#1 Highest Peak of All Time (Jordan '91 wins)

[Dr Positivity]

76 Erving clearly had an impressive year, but I can't put Erving's skillset over either MJ or Lebron. i just can't see the argument that his skillset is as good. Incredible physical talent and basketball IQ, but a passable jumpshot at best and overall halfcourt polish lacking, puts him being the 8 ball in that category IMO. It'd make sense to me that he'd crush the ABA due to his physical ability, more up and down play, lack of big men, etc. Can't say I think that guy is better than Lebron or MJ, who both have a case to be called rich man's Erving in their own ways

[C-izMe]

Dr. MJ just brought Dr. J up to 9th on my list. Pushing right against Lebron in 09. Great post.


And was Dr. J a Crash type defender. Whenever I watch old games he really reminds me of Wallace. It's uncanny sometimes.

[Doctor MJ]

Now, you might ask, "But wasn't the ABA the weaker league in general?

The question I would ask is: wasn't 70s NBA and ABA weaker than 60s, 80s, 90s and 00s NBA, because of talent split between two leagues?

I agree that late ABA was equal (or maybe even slightly better) to NBA, but that's not the problem here, where we compare players from different eras. So strength of the league when player X was great matters here.

Well, let's ask: If that were the case, if the split made the league(s) weaker, what would we expect to see in terms of "inflation" that would justify taking the players involved less seriously?

I know we've been talking about Erving, but it is clear that the ABA & NBA were different leagues with different rules and norms so it's more accurate to judge NBA pre- & post-merger imho in terms of the nitty gritty. I'll say in passing though that it is justifiable to further ponder ABA inflation in some ways. Clearly the offense was getting inflated by player super-weak defenders (since those defenders outperformed NBA ones post-merger), but still, until you have an explanation that works for why offense worked better in the ABA, you have to consider that the reason might be something you want to call inflation.

Comparing pre- & post- NBA, it is still tricky because a change in offensive effectiveness doesn't necessarily mean any one thing about the level of the league. However, if individual stats are the concern, those are typically offensive in nature, so if NBA players pre-merger were benefitting statistically from weaker competition. If that factor is significant, and we also know that those ABA defenses were coming in to make life tougher, then we should see superior offensive performance from NBA teams before the merger than after, right?

Okay:

'75-76 League ORtg: 98.3
'76-77 League ORtg: 99.5

Hmm. So bringing more talent in that basically dominated the list of top defenses in the league led to offenses getting better? What does that even mean? Hard to say.


Here's what I will say: Obviously when there are two championships, two MVPs, two scoring titles, etc, it does not make sense to do any thorough analysis that assumes those accomplishments were the exact equal of their singular counterparts post-merger. That level of "inflation" absolutely should be accounted for. However a thorough analysis should go into far more detail than that, and I would say that if you are doing that properly, you can get a solid understanding of how to map pre-merger accomplishments across to the post-merger.

[Dipper 13]

Russell was injured.

Can you provide a source to back this up?

[PTB Fan]

76 Erving clearly had an impressive year, but I can't put Erving's skillset over either MJ or Lebron. i just can't see the argument that his skillset is as good. Incredible physical talent and basketball IQ, but a passable jumpshot at best and overall halfcourt polish lacking, puts him being the 8 ball in that category IMO. It'd make sense to me that he'd crush the ABA due to his physical ability, more up and down play, lack of big men, etc. Can't say I think that guy is better than Lebron or MJ, who both have a case to be called rich man's Erving in their own ways

What made Dr J so great all-around was the fact that he had excellent physical tools to maximize some of his skill set. That's where there's a difference (at least to me) in being more complete. For example, Bird dominated the league based on his skill set without relying like Jordan, LBJ, Magic etc on their physical advantages yet the latter are usually above him in terms of being more 'complete'.

Some player's skill set wouldn't have been amazing without their physical advantages. So in a way there's a difference there.. and I like to define skills and all-around game a bit more differently. Then again, we have West, Olajuwon, Jordan etc who were dominant players on both ends yet people still bring players who were superstars on one end, and above average to great on other in front of them for random reasons, mostly numbers being in question.

