Pre-RealGM 100 Personal Lists, 2023 edition

[lessthanjake]

Is there not culture setting by leading 3 distinct casts [with different GM's, Coaches and in different cities] to NBA Championships [and leading 4 distinct casts/GM's/Coaches to NBA Finals]?

Do you not think a culture is set when you go to 8-straight NBA Finals?

These are the 4 greatest players ever of course they'll have accomplished things like multiple championships and finals appearances. Cap won chips in different cities and participated in one of the most successful sustained dynasties in NBA history do you think he was a positive culture builder?

Short answer is no I don't think LeBron or Kareem were positives in this aspect and none of the 3 (MJ included here) even sniff Russell who literally coached his own team to the championship. No matter how high you are on Mike, LBJ, and Cap as locker room presences no way you think they approached that level of value. I'd like to leave it at this for now because I'm concerned this may end up taking over the thread which I do not want. Feel free to respond to this but just so you know this will be my last post on this for this thread.

I think to be consistent you need to have Duncan ahead of Cap then.

I don’t have any strong views on the actual substantive issue being discussed, but just want to push back on the general idea that you can’t put Player 1 above Player 2 for Reason A while not putting Player 3 above Player 4 even though Reason A works in Player 3’s favor.

Ultimately, none of us rank players just based on one factor. It’s a multi-factor balancing test, in which we’ll often disagree on how those factors should be weighted or how players should be evaluated in a given factor, but no one is ranking people based on one factor alone. So, let’s take a simplified example, where someone’s personal balancing test is 20% “culture stuff” and 80% all the other on-court stuff. And let’s say we think that Duncan and Russell are both a 20/20 in culture stuff, while Garnett and LeBron are both a 15/20 in culture stuff. Does that mean we must either rank both culture guys above the non-culture guys or neither of them above? No, because we don’t know what our assessment of the on-court stuff for these players are, and that’s a huge part of the analysis too. So, for instance, let’s say we think KG and Russell were both an 75/80 in on-court stuff, Duncan was a 68/80, and LeBron was a 78/80. The overall combination of the “culture stuff” and on-court stuff would be 90/100 for Garnett, 88/100 for Duncan, 95/100 for Russell, and 93/100 for LeBron. It’d simultaneously be true that Russell is put over LeBron due to the culture stuff, while Garnett is still over Duncan despite culture stuff. And it wouldn’t be inconsistent. It’d just be the result of a multi-factor balancing test (or, here, an artificially simplified two-factor balancing test) in which no single factor is necessarily dispositive.

EDIT: It just occurred to me now that this post refers to Duncan’s ranking compared to Kareem, not Garnett. I was a bit confused about exactly what was being argued here in terms of players, and I haven’t quite followed every single post in the discussion on it. But my point is a general one, not specific to any particular comparison, so the names in my above example don’t really matter.

[AEnigma]

Or maybe people invent retroactive rationale to dress up what are ultimately gut feeling conclusions.

If the thought process is as simple as, “I think Garnett was better than Duncan but give Duncan a top five grade otherwise,” that is fine. When you start trying to turn that decision into a grand comment on “culture” and “portability” and “indifference to longevity” is when people are going to get on your case for the inconsistencies within that claimed approach.

[lessthanjake]

Or maybe people invent retroactive rationale to dress up what are ultimately gut feeling conclusions.

If the thought process is as simple as, “I think Garnett was better than Duncan but give Duncan a top five grade otherwise,” that is fine. When you start trying to turn that decision into a grand comment on “culture” and “portability” and “indifference to longevity” is when people are going to get on your case for the inconsistencies within that claimed approach.

There’s definitely truth to that, but I also think that those “gut feeling conclusions” are often a result of the kind of multi-factor balancing test I’m talking about. It’s just that it’s a balancing test that one’s brain can (and usually does) do implicitly, rather than explicitly thinking through exactly how one is evaluating and weighting the many different factors. Anyways, my point was just that arguments about how someone’s criteria isn’t consistent are usually just arguments that ignore that there’s ton of criteria and so one factor can make the difference in one comparison and not make the difference in another without it actually being inconsistent.

[Gregoire]

1. MJ

2. Kareem
3. Lebron
4. Wilt

5. Shaq
6. Magic
7. Bird

8. Curry
9. Duncan
10. Russell

[Colbinii]

Or maybe people invent retroactive rationale to dress up what are ultimately gut feeling conclusions.

