RealGM Top 100 List #40

[Jim Naismith]

Vote: Dwight Howard

Peaked much higher than Miller or Pierce: ~ 3rd best player in the NBA in 2009 and 2011

#35 in RPOY Shares (#113 for Pierce, #121 for Miller)

Led team to finals over 2009 LeBron

Players with at 3 or more playoffs with at least 25 PER

01 Michael Jordan...........9
02 Shaquille O'Neal..........9
03 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar....6
04 Tim Duncan...............6
05 Hakeem Olajuwon........6
06 Wilt Chamberlain.........5
07 LeBron James.............5
08 Charles Barkley...........4
09 Elgin Baylor................4
10 Dirk Nowitzki..............4
11 Dwight Howard..........3
12 Magic Johnson............3
13 George Mikan.............3
14 Chris Paul..................3
15 Dwyane Wade.............3
16 Jerry West.................3

[penbeast0]

ok, now we have 3 with 2 votes . . . back in 4 hours to check and set up runoff (hopefully).

[ceiling raiser]

I know I've been complaining about the run of wings, but I'm going to have to support one here. I've been up and down on Dwight (who I actually had at the bottom of my pre-project list), so Reggie Miller is my vote here (Pierce is on that shortlist as well). Doesn't hurt that I'd like to read some more Pierce-Miller conversation.

Here's my post from a few threads ago on Miller vs GP:

It looks like the Glove is going to win this, which is a fine pick. Going to have to cast my vote for Reggie Miller though.

As I noted above, his non-boxcore offense is tremendously effective, and the impact stats seem to reflect this. Not many things scarier for an offense than Reggie bobbing and weaving around screens all around the court, and getting open for a quick shot. I think there is some legitimate truth to him raising his game in the postseason as well. Super high portability, though I'd like for him to be a better defender.

Payton is an interesting case. Doesn't seem to be a huge standout in defensive RAPM (though he rates well in offensive RAPM), but looks like a solid impact player for the late 90s/early 00s. I have some concerns about his ability to be a dominant defensive guard without the benefit of hand-checking though, and while I think he might be a bit better defensively than RAPM is suggesting, I think the new rules would take away from his ability to be a legitimate two-way impactful player.

ElGee earlier in this thread about the value of shooting, and I do think there's a real chance he's correct about it being the most important element of offense. When you're a guy like Reggie who, through his shooting prowess and what it entails, is capable of distorting defenses to the extent that he did, you can have a profound impact on your team's scoring margin.

[RebelWithACause]

I know I've been complaining about the run of wings, but I'm going to have to support one here. I've been up and down on Dwight (who I actually had at the bottom of my pre-project list), so Reggie Miller is my vote here (Pierce is on that shortlist as well). Doesn't hurt that I'd like to read some more Pierce-Miller conversation.

Here's my post from a few threads ago on Miller vs GP:

It looks like the Glove is going to win this, which is a fine pick. Going to have to cast my vote for Reggie Miller though.

As I noted above, his non-boxcore offense is tremendously effective, and the impact stats seem to reflect this. Not many things scarier for an offense than Reggie bobbing and weaving around screens all around the court, and getting open for a quick shot. I think there is some legitimate truth to him raising his game in the postseason as well. Super high portability, though I'd like for him to be a better defender.

Payton is an interesting case. Doesn't seem to be a huge standout in defensive RAPM (though he rates well in offensive RAPM), but looks like a solid impact player for the late 90s/early 00s. I have some concerns about his ability to be a dominant defensive guard without the benefit of hand-checking though, and while I think he might be a bit better defensively than RAPM is suggesting, I think the new rules would take away from his ability to be a legitimate two-way impactful player.

ElGee earlier in this thread about the value of shooting, and I do think there's a real chance he's correct about it being the most important element of offense. When you're a guy like Reggie who, through his shooting prowess and what it entails, is capable of distorting defenses to the extent that he did, you can have a profound impact on your team's scoring margin.

What is your take on the big guys vs the perimeter guys drza and I disussed?
I ask, because in general you are very high on big men?!

It was Dwight, Zo, Mutombo and Sheed and for perimeter guys Miller and Pierce?

[E-Balla]

I know I said I wasn't going to vote but seeing as how we need separation for this runoff I'm voting Reggie Miller.

