I’m voting for Rick Barry over Elgin Baylor. Although Baylor may have peaked higher, Barry provides more high quality/prime seasons which makes his prime and overall career more impressive than Baylor’s, who had a short prime and less valuable post prime seasons. Barry also has a significant longevity edge over Baylor even though he was forced to sit out the entire 68 season.
10 Season Prime Barry 10 Season Prime (66-76) RS: 22.2 PER, .530 TS%, 103.3 WS, .178 WS/48 Barry 10 Season Prime (66-76) PS: 22.2 PER, .519 TS%, 13.2 WS, .161 WS/48
Baylor 10 Season Prime (59-68) RS: 23.2 PER, .491 TS%, 87.4 WS, .148 WS/48 Baylor 10 Season Prime (59-68) PS: 23.6 PER, .503 TS%, 13.0 WS, .148 WS/48
Here’s some quotes of Bill Sharman (coached Barry in SF) talking about Barry’s overall game and competitiveness:
Spoiler:
Not only is he a great shooter, but he's one of the game's finest passers. He hits the open man when he's double-teamed, which is often, and runs the pick and roll, setting up his teammates for easy layups, better than any player I've ever seen.
He has to be the quickest 6-7 player the game of basketball has ever seen. He's awfully hard, if not impossible, to match up against defensively. He beats a bigger opponent with his quickness and goes over the little man. He is unstoppable going to the basket on a one-on-one situation and is usually successful one-on-two.
I would have to call him super, super on the fast break. He can penetrate, make the basket and draw the foul better than anyone. He has great body-balance and body-control He has all the shots -- the hook, jumper, fade-away, set and the layups with either or both hands.
He's an intense competitor, whether it's basketball, golf, checkers or anything else -- he just doesn't want to lose. He's one guy I never had to worry about being up for a game.
I totally understand the argument about weak competition at center in the ABA, or his terrible hands and a really bad AST/TOV ratio, but at this stage in the project, there are really no guys who couldn't be criticized for something rather obvious - Barry was a bad teammate and not a very efficient scorer (even for his own era), Baylor in general wasn't really an efficient scorer during the 60s, and just about average defensively (if even that...I'm really not sure if he was even average), Isiah doesn't impress me that much as an overall player (except for his playmaking), Kidd was a really poor scorer for a player of his caliber, and not really a great creator in half-court (the same thing that you can criticze Drexler for), and his offensive impact wasn't anything special for a PG of his caliber. Players like CP3 and Durant are great, but they lack longevity.
I really like Gilmore's scoring efficiency at a pretty high volume (6 seasons with 20+ PPG, 18.8 career average), great rebounding (12.3 per game career average, 18.0% TRB, which is even higher than for example Robinson's or Ewing's), he anchored the best or second best defense 7 times in his career. His low usage (just 20.3% for his career, lower than all of the other candidates for this spot except Kidd (Kidd's career USG% is 19.2%) may be an issue, but he could be an excellent second option, plus his defense and rebounding brings some obvious value to your team. His longevity is as good as anyone's (actually the best of all - he was an All-Star caliber player for 14.5 seasons, over 45000 minutes). He's a pretty fair postseason performer, too.
I don't even expect Gilmore to make the run-off here, but from my perspective, he's the best candidate that we have here, so I'll vote for him. I'll change my vote when run-off starts, if I'll feel confident about voting for one of the candidates (but right now, it's hard to even predict who that might be - Baylor, Barry and Thomas have two votes each...three-way run-off?)
Elgin Baylor (2) - GC Pantalones, trex_8063 Isiah Thomas (2) - JordansBulls, drza Rick Barry (2) - ronnymac2, SactoKingsFan Chris Paul (2) - DQuinn1575, Owly Artis Gilmore (1) - Quotatious
Really, doesn't seem like we have a clear favorite...
drza wrote:Driving me crazy that I haven't had time to get my teeth into this for a few threads. I was really hoping to do a Frazier vs Zeke comp in the last thread, but just didn't get to it. Zeke's still on my radar, as well as Kidd. Paul is interesting because I do think there are a lot of similarities between him and Isiah (and comparing them, I think, would really help me illustrate how much I don't like the over-reliance-on-scoring-efficiency that I see in the win shares/PER type stats). And then, I really think there could be some meat in the Kidd vs Paul comparison, since both are in the databall era and therefore we can use things besides just the efficiency-based stats to compare them. But I just haven't been able to daggone do the analysis. Ugh, it's frustrating.