If the thought process is as simple as, “I think Garnett was better than Duncan but give Duncan a top five grade otherwise,” that is fine. When you start trying to turn that decision into a grand comment on “culture” and “portability” and “indifference to longevity” is when people are going to get on your case for the inconsistencies within that claimed approach.

There’s definitely truth to that, but I also think that those “gut feeling conclusions” are often a result of the kind of multi-factor balancing test I’m talking about. It’s just that it’s a balancing test that one’s brain can (and usually does) do implicitly, rather than explicitly thinking through exactly how one is evaluating and weighting the many different factors. Anyways, my point was just that arguments about how someone’s criteria isn’t consistent are usually just arguments that ignore that there’s ton of criteria and so one factor can make the difference in one comparison and not make the difference in another without it actually being inconsistent.

Right--so the issue I would originally have is if someone was as high on culture as Loufan says he is, and then has Duncan behind Kareem.

If he thinks Kareem is head-and-shoulders ahead of Duncan, then I presented a very strong argument for Duncan being every bit as good as Kareem at their peaks. The next point of contention I would have is comparing Primes. If Loufan did indeed buy into Duncan being similar Peak and Prime, then there isn't a rationale [given his criteria of culture being +++] for Kareem over Duncan.

It is possible Loufan is dismissive of the notion of Duncan being ahead of Kareem in terms of Peak/Prime, but then my point of contention would be LeBron was an excellent leader and given what many of his previous teammates have said about him, he builds a strong culture.

I think there are--objectively--a large amount of loop holes in rankings and it is important to talk about those blind-spots [lack of objectively and a hard bias] when we are in this project. After all, this is a huge project with tons of discussion.

[rk2023]

1. MJ

2. Kareem
3. Lebron
4. Wilt

5. Shaq
6. Magic
7. Bird

8. Curry
9. Duncan
10. Russell

Didn't you have Russell as a Mount Rushmore / GOAT level player not too far back? If anything, what changed your mind?

[lessthanjake]

Or maybe people invent retroactive rationale to dress up what are ultimately gut feeling conclusions.

If the thought process is as simple as, “I think Garnett was better than Duncan but give Duncan a top five grade otherwise,” that is fine. When you start trying to turn that decision into a grand comment on “culture” and “portability” and “indifference to longevity” is when people are going to get on your case for the inconsistencies within that claimed approach.

There’s definitely truth to that, but I also think that those “gut feeling conclusions” are often a result of the kind of multi-factor balancing test I’m talking about. It’s just that it’s a balancing test that one’s brain can (and usually does) do implicitly, rather than explicitly thinking through exactly how one is evaluating and weighting the many different factors. Anyways, my point was just that arguments about how someone’s criteria isn’t consistent are usually just arguments that ignore that there’s ton of criteria and so one factor can make the difference in one comparison and not make the difference in another without it actually being inconsistent.

Right--so the issue I would originally have is if someone was as high on culture as Loufan says he is, and then has Duncan behind Kareem.

If he thinks Kareem is head-and-shoulders ahead of Duncan, then I presented a very strong argument for Duncan being every bit as good as Kareem at their peaks. The next point of contention I would have is comparing Primes. If Loufan did indeed buy into Duncan being similar Peak and Prime, then there isn't a rationale [given his criteria of culture being +++] for Kareem over Duncan.

It is possible Loufan is dismissive of the notion of Duncan being ahead of Kareem in terms of Peak/Prime, but then my point of contention would be LeBron was an excellent leader and given what many of his previous teammates have said about him, he builds a strong culture.

I think there are--objectively--a large amount of loop holes in rankings and it is important to talk about those blind-spots [lack of objectively and a hard bias] when we are in this project. After all, this is a huge project with tons of discussion.

Yeah, I’m not saying to not discuss things, of course! And I can’t speak for LouFan, but my assumption would be that he probably doesn’t agree with you that Duncan was as good as Kareem at their peaks, and that he doesn’t rate LeBron as being as much of an excellent leader as you do. That could make his bottom-line conclusions perfectly consistent.

Of course, those are certainly debatable views that one can substantively disagree with. Indeed, I see you copied a long case you’ve made for Duncan—which I’m hoping to get the time to read through at some point soon—and the question of someone’s leadership is certainly a debatable one since it’s a squishy concept. But substantive disagreement with someone’s evaluation doesn’t necessarily mean that that other person’s evaluation is inconsistent. And it can be easy to think someone is being inconsistent if you are assuming that they agree with certain subjective evaluations of yours that they don’t agree with. In any event, though, I’ve made my point and I’m not LouFan so I don’t have any skin in the game regarding the validity of his rankings (indeed, I have my own rankings I’ve given in this thread that are substantially different from LouFan’s!), so I’ll just leave it at that.