Basically to me it came down to who showed up the most in major moments. I mean Pierce, Reggie, Deke, Dwight, and Zo were all good enough to lead you to the playoffs with a decent squad and be a good second option for a winner but Reggie is the only one of those guys that turned into an elite player in the playoffs. If playoff Reggie played 82 games a year he'd have been picked way earlier and it's not like his playoff performances were a fluke either. Pierce and Deke both need either perfectly built teams or to be a second option to win it all and Zo doesn't have the longest extended peak while Dwight is a mental midget to the point that it hurts the team.

T Mac's longevity is up to snuff but I have to take points off because he never had the chance to prove himself on a big stage.

[ceiling raiser]

What is your take on the big guys vs the perimeter guys drza and I disussed?
I ask, because in general you are very high on big men?!

It was Dwight, Zo, Mutombo and Sheed and for perimeter guys Miller and Pierce?

Some quick comments (not home ATM):

Dwight - I'm very high on him, and think his offense is incredibly underrated (and his defense maybe a tad overrated). I'd really like to see ShaqAttack post a bit on him if he has a chance.

Zo - Rates terrifically in RAPM, and from watching at the time reminded me a bit of Dwight. His https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z-0DQCSQr5vMLUp1zY4DbsmzBM4UFghqG4dc1eHfBh4/edit#gid=1672058251 (credit to lorak) are a bit underwhelming, despite his playing on solid teams with good defenses in 2 of the 3 pre-RAPM years for which we have data.

Deke - I spoke with Doc a few times over the course of the project. Monster defender in his day, maybe has a case for one of the GOATs when adjusting for era. But I'm not entirely convinced the paradigm for a defensive big man hasn't changed in the post-illegal defense era from the dominant shotblocker to the mobile, versatile big. I still do feel there's a real chance Nate Thurmond (still on the board) was superior defensive, but Mutombo has superior durability, longevity, and his offensive production is less of a negative.

Sheed - Very high on him, but I'm not sure how to parse credit for those Pistons defenses. As was mentioned, he rates well even in 04 season prior to the trade, so it's not entirely collinearity. Very unique skillset, unsure how I feel.

Pierce - Love his all-around game, pretty underrated scoring skillset and defense.

Miller - Thoughts are above.

Gun to my head, I'd say:

Miller/Pierce/Dwight
Mutombo
Sheed/Zo

All of them are top 75 guys IMO, and I'd take most of them (if not all) over some of the players already selected.

[penbeast0]

Pierce v. Miller it is . . . .

I think I go with Miller here. Pierce is more the all-arounder but Miller has one GOAT caliber skills and maximized it's potential over his career. Not completely sold on either this high, but slightly more sold on Miller (despite or maybe because he's now a Wizard).

[Doctor MJ]

So it's Pierce & Miller, which was the focus of my post on the first page. Not really sure what else to say on this front.
This was part of a post written before mine voting for Pierce, and a couple quick comparisons seem reasonable:

His RAPM data is on par with Dwight Howard (what was that you said about impact, penbeast0?), and he's had excellent longevity to boot (16 valuable seasons). Looks good via WOWY data, too.

Couple other tiny statistical tid-bits (other aspects have been previously covered):
He's 25th all-time in career rs WS.
He's 38th all-time in career playoff WS.

Miller's RAPM data looks better than Pierce's.
Miller is 16th all-time in career RS WS.
Miller is 21st all-time in career playoff WS.

Also if we go by WS/48:
In the RS, Miler is 45th all-time, Pierce is 62nd.
In the playoffs, Miller is 23rd all-time, Pierce is 128th.

And as mentioned:
Miller was on more successful offenses.
Miller is a better fit on great offenses due to his role which let's him work around the talent of others - Pierce isn't bad, Miller's considerably better.
Miller is better at exploding against really tough offenses when it counts.

Just on the face of it, I'd rather have Miller as my top scorer than Pierce, and I'd rather have my playmaking in the hands of a true distributor.

[Basketballefan]

Vote: Reggie Miller.

Glad Isiah is settled.

Pierce seems to be the lead contender so I'll talk on Miller vs Pierce.

As noted, last time I rated Pierce ahead of Miller and was one of Pierce's proponents. Since then my opinion has changed.

First the basic framework here:

I see Pierce as essentially a "very good" case scenario for a more unipolar oriented B-list superstar guard. Most guys like that aren't as efficient, and don't adjust so willingly or ably when the time comest to scale down the primacy. I like him a lot.

Miller I've talked to death, but obviously I see him as essentially the best case scenario we've ever scene for an off-ball scoring guard.

Now, to me it's quite clear that the very best offensive perimeter players are almost always on ball. If you can do a great job dictating the play when you have max control, well an offense can be designed to give you that control quite a bit, and hence your impact scales above all others.

