RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #27 (Steve Nash)

[Dutchball97]

3 assists per game over his career is not enough reason to elevate Chris Paul over Steph Curry. I can't think of a single other reason to elevate CP3 over Curry.

That is over now. While I personally voted for Curry earlier than I voted for CP3, longevity brings a case for CP3, as much as elevating teams with meh supporting casts. His last year with OKC who everyone felt was out of the playoffs makes him look even greater longevity wise. Dude was a beast and he made OKC a dangerous team.

I'm guessing Curry will be overtaking him in the 2021 Top 100.

The next one will be in 2023.

[Baski]

I do wonder why my "feeling out posts" about players garner such hostile responses. My personal annoyance with this is that I explicitly didn't take personality into account for other players I have a dislike for for different reasons (LeBron, KG, Karl Malone the most significant examples) but reading some of these responses I can't help but feel this doesn't happen across the board.

You definitely should take it into account. Sometimes an objectively worse player can have greater results than a better one due to how their teammates and management respond to them. Everyone weights it differently, but 0 as a weight is far too little.

It's already calculated into the results though. I judge players on what they accomplished, so if their personality was detrimental to the team it'll reflect that in how the team performed. For example it makes little sense to penalize Shaq for being difficult to work with during the Lakers threepeat because they still won and that was mostly thanks to Shaq's on field performance.

It sounds like you already do factor it in then. Unless you're saying that Shaq wins only 4 rings and only makes 6 finals regardless of whether he acts like Shaq or Tim Duncan.

[GQ Hot Dog]

That is over now. While I personally voted for Curry earlier than I voted for CP3, longevity brings a case for CP3, as much as elevating teams with meh supporting casts. His last year with OKC who everyone felt was out of the playoffs makes him look even greater longevity wise. Dude was a beast and he made OKC a dangerous team.

I'm guessing Curry will be overtaking him in the 2021 Top 100.

The next one will be in 2023.

Now that I'm aware of this poll, is there anything stopping me from starting my own poll next year?

[Baski]

I'm voting for D Wade here. I think he has the most impressive peak left, and he has also the best run left. 2006 was special, that ECF and NBA finals were out of this world. Basically, even with a bit less longevity than Nash, Wade did what Nash failed to do with such run. He absolutely killed it in 06.

I do understand that perspective, but I think it's important to remember that Wade was not leading an unstoppable offense when he did this. The team won with defense.

Wade's legend truly got established with those 2006 finals against Dallas.

In those finals, Miami had an ORtg of 101.0.

To use simple estimates, given that Dallas had a regular season DRtg of 105.0. That means Miami's performance in that series was a -4.0 rORtg, which means they underperformed by 6.5 points per 100 possessions against Dallas.

By contrast, the Suns in the previous round had an ORtg of 111.5, which gives them a +6.5 rORtg which was BETTER than what you'd expect from the regular season, despite the fact that the Suns were not playing at full strength in the playoffs due to injuries.

And of course, that doesn't factor in that the Suns were missing Amar'e that year.

So no, Wade was not succeeding in any way that could be seen as succeeding where Nash failed unless you're just doing RINGZ.

I'll further add that people tend to really lionize Wade's performance in the 2010 playoffs against Boston where he personally put up big numbers while his team put up a putrid ORtg. This is the trend of Wade. He puts up numbers, his team's offenses are meh.

To be clear, I do think Wade is a better floor raiser than Nash. I think Wade's at his best when you just tell him to go score and you try to use the rest of the lineup to win with defense, which is of course how they won the 2006 title.

Dallas in the '06 finals had an ORtg of 99.9. which was 11.9 below their regular season average. Anyone who wants to understand how Miami beat Dallas should be focused on Miami's defense not their offense. And the fact that the team had the ability at all times to have either Shaq or Zo on the floor is really a freakish thing.

But yeah, if I'm looking to build a team that will have an elite offense, Wade's pretty low on my list.

How do you factor in personnel and system though? Nash had a very compatible offensive cast/coach/system behind him. I don't think you can say the same about Wade in the years you're referencing. Putting elite shooters and a competent PG around prime Wade surely wouldn't give you Nash-level offenses, but we probably wouldn't call them putrid either.
Like say you gave Nash 05/06 Shaq and Zo instead of Amare and Marion. They might win the title but their offense wouldn't look as good as they do now.

[Doctor MJ]

How do you factor in personnel and system though? Nash had a very compatible offensive cast/coach/system behind him. I don't think you can say the same about Wade in the years you're referencing. Putting elite shooters and a competent PG around prime Wade surely wouldn't give you Nash-level offenses, but we probably wouldn't call them putrid either.
Like say you gave Nash 05/06 Shaq and Zo instead of Amare and Marion. They might win the title but their offense wouldn't look as good as they do now.

So first:

The question of how you try to turn apple-to-orange comparisons into apples-to-apples is always something we're left to do on our own because there are no objective answers.

If someone says they believe what Wade did was more impressive than Nash, that's not crazy.
If someone says that they think it's easier to build an elite team with Wade than Nash because of volume scoring and defense, that's not crazy.

But when someone says Wade succeeded where Nash did not, then we need to have a discussion about how the Heat actually won and how we'd have looked at Wade had he not actually led a team to a title.

Second:

Wade is the PG. Period. He's not a natural PG, as he himself has said, but he requires the ball to be in his hands in order to have anything like superstar offensive impact. He should be seen as a combo guard or a zero guard, along with Allen Iverson and Tyreke Evans. Was he better than those guys? Yes, but primarily because of his scoring.