[Doctor MJ]

Would you like to expand your thoughts on Lovellette?

Sure. Simplest thing would be that I see him as an offensive big at a time when bigs were the most valuable players because of their defense. Any guy along these lines in the era I'm probably going to be lower on than most.

I also think that the tendency of teams to move on from him hurts.

I also think that the fact that come playoff time in St. Louis, he became something of an afterthought hurts.

I also am influenced by the negatives I've read about his attitude as a team player, though I'll acknowledge that this may be unfair.

I expect the Top 3 guys here will make the 100. I also love Sharman and am not opposed to him making it. I doubt Cervi has a shot, and so much of what he did is in the NBL, I don't know if I'll even try to get him nominated...but he's arguably the second best player of his era.

By "his era" you mean pre-NBA years?

It is pre-NBA definitely, but I'm more thinking about the 1940s as a decade. Other than Mikan, I don't think there were any pros I'd say were better than him in the '40s.

Re: Barnett vs Lucas. I think Barnett needs to be understood as the #3 Knick on the '70 Knicks champion as 33 year old much older than the rest of the core. Had he maintained this prominence in their 2nd chip I think he'd be much more celebrated today...but he was 36, so it's understandable why he was a low minutes guy at this point.

By #3 Knick, you mean the 3rd best player on that team? I'm not sure I'd go that far (even though I am quite high on Dick), he's not better than Frazier and Reed, then Dave was also on that team. I think I'd take DeBusschere over Barnett quite easily for 1970.

I think Dave is a perfectly reasonable choice here, and most would agree with you.

I think what I'd say is that Barnett was the #3 minutes guy, the #3 guy on the team based on the box score, and someone whose offense I wouldn't be worried about if I were building a team the way I would with Dave, but obviously Dave's defense may make up for all of that.

Yeah, we've got a big disagreement with Thurmond.

I do see Thurmond as the #3 defensive big of his era comparing peak, probably the #1 big man individual defender, and quite possibly the #2 consistent-prime defender of his era. That seems like that should make him rank pretty high.

Offensively of course, he's not great. Had he played in another era I think we know he'd shoot a lot less, and this would be more valuable. Not looking to be super puritanical punishing him for that inefficiency, but what it does mean is that I just never end up seeing him as much of a candidate for POY shares. Now, I have a bunch of guys ahead of him here who also aren't really POY share guys, but a lot of these guys have key roles on champion teams and have signs of more all around basketball playing talents.

Something I'll acknowledge here is that while I'm not trying to punish Thurmond for the Warriors winning the title without him, I'm sure I'd see Thurmond differently if I saw him as one of the two stars on that championship team.

I think it depends on how you look at 1967 finals run - if you think Barry was the key reason why Warriors made that run, then I can understand why you held Nate in lower tier than me. I personally believe that Thurmond was clearly the most valuable player of that team and I don't think it's that controversial when you look at WOWY splits, as well as watch all the tape we have.

I think Thurmond had a very legitimate case for top 3 player in 1967-69 period when healthy (which unfortunately wasn't the case in 1968) and I like his 1971-73 run a lot as well. He didn't have a lot to work with after Barry changed the league and yet the Warriors consistently made playoffs as long as Thurmond played more than half of the season.

Good points, and I'll say that it's possible I didn't give the WOWY enough attention.

Re: Hawkins. So I think everyone knows I'm high on Connie and I don't really expect to persuade many folks of anything drastic. I see Hawkins at his best as a serious candidate for the best offensive player in the world, and I think what he did leading the Pipers to the championship is astonishing. I completely understand people who aren't that impressed by the first year of the ABA, but what I see from Hawkins here is something far more than just a volume scorer.

Re: Hawkins, Cunningham, Brown. So these guys all grew up playing against each other in Brooklyn and I tend to associate them. Cunningham was respected by the Black ballers in the area (they even said he played Black, which they meant as a compliment), but I definitely didn't get the impression that Cunningham was seen as better than Brown, let alone Hawkins.

Yeah, I think it shows the difference between our ranking systems. I don't disagree that Hawkins was the best talent out of these 3 and I entertain the idea that he peaked the highest (definitely in ABA, arguable vs Billy in NBA), but I don't give him much credit for his pre-ABA seasons in this project. It's unfair, because that situation wasn't his fault, but the life sometimes is unfair.

I really like it that you always find a way to give him respect he deserves.

