Tim Duncan's GOAT candidacy

[kayess]

Some responses, to the bolded:

1) Re: bolded 1 (on impact maximized vs impact higher): This was a good point, and what I was trying to point out with their single-year RAPM scores being similar on a yearly basis outside of the 09-10 LeBron mega-peak. The argument would be that, on the teams that truly contended, Duncan's impact on those teams was just as large as LeBron's and therefore that LeBron's "raw impact" advantage might not actually be much of an advantage in this particular comp. (Note: the normalized RAPM data I'm referring to came from Doc MJ's spreadsheet, which only went through 2012, had some issues in 1998, no 2001, partial 2002, etc. The point is, that spreadsheet needs to be updated with whatever the most recent state-of-art RAPM numbers. I did some quick eyeballing of LeBron's post-2012 numbers and feel like they are lower, but that should be confirmed before any real conclusions are made, here).

2) Re: maximum level achievable by teams like Heat or Cavs: This is a crucial point in my thought process, and ties a lot into my scaleability thoughts. I think that 2011 Wade/Bosh or current Irving/Love are the centerpieces of OUTLANDISHLY strong supporting casts.

That seems wildly unfair. If you want to completely disregard boxscore stats and argue Duncan>LeBron based on impact you can't turn around and completely ignore impact (not to mention 80% of the team + coaching) and call LeBron's casts outlandishly strong.

This year for instance your outlandishly strong centerpieces of Love/Irving are indeed LeBron's best teammates by RPM but they are ranked 14th and 57th so far. Meanwhile he is supposed to beat a Warriors team that has a 5 guys in the top30 and even if you take Durant off has a top40 guy at every single position.

And before you say LeBron maximizes Love/Irving: in 2014 Love was ranked roughly the same (12th) while having a career year, a PG was actually good at PGing, higher usage and a team built for him. If anything it's wildly impressive he has the same impact now as a third option on a team that has Irving. And Irving was ranked 231st in 2014 - so he is massively better now but still worse by impact stats than every single guy in the Warrior's starting lineup (+ 2 bench guys) by impact stats. But we are still talking about two first option, high-usage, meh for position/terrible defense guys who have better cumulative impact in new/lesser roles with LeBron who is still league-leading at 32. The Heat unfortunately had progressive age/injury/exhaustion working against them figuring things out.
And before you say Duncan is maximizing everyone else: maybe those guys are maximized by the best organization/coach in sports who still won 61 games this year without Duncan and without even trying at all and then took out the 3rd best RS team without their best player. Pop leisurely wins 60+ games while resting guys all over the place and barely anyone topping 30 min per game - compare that to LeBron's teams after he left.

You say Duncan's defense is more additive but then say LeBron has an outlandishly strong supporting cast while he has a cast that is epically bad defensively and you actually bring up Irving as outlandishly good who has a case for worst defender in the league and overall is ranked in Patty Mills territory impact-wise. Meanwhile Duncan had some of the best defenders of their generation on his teams (Robinson, Kawhi, Bowen) and enjoyed their additive impact while LeBron had to integrate high usage players with meh to atrocious defense with terrible and/or old supporting players (most of them also atrocious defenders), all with the help of rookie coaches instead of a GOAT coach.

When Duncan beat LeBron in 2014 he had 8 teammates with a higher RPM than Wade (although Bosh and Anderson were higher than Wade as well). Sure 2011 Wade still had some cartilage but on the flipside basically all the other players outside Bosh were terrible or injured, Spo was terrible and everyone had to figure out new roles or even positions on a new team, including LeBron who almost ruined his back/career by gaining weight to play PF. But on a team where everything is new and different to everyone, where he and 2 other guys are adjusting to not being "the guy" and playing more off ball for the first time in their lives, with a rookie coach and cast with terrible synergy where he had to gain weight and play a position he has never played you expect him to have more impact than Duncan in a situation that has grown for a decade under GOAT coaching? That's not really a fair setup for comparing impact on good teams, is it?

So you say LeBron had lower impact on good teams but completely disregard that how those good teams were put together was really impact-minimizing. For instance even if LeBron were the best defender on the planet that has less impact if the opponent has the option to just swing the ball away and leisurely stroll past Irving and Frye. Or on offense, his impact is probably not maximized by spending 1/3rd of all possessions pointlessly trying to get position while Irving does some super-fancy dribbling into a cluster of defenders he can shoot a long 2 from. Same with coaching - LeBron had a succession of meh rookie coaches while Duncan had a GOAT coach who is one of the best of all time at maximizing his player's impact.

Who knows what impact LeBron could have if he ever played with a good center/PG combo that's not trash defensively and a great coach. Sadly we'll never know. It's hard to imagine a better setup than Duncan had though.

Also, if you are talking about impact and outlandishly strong supporting casts it might be worth a look to check the top6 here:
https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/97-14-rapm-2

I'm not going to argue too much against Duncan, because I love him and think he legit has contributed more career value up to this point than James.