BTW, wonderful post from Doctor MJ.

[Doctor MJ]

Not going to take time to find the post I'm responding to here, but I did want to say:

People are making strong arguments for Wilt which I'm glad to see. I don't think it makes sense to say "well when Wilt does his thing, he scores, he wasn't scoring in '67 so it was more of an ensemble thing". Nah, the astounding success of '67 is all about Wilt. He is without question still the focal point of opponent's defense. One can argue, and I've brought this up before, that among the factors involved is a "decoy" factor where defense simply aren't responding optimally, and that a recognition of this might have been a major cause of the team's offense declining the next year. That could then be something people attribute as a factor other than "Wilt being good", but it's definitely not something that you should give credit to Hal Greer & company for.

However, I'm troubled when I see "and he did it against Russ & Nate, not Smits". Simply put, Wilt's not playing the same role as peak Shaq at all at that point, and he's not playing that role specifically because he wasn't nearly as effective at it as Shaq was. This is particularly important because when Wilt played this new role, he wasn't actually going up against Russ & Nate nearly as much as he did before, which of course part of why the team did better.

All that said, I understand wanting to adjust for strength of overall defense here, that's definitely a good thing,

[therealbig3]

This. So don't you think Duncan's box score production was influenced by Manu, Parker and Pop?
Or different question - don't you think Manu, Parker and Pop make life easier for Duncan than Rudy T, Thorpe and Kenny for Hakeem?

Manu and Parker in 03 were not very good yet. That supporting cast around Duncan was very weak offensively, worse than Hakeem's supporting cast in 94.

Pop does deserve a lot of credit for the Spurs' success, but the Spurs defense went from elite defense to good, but not great, defense exactly when Duncan started declining.

05-1st
06-1st
07-2nd
08-3rd
09-5th
10-8th
11-11th
12-10th

BTW, that season in 10, when the Spurs were 8th defensively, was when Duncan was considerably declined, and without Bowen. The Spurs' other big men were Matt Bonner, Dejuan Blair, and 35-year old Antonio McDyess.

His RAPM numbers were also always among the best in the league. And I don't even think we have the RAPM data for Duncan's defensive (physical) prime. The 2002 and 2003 numbers are kind of incomplete, and I think Duncan's best defensive years were 98-03, before he physically declined.

[PTB Fan]

However, I'm troubled when I see "and he did it against Russ & Nate, not Smits". Simply put, Wilt's not playing the same role as peak Shaq at all at that point, and he's not playing that role specifically because he wasn't nearly as effective at it as Shaq was. This is particularly important because when Wilt played this new role, he wasn't actually going up against Russ & Nate nearly as much as he did before, which of course part of why the team did better.

All that said, I understand wanting to adjust for strength of overall defense here, that's definitely a good thing,

When people in general make a case for someone, they have to down the others in order to praise the player for which they are writing.

[Doctor MJ]

76 Erving clearly had an impressive year, but I can't put Erving's skillset over either MJ or Lebron. i just can't see the argument that his skillset is as good. Incredible physical talent and basketball IQ, but a passable jumpshot at best and overall halfcourt polish lacking, puts him being the 8 ball in that category IMO. It'd make sense to me that he'd crush the ABA due to his physical ability, more up and down play, lack of big men, etc. Can't say I think that guy is better than Lebron or MJ, who both have a case to be called rich man's Erving in their own ways

I don't really have a problem with this, although I don't like the "rich man's Erving" thing. In general there's the principle of it with each players game being too unique to do this (Erving without question had strengths in addition to weaknesses relative to these other guys), but also I actually see LeBron having more in common with McGinnis and Jordan having more in common with Wade. I don't know who to compare Erving too, which might be part of the problem. To some degree, Erving has the kind of joga bonita to his game that Bird & magic do, where as Jordan was more pure explosion and LeBron's game is actually kinda ugly. The relative beauty of a player's game is irrelevant to how good he is in principle, but understanding how a player did his thing helps you understand his specific kind of impact.

[ThaRegul8r]

Russell was injured.

Can you provide a source to back this up?