Reasonable points, and I appreciate the nod. I'm less concerned with people actually ranking Hawkins high in a project like this than I am with people understanding how unique he was.

I will say this about weighting his career before the ABA: I'm not explicitly weighting schoolyard play, the ABL, or the Harlem Globetrotters here, but it does play into my holistic sense of what he was as a player and perhaps dials down the longevity concerns a bit.

There's still a lot of guys whose longevity moves them ahead of Hawkins for me, but I don't see him as a "flash in the pan" the way others may.

Lanier's always a tough one to peg. I think it's quite reasonable to have literally on top of the list, but with his limited team success it's iffy for me. Again not trying to penalize a guy based on winning bias, but when I go through year by year POY-style, he didn't get those spots. I welcome arguments to help me better understand what he was achieving.

I think when you start looking at how the Pistons fared when he missed time and you look at their rosters (especially after Bing's injury), it's very clear that Lanier didn't have anything to work with. Some of these WOWY numbers show Pistons supporting cast as almost the 1970s equivalent of 2000s Wolves, they were really bad.

Now, it's important to note that Lanier did miss a lot of games in his prime and that was one of the reasons why Pistons failed to win more games. Again though - I don't think his durability problems were that bad that you can't put him higher.

Good stuff, will be keeping an open mind.

Ah, now that's interesting given our disagreement on Thurmond. Eaton's a more extreme example.

I think Eaton has a real argument as being worthy of the Hall of Fame because of how singular he was, and how undeniably valuable he was a shot-blocker on defense, but in terms of career value-add, I think he's really far below the other guys here.

Don't get me wrong, he probably has the weakest career out of this group, but I think he's worth consideration for top 100. I don't think his career is much inferior to Ben Wallace.

I consider Wallace to be the MVP and foundation of a championship team, and I think that team could have easily won more than one title.

Eaton really doesn't have anything that matches up with this, nor do I really think he could have been this in his own or later eras.

Re: Iverson vs Penny. I see Penny as the clear cut better player and while health hurts him, realistically he was relevant to contending basketball about as long as Iverson was.

Penny definitely peaked higher than Iverson (at least to me), but he had like 4 relevant seasons? Maybe 6 if you want to use his post-1999 years? I don't think Iverson was that bad.

Put it this way:

Iverson was a driving force behind teams that won playoff series over a 5 year stretch from age 23 to 27.
Hardaway was a driving force behind teams that won playoff series over a 6 year stretch from age 23 to 28 (I don't think most people remember that the lone playoff series victory of the Kidd Phoenix years came when Kidd missed time.)

Not trying to argue that Hardaway literally had as good or better longevity to Iverson, but to make up for Hardaway being better at basketball, I think Iverson needed to maintain his relevance longer.

Others will object to me talking about Iverson losing relevance at that young of an age while pointing to his big scoring numbers, but by that point we're talking about a 76ers team crippled in the name of "giving AI more help" under the theory that he was only jacking so many shots because he had no offensive talent around him, and ignoring the evidence that the key to winning with Iverson was to win with defense based on not-Iverson defensive players.

Most would have McGrady considerably higher so that's understandable. I don't really see his career amounting to much when all is said and done.

Lastly when I did CORP evaluation, Tracy finished around 70th spot. His career is very weak for someone that talented, but he still has a few very strong seasons accumulated. I think he'd make my top 100, although I don't rate him as high as some.

I think people tend to be blind to McGrady's efficiency issues in part because of the one great season in which him vs Kobe was a legit conversation, and I think that Houston being an all-time "overachieve when stars are injured" situation really makes those years meh.

I can definitely see the case for Gobert over Embiid actually. Lowry & Horford are tricky like Divac because it's the lower peak, great long career thing.

I like the Divac and Lowry/Horford comparison.
I also wonder - have you considered Marc Gasol? I think he's at least worth mentioning.

Great guy to bring up, and I can actually tell you what happened there with leaving him off my list. For more recent players I tend to group by draft class, and I do think that Horford is the #2 guy in the 2007 draft class ahead of Gasol.

I think though that Gasol has an argument over Horford, and also over Divac & Lowry.

[Doctor MJ]

A refresher regarding the culture-setting we saw "Outside of enviroments led by coaches famous for their unparalleled ego management

According to one official, Hughes was explicitly told by Jordan to get him the ball if he wanted to play. When Hughes began passing it to Stackhouse as much as to Jordan, he was soon benched. Point guard Tyronn Lue, the official said, obliged and began finding Jordan every time he played. ''He was scared to death of what would happen to him in his career if he didn't,'' the player said of Lue. ''He was always looking at the bench at Michael.''

