Luka Shaq vs West Bird

[70sFan]

How about just an example of a player going from a poor dribbler to an elite one.

We’ve gone down this road before, so definitely no need for us to have the same discussion again, but I just want to point out that I think this is pretty clearly a non-sequitur. Jerry West wouldn’t have to go from a poor dribbler to an elite one. He’d need to go from an elite dribbler under one ruleset to an elite dribbler under a different ruleset. Even if you think poor dribblers almost never become elite dribblers, that is a different question. Jerry West was not allowed to dribble the way players dribble today, so we have no information that tells us that Jerry West is a poor dribbler under the current ruleset. You’re just speculating that that’s the case, based on your view that dribbling under the current rule set is harder (a very dubious premise, but we’ve already discussed that at length in the past, so I won’t belabor that point). But, by that logic, if we put Kyrie Irving in the 1960s and you’d never seen him play in the modern era, you’d have to conclude he would be a poor dribbler under the current ruleset too.

This is a distinction without value. West being 'elite' at bad dribbling is akin to telling me someone is an 'elite' crawler, and trying to extrapolate that to suggest they'll be elite at running too.

Kyrie can run, so obviously he can crawl. I don't need to see him crawl to know that, because it's a subset of running. If you can run you can crawl. Conversely, being able to shoot midrangers well is no guarantee you can shoot 3s well. It's a different skillset. Just ask Demar.

West's dribbling is poor by modern standards, so if you want to argue that he'd be elite at handling the ball today then you need to find examples of guys going from a bad handle to an elite one. That would be step one. Why West has a worse handle (i.e. because of rules at the time) is really irrelevant. As I've discussed before, this is about who is the best at basketball, not what is 'fair', though as I've also explained I think my approach is ultimately fairer too.

Why do we have more unskilled bigs dribbling the ball consistently with ease in this era, if it's harder to handle the ball in modern way?

[One_and_Done]

I disagree with both your premise, and the implication that it would mean anything for this discussion.

[Cavsfansince84]

This is a distinction without value. West being 'elite' at bad dribbling is akin to telling me someone is an 'elite' crawler, and trying to extrapolate that to suggest they'll be elite at running too.

Kyrie can run, so obviously he can crawl. I don't need to see him crawl to know that, because it's a subset of running. If you can run you can crawl. Conversely, being able to shoot midrangers well is no guarantee you can shoot 3s well. It's a different skillset. Just ask Demar.

West's dribbling is poor by modern standards, so if you want to argue that he'd be elite at handling the ball today then you need to find examples of guys going from a bad handle to an elite one. That would be step one. Why West has a worse handle (i.e. because of rules at the time) is really irrelevant. As I've discussed before, this is about who is the best at basketball, not what is 'fair', though as I've also explained I think my approach is ultimately fairer too.

I'm just curious where this huge bias you have against previous eras of players actually comes from. Is it just that in your mind everything in the current era(your era) must be better by virtue of coming after?

[TheGOATRises007]

Comparing crawling/running and dribbling in the 60's/dribbling in the modern age is a beyond stupid analogy. Like genuinely one of the dumbest analogies ever.

I mean this is just brain rot reading some of these posts from you one_and_done

And the hilarious part is that posters constantly point out the flaws in your logic and your rebuttal every single time, "i just disagree."

You act like the smartest person every single time. Makes for truly awful reading.

And before you respond "I disagree", I disagree with you disagreeing.

[One_and_Done]

This is a distinction without value. West being 'elite' at bad dribbling is akin to telling me someone is an 'elite' crawler, and trying to extrapolate that to suggest they'll be elite at running too.

Kyrie can run, so obviously he can crawl. I don't need to see him crawl to know that, because it's a subset of running. If you can run you can crawl. Conversely, being able to shoot midrangers well is no guarantee you can shoot 3s well. It's a different skillset. Just ask Demar.

