best transition scorers ever. The result was historically great scoring efficiency. To illustrate, Barkley had between a 122 and 124 TS+ for four straight years, while being a high-volume scorer. For reference, as efficient as the guys you’ve listed are, out of the 17 guys you listed in the three tiers (i.e. your “Goat tier,” “Borderline Goat” tier, and “All time great” tier), the only one that has ever had even one season with a TS+ as high as Barkley had for four straight years was Steph in 2016. That’s it. No one else did it once. Barkley did it four straight times. And this wasn’t a guy who just scored efficiently and nothing else. He was one of the very best offensive rebounders in history—ranked 4th in NBA history in offensive rebounds per game, behind only Moses Malone, Rodman, and Drummond. And, unlike some other major post threats in that era, he was a capable passer, averaging over 4 assists per game in his prime. This is a player where we can look at the box stats and think about his skill set and we would fully expect that the offensive impact would be massive.

Looking at advanced stats and box-score is not the way to go. Charles may have post play, but what about from mid-range, and outside the line? Luka takes that. Luka also has better court vision, as a passer(lob,bounce,outlet), better delivery quality, quicker decision maker, better spacer, and a creator in both the paint and perimeter. Also a better floor and ceiling raiser offensively, with better gravity. What does Chuck do to overtake Luka with all of these advantages, scoring and playmaking wise. Also better in the PnR.

Offensive rebounding, aaaaannd that's about it. Let's take a look at their per 75 scoring numbers (with rTS)

Luka:30.1 IA pts/75 on +1.8 rTS
Barkley: 22.7 IA pts/75 on +7.9 rTS

That's giving the edge to Luka, and so is his half-court scoring. Transition offensively prolly goes to Chuck since Luka is slow and nobody realy is good in transition like that.

So, I don't think you can make a reasonable case for Chuck over Luka offensively.

[OhayoKD]

Alright there's some points of clarity I think that should be made for posterity

1. That RAPM is far far away from completion and Barkley's "sample" here is basically non-existent


Barkley's 10-year rapm comes from a sample of 178 games (so a little more than 2 seasons worth). Moreover since this is rapm, the off-sample is not 178 games, but 178 small snippets of game spread across 10 seasons.

I definitely wouldn’t say over 2 seasons worth of data is a “basically non-existent” sample size. It’s not a large enough sample that noise isn’t a concern, but it’s enough to be meaningful. In terms of noise, it’s akin to how we’d treat normal 2-year or 3-year RAPM—which is that it’s not as high a sample size as we’d like but does likely give us a good understanding of the general zone a player landed in.

Normal 2-year or 3-year RAPM is not spread over 10 years. Baffling equivalency.

With no prior, it is true that RAPM takes some games to actually be able to get someone to a high estimate, but we can look at other RAPMs with no priors and see that top one-year RAPMs are typically about as high as top three-year and five-year RAPMs, so even just one year of data is pretty much enough for that issue to be unimportant.

"Sets which do not feature oversampling...do not showcase the expected effects of oversampling"

After that was pointed out, you shifted to a different argument about what percent of the overall sample a player was.

And when you say "different" you mean "exactly the same", right?

Because "what percent of the overall sample a player was" is literally what determines whether a player has been oversampled.

And as we’ve previously talked about, the theory is not really consistent with there being lots of players at the higher ends of the list with much smaller samples than other players.

Right, because the "theory" definitely predicted a 1:1 relationship between size of sample and rapm rank

Anyways, you are of course saying this because it bothers you how well Jordan does in Squared’s data, so you can’t help yourself but try to discredit Squared’s RAPM data for Jordan anytime it is mentioned—even when, as here, it was mentioned in a post about a different player.

Yep. Jordan being tied with Magic...bothers me. Absolutely. That's why I replied.

[lessthanjake]

Alright there's some points of clarity I think that should be made for posterity

1. That RAPM is far far away from completion and Barkley's "sample" here is basically non-existent


Barkley's 10-year rapm comes from a sample of 178 games (so a little more than 2 seasons worth). Moreover since this is rapm, the off-sample is not 178 games, but 178 small snippets of game spread across 10 seasons.

I definitely wouldn’t say over 2 seasons worth of data is a “basically non-existent” sample size. It’s not a large enough sample that noise isn’t a concern, but it’s enough to be meaningful. In terms of noise, it’s akin to how we’d treat normal 2-year or 3-year RAPM—which is that it’s not as high a sample size as we’d like but does likely give us a good understanding of the general zone a player landed in.

Normal 2-year or 3-year RAPM is not spread over 10 years. Baffling equivalency.

It certainly is pretty equivalent to the extent the concern is just how small the sample size is, which is exactly the concern you expressed when you said “Barkley’s ‘sample’ here is basically non-existent.” There’s a separate issue with Squared’s data, which is that it isn’t complete, so it has potential sampling bias on top of garden-variety noise. But on the noise issue (which you explicitly raised), the fact that Barkley’s sample is over two seasons worth of games makes noise a concern but not nearly as big of one as you were suggesting when you said his sample is “basically non-existent.”