Late last fall, Richard Hamilton and Jordan got into an ugly shouting match. The two officials said it began when Hamilton told Jordan he was tired of being a ''Jordannaire,'' the term used for Jordan's role players in Chicago. ''Rip was a young, brash guy who threatened the idea of Michael being the guy here,'' the official said. ''He was promptly gotten rid of for Stackhouse.'' A person close to Jordan denied Hamilton was traded because of a personality conflict. He insisted contractual issues led to the Stackhouse deal.

In the season's final weeks, players openly complained about the double standards for Jordan. Promptly dressed and ready to speak with reporters after games, they were forced to wait in the locker room for 15 or 20 minutes while Jordan showered and dressed in a private room.

There’s coach-killing and then there’s Franchise killing. Even if there wasn’t plenty contradicting the former assertion and not much of anything contradicting the latter, Equating Jordan with Kareem and Lebron here is laughable

Whoa! I've long been critical of Jordan in Washington, but wasn't aware of these quotes. Can you provide the source here?

[Colbinii]

A refresher regarding the culture-setting we saw "Outside of enviroments led by coaches famous for their unparalleled ego management

According to one official, Hughes was explicitly told by Jordan to get him the ball if he wanted to play. When Hughes began passing it to Stackhouse as much as to Jordan, he was soon benched. Point guard Tyronn Lue, the official said, obliged and began finding Jordan every time he played. ''He was scared to death of what would happen to him in his career if he didn't,'' the player said of Lue. ''He was always looking at the bench at Michael.''

Late last fall, Richard Hamilton and Jordan got into an ugly shouting match. The two officials said it began when Hamilton told Jordan he was tired of being a ''Jordannaire,'' the term used for Jordan's role players in Chicago. ''Rip was a young, brash guy who threatened the idea of Michael being the guy here,'' the official said. ''He was promptly gotten rid of for Stackhouse.'' A person close to Jordan denied Hamilton was traded because of a personality conflict. He insisted contractual issues led to the Stackhouse deal.

In the season's final weeks, players openly complained about the double standards for Jordan. Promptly dressed and ready to speak with reporters after games, they were forced to wait in the locker room for 15 or 20 minutes while Jordan showered and dressed in a private room.

There’s coach-killing and then there’s Franchise killing. Even if there wasn’t plenty contradicting the former assertion and not much of anything contradicting the latter, Equating Jordan with Kareem and Lebron here is laughable

Whoa! I've long been critical of Jordan in Washington, but wasn't aware of these quotes. Can you provide the source here?

I copy-pasted the first paragraph from OhayoKD's quote into Google and this article popped up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/sports/pro-basketball-jordan-s-strained-ties-to-wizards-may-be-cut.html

[Doctor MJ]

Fully integrated by the 60s? Come on bro. That's not true at all. The NBA at the start of Russell's career had relatively few black players, and even by the end was far from the integrated league of today.

The league was half black in 1965, which was far from the end of Russell's career.

Just to piggy back here:

Russell was the true Black spearhead in the NBA that opened up the floodgates for everyone else, and by the time Russell retired the league had gone from vast-majority White to majority Black. (Russell wasn't the first Black player in the NBA of course, but everything changed when Russell arrived and immediately started leading teams to titles, which no Black player had done before.)

While I wouldn't suggest we literally give Russell points for being a spearhead in the RealGM 100 (because as noted, this project is grounded in competitive achievement not other significance), I think it's relevant on this particular point of discussion.

After Russell turned down the traditional team that got the best Black players (Globetrotters) to go to the NBA, and proceeded to get recognized as an MVP, all the best Black talent aimed for the NBA, and that's what changed everything.

From there the thing about Russell's career is that he continued to be the dominant force in the game for 13 years as loads of new talent arrived in the league. Had Russell been knocked off his perch years earlier than that, I'd have similar criticisms to his greatness that I have for Mikan, but that's not what happened.

Fun, semi-related tangent (which I'm sure a number of people here are aware of):

Along with the trend of Black players joining the NBA in Russell's wake, so to did facial hair become an NBA thing. Russell first grew the goatee as a rookie. One of Russell's nickname was "Whiskers" because nobody else in the league had facial hair.

A few years down the road only Russell & Wilt had facial hair, and there was a movement to ban facial hair on NBA players. Didn't happen, and from there the trend started spreading until it became seemingly ubiquitous in the '70s.