On the other hand, if you're not actually a world class decision maker, then being more on ball and scoring is more about forcing the decisions to be "me", and this causes a lot of problems.

Pierce exists on the level where I wouldn't allege problems, but I also wouldn't feel comfortable giving him a clear edge.

Now, team context: I really can't stress enough how much more successful Miller's offenses were than Pierce's.

If we call a "great" offense one that is 3 or more points above average. Miller was on 8 of them, Pierce was never on one. So for anyone giving Pierce the edge thinking about the role he played in the Big 3 as showing him to be more proven, you need to turn around 180. Miller is far more proven as a threat on a great offense, and he plays a role that is inherently more suited to scaling with talent around him.

That's before you even get into how Miller's ability to explode in the playoffs pushes him well ahead of Pierce while still playing a role that gets in the way of others less.

So yeah, to me the debate comes in here based on rebounding & defense. Cases have been made against Miller here, and while there's been some defense, by no means do I insist that everything's addressed. And while we can talk on it more, it's like anything else that comes down to one player being better at X while another's better at Y: How do you weight all that holistically?

Last time around, when I used the best +/- data available, the thing that I forced into the conversation was that Pierce looked to be in serious debate with Kidd. That data surprised me, but I couldn't ignore it, and I wanted everyone to consider it strongly.

We now have more data, and the gap between Pierce and a guy like Kidd is now more clear, which is another way of saying that Kidd with more info looks about the same, but Pierce with more data doesn't look quite as strong as hoped.

We have 3 years available in PI RAPM before Miller's clear end-of-prime. During those years he was ages 32 through 34. He had a scaled rating north of 5 each year, and the earlier year puts him in the mid 6's.

We have basically Pierce's whole year available with this data. He breaks the 5+ barrier only 4 times, and he never broke it consecutive years. He breaks the number in Miller's 32 year old season only once, that was on the '08 Celtics, a collective effort along the lines of which Miller's portability would make him typically a better fit for than Pierce.

Again, I don't want to hate on Pierce. He's in my Top 50. But still the choice of Miller over him isn't one I'm agonizing over.

Pierce>Miller.

Let's not continue to ignore that Miller is one-dimensional, while ignoring that Pierce was an all around player.

It's really frustrating dealing with you dude. I write all this and, and the sum total of your thoughts is an allegation that I'm ignoring things that I literally have addressed in great detail all over the place in these very threads that you've been reading?

There's basically nothing I can say other than that you haven't done anything to convince me I should be listening to you - unlike virtually everyone else here.

I think we value things too differently when it comes to this particular comparison.

I personally don't put a lot of weight into team offenses. I prefer to just look at level of play and the results produced, as opposed to caring so much about where their team was ranked offensively.

[Notanoob]

Sheed - Very high on him, but I'm not sure how to parse credit for those Pistons defenses. As was mentioned, he rates well even in 04 season prior to the trade, so it's not entirely collinearity. Very unique skillset, unsure how I feel.

Gah, please don't say this. It's just a big pet peeve of mine, but something either is unique or it isn't, by the very definition of the word unique. It just drives me nuts that people water down the meaning of the word from "one of a kind, none other like it" to just "a bit unusual, one of a handful".

With that out of the way, I vote for Reggie Miller. Absolute goat at one particular skill set, consistently raised his game in the playoffs (it wasn't some sort of fluke), essentially impossible to keep from doing the one thing that he did. I always felt that Pierce was a tad bit overrated.

[PaulieWal]

Check the Sig.

Your new name had me confused for a day or so. Keep the sig for a while. FWIW, I liked your old name better .

[ceiling raiser]

Sheed - Very high on him, but I'm not sure how to parse credit for those Pistons defenses. As was mentioned, he rates well even in 04 season prior to the trade, so it's not entirely collinearity. Very unique skillset, unsure how I feel.

Gah, please don't say this. It's just a big pet peeve of mine, but something either is unique or it isn't, by the very definition of the word unique. It just drives me nuts that people water down the meaning of the word from "one of a kind, none other like it" to just "a bit unusual, one of a handful".

With that out of the way, I vote for Reggie Miller. Absolute goat at one particular skill set, consistently raised his game in the playoffs (it wasn't some sort of fluke), essentially impossible to keep from doing the one thing that he did. I always felt that Pierce was a tad bit overrated.

Apologies for that. I guess it doesn't make much sense when reading aloud.