West's dribbling is poor by modern standards, so if you want to argue that he'd be elite at handling the ball today then you need to find examples of guys going from a bad handle to an elite one. That would be step one. Why West has a worse handle (i.e. because of rules at the time) is really irrelevant. As I've discussed before, this is about who is the best at basketball, not what is 'fair', though as I've also explained I think my approach is ultimately fairer too.

I'm just curious where this huge bias you have against previous eras of players actually comes from. Is it just that in your mind everything in the current era(your era) must be better by virtue of coming after?

I watched the footage from different eras and came to a conclusion about how good they were. I'm not interested in nostalgia, I'm interested in how good guys were at playing basketball; at least when it comes to ranking guys.

Now, if you want to honour West with statues and jersey retirements, and HoF entry, that is totally appropriate. West achieved more as a player than most, and deserves more accolades than Luka does right now. If I'm asking who is a better player though it's Luka and it's not remotely close. It's a symptom of something troubling when people can't take their heroes off a pedestal and evaluate them honestly. That's how cults get started.

[One_and_Done]

Comparing crawling/running and dribbling in the 60's/dribbling in the modern age is a beyond stupid analogy. Like genuinely one of the dumbest analogies ever.

I mean this is just brain rot reading some of these posts from you one_and_done

And the hilarious part is that posters constantly point out the flaws in your logic and your rebuttal every single time, "i just disagree."

You act like the smartest person every single time. Makes for truly awful reading.

And before you respond "I disagree", I disagree with you disagreeing.

Let me ask you a question. If Demar had played in the 70s and 80s, do you think people would be arguing that he could hit 3s today? Be honest.

[70sFan]

I don't think anyone would make much of an argument for 1970s Derozan potential shooting ability, just like people don't do that with guys with similar scoring game like David Thompson.

[Cavsfansince84]

I watched the footage from different eras and came to a conclusion about how good they were. I'm not interested in nostalgia, I'm interested in how good guys were at playing basketball; at least when it comes to ranking guys.

Now, if you want to honour West with statues and jersey retirements, and HoF entry, that is totally appropriate. West achieved more as a player than most, and deserves more accolades than Luka does right now. If I'm asking who is a better player though it's Luka and it's not remotely close. It's a symptom of something troubling when people can't take their heroes off a pedestal and evaluate them honestly. That's how cults get started.

So this really goes beyond bb in some way from what I have read of your response. It's something deeper within you when you start talking about it being troubling and how cults started. Not that I am saying you are wrong but just it is something else that is going on here imo. The idea of the past being seen as greater than it actually was or people put on pedestals and beyond criticism in your mind. I'm just saying I think its led to you having a rather strong bias against greats of the past.

[One_and_Done]

I watched the footage from different eras and came to a conclusion about how good they were. I'm not interested in nostalgia, I'm interested in how good guys were at playing basketball; at least when it comes to ranking guys.

Now, if you want to honour West with statues and jersey retirements, and HoF entry, that is totally appropriate. West achieved more as a player than most, and deserves more accolades than Luka does right now. If I'm asking who is a better player though it's Luka and it's not remotely close. It's a symptom of something troubling when people can't take their heroes off a pedestal and evaluate them honestly. That's how cults get started.

So this really goes beyond bb in some way from what I have read of your response. It's something deeper within you when you start talking about it being troubling and how cults started. Not that I am saying you are wrong but just it is something else that is going on here imo. The idea of the past being seen as greater than it actually was or people put on pedestals and beyond criticism in your mind. I'm just saying I think its led to you having a rather strong bias against greats of the past.

Kareem is in my top 3 all-time, so not really. I have a bias against players who weren't as good as other players.

[Cavsfansince84]

Kareem is in my top 3 all-time, so not really. I have a bias against players who weren't as good as other players.

Good is an extremely subjective word on here or many other places. Just for the record as is how we as individuals grade athletes and other things.

[Ol Roy]

A presumption of adaptability across eras (with an understanding that we are engaging in probabilities and in search of as much player-specific context possible) should be the ground rule for the PC board.