[lessthanjake]

I think the issue with Wizards Jordan is mainly that his leadership style is basically “If you play for me and work as hard and want it as much as me (which I’ll be extremely harsh in my criticism of you if I don’t think you’re doing), then I’ll lead you to victory.” That leadership style might actually work very well if you’re as good as Jordan was on the Bulls. But it has the makings of a disaster if you’re only as good as Jordan was on the Wizards. Wizards Jordan wasn’t good enough to lead a team to much of anything. And if you’re not actually all that great anymore, then people aren’t going to be okay with playing for you and withering through your harsh criticism, because they know the end result isn’t going to be you leading them to victory—and indeed, they may well reasonably feel like playing for you genuinely isn’t even the best route to success for the team.

So I wouldn’t necessarily say that the leadership of Wizards Jordan is reflective of the leadership of Bulls Jordan. Jordan being way less good as a player had a materially large impact on the effectiveness of his particular style of leading a team. You can’t really be effective with Jordan’s leadership style if you’re not actually that good! That’s still a knock on him to some degree, but I wouldn’t exactly take the Wizards years and map them onto the Chicago years and come to some conclusion that Jordan’s leadership was always ineffective and that Phil Jackson just papered over it.

[Doctor MJ]

I was actually thinking about finding someone to replace him with altogther for a sec, but he is #2 behind LeBron on of those 25-year RAPM samples. I gotta give him credit for that even if he's had some rough playoffs. Plus is it even fair to grade him harshly on playoff failures in years when Doc Rivers is his coach?

So, I'm not trying to tell you you need to change your approach, but I do want to respond here based on how I think about this.

First off, there's just the general notion of longevity. As I've said, I'm not looking to micromanage how people judge longevity so long as people do think about it in this project in a way they wouldn't if this were the Peaks project.

When we consider base longevity, I think minutes played is a good place to start. So I'll put this comparison in to chew on:

Joel Embiid, drafted in 2014, has played 12,524 regular season minutes and 1,835 playoff minutes.
Jayson Tatum, drafted in 2017, has played 14,916 regular season minutes and 3,635 playoff minutes.

So quite literally, Embiid has inferior longevity to Tatum even before you factoring the damage that Embiid's missed time has had for his teams. Doesn't mean that Embiid should be below Tatum in your rankings, but just in case you were thinking about Embiid as someone who "has been around for a while" and Tatum as "still pretty new", which I think would be a natural thing to do, I think the scale of Embiid's missed time is important here.

Here's another number that I factor in which may not matter to others at all:

How many playoff series victories were you a Top 5 minutes guy on your team?

Embiid: 2
Tatum: 10

Now, fine to say that Tatum's been in a better environment on this, but I'd point out that Embiid's teammate Ben Simmons tallies to 3 here, and that Embiid didn't qualify by this metric in ANY of those 3 series. I'm as critical of Simmons as anybody and certainly don't think he's anywhere near as good as Embiid, but quite literally the playoff success of the 76ers from Embiid's draft in 2014 until 2021 was driven more by Simmons than Embiid.

I think it's totally understandable to look at Simmons, Brett Brown & Doc Rivers and think that they held Embiid back, but I'd say that the true reality here is that Embiid's injuries are the real issue, and that if it weren't for the quality of non-Embiid teammates, Philly's playoff success by playoff series would drop by more than 50%.

This then to say that, in addition to other comparisons, I really think Tatum has just done more in the pros to help his team be a title contender than Embiid has...and Tatum's not a guy I look at as a real Top 50 candidate yet.

[Cavsfansince84]

One thing that sort of stands out to me re how Thurmond is considered is relative to Russell. There's so many similarities between them as players(granted Russell was a better passer and hardly anyone can match his overall intangibles) but in terms of offensive efficiency it does seem to be held against Nate way more than it is against Russell. Now I get some people aren't high on Russell at all and will have him outside their top 10 list even but for those who have him higher up(even top 5 as I do), isn't it possible that Nate is generally well underrated given how highly Russell's impact is seen in those same years and the argument that Nate was maybe having 80-90% of the impact Russell did via his defense and rebounding? Because efficiency wise in the years they were both in the league its very close and you could argue that Nate was sort of forced to take on a larger scoring load due to the teams he was on.