Remember what I said before: If you look at the 4 epochs of LeBron's career, the team he had the least offensive success with is the Heatles, and that was most certainly not what he was expecting. If with even LeBron you can't expect to build to build an offense with Wade that surpasses what he did when he had no one with the same kind of talent as Wade & Bosh, that really shows you how limited Wade is in such a capacity.

So then the question is what you can expect when you put Wade with a bunch of shooters. I understand why folks are optimistic just using their imaginations or Wade operating in space, the primary value of that space is in using your teammates who can hit shots if you get them the ball effectively and you have to factor in a massive difference between comparing an SG to the single best decision maker in basketball history.

Third:

It would be one thing if Wade was known for leading a stronger team offense in the playoffs than in the regular season. Then you could say "Well the offense is weaker because more emphasis is placed on defense, but you can see come playoff time how his team's systems actually work better in the playoffs." That's not what actually happened though.

Fourth:

I think it's worth examining how your starting point shapes your perspective.

People who focus on individual stats tend to look at poor team performance and say "Imagine what kind of numbers he'd put up if he had some help!", whereas those of us more team-focused tend to first ask "What was working for the team? How was it working?"

We see this a lot with Stockton vs Nash despite the fact the differences between them are relatively small.

If you start by looking at the assist totals, you tend to actually be MORE impressed with his passing because the team offense was not better.

If you start by looking at team performance and note that everything on offense was running through Nash, the notion that he was doing something wrong because he didn't have even more assists becomes non-sensical.

And the 2010 series I alluded for Wade shows this in a nutshell.

In that series against that stellar Boston defense, Wade scored 33.2 PPG on 65.0 TS%. Looks positively GOAT-like.
His team had an ORtg of 97.8, which was 6.1 worse than what the Celtics allowed in the regular season, despite the fact that in the regular season the Heat's offense was pretty much average.

Some will see that and think "My gosh, imagine if Wade had better teammates!", but you do have to remember that it's not the defenses job to keep Wade from scoring, it's their job to keep the Heat from scoring. And they did that well enough they didn't even have to really break a sweat before moving on to the next round.

To be clear, I wouldn't want to use this to say Wade was doing something fundamentally wrong, I'm just saying it's a huge problem if you try to make a case for Wade's offense based on a notion of him being "unstoppable".

I'll add then that this is basically the same conversation we had with Wilt.

Put all this together:

There's really no reason to look at Wade as someone proven to be able to lead elite offenses, and there's a boatload of surrounding context that makes us tend to look at Wade and say "Oh, but he succeeded. He won that title. He got the stats. Stop quibbling about the details.", and I think a wiser course of analysis asks:

How would we see Wade if his team wasn't monstrous defensively in those 2006 finals?

I think that if you don't actually give Wade the benefit of the doubt on all this stuff up front, you start realizing there are a lot of concerns.

[penbeast0]

I'm guessing Curry will be overtaking him in the 2021 Top 100.

The next one will be in 2023.

Now that I'm aware of this poll, is there anything stopping me from starting my own poll next year?

OF course not, but the stress of getting it out there every other day for 200 days, making sure to keep tallies, and trying to get everyone to play nice is pretty extreme. Trex is doing a great job but it wears on you.

[Owly]

Highly knowledgeable basketball posters with more first hand experience disagree with me on this so I'm not claiming reasonable people cannot disagree, but I do think they tend to look at it more in terms of "Well someone had to be the go-to-scoring thread on the roster, and there were great teams where Hayes was that guy and it worked well enough". And I'd tend to respond: "And they'd get slaughtered against a more strategically mature league". You don't win championships with Hayes as your lead scorer today, period, and not because of the 3 per se so much as teams are used to actually examining what really works and what doesn't, and Hayes volume scoring doesn't.

I don't think Hayes success was caused by lack of strategical maturity of the league in the 1970s. Bullets teams were usually bad or mediocre offensively, outside of one season in 1979 when Dandridge was clearly more important offensive player than Hayes. Washington had been good because they were very good defensively and they weren't terrible on offense. They had usually decent offensive talent, a talent often underused because of Hayes huge ego.

Hayes claim of greatness is strictly related to defense and rebounding, he just wasn't a good scorer for most of his career. That's why Bullets kept losing in playoffs and that's why they won the title in one year when Hayes actually scored on decent efficiency and he wasn't very high volume by then.

So in short - you won't win the title with Hayes as a volume scorer in any era, unless you have elite defense and good offensive players who masked some of his weaknesses.

I agree that he's not worthy consideration unless you are very high on longevity, because his longevity is fantastic. It's not because he wouldn't translate to other eras though, it's because what he did wasn't good enough in his own era. With lower ego, he could have been a superstar because he had all the tools, but he was know as a selfish man who didn't listen his coaches even in college.

Note: I have long leaned cynical on Hayes. I agree with the gist here, his value is D and rebounding (previous projects moved me up on his D).

I'm not sure what the bolded means. He wasn't a good scorer sure. That's why they lost in the playoffs ... is this to imply he was worse in the playoffs. He wasn't. Despite a negative rep his career numbers go solidly upwards. This might be a "conveniently his better years have the longer playoff runs and he weakest years are out of the playoffs or low total minutes" ... but this is the case for most playoff "game raisers". Regardless his TS% is up, his PER is up, his OWS/48 is nearly doubled (0.035616 to 0.065769231) and his OBPM goes significantly up (0.2 to 2.4 - incomplete data for this one). Whilst it isn't just scoring (oreb% slightly up, turnover% slightly down) if the implication is there is a playoff specific problem, that doesn't seem to make sense, at first glance, to me (and to the extent that playoff seem very heavily weighted by some, at first glance playoffs seem an advantage for Hayes).