[JordansBulls]

Vote: Reggie Miller

Clutch playoff performer, led his teams to the finals as the clear cut man and only lost to guys who were clearly superior players. Led team to best record in the conference and simply a big time player when it matters.

[trex_8063]

So it's Pierce & Miller, which was the focus of my post on the first page. Not really sure what else to say on this front.
This was part of a post written before mine voting for Pierce, and a couple quick comparisons seem reasonable:

His RAPM data is on par with Dwight Howard (what was that you said about impact, penbeast0?), and he's had excellent longevity to boot (16 valuable seasons). Looks good via WOWY data, too.

Couple other tiny statistical tid-bits (other aspects have been previously covered):
He's 25th all-time in career rs WS.
He's 38th all-time in career playoff WS.

Miller's RAPM data looks better than Pierce's.

For the data we have, Miller's best 3-year RAPM is marginally (almost negligibly) better than Pierce's (by ~+0.25 per year). Miller's RAPM was neutral in '01 and '02, and a slight negatives in '03-'05. Pierce, otoh, has never had a negative or neutral/0.0 year in 16 seasons. His worst is +0.9.

Miller is 16th all-time in career RS WS.
Miller is 21st all-time in career playoff WS.

Also if we go by WS/48:
In the RS, Miler is 45th all-time, Pierce is 62nd.
In the playoffs, Miller is 23rd all-time, Pierce is 128th.

And Miller's career PER was 18.4; Pierce's was 20.4 (and on marginally more mpg, too). Even if we look only at Miller's first 16 seasons only, his PER was 18.6 (and PER is a stat that very much likes efficiency, too; that's why guys like Hayes, Maravich, and Zeke never had terribly impressive PER's, despite what at times were insane volumes).
Pierce's usage and volume (Per 100) is greater. Pierce has more in the way of simple "career tally" achievements, too. So there are many ways to look at this comparison.

[Doctor MJ]

Spoiler:

Pierce>Miller.

Let's not continue to ignore that Miller is one-dimensional, while ignoring that Pierce was an all around player.

It's really frustrating dealing with you dude. I write all this and, and the sum total of your thoughts is an allegation that I'm ignoring things that I literally have addressed in great detail all over the place in these very threads that you've been reading?

There's basically nothing I can say other than that you haven't done anything to convince me I should be listening to you - unlike virtually everyone else here.

I think we value things too differently when it comes to this particular comparison.

I personally don't put a lot of weight into team offenses. I prefer to just look at level of play and the results produced, as opposed to caring so much about where their team was ranked offensively.

Oh I'd say we do value different things, and that's fine. You talking like you're doing just in this post doesn't bother me at all. But you make posts sometimes, like the one above, that just leave me feeling like you're not actually trying to understand what's being said around you.

[ronnymac2]

Vote: Reggie Miller

I buy the arguments over Pierce. Paul is one of the great players of our time, a truly devastating scorer in the halfcourt with a portable skillset. Solid passing, solid defense, strong rebounding. Certainly buy the argument for PP.

Reggie isn't a unique force per se — see Ray Allen — but he is perhaps the best at spacing + gravitational pull. Think Korver today with greater ability to scale to greater volume/USG% in star MPG. That's a devastating offensive player.

I would have liked to see Reggie and Ray in a runoff. Miller might "Miller" better, but Ray has a greater toolset of secondary skills. I've seen that advantage swept under the rug, much in the same vain people say Klay Thompson's post-up ability doesn't matter when he is compared to current shooters and SGs. Klay might not be an elite post threat, but the fact that he is capable of being effective at that secondary skill can be extremely valuable in taking advantage of a matchup, loosening the defense, or just getting Klay in a rhythm. It's a chip you have when selecting how you want to build your team.

Same with Ray. If I were selecting a shooting guard to replace Joe Dumars on the Bad Boy Pistons, a team with below average ball-handling at SF, PF, and C, I'd take Ray Allen over Reggie Miller. The extra ball-handling Allen provides takes away ball-handling duties from poor ball-handlers and thus saves the team from turnovers and crumby offensive execution.

But back to Reggie. Miller proved he could dominate elite defenses many times over. His 2000 playoff run is probably his best extended playoff run, where he thoroughly throttled 3 of the best defensive teams in the league. Something like 24 PPG on 60% shooting. He usually torched New York's elite defensive teams (1994 ECF are probably Miller's greatest feat). Only time I can remember where Miller was subpar was against CHI in 1998 (his volume and USG% over the 7 games wasn't what I would expect from him). Still, CHI was an elite defense, and it's one series.