[70sFan]

One thing that sort of stands out to me re how Thurmond is considered is relative to Russell. There's so many similarities between them as players(granted Russell was a better passer and hardly anyone can match his overall intangibles) but in terms of offensive efficiency it does seem to be held against Nate way more than it is against Russell. Now I get some people aren't high on Russell at all and will have him outside their top 10 list even but for those who have him higher up(even top 5 as I do), isn't it possible that Nate is generally well underrated given how highly Russell's impact is seen in those same years and the argument that Nate was maybe having 80-90% of the impact Russell did via his defense and rebounding? Because efficiency wise in the years they were both in the league its very close and you could argue that Nate was sort of forced to take on a larger scoring load due to the teams he was on.

I think Thurmond definitely is underrated compared to Russell (though he's definitely inferior basketball player overall), but I will provide a few arguments why Russell ranks clearly higher:

1. Durability - the easiest thing to nitpick in Nate's resume. Russell was an ironman, while Nate missed a lot of games that caused his team to lose chances for titles.
2. Russell was clearly better defensively. I'd compare it to the gap someone like LeBron has over someone like Durant on offense (not because Nate is Durant equivalent on defense, but because Russell has bigger advantage over 2nd best defender than GOAT offensive player).
3. Russell was a better offensive player, at least for majority of his prime. He improved his offensive game in the playoffs consistently, while Thurmond usually didn't.

These reasons do not explain why people who have Russell in top 5 don't have Thurmond inside top 50, but I think it's enough to put 35-40 places between them.

[Cavsfansince84]

I think Thurmond definitely is underrated compared to Russell (though he's definitely inferior basketball player overall), but I will provide a few arguments why Russell ranks clearly higher:

1. Durability - the easiest thing to nitpick in Nate's resume. Russell was an ironman, while Nate missed a lot of games that caused his team to lose chances for titles.
2. Russell was clearly better defensively. I'd compare it to the gap someone like LeBron has over someone like Durant on offense (not because Nate is Durant equivalent on defense, but because Russell has bigger advantage over 2nd best defender than GOAT offensive player).
3. Russell was a better offensive player, at least for majority of his prime. He improved his offensive game in the playoffs consistently, while Thurmond usually didn't.

These reasons do not explain why people who have Russell in top 5 don't have Thurmond inside top 50, but I think it's enough to put 35-40 places between them.

Yes, everything you said above plus winning bias(which isn't a bias so much as just seeing correlation between winning and player impact) points towards Russell. My point was just similar to what you made at the end. Which is that if era based impact is a criteria that you value then I think Thurmond tends to be underrated quite a bit and if someone has Russell top 5 then I think they should also be relatively high on Thurmond as well. Top 50 seems about right with room for him possibly being top 40. Also, Russell's post season offense was relatively low volume and pretty bad efficiency wise from 66-69.

[Doctor MJ]

One thing that sort of stands out to me re how Thurmond is considered is relative to Russell. There's so many similarities between them as players(granted Russell was a better passer and hardly anyone can match his overall intangibles) but in terms of offensive efficiency it does seem to be held against Nate way more than it is against Russell. Now I get some people aren't high on Russell as all and will have him outside their top 10 list even but for those who have him higher up(even top 5 as I do), isn't it possible that Nate is generally well underrated given how highly Russell's impact is seen in those same years and the argument that Nate was maybe having 80-90% of the impact Russell did via his defense and rebounding? Because efficiency wise in the years they were both in the league its very close and you could argue that Nate was sort of forced to take on a larger scoring load due to the teams he was on.

I'd first point to TS Add numbers to get a one-number metric on the difference. Thurmond looks far worse than Russell on this front, and early in Russell's career he was a positive here.

I also think the difference in shooting primacy is a key here. Thurmond on the Warriors averaged 13.9 FGA per 36 minutes. Russell only surpassed that once with a 14.1 in '57-58, at a time when Russell was still getting positive TS Add. Keep in mind also that I'm using per minute numbers instead of per possession because that's what's available, but we know that pace had slowed by the time Thurmond was at his highest shooting volume (1970-ish).

In general this all gets in to the difference between trying & failing to be a main scorer, and taking on a different role. It's not as dramatic as in Wilt vs Russell debates of course, but in general Russell simply wasn't used as a major scoring force on his pro teams and that was a strategic decision not a failure on his part. I don't think Russell could have done what Wilt did as a scorer of course, but in Thurmond's career we see part of what using Russell as he was was looking to avoid.

I think it's understandable to have an approach where you don't blame Thurmond for his coach's bad decision to treat him as more of a scorer than Auerbach treated Russell, but from a value-add perspective, damage is damage.