[70sFan]

Highly knowledgeable basketball posters with more first hand experience disagree with me on this so I'm not claiming reasonable people cannot disagree, but I do think they tend to look at it more in terms of "Well someone had to be the go-to-scoring thread on the roster, and there were great teams where Hayes was that guy and it worked well enough". And I'd tend to respond: "And they'd get slaughtered against a more strategically mature league". You don't win championships with Hayes as your lead scorer today, period, and not because of the 3 per se so much as teams are used to actually examining what really works and what doesn't, and Hayes volume scoring doesn't.

I don't think Hayes success was caused by lack of strategical maturity of the league in the 1970s. Bullets teams were usually bad or mediocre offensively, outside of one season in 1979 when Dandridge was clearly more important offensive player than Hayes. Washington had been good because they were very good defensively and they weren't terrible on offense. They had usually decent offensive talent, a talent often underused because of Hayes huge ego.

Hayes claim of greatness is strictly related to defense and rebounding, he just wasn't a good scorer for most of his career. That's why Bullets kept losing in playoffs and that's why they won the title in one year when Hayes actually scored on decent efficiency and he wasn't very high volume by then.

So in short - you won't win the title with Hayes as a volume scorer in any era, unless you have elite defense and good offensive players who masked some of his weaknesses.

I agree that he's not worthy consideration unless you are very high on longevity, because his longevity is fantastic. It's not because he wouldn't translate to other eras though, it's because what he did wasn't good enough in his own era. With lower ego, he could have been a superstar because he had all the tools, but he was know as a selfish man who didn't listen his coaches even in college.

Note: I have long leaned cynical on Hayes. I agree with the gist here, his value is D and rebounding (previous projects moved me up on his D).

I'm not sure what the bolded means. He wasn't a good scorer sure. That's why they lost in the playoffs ... is this to imply he was worse in the playoffs. He wasn't. Despite a negative rep his career numbers go solidly upwards. This might be a "conveniently his better years have the longer playoff runs and he weakest years are out of the playoffs or low total minutes" ... but this is the case for most playoff "game raisers". Regardless his TS% is up, his PER is up, his OWS/48 is nearly doubled (0.035616 to 0.065769231) and his OBPM goes significantly up (0.2 to 2.4 - incomplete data for this one). Whilst it isn't just scoring (oreb% slightly up, turnover% slightly down) if the implication is there is a playoff specific problem, that doesn't seem to make sense, at first glance, to me (and to the extent that playoff seem very heavily weighted by some, at first glance playoffs seem an advantage for Hayes).

I didn't mean thay Hayes got worse in playoffs, he wasn't that good scorer in first place. Even with small improvement, he's not good enough to be the first option on constant contender with good offense. Bullets relied heavily on defense with their style of play.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm guessing Curry will be overtaking him in the 2021 Top 100.

The next one will be in 2023.

Now that I'm aware of this poll, is there anything stopping me from starting my own poll next year?

To do this well you've got to get good posters to participate. It's a process that generally take 200+ days, and so if we were doing every year, that would mean that on average one of these would be going at all times, which requires quite a lot of dedication from everyone involved.

We've settled on an every-3-years model for about a decade now, and the essence of that is that by about the 3rd year enough has happened that the results can be expected to be meaningfully different even if we have the same voting base.

I'll add that back when we had the hiatus in March there was talk about what it should mean for the 2020 project. What I said at the time and still feel is that if the NBA hadn't come back and finished the season, then the best course of action would be to move the project to 2021. It didn't feel like enough had happened that it was worth the dedication to go all the way through 100 at that time. Post-Bubble, it did feel worth it.

That doesn't mean you can't post your personal Top 100 after the '20-21 season and solicit others to do the same, but that's a far smaller endeavor.

Last thing I'll note:

I personally think it's best not to update my Top 100 list every year. I find that when you do that yearly you tend to be a slave to forest-for-the-trees thinking, and the narrative of the season really dominates your perspective.

Though as I say this, I do think there's truth that whatever was the season right before the project seems to take an outside role in how people perceive things. Only doing the project doesn't prevent the problematic phenomenon, but I think it helps some.

[Dr Positivity]

1. Dwyane Wade - dominant peak, if he had a longer and healthier prime he would have been a top 20 guy

2. Steve Nash - Gone back and forth between him and Harden, but the last few days reminded me that I'm not a fan of Harden's intangibles

3. James Harden - Would love to put him lower but I think he's a higher peak player than candidates like Drexlera nd Miller, and players like Ewing are also flawed in their own way.

[Owly]

I don't think Hayes success was caused by lack of strategical maturity of the league in the 1970s. Bullets teams were usually bad or mediocre offensively, outside of one season in 1979 when Dandridge was clearly more important offensive player than Hayes. Washington had been good because they were very good defensively and they weren't terrible on offense. They had usually decent offensive talent, a talent often underused because of Hayes huge ego.

Hayes claim of greatness is strictly related to defense and rebounding, he just wasn't a good scorer for most of his career. That's why Bullets kept losing in playoffs and that's why they won the title in one year when Hayes actually scored on decent efficiency and he wasn't very high volume by then.

So in short - you won't win the title with Hayes as a volume scorer in any era, unless you have elite defense and good offensive players who masked some of his weaknesses.