No one here knows more about Russell than I do. There is no source other than what a poster here said one day. Same as when another poster claimed Kareem was injured against Nate Thurmond, which explains why he got shut down by Thurmond in the postseason, it wasn't that Thurmond's defensive ability had anything to do with it. Just excuses and attempted rationalizations.

[C-izMe]

After thinking it over I might pick Jordan 91. The most perfect season ever.

[PTB Fan]

Russell was injured.

Can you provide a source to back this up?

No one here knows more about Russell than I do. There is no source other than what a poster here said one day. Same as when another poster claimed Kareem was injured against Nate Thurmond, which explains why he got shut down by Thurmond in the postseason, it wasn't that Thurmond's defensive ability had anything to do with it. Just excuses and attempted rationalizations.

No one knows more about Russell than you. I've read your posts in the Retro Player Of The Year projects. They were... just amazing.

[PTB Fan]

BTW, it's amazing that Kareem hasn't been mentioned here.

[ElGee]

Seems like not a lot of talk about the No. 1 peak of all-time for a thread about the No. 1 peak of all-time. Reciting box score stats for each player's last few PS games does not determine how good they were at basketball.

Here are a few stats, for kicks:

Shaq free-throw rate: 0.49.
Wilt free-throw rate: 0.76.

Huh? What do you mean "free throw rate?"

The 76ers pace was 122.9 in 1967.
The Lakers pace was 93.3 in 2000.

Wilt took 8.6 FTA's per 36, or 9.3 FTA's per 100.
Shaq took 9.4 FTA's per 36, or 13.4 FTA"s per 100.

it has been mentioned before that Russell was injured and that Sixers championship was thus, according to the author, tainted. on the other hand, informed poster like Warspite said that he had never heard about it before so we should probably look deeper.

now it makes sense - Celtics were 5-4 vs Philly in '67 RS, 4-4 in '68 RS (lost 2 games when Russ and Hondo were resting for the playoffs so it's basically 4-2) and 4-3 in '68 PS. it's incredibly strange that suddenly they were pounded by 10 pts on average in that series, while they outscored Celtics by 2 pts in the '67 RS. they did that by scoring 121 PPG in that series (111 vs Cs in '67 RS) it also coincided with Russell having the worst series of his career. what are the odds ?

fun fact: 1st time 67ers played Celtics, they destroyed them 138-96. Celtics come back week later and win 105-87. I've never seen such a turnaround. from -42 to +18 ? I mean wow. also, without that first game Philly scored 107.5 and was outscored by 3 pts so that game turned the sample around.

the point is that Celtics and 76ers were very much equal in 67-68 and it was a consistent trend. what jumps out is 67 postseason where the Celtics played just... poorly, with Russell playing the worst series of his career, basically making no impact. I'd say there's a pretty big chance he was injured badly.

I've never seen any evidence Russell was injured. Keep in mind I've combed through the dailies for most of the 1960's and have read Russell's biography and grew up in Boston hearing Russell legends.

Bastillon's conlcusion that Russell was injured is *easily explainable by variance.* He asks when have you ever seen a -42 turn into a +18? And he asks this because they didn't get the NBA in Scandinavia for Memorial Day in 1985 http://www.basketball-reference.com/box ... 70BOS.html

I don't understand the agenda against Wilt here.

He's scoring 'too much', yet takes his average team to within one point of beating the back-to-back-to-back defending champions Celtics in 1962, and you mark him down.

He's fit into the mold of everyone's favorite player Russell, defending, rebounding and passing as his first priorities, and then add 24 ppg on 68% shooting for good measure, and leads his team to 68-13, and people still 'can't see his impact'.

It's not an agenda, it's trying to understand how good someone was at basketball. Period. He did not fit into Russell's mold, the media simply described him that way because of the championship narrative of the Celtics. In reality, peak Wilt wasn't close to the defender Russell was (totally different physical build), and his offense was way better than Russell's ever was.