I also am glad to see the Baylor/Barry/Hondo conversation. I spent some time looking at Elgin back when Pettit was going in, and I still feel like Baylor was the more impressive of the two at their best. I wasn't ready to vote for either of them when Pettit went in, but if I were I'd have voted for Baylor first.
Having not done the analysis that I want to, I'll go ahead and vote for Isiah Thomas. I don't think Paul has the longevity to mess with him yet (the win shares argument didn't do much for me, because it didn't demonstrate longevity and as I've mentioned I think it (grossly) over-relies on scoring efficiency in evaluating). I'm not at all sure that Kidd isn't better...in fact, if I were going to be around tomorrow with time to post I wouldn't vote yet and would instead let it play out. But I'm on the road tomorrow (going to celebrate my grandpa's 99th birthday), so I've got to vote now.
I grew up watching Isiah Thomas, and always thought that he was just a step below the Magics and Birds of the world. In the last project I spent some time going back through those Pistons, and it seemed clear to me that he was the key to their offensive success over his full tenure there and that he (along with Daly and later Rodman) were the dominant figures on that team. He could create for both himself and others, ran very strong offenses through his prime (peaked at #1 in the league, in the mid-80s where the Lakers and Celtics roamed), and stepped up big multiple times in the playoffs. For now, that's enough to get my vote here:
Vote: Isiah Thomas
Bullet counterpoints/responses on Isiah/Paul
- WS total does reflect meaningful longevity because its a (semi-)accumulative rather than rate metric. You can argue how good it is but when you're multiplying rate productivity by minutes you're getting a total refleclecting cumulative goodness.
- 1st place offense was (a) an outlier (11th in '83, 9th in '85); (b) due to offensive rebounding and minimizing turnovers neither of which Thomas particularly did (at best you might claim he was creating shots for others so his his individual turnover numbers are misleading, but I'd be reticent to claim low turnovers as an Isiah caused strength)
- PER skewing pro-efficiency? Career PER has Baylor at 25; T-Mac at 26 Dominique at 33, Chris Webber at 47, AI at 48, Al Jefferson at 49, Jon Drew at 50. If there is a pro-efficiency skew it's hidden by a scoring volume skew which would give an artificial advantage to Isiah, not Paul. Yet Paul has only two years (his first two) when his PER is worse than Isiah's best year. And whilst WS might skew against Thomas with regard to scoring efficiency, it skews pro-him on defense. It over credits him for Detroits D based on his boxscore (gambling for steals) and the combination of being on a good defensive team and DWS's inability to split defensive credit accurately ('89 he's 2nd on Detroit in DWS, 1st in the playoffs; '90 he's 2nd and 2nd) part of that is minutes but still. This problem is particularly accute because Detroit's best defenders are primarily non-boxscore in their defensive impact.
- Regarding stepping up in the playoffs. True but stepping up is a relative thing. Shawn Kemp, Derrick Coleman, Baron Davis, Gus Williams and Johnny Moore stepped up the playoffs. So too, from a lower baseline, did Tim Thomas. How much does this matter?
Rapid fire responses, because the time just isn't here and I'm about to get on the road:
*The #1 team offensive rating is a bit of an outlier in terms of relative finish, but from memory pretty much every Pistons offense of Zeke's prime was up around +110 in ORTG with all of the moving parts changing except for Isiah and Laimbeer. And the timing of the offensive improvements, when Isiah was clearly playing a larger role than Laimbeer, led me to conclude that Zeke (and Daily) were the main cogs needed to maintain the strong offense.