If you don't want to engage in reasoned projection, simply because older players didn't play more recently, fine...nobody is forcing you to, you don't have to comment. But that's a personal problem: a psychological need for absolute certainty and an attention-seeking need for every discussion to revolve around it. Rehashing absurdities doesn't contribute to these threads; it just derails them. Discounting older players with an axe instead of a scalpel (like insisting West can't shoot three pointers because the line didn't exist when he played, and a player who can't shoot threes at all therefore has little value) doesn't lead to accuracy in grading players, it just satisfies an artificial construct that goes against the spirit of actually comparing players in any meaningful way.

[GeorgeMarcus]

A presumption of adaptability across eras (with an understanding that we are engaging in probabilities and in search of as much player-specific context possible) should be the ground rule for the PC board.

If you don't want to engage in reasoned projection, simply because older players didn't play more recently, fine...nobody is forcing you to, you don't have to comment. But that's a personal problem: a psychological need for absolute certainty and an attention-seeking need for every discussion to revolve around it. Rehashing absurdities doesn't contribute to these threads; it just derails them. Discounting older players with an axe instead of a scalpel (like insisting West can't shoot three pointers because the line didn't exist when he played, and a player who can't shoot threes at all therefore has little value) doesn't lead to accuracy in grading players, it just satisfies an artificial construct that goes against the spirit of actually comparing players in any meaningful way.

Well said

[Jaivl]

Cool. I disagree.

[Cavsfansince84]

I'll add two more things re:cross era comparisons and West in particular which is that guys who worked hard enough to be considered top 4 players of their era are going to work hard in any era. That's often the difference between a guy being an all star and a perennial top 5 player is work ethic. So that has to be taken into account to some degree when we ask 'could player x develop skill y'. It's not that it's a given but that in a hypothetical scenario I would generally side with a player who already demonstrated a great work ethic.
Just as Steph wasn't just born with great hand eye coordination or w/e you want to call it but he also practiced shooting probably from the time he was 4-5 years old. West also has many physical advantages which translate to any era(good size, quickness, length) and his turn around jumper is probably the best of all time. He could just do it at will over almost any defender and to me the problem is that he made it almost look too easy and people kind of take it for granted that its not an impressive shot because it looks so simple.

[One_and_Done]

A presumption of adaptability across eras (with an understanding that we are engaging in probabilities and in search of as much player-specific context possible) should be the ground rule for the PC board.

If you don't want to engage in reasoned projection, simply because older players didn't play more recently, fine...nobody is forcing you to, you don't have to comment. But that's a personal problem: a psychological need for absolute certainty and an attention-seeking need for every discussion to revolve around it. Rehashing absurdities doesn't contribute to these threads; it just derails them. Discounting older players with an axe instead of a scalpel (like insisting West can't shoot three pointers because the line didn't exist when he played, and a player who can't shoot threes at all therefore has little value) doesn't lead to accuracy in grading players, it just satisfies an artificial construct that goes against the spirit of actually comparing players in any meaningful way.

'Impartiality is always partial', because it ultimately favours someone.

The idea that people who disagree with you should just concede the premise of your argument makes little logical sense.

You can talk about 'the spirit' of comparison, whatever that means, but really you're just favouring past players. I would argue my approach is both fairer as well as better, because it looks at the skills players actually had and judges them off that. Once you start giving players imaginary skills you open up a Pandora's box where everything is even more subjective and driven by biases. Instead of asking who had the more valuable skillset, it becomes a question of who we can imagine having the best skillset in our minds. In which case, I'll start ranking Shaq if he'd been born later and developed a 3pt shot, or Demarcus Cousins and Sheed if they had been born in a situation where they had better role models, or Bill Walton if modern medical tech had made him healthy, or Len Bias if he lived. The problem is none of those things happened, and we can only rank guys on what they actually did. That is both fairer and more accurate.