There's another point though about how Russell came to be used offensively. They weren't setting him up in the post where you'd expect him to be able to get the best scoring opportunities. The intent was to use him to get the break started and increasingly use him as a distributor. I think this was a wise move, but it does mean that I don't think Russell's scoring efficiency as his career goes along should be interpreted simply as him getting worse at it. When your shots are not the plan but rather something that happens when things don't go according to plan, your efficiency can drop badly. I would argue, for example, that Mikan's perimeter teammates would have likely been far more efficient if you actually designed an offense around them rather than focusing almost entirely on getting the ball to Mikan and only shooting when that didn't work out.

Re: defense. I'm open to arguments here, but while I think Thurmond was an outstanding defender, I don't see him as being comparable to Russell in impact. I don't think he had the same type of quickness that made Russell such a devastating horizontal threat. I also think Russell's intelligence was essentially off-the-charts.

[70sFan]

Yes, everything you said above plus winning bias(which isn't a bias so much as just seeing correlation between winning and player impact) points towards Russell. My point was just similar to what you made at the end. Which is that if era based impact is a criteria that you value then I think Thurmond tends to be underrated quite a bit and if someone has Russell top 5 then I think they should also be relatively high on Thurmond as well. Top 50 seems about right with room for him possibly being top 40.

I would definitely go for Thurmond into top 50, maybe even top 40. Mutombo is another player that should get way more consideration for top 50.

Also, Russell's post season offense was relatively low volume and pretty bad efficiency wise from 66-69.

True but these are the weakest offensive seasons in his career.

[70sFan]

One thing that sort of stands out to me re how Thurmond is considered is relative to Russell. There's so many similarities between them as players(granted Russell was a better passer and hardly anyone can match his overall intangibles) but in terms of offensive efficiency it does seem to be held against Nate way more than it is against Russell. Now I get some people aren't high on Russell as all and will have him outside their top 10 list even but for those who have him higher up(even top 5 as I do), isn't it possible that Nate is generally well underrated given how highly Russell's impact is seen in those same years and the argument that Nate was maybe having 80-90% of the impact Russell did via his defense and rebounding? Because efficiency wise in the years they were both in the league its very close and you could argue that Nate was sort of forced to take on a larger scoring load due to the teams he was on.

I'd first point to TS Add numbers to get a one-number metric on the difference. Thurmond looks far worse than Russell on this front, and early in Russell's career he was a positive here.

I also think the difference in shooting primacy is a key here. Thurmond on the Warriors averaged 13.9 FGA per 36 minutes. Russell only surpassed that once with a 14.1 in '57-58, at a time when Russell was still getting positive TS Add. Keep in mind also that I'm using per minute numbers instead of per possession because that's what's available, but we know that pace had slowed by the time Thurmond was at his highest shooting volume (1970-ish).

In general this all gets in to the difference between trying & failing to be a main scorer, and taking on a different role. It's not as dramatic as in Wilt vs Russell debates of course, but in general Russell simply wasn't used as a major scoring force on his pro teams and that was a strategic decision not a failure on his part. I don't think Russell could have done what Wilt did as a scorer of course, but in Thurmond's career we see part of what using Russell as he was was looking to avoid.

I think it's understandable to have an approach where you don't blame Thurmond for his coach's bad decision to treat him as more of a scorer than Auerbach treated Russell, but from a value-add perspective, damage is damage.

There's another point though about how Russell came to be used offensively. They weren't setting him up in the post where you'd expect him to be able to get the best scoring opportunities. The intent was to use him to get the break started and increasingly use him as a distributor. I think this was a wise move, but it does mean that I don't think Russell's scoring efficiency as his career goes along should be interpreted simply as him getting worse at it. When your shots are not the plan but rather something that happens when things don't go according to plan, your efficiency can drop badly. I would argue, for example, that Mikan's perimeter teammates would have likely been far more efficient if you actually designed an offense around them rather than focusing almost entirely on getting the ball to Mikan and only shooting when that didn't work out.

Re: defense. I'm open to arguments here, but while I think Thurmond was an outstanding defender, I don't see him as being comparable to Russell in impact. I don't think he had the same type of quickness that made Russell such a devastating horizontal threat. I also think Russell's intelligence was essentially off-the-charts.

All of these points are fair, but do they explain why most people have Russell inside top 5, while Thurmond usually ends at the end of top 70?

[Cavsfansince84]

True but these are the weakest offensive seasons in his career.

Right but it still sort of coincides with his general off efficiency going down and people still being very high on those seasons in terms of his impact. I mean his teams were still winning rings in 3 of those 4 seasons despite his playoff ppg/efficiency numbers being rather weak(as opposed to the the other playoffs you alluded to where both tended to go up).