Average defense...played on a few solid defensive teams.

Great longevity. He was still helping those Indy teams with Jermaine O'Neal and Ron Artest. I don't mind Reggie being voted in here.

[Doctor MJ]

So it's Pierce & Miller, which was the focus of my post on the first page. Not really sure what else to say on this front.
This was part of a post written before mine voting for Pierce, and a couple quick comparisons seem reasonable:

His RAPM data is on par with Dwight Howard (what was that you said about impact, penbeast0?), and he's had excellent longevity to boot (16 valuable seasons). Looks good via WOWY data, too.

Couple other tiny statistical tid-bits (other aspects have been previously covered):
He's 25th all-time in career rs WS.
He's 38th all-time in career playoff WS.

Miller's RAPM data looks better than Pierce's.

For the data we have, Miller's best 3-year RAPM is marginally (almost negligibly) better than Pierce's (by ~+0.25 per year). Miller's RAPM was neutral in '01 and '02, and a slight negatives in '03-'05. Pierce, otoh, has never had a negative or neutral/0.0 year in 16 seasons. His worst is +0.9.

Miller is 16th all-time in career RS WS.
Miller is 21st all-time in career playoff WS.

Also if we go by WS/48:
In the RS, Miler is 45th all-time, Pierce is 62nd.
In the playoffs, Miller is 23rd all-time, Pierce is 128th.

And Miller's career PER was 18.4; Pierce's was 20.4 (and on marginally more mpg, too). Even if we look only at Miller's first 16 seasons only, his PER was 18.6 (and PER is a stat that very much likes efficiency, too; that's why guys like Hayes, Maravich, and Zeke never had terribly impressive PER's, despite what at times was insane volumes).
Pierce's usage and volume (Per 100) is greater. Pierce has more in the way of simple "career tally" achievements, too. So there are many ways to look at this comparison.

As I mentioned before. We have 3 years of Miller in his prime, in all 3 years he had +5 values. Pierce only managed that 4 times in his whole career. This is a sizable difference in my book.

Your mentioning the last years of Miler's career is just weird to me. The earliest of those years is '01-02, during which Miller was 36 years old, the same age Pierce was last year when he was playing far less minutes than Miller was at that age. What kind of a longevity argument IS that?

Re: PER, Pierce looks better. Fine to bring up.

Re: PER likes efficiency. PER likes efficiency more than drunks at bars but there fundamental mathematical issues with it that make it favor volume scoring considerably more than any of the major or semi-majors competitors that followed in its wake created by guys with actual analytics background.

[E-Balla]

Check the Sig.

Your new name had me confused for a day or so. Keep the sig for a while. FWIW, I liked your old name better .

I just came up with the ebola pun and had to capitalize quickly .

[trex_8063]

As I mentioned before. We have 3 years of Miller in his prime, in all 3 years he had +5 values. Pierce only managed that 4 times in his whole career. This is a sizable difference in my book.

I've still never understood your "scaling" process for your RAPM spreadsheet. I use the date from ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt for '98-'00, shutupandjam for '01-'07, and Got Buckets? for '08-'14. From these sources neither guy has a +5. The three prime Miller years are +4.9, +4.02, +4.35; Pierce's three best are +4.23, +4.19, +4.1.

But anyway, using your spreadsheet you're mentioning +5 for the three prime years we have of Miller while also mentioning we have four +5 years for Pierce, and calling this a big difference......essentially assuming Miller is +5 for ALL the rest of his prime (which is something we do NOT know).

Your mentioning the last years of Miler's career is just weird to me. The earliest of those years is '01-02, during which Miller was 36 years old, the same age Pierce was last year when he was playing far less minutes than Miller was at that age. What kind of a longevity argument IS that?

'01 was Miller's 14th season--->he was avg 39.3 mpg and had an RAPM (NPI) of 0.0.
Pierce's 14th season--->avg 34.0 mpg with RAPM of +1.37

'02 was Miller's 15th season--->avg 36.6 mpg with RAPM of 0.0.
Pierce's 15th season--->33.4 mpg with RAPM of +2.0.

'03 was Miller's 16th season--->avg 30.2 mpg with RAPM of -0.9.
Pierce's 16th season--->avg 28.0 mpg with RAPM of +0.9.