I agree that he's not worthy consideration unless you are very high on longevity, because his longevity is fantastic. It's not because he wouldn't translate to other eras though, it's because what he did wasn't good enough in his own era. With lower ego, he could have been a superstar because he had all the tools, but he was know as a selfish man who didn't listen his coaches even in college.

Note: I have long leaned cynical on Hayes. I agree with the gist here, his value is D and rebounding (previous projects moved me up on his D).

I'm not sure what the bolded means. He wasn't a good scorer sure. That's why they lost in the playoffs ... is this to imply he was worse in the playoffs. He wasn't. Despite a negative rep his career numbers go solidly upwards. This might be a "conveniently his better years have the longer playoff runs and he weakest years are out of the playoffs or low total minutes" ... but this is the case for most playoff "game raisers". Regardless his TS% is up, his PER is up, his OWS/48 is nearly doubled (0.035616 to 0.065769231) and his OBPM goes significantly up (0.2 to 2.4 - incomplete data for this one). Whilst it isn't just scoring (oreb% slightly up, turnover% slightly down) if the implication is there is a playoff specific problem, that doesn't seem to make sense, at first glance, to me (and to the extent that playoff seem very heavily weighted by some, at first glance playoffs seem an advantage for Hayes).

I didn't mean thay Hayes got worse in playoffs, he wasn't that good scorer in first place. Even with small improvement, he's not good enough to be the first option on constant contender with good offense. Bullets relied heavily on defense with their style of play.

Fair enough. It read as clunky when this was posited as a playoff problem. But as a non-efficient black hole, without a shift in mindset he's probably actively a barrier to a significantly good offense.

[No-more-rings]

I do understand that perspective, but I think it's important to remember that Wade was not leading an unstoppable offense when he did this. The team won with defense.

In those finals, Miami had an ORtg of 101.0.

So are you saying it's Wade's fault that Shaq was old, fat, slow and couldn't get his against Erick Dampier?

Or that most of their role players were either old and/or sucked on offense, like Payton, Alonzo, Williams, Haslem etc? This wasn't a cast suitable for great offenses.

By contrast, the Suns in the previous round had an ORtg of 111.5, which gives them a +6.5 rORtg which was BETTER than what you'd expect from the regular season, despite the fact that the Suns were not playing at full strength in the playoffs due to injuries.

And of course, that doesn't factor in that the Suns were missing Amar'e that year.

So no, Wade was not succeeding in any way that could be seen as succeeding where Nash failed unless you're just doing RINGZ.

Are you to believe that Nash beats Dallas with Wade's cast? There's no way they could've had the team defensive performance they did with Nash in place of Wade, that's a huge drop off. And Nash may have gotten better production out of some of the guys, but they needed big scoring from an individual or they weren't going to win.

I'll further add that people tend to really lionize Wade's performance in the 2010 playoffs against Boston where he personally put up big numbers while his team put up a putrid ORtg. This is the trend of Wade. He puts up numbers, his team's offenses are meh.

That's because he didn't play with good offensive players , this has been mentioned and ignored repeatedly. I don't understand your motive for completely removing supporting cast when talking about a team metric.

To be clear, I do think Wade is a better floor raiser than Nash. I think Wade's at his best when you just tell him to go score and you try to use the rest of the lineup to win with defense, which is of course how they won the 2006 title.

Dallas in the '06 finals had an ORtg of 99.9. which was 11.9 below their regular season average. Anyone who wants to understand how Miami beat Dallas should be focused on Miami's defense not their offense. And the fact that the team had the ability at all times to have either Shaq or Zo on the floor is really a freakish thing.

Why don't you want to acknowledge that Wade was a big part of that? He didn't have a Draymond Green level anchor that your dude Curry has had the luxury of in his whole prime.

The Heat's defensive performances was an effort by committee type of thing, rather than their being a clear most impactful defender.

Notable guys by MPG:

Wade: 43.5
Walker: 36.6
Shaq: 35.2
Williams: 31.3
Posey: 29.5
Haslem: 29.2
Payton: 22.3
ZO: 11

When you factor in minutes, how many of those guys actually provided more value on defense? This isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious to what your answer is. No one aside from ZO and Haslem were clearly better on a per minute basis.

Considering Wade's large minute load, and how bad some of Dallas' perimeter players played(Howard, Stackhouse and Harris all held to under 50 ts%), i don't see how Wade's defense should just be an afterthought especially when Nash is objectively a negative defender.

Some of Wade's defensive numbers:

Game 3: 11 defensive rebounds, 2 steals
Game 6: 7 defensive rebounds, 4 steals, 3 blocks!!

Wade was 2nd in defensive rebounds, 4th on the team in DRB%, 3rd in blk %, and 2nd in DRTG of guys that played meaningful minutes, the last part's probably meaningless but there's a lot of evidence to believe Wade's defense isn't irrelevant in the series.

But yeah, if I'm looking to build a team that will have an elite offense, Wade's pretty low on my list.

That's your choice, but also acknowledge that it's also going to be harder to build an elite defense around Nash as opposed to Wade.

From 04-2013, Wade was only on two teams that weren't in the top 10 in DRTG, 2009(ranked 11th), and 2008(26th), though that year shouldn't even count all things considered, and a top 6 defense 4 times(05, 10-12).

I'm not willing to just chalk all that up to coincidence, or act like it's irrelevant when we're talking about Nash.

[Doctor MJ]

but the last few days reminded me that I'm not a fan of Harden's intangibles

Yup.

I know in the context of this project people are likely to think of me as someone gleefully anti-Harden, but as I say, I've been cheering Harden on for a long time because he went to high school in my district.