*Win shares...I don't hate it, but I do feel that it overly focuses on efficiency. Which leads to conclusions like 3 Chris Paul years are worth like 85% of the value of Isiah's career. It doesn't reflect longevity, it reflects that win shares DRAMATICALLY overvalues efficiency (IMO) and that it therefore can lead to conclusions that don't bear much resemblence to reality. Win shares, I believe, was derived on a type of regression that estimates some correlation with good team play. But when you're doing batch estimation/correlations over huge samples, outliers can break the system. Paul may very well be an outlier in the types of things that win shares measures, but the math then pushes his values based on that particular stat beyond what his actual impact is. And since Paul is in the databall era, we have other more direct measures of his impact to compare win shares to that helps point this out. Paul is great in the +/- stats, for example, but not the ridiculous outlier that he is in win shares (where measures out as bar-none the best player in the NBA, ahead of LeBron and every other player that is still active in win shares/48).
*Playoff step-ups. The players that you listed are starting from lower points than Zeke. My point wasn't that Zeke was relatively stronger in the postseason than the regular, it was that he had some really great playoffs in a vacuum. Which is an accomplishment worthy of mention. (By the way, of the players you listed as counter-points, I have interest in Baron Davis. He measures out better than expected in both RAPM and postseason on/off +/-, and I'll probably want to look further into that and him at some point before we get to 100).
Bullet points again: - No. 1 offense: Depends on the strength of conclustion you're trying to make. He's the constant in a series of above average, goodish but not great, often unexceptional offenses. There are moving parts but they're generally not bad ones. Anyway as before it depends on the takeaway we're to get from this. That for say, 7 years could be the constant, perhaps most important part of a good (to varying degrees) offense.
- WS: Win Shares does reflect longevity. Hence Jabbar clearly first all-time, Stockton and Malone top 5. If don't think it's valid that's fine but it's odd to suggest it doesn't reflect longevity beacuse it isn't a good metric.
FWIW: Thomas career WARP 129; Chris Paul career WARP (123 (through 2012) + ?+ 14.47 (2014) cf: http://www.basketballprospectus.com/art ... mode=print ; http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM); I suspect we see the same with PER-EWA (probably between the the two - WARP likes Thomas more than other metrics, you've suggested WS skews pro Paul). I'd suggest there's a (metric) consensus that Paul has clearly passed Thomas in the RS, and that's without factoring in that Thomas spreads his goodness more thinly.
- Playoff step up: Depends on your measure and he has the longest RS careem but by the boxscore Thomas is 3rd in RS PER and 4th in RS WS/48; cf: http://bkref.com/tiny/eaPMj . This is perhaps somewhat moot though if as you say the point is great playoffs in a vacuum (rightly imo). In the playoffs though, amongst this group he is 5th in PER and 6th in WS/48. He again has the most minutes (though this is largely out of a players control). He is also (unlike Kemp and perhaps Coleman) fortunate enough to have missed the playoffs in his worst years (rookie and last two years) and had his longest runs at 26-28. If there are sample concerns, perhaps the playoffs with matchups, injuries, uneven competition etc, plus sample size relative to RS careers should not be heavily weighted.
Warspite wrote:Im curious why someone would mention Kidd or CP3 before Bob Cousy.
Make a case for Cousy. I'll listen. I'll need more than Kidd sucks at shooting tho since I already know he sucks at shooting and still think he's a candidate here. Maybe more about what makes Cousy great?
Especially when trying to make a case for Bob Cousy we'll need more than "Kidd sucks at shooting"......Cousy wasn't exactly a font of scoring efficiency either.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Excelled in every role he was placed in--6th man, defensive stopper, primary scorer, playmaker, etc.
Great longevity. Only 1k fewer minutes than John Stockton and he was a quality player for all those minutes and an elite one for most of them.
His ability to play heavy minutes and run all-day fit perfectly into what the Celtics wanted to do. Celtics weren't ever really great offensive teams so his efficiency compared to modern players really doesnt bother me. He was at or better than league average most years when he played--again plus the Celtics style is a factor.
Clutch plays in championship moments on both ends.
ThunderBolt wrote:I’m going to let some of you in on a little secret I learned on realgm. If you don’t like a thread, not only do you not have to comment but you don’t even have to open it and read it. You’re welcome.
It's very difficult once again to judge between these guys. I can see arguments in multiple directions.
In the end, I'd summarize it like this:
Paul was the best of any of the players getting votes right now. Obviously that's my opinion, but most will agree he's at least right there with the best of this group, with other guys below him. He's an exceptional player, who we all expect to rise up beyond these other guys by the time we're done.