But calling Kyrie/Love outlandishly strong while Duncan has Pop/Gino/Parker+the Spurs system giving him a steady stream of solid players is a bit much... Although it has to be mentioned: would any other superstar have allowed this to thrive as well as Duncan as? Probably not - but he didn't make them draft Gino/Parker/Mills etc. Its completely symbiotic, but Duncan/the Spurs org both do things well that are independent of the other.

[drza]

I'm quoting all three responses here to show that I'm responding to your posts, but I'm not going to necessarily go point-by-point for any of them for several reasons. One is time/length. But another is that I'm not positive where the line is between me not getting my point across fully, honest analytical disagreement, and fighting narrative points that don't really have to do with me.

*I'll start with the last point. I don't have an agenda for/against either of these two players...if anything, LeBron would be the one more likely to have my allegiance. He's an Ohio boy, like me, I've been hearing about him since he was in junior high, and I grew up with the Cavs as my favorite team. They aren't now, but I grew up listening to them on 1100 WWWE, and I'm literally drinking water right now out of a Cavaliers tumbler. I'm not in this discussion to gotcha either side, I'm in it to try to tease out an analytical approach I've brought up and floated slightly through the years but never took the time to pin down.

*Some review of my stance here: LeBron, in that 09 - 10 window, measured out with more raw impact on his team than Duncan ever had in his career. That's freely acknowledged and stipulated. And, I think for many, that kind of ends the argument. LeBron can influence the game more than Duncan ever showed, therefore he's the better player.

*What I'm working through here, is, how important are other aspects of team building BESIDES raw impact in evaluating a player? Kayess mentioned this should be bolstered with skill set discussion, and I whole-heartedly agree. In fact, I was pretty sure that was the tact I'd been taking with my posts in this thread, so if it didn't come across then that's on me. But I whole-heartedly agree that skillset is the huge underlying factor for what I've been talking about.

*Bringing it back to impact. I've pointed out, and used to support my stance, that outside of that 09 - 10 mega peak, LeBron's year-by-year measured impact tends to be very similar to Duncan's year-by-year impact. However, while Duncan's impact in his career has come with him playing different roles, I would argue that LeBron has pretty much played the same general role, just to different extents, on all of his teams. Duncan was the primary offensive anchor next to a dominant defensive anchor in his early years next to Robinson. Duncan was the primary defensive and offensive anchor of those Spurs teams when Robinson was fading and Parker/Ginobili were young. Duncan was the primary defensive anchor and part of a 3-way offensive attack during GInobili's and Parker's peak years. And, Duncan was the primary defensive anchor and a smaller part of an ensemble offense later in his career. Obviously, he wasn't at his peak for all of those iterations, but Duncan's impact stayed high in different use cases, and allowed his teammates to be the best that they can be under those different use cases.

I'm not arguing that Duncan didn't have great support...BELIEVE me, I'd never argue that (I'd hope those that know me would have a pretty clear vantage on my belief that Duncan had some of the most support of his generation). My point, here, is that the flexibility of his game (his skillset, if you will), fits under a wide variety of team supports while maintaining his value, and that it simultaneously allows these diverse team structures to maximize as well.

*When I say that LeBron's casts were outstanding (whatever term I used) with both Wade/Bosh and Love/Irving, my point was that that level of support mixed with a transcendant talent builds magical teams. LeBron's teams are always contending, some winning titles, but I never sense the pop in them that I used to see with the all-time teams. Again, this isn't meant to be a Gotcha! against LeBron, it instead bred a question in me...why AREN'T those teams as magical as they should be? And before it descends down the route of trying to convince me that LeBron's teams were better than I'm giving credit for, or into the path of trying to define what "magical team" means...that's not the point, and hopefully the convo doesn't go that way. I'm handwaving to keep the conversation on track, but suffice it to say that I believe LeBron to be BAR NONE the best player in the NBA from 2011 - 2017, and thus a strong supporting cast around him shouldn't generate a team that contends for a title, it should produce a juggernaut. I would not characterize his teams as juggernauts.

*Someone pointed out that I used the terms "1st team All NBA talents" to describe LeBron's casts, whereas in Cleveland it turns out neither Love nor Kyrie have ever been 1st team. That's my fault, since I didn't look it up. In memory, I thought that Love was 1st team in 2014. Instead, at the time he joined Cleveland, Love was a 2-time 2nd team that had finished as high as #6 in the MVP vote. I apologize for my mis-speak, but I'd hope that the spirit of my point about him being an absolutely stellar supporting piece should stand.

*Someone pointed out that Kyrie is a terrible defensive player, and someone else evoked Tony Parker as a better floor general than Kyrie has shown himself to be. I'd argue that these both support the point that I'm making. Because Kyrie was 22 years old, coming off a college season that was lost to injury and three somewhat injury-plagued seasons as a pro when LeBron came to town. He was a number one overall pick, who had progressed up to 83rd on the RAPM list for 2014. He held fairly stead around 75th in 2015, then dropped to 154th in 2016. I don't have a PI-RAPM list for 2017, but using RPM the player that he most resembles impact-wise is Isaiah Thomas...among the NBA elite in offensive impact, among the league worst in defensive impact.