Just like Len Bias never lived, and Shaq never actually learned to hit 3s, it is also true that West never showed an elite modern handle, or demonstrated he could hit 3s reliably. Some players who are great midrange shooters develop a 3, and others like Demar don't, so it's impossible to infer one from the other. It's also notable that nobody ever argues old star X would have become Demar, they always argue they'd have succeeded, and that is another way the 'imaginary player' approach unfairly favours stars from a bygone era. It also favours them because it ignores the fact they played in a barely professional league who would be spanked by 2nd rate Euroleague teams if we teleported them into today's game.

You can have your approach, but I'm going to stick with mine. It's both more accurate and frankly fairer.

[OhayoKD]

A presumption of adaptability across eras (with an understanding that we are engaging in probabilities and in search of as much player-specific context possible) should be the ground rule for the PC board.

If you don't want to engage in reasoned projection, simply because older players didn't play more recently, fine...nobody is forcing you to, you don't have to comment. But that's a personal problem: a psychological need for absolute certainty and an attention-seeking need for every discussion to revolve around it. Rehashing absurdities doesn't contribute to these threads; it just derails them. Discounting older players with an axe instead of a scalpel (like insisting West can't shoot three pointers because the line didn't exist when he played, and a player who can't shoot threes at all therefore has little value) doesn't lead to accuracy in grading players, it just satisfies an artificial construct that goes against the spirit of actually comparing players in any meaningful way.

If you don't want axes then stop making it necessary.

The league is far more talented and any old player is getting worse vs much better competition. Want to debate how much worse they get? Cool. Claiming they get better isn't "reasoned projection" isn't "reasoned projecting", it's "reasoned delusion". As long as "reasonable" people keep "respectfully" welding the latter into "fair" scaffolding to obscure newer better things, the axe is a proportionate response and I'll encourage anyone who wields it.

[OhayoKD]

This is a distinction without value. West being 'elite' at bad dribbling is akin to telling me someone is an 'elite' crawler, and trying to extrapolate that to suggest they'll be elite at running too.

Kyrie can run, so obviously he can crawl. I don't need to see him crawl to know that, because it's a subset of running. If you can run you can crawl. Conversely, being able to shoot midrangers well is no guarantee you can shoot 3s well. It's a different skillset. Just ask Demar.

West's dribbling is poor by modern standards, so if you want to argue that he'd be elite at handling the ball today then you need to find examples of guys going from a bad handle to an elite one. That would be step one. Why West has a worse handle (i.e. because of rules at the time) is really irrelevant. As I've discussed before, this is about who is the best at basketball, not what is 'fair', though as I've also explained I think my approach is ultimately fairer too.

I'm just curious where this huge bias you have against previous eras of players actually comes from. Is it just that in your mind everything in the current era(your era) must be better by virtue of coming after?

Basic logical deduction. Even if you haven't, for some reason, seen these physically less impressive, comically less fluid, and far less skilled greats play basketball, you should have been able to figure out they'd be worse based on the fact today's talent pool is far bigger and the degree of investment both in terms of time and money in refining said talent is far higher.

But since you have a massive bias towards older inferior players, you have religiously decided to pretend superstars are magically staying as good vs much better competition, so much so you tried to equate Larry Bird with Jokic because he's white and doesn't dunk.

[lessthanjake]

How about just an example of a player going from a poor dribbler to an elite one.

We’ve gone down this road before, so definitely no need for us to have the same discussion again, but I just want to point out that I think this is pretty clearly a non-sequitur. Jerry West wouldn’t have to go from a poor dribbler to an elite one. He’d need to go from an elite dribbler under one ruleset to an elite dribbler under a different ruleset. Even if you think poor dribblers almost never become elite dribblers, that is a different question. Jerry West was not allowed to dribble the way players dribble today, so we have no information that tells us that Jerry West is a poor dribbler under the current ruleset. You’re just speculating that that’s the case, based on your view that dribbling under the current rule set is harder (a very dubious premise, but we’ve already discussed that at length in the past, so I won’t belabor that point). But, by that logic, if we put Kyrie Irving in the 1960s and you’d never seen him play in the modern era, you’d have to conclude he would be a poor dribbler under the current ruleset too.