So the issue is longevity, and right from the start to my mind that basically eliminates Baylor & Isiah. Isiah more clearly, but Baylor for the reasons I've given. His true prime - where he was an actual superstar level player was 4-5 years, which Paul has already surpassed. That's before you get into the matter that that was so long ago, and while he was a superstar early on, he never showed the growth in awareness that leads to increasing efficiency that you typically see from smart players. You might point to his injuries there as an excuse, but actually that only made it that much more clear cut that he needed to adjust how he played.
I bring up Win Shares, as I did before, not because I think they are the perfect stat, but because they represent the most commonly used overall performance metric that can be applied backward into history and tallied up over a career. And by that metric, Paul tops both Isiah and Baylor.
On the other side of things, the other guys mentioned (Barry, Gilmore, Hondo) do have significantly superior longevity to Paul, and Isiah, and Baylor. If you side with all 3 of those guys over Paul, I feel you. I can see the argument, and my opinions aren't set in stone.
But for now I'm sticking with Paul. His prime is the most impressive, and it's actually not that short any more.
If you voted for a guy who isn't tied for the lead, you might want to consider switching. I don't know what beast will do, but it's about time for the runoff, and a 4-way runoff isn't really a great option. We could easily end up with it still a tie.
If that irritates you given that your guy is only 1 vote off from the lead, I understand.
I consider Paul better than Isiah; Isiah's championship years were when he took a step BACK offensively ad the team focused on defense, adding appropriate players. Paul is better on O by what I hold to be a considerable margin. I don't think Baylor is in the same class as either offensively, volume production aside, and I'm not prepared to consider Gilmore juuust yet, as I don't have a good feel for high impact from him, regardless of his efficency.
I vote for Chris paul.
Strong basketball IQ, excellent HCO, obviously has good synergy with athletic finishers and shooters. Longevity isn't great and he isn't a knock your socks off scorer, but everyone here will have flaws made more noticeable at this stage. Has had some bad luck and injuries, but so have others in this range. I think a lot of Isiah's traction is built on his title narrative, and I think people often forget what Joe Dumars did to the injury-devastated Lakers in the 89 Finals. Zeke was great, but I'm going Paul here.
If you voted for a guy who isn't tied for the lead, you might want to consider switching. I don't know what beast will do, but it's about time for the runoff, and a 4-way runoff isn't really a great option. We could easily end up with it still a tie.
If that irritates you given that your guy is only 1 vote off from the lead, I understand.
I am fully aware that my vote for Hondo is essentially a throwaway vote at #29, but I made a commitment to penbeast and everyone participating in the project that I would never vote strategically and I feel like if I switched it now it would be influencing who ends up in the run-off with Chris Paul and I'm not comfortable personally doing so in light of my earlier promise.
Only speaking for myself here. If others feel it appropriate for them I have zero issues with it.
ThunderBolt wrote:I’m going to let some of you in on a little secret I learned on realgm. If you don’t like a thread, not only do you not have to comment but you don’t even have to open it and read it. You’re welcome.
I didn't have time to do as much research as I would've liked, but still want to get in a vote before the runoff. As noted at the beginning of the thread, I was between Baylor, Havlicek, and Barry, and they all still seem very close to me.
I'm ultimately going with Barry because of his longevity edge over Baylor, and scoring more efficiently than Havlicek. His 75 championship run was very impressive, and he seems to be a better all around player than given credit for at times. I also think his off the court personality making a negative impact on his success as a player is overstated. I just as easily could've gone with Havlicek here, but I'm slightly more confident in Barry on his own.