Now, bringing that back to this comp. I'd argue that a) his impact progression isn't normal, for a player of his caliber. That he's developed as a scorer, but that absent LeBron he'd be further along as a team offense initiator. Like Tony Parker, another young point guard that was entered the league as a scorer first and learned to run a team later, Irving would be on a similar (but likely higher, faster) trajectory to Parker were his team built around a talent like Duncan's instead of LeBron's. Not because LeBron is inherently bad in some nefarious way...as I mentioned, I believe him to be BAR NONE the best player in the NBA. No, it's because LeBron does what Irving would be learning to do, and why would you take the ball out of LeBron's hands? That'd be dumb. But, necessarily, it places some diminishing return limits on Uncle Drew. Limits that, if his star teammate was Duncan, wouldn't have been there.

And of course, this isn't limited to Irving. The same thing happened with Wade because, again, there's diminishing returns there. Similar with the offensive responsibilities of Love and Bosh.

And again, it's not an attack on LeBron. It's pointing out that he's great because he can do everything at a high level, so if he is surrounded by other great offensive players, there's going to be a diminishing return. There just is. Meanwhile, Duncan could be maximized as a co defensive/offensive anchor. If his teammate is a dominant defensive anchor, he could do more on offense. If his teammates run a great offensive unit, he could maintain his impact by becoming the best defensive player in the league. LeBron can't. he can be all-world at all of the things that he's all-world at, but he's never shown an ability to, say, let 2011 Wade (who was all-world in RAPM in 2009, 2010) be the offensive captain while LeBron shifts to becoming the best defensive player in the league. I think LeBron actually tried to take a step back for Wade in 2011 and the result was just...awkward. Their talent still made the team a contender, but neither of them nor the team were maximized. Again...that's my point.

*Summary: If LeBron can provide more raw lift, but Duncan lifts championship caliber supporting casts to an equal degree but has more versatility in the ways that he can provide that lift, which thus lets him maintain his impact under more diverse situations (portability) and also lets him maintain his impact while ALSO letting his team maximize THEIR impacts (ties to scaleability)...then is LeBron still the better player? Maybe you read that case, and still say yes. I'm not sure I'm there. And, by all means, point out holes or counter my logic where applicable. But know, going in, I'm sincerely trying to tease out what makes players great, not trying for a gotcha narrative in either direction.

[kayess]

1) I don't think we're saying you have an agenda - in fact that's why I'm saying I don't know how to explain it (I think it's neither laziness or intentional - i.e., an agenda)

2) I think saying he's playing the same general role isn't nuanced enough - he played more and more off-ball as he got better playmakers around him, semi-anchored the defense when he had players more geared on O...

3) But that's the thing though isn't it - the evidence for the support is the weight of the names without taking into account their skill-sets again (or only going as far as production, and not on/off). Maybe they're not as magical because in an NBA as smart and as advanced as this one, having a shooter as bad as injured, post-prime Wade, defenders as bad as Irving/Love, semi-black holes like Irving just don't cut it. You say you're handwaving this to keep the conversation on track - but this is exactly what derails the conversation - simply assuming the supporting cast was good without looking deeper. They don't even pass the sniff test of playmaking/shooting/defense - so it's not necessary to dig much deeper to see that there's potentially a flaw in this assumption.

4) Kyrie's been given plenty of opportunities to show he can run an offense - and he continues missing open shooters or cutters. The reason why LeBron can't give up the ball is because the offense stalls - it's just Kyrie dribbling at the top of the key and then trying something. Could you argue that if Kyrie were allowed to run the offense 100% when LeBron were there that he'd become better? Sure - but the HUGE difference is that LeBron is 32, and surrounded by not much else, and Duncan was 27 and surrounded by Pop and a great supporting cast when he was starting to cede the O to Parker/Gino. Huge, huge difference. It's arguable that it was what was best for the team overall in Duncan's case, but in LeBron, it simply isn't. You're giving up your contending window at the cost of wasting the tail-end of LeBron's prime.

5) Quick comment on Bosh's offensive responsibilities: you champion the big man who spaces the floor and is a high post passing hub, rather than the "dump it into the post and wait for the kick-out" big guy. So I don't see how Bosh was underutilized: his impact on O was maximized for the benefit of the team because his lower efficiency post-ups/isos were taken away. Not going to go too much deeper into this point, but Bosh should be the last example here - he was far better in Miami than in Toronto overall.

6) 2011: I'm surprised you used 2011 as the cut-off point for LeBron being bar none the best. Who did you think was better in '09 and '10? Garnett?

Anyway, the results were awkward because it was their first year playing together, AND LeBron was a far worse player in '11 than in '09/'10. If you think he's by far the best in 2011, he was even better in 2009.

Edit: this isn't to say he couldn't have done better. It's just that the general sense you just get from people arguing against his portability is that he's a star-killer or something.