This is a distinction without value. West being 'elite' at bad dribbling is akin to telling me someone is an 'elite' crawler, and trying to extrapolate that to suggest they'll be elite at running too.

Kyrie can run, so obviously he can crawl. I don't need to see him crawl to know that, because it's a subset of running. If you can run you can crawl. Conversely, being able to shoot midrangers well is no guarantee you can shoot 3s well. It's a different skillset. Just ask Demar.

West's dribbling is poor by modern standards, so if you want to argue that he'd be elite at handling the ball today then you need to find examples of guys going from a bad handle to an elite one. That would be step one. Why West has a worse handle (i.e. because of rules at the time) is really irrelevant. As I've discussed before, this is about who is the best at basketball, not what is 'fair', though as I've also explained I think my approach is ultimately fairer too.

The point here is that if Kyrie were transported to the 1960s and you’d never seen him play in the modern era, then you would never have seen him “run” (because to do so in the 1960s would be a turnover every time, so he wouldn’t do it), but rather only have seen him “crawl.” Under your logic, you’d therefore assume Kyrie could not dribble well under the modern ruleset, simply because you wouldn’t see him using modern dribbling in the 1960s. There’s really no way of escaping that that’s the logical conclusion your argument would lead to. And this should illustrate a huge flaw in your argument. You simply assume that people are unable to do stuff that was illegal when they played, because you never saw them do it. But of course you didn’t see them do it! It was illegal! Someone not doing something that is illegal tells us nothing about whether they can do it or not, as the example of Kyrie in the 1960s demonstrates.

Of course, that’s not even getting into the fact that you’re wrong that 1960s dribbling is “poor” or necessarily easier. Anyone who has ever played even like 5 minutes of basketball in their lives should be aware that carrying the ball makes dribbling way easier, and therefore that not being allowed to do so adds to the difficulty. Of course, with that difficulty taken away by relaxed carrying rules, players have found other ways to up the difficulty (i.e. with fancy dribbling moves), but it’s by no means clear that that makes it harder now overall, because it’s not clear that that adds more difficulty than being able to carry takes away. But we’ve gone over that before and literally every person to discuss this with you has said this to you, so I’m sure it is not worth actually getting into, because you’re just dug in.

[Ol Roy]

A presumption of adaptability across eras (with an understanding that we are engaging in probabilities and in search of as much player-specific context possible) should be the ground rule for the PC board.

If you don't want to engage in reasoned projection, simply because older players didn't play more recently, fine...nobody is forcing you to, you don't have to comment. But that's a personal problem: a psychological need for absolute certainty and an attention-seeking need for every discussion to revolve around it. Rehashing absurdities doesn't contribute to these threads; it just derails them. Discounting older players with an axe instead of a scalpel (like insisting West can't shoot three pointers because the line didn't exist when he played, and a player who can't shoot threes at all therefore has little value) doesn't lead to accuracy in grading players, it just satisfies an artificial construct that goes against the spirit of actually comparing players in any meaningful way.

'Impartiality is always partial', because it ultimately favours someone.

The idea that people who disagree with you should just concede the premise of your argument makes little logical sense.

You can talk about 'the spirit' of comparison, whatever that means, but really you're just favouring past players. I would argue my approach is both fairer as well as better, because it looks at the skills players actually had and judges them off that. Once you start giving players imaginary skills you open up a Pandora's box where everything is even more subjective and driven by biases. Instead of asking who had the more valuable skillset, it becomes a question of who we can imagine having the best skillset in our minds. In which case, I'll start ranking Shaq if he'd been born later and developed a 3pt shot, or Demarcus Cousins and Sheed if they had been born in a situation where they had better role models, or Bill Walton if modern medical tech had made him healthy, or Len Bias if he lived. The problem is none of those things happened, and we can only rank guys on what they actually did occur. That is both fairer and more accurate.