I remember, for example, Jeff Van Gundy drooling watching Harden play in the 2012 playoffs fondly, and was on board the bandwagon proclaiming Harden to be a star well before, say, Sam Presti did.

There's so much to praise about what Harden's achieve. The dude is one of the greatest scoring innovators in the history of the game and has an argument for being the single highest degree of difficulty to guard from the sake of dealing with the offensive player's ability to take any given moment to his advantage.

But I'm really disappointed with the attitude I've seen from him repeatedly in Houston, and quite honestly I think that if Harden had a different attitude, the Rockets would still be a contender right now.

[ccameron]

Well I think I laid it out pretty plainly based on the POY. It's weird that the PC Board went from being the place that called Curry a Top 5 player while the mainstream didn't even see him as an all-star to a place where we put his GOAT list ranking way below the mainstream. I'm not saying that mere fact makes any particular vote right or wrong, but it's nothing obvious.

Re: 29 to 24. Right, but in the meantime Curry won another championship and then the next year after everyone else got injured Curry took over and did all the volume scoring stuff that people holding 2016 against him say he can't do. This last 3 years stretch (2017 to 2020) wasn't as strong as the previous (2014 to 2017), but keep in mind that from 2014 to 2017 he want from outside of the Top 100 to Top 30 and at that time Curry was already in a debate with Paul.

Curry's best years were from 2014-2017, his huge jump made sense, but of course you aren't going to make anymore massive leaps once you get inside the top 30. By the time of the 2017 project, his 2017 title was already in the books. Since then, he had:

1. 2018: He played well, but played 51 games. As a side note, Wade's 2007 season (in which he was arguably playing some of the best basketball of his career) is often completely discounted because he played 51 games. Wade came back in time for the playoffs, but whereas Curry had the luxury of an all-time cast and could get a title even while missing some more time in the playoffs, Wade had no such luck, so that season just dissapears into the ether for most people when talking about Wade's career. Not saying Curry;s situation was exactly the same (Wade is diminished when he tries to come back for the playoffs), or that 2018 wasn't a positive for him, but it was a decent, not great year for him despite the title.
2. 2019: This is a quality season. Although not at the level of 2016 or 2017, he at least showed for me that he didn't crumble after his teamate's injuries, and put up a good fight -- some brilliant moments and some not so brilliant moments, but definetely another prime year
3. 2020: Completely lost season.

So one solid prime year, one prime-ish year with a title but significant playing time lost, and 1 no-show.

Meanwhile, what's Paul done these past 3 years? Left his long-time team with a bunch of ill-will, forced his way to the Rockets, been so annoying on the Rockets that he got sent to irrelevance (OKC), and now he's going to another lottery team - granted one with hope for the next year. It has not been a good epoch for him, particularly if you're someone like me who prior to this point basically gave Paul the benefit of the doubt about his tendency to make those around him unhappy, and no there is no more doubt.

Paul had 3 quality allstar level seasons. He played more games than Curry. People I think really started to wake up to how valuable a player he was during his time on a true contender in the Rockets. He had his injury problems, too, and I value Curry's higher peak during these three years (despite a completely lost year and significantly fewer games played), so it makes sense Curry catches up to him a little.

As for his personality, How much of him being "sent to irrelevance" was on him and how much was on Harden? Neither seems to have a great track record, but in CP3s case it's possible that his desire to win at all costs is what irks his less competitive teammates (not that Harden itsn't competitive, but it seems he hasn't been easy to get a long with either). We've seen what happened to Jimmy Butler when he started playing for a quality franchise. Not sure CP3 doesn't have some blame here, but I don't know how you can just dismiss him like that when, in my opinion, he has played for some pretty dysfunctional teams to begin with.

Re: Wade 22 to 27 or worse. Having done this a long time I don't find there to be anything strange about a guy dropping 5 spots when he's not doing anything, particularly when that has a lot to do with him being surpassed by guys who are still playing.

But I can be more specific here. I see 2 trends aside from current guys just playing more:

1. Old-timers are getting championed harder this time, for whatever reason. Mikan & Pettit surpassed Wade. This probably wasn't about Wade so much as folks who thought the old-timers deserved more respect, and I wouldn't be surprised if this difference is a bit more about who are population of voters happens to be than anything else.

Agree on the old-timers getting more love this time around, that's interesting part of this year's project.

2. The fact that Wade is now someone from the past while his draftmate is still the best player in the world is really hammering in how poor Wade's longevity was. In a sport where we're now expecting 15 year plus years of relevance, Wade stands out as someone whose game just could not do this. If you go look at this list to this point and just look at the more modern guys, they're basically all guys whose games aged like wine. Wade's aged more like milk. This is bound to hurt him.

Almost every draftmate of Wade is long gone. In fact I can only think of Carmelo Anthony at the moment (and Udonis Haslem who went undrafted, and has long been more of a coach than a player). Who else is still in the league? The fact that Lebron is still the best player in the league shows what a freak he is, and nothing else. Wade's longevity is not the best, but if you hold anybody to Lebron's standard, everyone voted in so far not named Kareem or Malone pales.

Yes, people are trying to defend his longevity, point out other players didn't have that many more great years and all that, and certainly for some that perspective is the one that resonates with them, but I don't think there's any doubt that Wade's losing some stature over time when we're realizing how unusual Wade's age limitations are compared to most other top-tier guys.

Now as I've said: There are clear reasons for this. It's not a personality flaw on Wade's part. The issues is simply 1) his game was more dependent on youthful explosion than basically any other top-tier guys, 2) his shot always sucked and we're now in an era where that's a much bigger deal than ever before - give Wade good shooting and he's still playing, and 3) he didn't have an off-the-charts BBIQ which at this level is almost par for the course for guards.