So there is a minutes difference there. Not sure I'd use descriptors like "far less". The minutes gap certainly doesn't seem as sizable as the RAPM gap. I bring this up to point out that where RAPM data is concerned, even if we were to assume Miller was positive every single year that we don't have data for (which certainly might not be the case for his rookie year, for instance), we still know for a fact that he's got no more than 13 positive impact seasons. But we know for fact that Pierce has 16 positive impact seasons.

So even if Miller was marginally ahead in his prime, the RAPM picture may even out a little as we look total career impact.

Re: PER, Pierce looks better. Fine to bring up.

Re: PER likes efficiency. PER likes efficiency more than drunks at bars but there fundamental mathematical issues with it that make it favor volume scoring considerably more than any of the major or semi-majors competitors that followed in its wake created by guys with actual analytics background.

Fair enough, but it doesn't love volume scoring enough to rate guys like Hayes or Maravich very much. Rates them behind guys like Chauncey Billups (who's never avg 20 ppg in his life). Chris Paul too has some crazy high PER's despite often scoring <20 ppg; again because of his excellent efficiency (both shooting and wrt turnovers).

[Doctor MJ]

As I mentioned before. We have 3 years of Miller in his prime, in all 3 years he had +5 values. Pierce only managed that 4 times in his whole career. This is a sizable difference in my book.

I've still never understood your "scaling" process for your RAPM spreadsheet. I use the date from ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt for '98-'00, shutupandjam for '01-'07, and Got Buckets? for '08-'14. From these sources nobody has a +5. The three prime Miller years are +4.9, +4.02, +4.35; Pierce's three best are +4.23, +4.19, +4.1.

But anyway, using your spreadsheet you're mentioning +5 for the three prime years we have of Miller while also mentioning we have four +5 years for Pierce, and calling this a big difference......essentially assuming Miller is +5 for ALL the rest of his prime (which is something we do NOT know).

RAPM is a process that makes it so that 1 "point" of value in its results is no longer the same thing as 1 point on the scoreboard. So I did 2 things:

1) I made a "normalized" or "SD" version of it that presents a value based on how many standard deviations above average a player is, under the assumption that actual variance through the league doesn't change very much.

2) I made a "scaled" version which took the standard deviation from an APM study (which doesn't have the same issue) and applied it to the normalized RAPM studies.

In terms of math:

Scaled RAPM = Raw RAPM / Study's SD * APM SD

Your mentioning the last years of Miler's career is just weird to me. The earliest of those years is '01-02, during which Miller was 36 years old, the same age Pierce was last year when he was playing far less minutes than Miller was at that age. What kind of a longevity argument IS that?

'01 was Miller's 14th season--->he was avg 39.3 mpg and had an RAPM (NPI) of 0.0.
Pierce's 14th season--->avg 34.0 mpg with RAPM of +1.37

'02 was Miller's 15th season--->avg 36.6 mpg with RAPM of 0.0.
Pierce's 15th season--->33.4 mpg with RAPM of +2.0.

'03 was Miller's 16th season--->avg 30.2 mpg with RAPM of -0.9.
Pierce's 16th season--->avg 28.0 mpg with RAPM of +0.9.

So there is a minutes difference there. Not sure I'd use descriptors like "far less". The minutes gap certainly doesn't seem as sizable as the RAPM gap. I bring this up to point out that where RAPM data is concerned, even if we were to assume Miller was positive every single year that we don't have data for (which certainly might not be the case for his rookie year, for instance), we still know for a fact that he's got no more than 13 positive impact seasons. But we know for fact that Pierce has 16 positive impact seasons.

So even if Miller was marginally ahead in his prime, the RAPM picture may even out a little as we look total career impact.

Okay so you're basically saying from years 14 to 16 Pierce looks better. Okay, what data do you have for those seasons for Pierce? Not denying it, but things got a bit wacky with RAPM studies in the past couple years and frankly I'm still wading through them.

Re: PER, Pierce looks better. Fine to bring up.

Re: PER likes efficiency. PER likes efficiency more than drunks at bars but there fundamental mathematical issues with it that make it favor volume scoring considerably more than any of the major or semi-majors competitors that followed in its wake created by guys with actual analytics background.

Fair enough, but it doesn't love volume scoring enough to rate guys like Hayes or Maravich very much. Rates them behind guys like Chauncey Billups (who's never avg 20 ppg in his life). Chris Paul too has some crazy high PER's despite often scoring <20 ppg; again because of his excellent efficiency (both shooting and wrt turnovers).

Right, like I say: PER values efficiency more than what uninformed evaluators tend to do, but not as much as any more recently developed metrics I'm aware of.