But in that Game 7, Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 25 points (to Shaq's 18), and had game-highs of 11 rebounds (to Shaq's 9), seven assists (to Shaq's five), and four blocked shots (to Shaq's one). In Game 6, Kobe had a game-high 33 points, six assists, four steals and three blocked shots. But as I've said before, I don't care what a player's teammates do, I'm interested in the player in question's individual performance. People act like Shaq is this unstoppable force who steamrolls over the opposition, but contrary to the hype, he was not unstoppable. Shaq's individual performance in the biggest games of the series was subpar in a series they by all rights should have lost anyway were it not for a monumental gag job, and since we're talking about GOAT season, he cannot be #1 as far as I'm concerned. Not when you've got seasons like Wilt dethroning the eight-peat Celtics, with his individual performance being beyond reproach. You've got to come up big when it matters, whenever your team needs it. So, no, Shaq 2000 is eliminated from the #1 spot on my list of GOAT seasons. Everyone else's mileage may vary, but I cannot in good conscience vote this season as GOAT.

Well, since no player can individually win a game, and variance is abundant in the sport, losing would not disqualify someone from being the best ever. And since that's the case, all you are really doing is saying because Shaq had TWO GAMES below his own standards, you are disqualifying him, regardless of whether his standard the rest of the time was better than everyone else's. You can do that, but it's totally illogical. How do you know Chamberlain didn't have two 15 TOV games in 1967 or two atrocious defensive games?

Furthermore, Portland had the best frontline in the game for defending O'Neal.

2000 Shaq Regular Season
vs. Portland 20.5 ppg 13.0 rpg 3.5 apg on 50% shooting and 8.7 FTA's per 36.
vs. League 30.1 ppg 13.7 rpg 3.8 apg 58% shooting and 9.4 FTA's per 36.

Part of a player's "goodness" is his ability to play against a variety of different types of teams. If you believe that the league could somehow sustain a frontline of the Blazers (280 lb Sabonis, Sheed and Grant), then I suppose you might not think highly of Shaq. (Atlanta, Miami and Houston were the other teams his scoring was really down against during the season...teams with guys like Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning and PJ Brown). Otherwise, it's called a "bad matchup," against a top defensive team, which he still averaged 26-12-4 on 54% shooting and 11.1 FTA's per 36). And one of the reasons his scoring was down in the last 2 games is because of all the double teams, which led to many Opportunities Created for O'Neal.

[PTB Fan]

I remember Shaq dunking from the early 00's (way too young to remember it), but Portland was very good with their double and sometimes triple teams for Shaq. 7'3 Sabonis as a primary defender, Sheed to help in the post and Scottie coming in from the perimeter to help. They were really really outstanding overall.

[Josephpaul]

BTW, it's amazing that Kareem hasn't been mentioned here.

Go back few pages I had 71 Kareem as my pick

[Josephpaul]

Kareem 71 , the only championship for the bucks 2596 total points in the season . In the finals he avg 27PGG 18.5REB a clean sweep of Boston bullets who had 2 HOF. He also beat a laker team that had Wilt , Gail Goodrich to get to the finals. For these reasons I think his peak seasons is the all time Peak.

71 numbers re edited
TS% 60.6 regular season
TS % 54.8 Playoffs
Point total 2596 , 31.7 PPG On 57.7 FG%
TRB 1311 16.0
PER Reg 29.0 / 25. 3 Playoffs
Only lost 2 games against in his playoff run.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIL/1971.html

Fixed.

[PTB Fan]

BTW, it's amazing that Kareem hasn't been mentioned here.

Go back few pages I had 71 Kareem as my pick

I saw that post. I thought that he'd be mentioned more..

[therealbig3]

@ElGee

It seems that you feel that the #1 peak ever comes down to Jordan vs Shaq.

What are your thoughts on how they compare?

[C-izMe]

I have one big issue here. Should "most dominant" get 1st over "most perfect".any players can argue for most dominant but most perfect is 91 Jordan (he had one bad game all year in 99 games), 03 Duncan (can't think of any bad PS games), or 94 Hakeem (3-4 legitimately bad games with about 7 below average games). Most dominate comes down to 00 Shaq (unstoppable, 2nd best defender in a 29 team league) and 67 Wilt (amazing offensive player and great defensive anchor).

I need to stop over thinking this I think.