Beyond that for me and some others, the fact that Wade really never showed an ability to lead elite offenses is concerning. I tend to see him more as a floor raiser than a ceiling raiser, and this is not something I used to think about. At one point I would have argued that Wade was arguably better than Kobe prime vs prime and just give Kobe the longevity edge. Now? Not so much.

We won't agree on a lot of this, and we've probably stated out positions on a lot of this already with regard to his longevity. He was capable of superstar play for 10 years (although frequently interrupted by injuries with significant time lost during those years or playing while injured), and all star play for another 3 or so years, and then, unlike Kobe or Jordan, decided to be of marginal positive value as a bench player rather than detrimental negative as an aging star demanding star treatment (not of much significance except to illustrate his personality and team-first mentality, since you have brought this up as a significant point with regard to others). "Aging like milk" I don't just think is an exaggeration, it's unfair. As for his BBIQ, while not at the level of Lebron/CP3/Nash, he has been universally praised for being an extremely intelligent player by teammates and coaching staff (Spoelstra has made it a very frequent point), as a scorer, playmaker, and defender, so I don't know what else to say about that. If by "his shot sucked" you mean he wasn't a good 3 point shooter, fine, but "his shot" included a pretty reliable midrange. In today's era, no doubt coaching staff would not tell him to not bother with 3s, and no question the proportion of end-of-shotclock bailout plays goes down, but whatever. You can knock him for not being a good 3pt shooter, but not that his shot "sucked."

I totally disagree that Wade couldn't lead elite offenses. If we ever saw him on an offensive minded team built around him, like we have with Curry, Lebron, Harden, Nash, etc., then you could make that statement. But we never did. I would like to see Curry or Harden or Nash produce their elite offenses on those late 2000s Heat teams.

[Doctor MJ]

I do understand that perspective, but I think it's important to remember that Wade was not leading an unstoppable offense when he did this. The team won with defense.

In those finals, Miami had an ORtg of 101.0.

So are you saying it's Wade's fault that Shaq was old, fat, slow and couldn't get his against Erick Dampier?

Or that most of their role players were either old and/or sucked on offense, like Payton, Alonzo, Williams, Haslem etc? This wasn't a cast suitable for great offenses.

I think it's really important to draw a distinction between recognizing that the team was winning because of their defense and saying that the alpha scorer was actually hurting his team.

The question is not whether Wade deserves praise for his performance, but whether it makes sense to talk as if he succeeded where someone else, in this case Nash, failed. I'm saying there's really no cause for such a conclusion.

By contrast, the Suns in the previous round had an ORtg of 111.5, which gives them a +6.5 rORtg which was BETTER than what you'd expect from the regular season, despite the fact that the Suns were not playing at full strength in the playoffs due to injuries.

And of course, that doesn't factor in that the Suns were missing Amar'e that year.

So no, Wade was not succeeding in any way that could be seen as succeeding where Nash failed unless you're just doing RINGZ.

Are you to believe that Nash beats Dallas with Wade's cast? There's no way they could've had the team defensive performance they did with Nash in place of Wade, that's a huge drop off. And Nash may have gotten better production out of some of the guys, but they needed big scoring from an individual or they weren't going to win.

I don't think Nash is a better Wade than Wade and I don't think Wade is a better Nash than Nash.

I will say that I think that the '05-06 Heat are probably the weakest championship team I've ever seen and thus it's largely a fluke that we look at them as "NBA champions" and look at, say, the '06-07 Suns as a team who came up short.

I'll also note that while the '05-06 playoff Suns were a crippled team that I don't see as championship-worthy, it's really not crazy at all to think they might have beaten those Heat had they played as the best version of the '05-06 team - that is, even without Amar'e.

While in one of the regular season games that season Wade didn't play, they did play in late January in Miami and the Suns won in a blow out up 90-72 after 3 quarters. At that time, during the meat of the year, both teams were playing 60-ish wins type of ball, so this really was a meeting between serious contenders, though I'll grant that one regular season game only counts for so much.

I'll further add that people tend to really lionize Wade's performance in the 2010 playoffs against Boston where he personally put up big numbers while his team put up a putrid ORtg. This is the trend of Wade. He puts up numbers, his team's offenses are meh.

That's because he didn't play with good offensive players , this has been mentioned and ignored repeatedly. I don't understand your motive for completely removing supporting cast when talking about a team metric.

He played with LeBron and produced weaker offenses than LeBron produced with Mo Williams.

To be clear, I do think Wade is a better floor raiser than Nash. I think Wade's at his best when you just tell him to go score and you try to use the rest of the lineup to win with defense, which is of course how they won the 2006 title.

Dallas in the '06 finals had an ORtg of 99.9. which was 11.9 below their regular season average. Anyone who wants to understand how Miami beat Dallas should be focused on Miami's defense not their offense. And the fact that the team had the ability at all times to have either Shaq or Zo on the floor is really a freakish thing.

Why don't you want to acknowledge that Wade was a big part of that? He didn't have a Draymond Green level anchor that your dude Curry has had the luxury of in his whole prime.

The Heat's defensive performances was an effort by committee type of thing, rather than their being a clear most impactful defender.

Notable guys by MPG:

Wade: 43.5
Walker: 36.6
Shaq: 35.2
Williams: 31.3
Posey: 29.5
Haslem: 29.2
Payton: 22.3
ZO: 11

When you factor in minutes, how many of those guys actually provided more value on defense? This isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious to what your answer is. No one aside from ZO and Haslem were clearly better on a per minute basis.