Just like Len Bias never lived, and Shaq never actually learned to hit 3s, it is also true that West never showed an elite modern handle, or demonstrated he could hit 3s reliably. Some players who are great midrange shooters develop a 3, and others like Demar don't, so it's impossible to infer one from the other. It's also notable that nobody ever argues old star X would have become Demar, they always argue they'd have succeeded, and that is another way the 'imaginary player' approach unfairly favours stars from a bygone era. It also favours them because it ignores the fact they played in a barely professional league who would be spanked by 2nd rate Euroleague teams if we teleported them into today's game.

You can have your approach, but I'm going to stick with mine. It's both more accurate and frankly fairer.

Your approach is not accurate or fair. It's black and white. It is fundamentally incompatible with actually comparing players across eras. What you are actually doing is refusing to make comparisons because your standard of evidence for sports athletes is stricter than that of criminal law. Your exclusionary rule is so broad that it renders all evidence meaningless.

You equate any cross-era projection with Len Bias living or Shaq shooting threes, which is a fallacious comparison. And then there is the Demar DeRozan trump card, as if the career of one player can be considered dispositive. Imaginary players and time machines. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

Your modus operandi for every thread is provocatively declaring "it's not even close," dumping the same talking points into every thread until the actual subjects become irrelevant, and then the thread dies because people are tired of debating epistemology with you. In other words, people start threads implicitly or explicitly asking for cross era comparisons and you show up to say, "sorry we can't do that!"

I liked the threads of years past much better, which I read as a lurker. Members used their imaginations and had spirited debates about the players, which would usually turn into film study and statistical analysis, and there would be brainstorming about portability in different situations and eras. But hey, at least we have you here to gatekeep, evangelize, and derail.

[One_and_Done]

We’ve gone down this road before, so definitely no need for us to have the same discussion again, but I just want to point out that I think this is pretty clearly a non-sequitur. Jerry West wouldn’t have to go from a poor dribbler to an elite one. He’d need to go from an elite dribbler under one ruleset to an elite dribbler under a different ruleset. Even if you think poor dribblers almost never become elite dribblers, that is a different question. Jerry West was not allowed to dribble the way players dribble today, so we have no information that tells us that Jerry West is a poor dribbler under the current ruleset. You’re just speculating that that’s the case, based on your view that dribbling under the current rule set is harder (a very dubious premise, but we’ve already discussed that at length in the past, so I won’t belabor that point). But, by that logic, if we put Kyrie Irving in the 1960s and you’d never seen him play in the modern era, you’d have to conclude he would be a poor dribbler under the current ruleset too.

This is a distinction without value. West being 'elite' at bad dribbling is akin to telling me someone is an 'elite' crawler, and trying to extrapolate that to suggest they'll be elite at running too.

Kyrie can run, so obviously he can crawl. I don't need to see him crawl to know that, because it's a subset of running. If you can run you can crawl. Conversely, being able to shoot midrangers well is no guarantee you can shoot 3s well. It's a different skillset. Just ask Demar.

West's dribbling is poor by modern standards, so if you want to argue that he'd be elite at handling the ball today then you need to find examples of guys going from a bad handle to an elite one. That would be step one. Why West has a worse handle (i.e. because of rules at the time) is really irrelevant. As I've discussed before, this is about who is the best at basketball, not what is 'fair', though as I've also explained I think my approach is ultimately fairer too.

The point here is that if Kyrie were transported to the 1960s and you’d never seen him play in the modern era, then you would never have seen him “run” (because to do so in the 1960s would be a turnover every time, so he wouldn’t do it), but rather only have seen him “crawl.” Under your logic, you’d therefore assume Kyrie could not dribble well under the modern ruleset, simply because you wouldn’t see him using modern dribbling in the 1960s.

Yes, that is the logical result of judging people off what actually happened, and that's fine. If weightlifting in the 50s had rules that only let people lift up to 200 pounds, and we transported a guy from today who could lift 400 pounds into the past so we had no knowledge that the future guy could lift 400 pounds, then we'd be unable to assume he could lift more. It would be too speculative.

Life isn't always fair; sometimes people are born with advantages others don't have. It's similarly not fair to assume older players could always do things today. The solution is t9 judge guys off what they actually showed they could do.