With no prior, it is true that RAPM takes some games to actually be able to get someone to a high estimate, but we can look at other RAPMs with no priors and see that top one-year RAPMs are typically about as high as top three-year and five-year RAPMs, so even just one year of data is pretty much enough for that issue to be unimportant.

"Sets which do not feature oversampling...do not showcase the expected effects of oversampling"

I think you are missing the point here. I was remarking upon the potential point that RAPM with no prior likely takes some games to get a good player up to around where they should be, since the prior starts them at zero. In prior discussions, this is the argument you had seemed to indicate. Or at least, I took it that way, made it very clear that I took it that way, and you repeatedly did not correct me about that in multiple discussions about it across multiple threads—until the point in which you had talked yourself into a knot on that (saying something that was incompatible with that argument) and then you claimed you had been saying something else all along. Maybe you were always making a different point and just not correcting my understanding of your argument, though failing to correct someone would be very out of character for you. Either way, the point I’m making here is in reference to that argument, which actually has some validity IMO if the sample sizes were really small but just doesn’t really have much validity in the sample sizes Squared has for the relevant players we’d be discussing.

After that was pointed out, you shifted to a different argument about what percent of the overall sample a player was.

And when you say "different" you mean "exactly the same", right?

Because "what percent of the overall sample a player was" is literally what determines whether a player has been oversampled.

This is, of course, confusing. Because the above-discussed concept is actually different than the concept of “oversampling,” and you’ve previously insisted that it’s different after you talked yourself into a knot and said something that was incompatible with the above-discussed concept. Now you’re saying it’s “exactly the same.” Doesn’t make any sense, and actually isn’t correct. I’m going to just assume you’re playing dumb here or failing to comprehend the other concept I’m talking about.

And as we’ve previously talked about, the theory is not really consistent with there being lots of players at the higher ends of the list with much smaller samples than other players.

Right, because the "theory" definitely predicted a 1:1 relationship between size of sample and rapm rank

The problem here is that your theory needs to have actual evidence to support it (especially because you never even really attempt to explain how the theory purportedly works). If the output doesn’t actually discernibly support it, then there’s no reason to believe it’s right (or at least no reason to believe it is right in any material way). You’ve attempted to make arguments that the output does support your theory, but, as explained in my prior post, those arguments clearly fall flat because your “evidence” is stuff that we’d expect to see in normal RAPM without this oversampling issue being at play, and in situations where your oversampling theory would suggest we’d see something we wouldn’t expect to see in normal RAPM we instead see what we’d expect to see from normal RAPM. I’ve explained this above, and you don’t substantively engage with it here, just as you didn’t when I first made these points a while back in another thread.

Anyways, you are of course saying this because it bothers you how well Jordan does in Squared’s data, so you can’t help yourself but try to discredit Squared’s RAPM data for Jordan anytime it is mentioned—even when, as here, it was mentioned in a post about a different player.

Yep. Jordan being tied with Magic...bothers me. Absolutely. That's why I replied.

You have a very loose definition of “tied,” given the fact that they’re…not actually tied. Quite close, yes (while both being miles above everyone else), in a measure that has significant potential error. But not tied. And that’s evidently what bothers you.

As a sidenote, I will say that Magic being close to Jordan in this data is a real feather in his cap.

[lessthanjake]

Not good detail enough to overwrite what Luka does as a basketball player.
As a passer (lob, bounce, outlet, behind the back), facilitator, court vision, and gravity Luka takes. Luka also takes scoring and on ball vs Chuck.
Luka, a better playmaker and scorer than Charles, really shouldn't be debatable if you watched the games that Luka is a better offensive player.

As for Dirk, he's just better than Barkley as a basketball offensive force, this describes it in great detail.



Next up, if you have him over Kobe/CP3/Durant/West offensively, this is what I have to say to you:

I have him at 17th best offensive, clear of everyone below Wilt. So it's not like I'm hating.

With Luka, the RAPM data is just not all that great for him. I tend to think that when RAPM data isn’t very good but the box stats are great, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but that still wouldn’t result in a conclusion that Luka is better than Barkley offensively IMO. We can talk about their skill sets, but they’re very different players who play very different styles, so they are each quite a lot better than the other at certain things. Their styles are both more suited to their own era than the other guy’s era, since Barkley was an incredible post player, while Luka obviously plays a much more heliocentric style. But I think Barkley was more offensively impactful in his era than Luka is in this era, and I do think that conclusion is consistent with the available data.