Considering Wade's large minute load, and how bad some of Dallas' perimeter players played(Howard, Stackhouse and Harris all held to under 50 ts%), i don't see how Wade's defense should just be an afterthought especially when Nash is objectively a negative defender.

Some of Wade's defensive numbers:

Game 3: 11 defensive rebounds, 2 steals
Game 6: 7 defensive rebounds, 4 steals, 3 blocks!!

Wade was 2nd in defensive rebounds, 4th on the team in DRB%, 3rd in blk %, and 2nd in DRTG of guys that played meaningful minutes, the last part's probably meaningless but there's a lot of evidence to believe Wade's defense isn't irrelevant in the series.

If you want to make the argument for Wade as a DPOY-level defensive player, go right ahead. Dive into specifics. How did Wade limit Howard, Stackhouse, and Harris all under 50 TS%?

I'm not looking to ignore Wade's defense remotely, but I've yet to hear anyone argue that it wasn't offense where the bulk of him impact came from, thus the fact that it's the defense that won the Heat the title speaks to the importance of his supporting cast.

But yeah, if I'm looking to build a team that will have an elite offense, Wade's pretty low on my list.

That's your choice, but also acknowledge that it's also going to be harder to build an elite defense around Nash as opposed to Wade.

From 04-2013, Wade was only on two teams that weren't in the top 10 in DRTG, 2009(ranked 11th), and 2008(26th), though that year shouldn't even count all things considered, and a top 6 defense 4 times(05, 10-12).

I'm not willing to just chalk all that up to coincidence, or act like it's irrelevant when we're talking about Nash.

Eh, again. If Wade was primarily impact offense and the team defense is what stood out, then obviously you need to give credit to the defense for a lot more than just Wade.

If you actually want to make the case that Wade was a better defensive player than offensive player though, you go right ahead.

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote 1 - Patrick Ewing
Vote 2 - Steve Nash
Vote 3 - Scottie Pippen

For the record I prefer Nash over Wade.

I’m just going to address some of the themes (for the lack of a better word) that revolved around ewing during his career.

He came up in one of the best eras for centers the game has ever seen. There are the obvious all time greats such as hakeem, robinson, and towards the later part of his career shaq. Then you had his georgetown counterparts in mutombo and mourning as well as guys like parish, divac, willis, smits, sabonis, daugherty, etc. On top of competing with these guys for accolades like all NBA and all defensive team, he had the tall task of being the focal point on offense going up against them on a regular basis.

And that leads me to the story of ewing’s career: He never had a consistent all star caliber 2nd option in his prime. The knicks were essentially forced to run the offense through him as he was their only option. Starks was a talented player who would go to war for you, but for every few games he went off, you’d end up with a shot happy poor shooting night. Many times, the knicks would end up winning these games in spite of that due to ewing’s stellar play.

Was Ewing a hyper efficient elite offensive player? Not quite, but he would turn into a great offensive force with impressive athleticism for a guy his size. As his athleticism waned, he developed more of an outside game, and while his efficiency would decrease, you could still go to him late in games if you needed a bucket. You can also attribute his decrease in efficiency in the playoffs to defenses locking in even more on him due to the lack of other options.

I’m sorry, but the notion that he actually brought his teammates down offensively to the point where they would’ve had a significantly greater impact without him is irrational. If ewing was ever fortunate enough to play with another great player, he would’ve taken advantage of it just fine. When he finally got the opportunity to play for a championship in 94, he just so happened to face his ultimate match in hakeem. By no means am I guaranteeing a championship if he faced the likes of barkley, stockton and malone, or david robinson, but the outcome may have been different.

Ewing and the knicks played jordan’s bulls as well as anyone back then, but just couldn’t get over the hump. While teams from other eras certainly prevented players from winning championships, jordan had a major effect on those guys from the 90s. Those knicks teams were built on defense, and while there’s no question ewing had great defensive players around him, he was the anchor nonetheless. NY’s defensive RTG ranks from 92-99:

92 - 2nd
93 - 1st
94 - 1st
95 - 1st
96 - 4th
97 - 2nd
98 - 4th
99 - 4th

Top 5 defense for 8 straight seasons and best in the league for 3 straight? That’s damn impressive any way you slice it. 92 was riley’s first year as head coach, and he found a way to manage all these strong personalities (mason, oakley, mcdaniel, starks, harper, etc.) and help them channel that towards performance on the court. Ewing had an impressive peak in 89-90 putting up 28.6 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 2.2 APG, 1 SPG, 4 BPG on 59.9% TS and 115 ORtg. He rounded out his career with solid longevity (15 productive seasons) and 9 straight seasons of 20+ PPG, 10+ RPG and 2+ BPG.

[penbeast0]

Harden seems like the next Barkley but with assists instead of rebounds. Truly an ATG offensive force with a major secondary attribute but a serious lack of effort on defense, turnover prone (Barkley got better as he "matured"), more than a little bit of a jerk. I will probably be voting for him sometime in the next 10 spots but I don't have to like it. (Notice I didn't vote for Barkley as high as he went)

The biggest difference is that Barkley is a funny jerk, Harden seems humorless.