My vote goes to Rick Barry. I think he is underrated because of his bad personality, but I think personality isn't that important in basketball. For example look at the best team ever: MJ, Rodman and Pippen - all of them with big flaws in theirs personalities, yet Bulls were great. On court level of play is all that matters, really, and Barry was great player. His efficiency might not look good, but it's similar story like with Bird in playoffs - despite relatively weak scoring efficiency Barry's offensive impact was VERY good. And he wasn't bad defender either when we look at overall impact on D, not only man to man defense.
lorak wrote:My vote goes to Rick Barry. I think he is underrated because of his bad personality, but I think personality isn't that important in basketball. For example look at the best team ever: MJ, Rodman and Pippen - all of them with big flaws in theirs personalities, yet Bulls were great. On court level of play is all that matters, really, and Barry was great player. His efficiency might not look good, but it's similar story like with Bird in playoffs - despite relatively weak scoring efficiency Barry's offensive impact was VERY good. And he wasn't bad defender either when we look at overall impact on D, not only man to man defense.
lorak wrote:My vote goes to Rick Barry. I think he is underrated because of his bad personality, but I think personality isn't that important in basketball. For example look at the best team ever: MJ, Rodman and Pippen - all of them with big flaws in theirs personalities, yet Bulls were great. On court level of play is all that matters, really, and Barry was great player. His efficiency might not look good, but it's similar story like with Bird in playoffs - despite relatively weak scoring efficiency Barry's offensive impact was VERY good. And he wasn't bad defender either when we look at overall impact on D, not only man to man defense.
Current beliefs belittle the value of volume scoring. However as a former volume scorer I can testify to its importance as well as its value. Barry was one of the truly elite scorers and his teams had success reaching the Finals in 67 in the ABA and in 75. He was in my top 20 a few yrs back and he still is a better player than 30% of the guys voted in already.
When I see LBJ I see a modern Rick Barry.
HomoSapien wrote:Warspite, the greatest poster in the history of realgm.
LeBron = Barry? Really? Barry was a tall, superb outside shooter, didn't like contact, played little defense, and was a flaming jerk to his teammates. The only thing I see in common with LeBron is great passing and high scoring volume.
That said . . .
Vote count: Rick Barry (5) - ronnymac2, SactoKingsFan, Clyde Frazier, lorak, Warspite Chris Paul (5) - DQuinn1575, Owly. Doctor MJ. tsherkin, +penbeast0
Elgin Baylor (3) - GC Pantalones, trex_8063, Jim Naismith Isiah Thomas (2) - JordansBulls, drza Artis Gilmore (1) - Quotatious John Havlicek (1) - Chuck Texas
I'm going to add my runoff vote to Chris Paul. I want a guy who competes at both ends of the court, doesn't throw his teammates under the bus, and will be a leader . . . given that Barry's numbers aren't quite as good as Paul's, 1975's admittedly great run by itself doesn't make up close to the difference. I don't think I vote for Barry over Drexler, Havlicek, Durant, Gervin, or English either though I am still open to it. Baylor or Nique v. Barry is far from a sure thing either . . . Worthy, McHale, there are several other possibilities I look at as being on Barry's level at least.
“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination,” Andrew Lang.
My official vote is for Rick Barry. Strong start as ROY then next season at the 67 Finals against Wilt's Sixers, put up 40.8/8.8/3.3 on 40% FG. That Sixers defense did a number on the Warriors. Went to the ABA and blew up though in a weaker league. Injury prone during his ABA time. Injured his knee in 71, then starts to be more perimeter orientated and more of a play maker as his 3pt and assist totals go up. 72 ABA post season, led the Nets over Dr. J's (avg 30/20 in PO) Squires in 7 games while hitting a clutch 3 to seal the game. Upset the Bucks in 73 playoffs. In 75 against the Bulls, together with Wilkes, led a scoring run to seal game 7 while scoring 14 in the 4th. Biggest upset in 75 Finals against the Bullets (6.54 SRS), put up 29.5/4/5/3.5 on 44% FG while doing a carry job in this series. 74-76, GSW was 2nd in team ORTG. Looks like from 76 on though, Phil Smith took bigger role, and Gus Williams played solid minutes. Gambled on defense. Like every Barry as he was the 1st, retired with the Rockets.
Looks like a very good shooter, squared up nicely when receiving the ball. Shot a lot of pull up jumpers with range out to the 3 point line though mostly a mid-range/15-20ft guy. Backed his guy down and shot a turnaround. Doesn't drive to the lane much unless path is clear which may explain the lower FTA totals. Doesn't appear to be a ball stopper offensively while being a good passer where I value passing highly. High BBIQ as he made quick passes, touch passes with good court vision. Probably a big reason why the Warriors had high team ORTG as Lorak said. Played both on and off ball.