More generally, I really don’t think you’re adequately appreciating how good Barkley was offensively. Barkley was genuinely unstoppable in the post. And he was one of the best transition scorers ever. The result was historically great scoring efficiency. To illustrate, Barkley had between a 122 and 124 TS+ for four straight years, while being a high-volume scorer. For reference, as efficient as the guys you’ve listed are, out of the 17 guys you listed in the three tiers (i.e. your “Goat tier,” “Borderline Goat” tier, and “All time great” tier), the only one that has ever had even one season with a TS+ as high as Barkley had for four straight years was Steph in 2016. That’s it. No one else did it once. Barkley did it four straight times. And this wasn’t a guy who just scored efficiently and nothing else. He was one of the very best offensive rebounders in history—ranked 4th in NBA history in offensive rebounds per game, behind only Moses Malone, Rodman, and Drummond. And, unlike some other major post threats in that era, he was a capable passer, averaging over 4 assists per game in his prime. This is a player where we can look at the box stats and think about his skill set and we would fully expect that the offensive impact would be massive.

Looking at advanced stats and box-score is not the way to go.

Why shouldn’t we consider RAPM? It’s almost certainly the best data we have—particularly for players in the play-by-play era, where we have full RAPM data.

As for considering “box-score,” you actually do exactly that below, when talking about how many points they scored per 75 possessions. So it’s hard to take seriously you saying that looking at “box-score is not the way to go.” You seem to just not want to engage with the box data I provided.

Charles may have post play, but what about from mid-range, and outside the line? Luka takes that. Luka also has better court vision, as a passer(lob,bounce,outlet), better delivery quality, quicker decision maker, better spacer, and a creator in both the paint and perimeter. Also a better floor and ceiling raiser offensively, with better gravity. What does Chuck do to overtake Luka with all of these advantages, scoring and playmaking wise. Also better in the PnR.

Offensive rebounding, aaaaannd that's about it.

This seems to just be you listing various things you think Luka does better than Barkley. That’s fine, but Barkley being an unstoppable post player in the half-court, an elite transition player, and one of the best offensive rebounders of all time are advantages that have huge impact. If you watched peak Barkley, I think you’d see that. Obviously, they’re both better than the other at stuff. The fact that Barkley appears to have better offensive impact data suggests that his offensive advantages were more impactful than Luka’s.

Also, some of what you say here isn’t even skillset analysis. Saying Luka is “a better floor and ceiling raiser offensively” is just a conclusory statement. Simply saying he’s better isn’t an argument that shows he is better.

Let's take a look at their per 75 scoring numbers (with rTS)

Luka:30.1 IA pts/75 on +1.8 rTS
Barkley: 22.7 IA pts/75 on +7.9 rTS

That's giving the edge to Luka, and so is his half-court scoring.

First of all, I’m not sure what years you’re using here for Barkley. Looking at Thinking Basketball’s year-by-year data for Barkley, it seems to me that you must be using his entire career (i.e. including Barkley’s post-prime years), while comparing to Luka Doncic in the middle of his prime. Needless to say, that is not a fair approach. If you actually looked at Barkley’s first seven seasons (i.e. the number of seasons Luka has played) and compared to Luka, it’d be more like around 23.5 IA pts/75 on +10.5 rTS%. Which I really wouldn’t say looks inferior to Luka’s numbers there. And then we get to the fact that Barkley played significantly more MPG than Luka, so looking at scoring on a per-75-possession basis is biased against him (since it is harder to maintain as much scoring on a per-possession basis when you have less rest). If Luka played the same number of minutes as Barkley, I am quite certain his points per 75 possessions would not be as high as it is.

Transition offensively prolly goes to Chuck since Luka is slow and nobody realy is good in transition like that.

Saying transition offensive “prolly goes to Chuck” is a real understatement. Barkley was one of the best transition players in league history.

[Elpolo_14]

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With Luka, the RAPM data is just not all that great for him. I tend to think that when RAPM data isn’t very good but the box stats are great, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but that still wouldn’t result in a conclusion that Luka is better than Barkley offensively IMO. We can talk about their skill sets, but they’re very different players who play very different styles, so they are each quite a lot better than the other at certain things. Their styles are both more suited to their own era than the other guy’s era, since Barkley was an incredible post player, while Luka obviously plays a much more heliocentric style. But I think Barkley was more offensively impactful in his era than Luka is in this era, and I do think that conclusion is consistent with the available data.

.

Looking at advanced stats and box-score is not the way to go.

Why shouldn’t we consider RAPM? It’s almost certainly the best data we have—particularly for players in the play-by-play era, where we have full RAPM data

Firstly thanks for the response on my post. It great to share opinion on these great player

RAPM is good data but you're not using it correct. Sample is way small and its true the square ramp has bias. It's also important to look at other thing like WOWY and skillset( I do think that Luka have very elite traits on may aspect on the offensive end that able to make him an all time offensive engine )and teammate. Luka played with playmakers alot in dallas so his on/off and RAPM suffer. But his WOWY as good as Barkley's. Even with teammates like Brunson and Kyrie who do alot as offense loader in a better/ more talented NBA



Box is okay but you don't need advanced to use. Better to look at film and stats and impact instead of strange formula