[eminence]

NY’s defensive RTG ranks from 92-99:

92 - 2nd
93 - 1st
94 - 1st
95 - 1st
96 - 4th
97 - 2nd
98 - 4th
99 - 4th

Top 5 defense for 8 straight seasons and best in the league for 3 straight? That’s damn impressive any way you slice it. 92 was riley’s first year as head coach, and he found a way to manage all these strong personalities (mason, oakley, mcdaniel, starks, harper, etc.) and help them channel that towards performance on the court. Ewing had an impressive peak in 89-90 putting up 28.6 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 2.2 APG, 1 SPG, 4 BPG on 59.9% TS and 115 ORtg. He rounded out his career with solid longevity (15 productive seasons) and 9 straight seasons of 20+ PPG, 10+ RPG and 2+ BPG.

My biggest reservation on Ewing is that 4th in '98. Ewing essentially missed that season. The teams record still took a dive (seems to have been clutch play based, so not sure how much luck and how much real), so it's not all bad news for Ewing. You're a New York fan (I think?), so I'm sure know it better than I, how do you feel they managed such a strong D/squad without him that year? Ward/Mills of all people seem to dominate their defensive on/off for the season.

[Joao Saraiva]

I'm voting for D Wade here. I think he has the most impressive peak left, and he has also the best run left. 2006 was special, that ECF and NBA finals were out of this world. Basically, even with a bit less longevity than Nash, Wade did what Nash failed to do with such run. He absolutely killed it in 06.

I do understand that perspective, but I think it's important to remember that Wade was not leading an unstoppable offense when he did this. The team won with defense.

Wade's legend truly got established with those 2006 finals against Dallas.

In those finals, Miami had an ORtg of 101.0.

To use simple estimates, given that Dallas had a regular season DRtg of 105.0. That means Miami's performance in that series was a -4.0 rORtg, which means they underperformed by 6.5 points per 100 possessions against Dallas.

By contrast, the Suns in the previous round had an ORtg of 111.5, which gives them a +6.5 rORtg which was BETTER than what you'd expect from the regular season, despite the fact that the Suns were not playing at full strength in the playoffs due to injuries.

And of course, that doesn't factor in that the Suns were missing Amar'e that year.

So no, Wade was not succeeding in any way that could be seen as succeeding where Nash failed unless you're just doing RINGZ.

I'll further add that people tend to really lionize Wade's performance in the 2010 playoffs against Boston where he personally put up big numbers while his team put up a putrid ORtg. This is the trend of Wade. He puts up numbers, his team's offenses are meh.

To be clear, I do think Wade is a better floor raiser than Nash. I think Wade's at his best when you just tell him to go score and you try to use the rest of the lineup to win with defense, which is of course how they won the 2006 title.

Dallas in the '06 finals had an ORtg of 99.9. which was 11.9 below their regular season average. Anyone who wants to understand how Miami beat Dallas should be focused on Miami's defense not their offense. And the fact that the team had the ability at all times to have either Shaq or Zo on the floor is really a freakish thing.

But yeah, if I'm looking to build a team that will have an elite offense, Wade's pretty low on my list.

While team stats are useful, they provide a team context. The Heat did not have a fantastic team.

They had Posey and Williams as good 3 point shooters that year. Walker wasn't exactly that, he played how many modern PFs do but he was baaad.

The Heat struggled mightly on offense in games 1 and 2 in the finals. However, Wade by himself, gave them a boost on offense to be arround 100 points instead of 80 in those last 4 games. And it was by his will.

This is something Nash as a scorer never showed us, and it is an important aspect in a basketball game.

I just can't say I ever saw Nash do what Wade did. Fine, the Heat were not super great on offense, but a Wade made a big difference with his play. In the last 4 games of the series he always scored above 35 and he only had one game with less than 60ts%, two above 66.

While scoring isn't the only aspect of the game, a player scoring like that is for sure a force to be recognized.

And having that ultimate punch in his scoring arsenal and getting his team enough offense to win a ring is something Nash didn't do.

The only game Nash had against Dallas that comes within the same type of performances Wade had in the finals was G1.

Not that Nash played bad for most of the series, even tough he was subpar here and there. But he definitely didn't rise his game to the heights of D. Wade.

[Clyde Frazier]

NY’s defensive RTG ranks from 92-99:

92 - 2nd
93 - 1st
94 - 1st
95 - 1st
96 - 4th
97 - 2nd
98 - 4th
99 - 4th

Top 5 defense for 8 straight seasons and best in the league for 3 straight? That’s damn impressive any way you slice it. 92 was riley’s first year as head coach, and he found a way to manage all these strong personalities (mason, oakley, mcdaniel, starks, harper, etc.) and help them channel that towards performance on the court. Ewing had an impressive peak in 89-90 putting up 28.6 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 2.2 APG, 1 SPG, 4 BPG on 59.9% TS and 115 ORtg. He rounded out his career with solid longevity (15 productive seasons) and 9 straight seasons of 20+ PPG, 10+ RPG and 2+ BPG.

My biggest reservation on Ewing is that 4th in '98. Ewing essentially missed that season. The teams record still took a dive (seems to have been clutch play based, so not sure how much luck and how much real), so it's not all bad news for Ewing. You're a New York fan (I think?), so I'm sure know it better than I, how do you feel they managed such a strong D/squad without him that year? Ward/Mills of all people seem to dominate their defensive on/off for the season.

I'd point to that being his 13th season at 35 years old, and his impact just wasn't as high as it was in his prime. As I mentioned, they did have solid defensive players around him including a great scheme for the time. By then he was more the face of the team and had taken a back seat in role. Also, in 99 he was an integral part in upsetting miami in the first round despite later advancing past indiana without him en route to the finals. His body had really taken a beating at that point. It's hard to believe he ended up making it back for one more ECF run as he tore his achilles in 99.