#27 Highest Peak of All Time (Pippen '95 wins)

[Doctor MJ]

Karl Malone '98 has been enshrined. At age 34, he is now the oldest player on our list.

We move on.

[colts18]

Dwight Howard has to go next. He was better in the postseason in 09, but he was a better regulars season player in 2011. Plus his defensive impact in both years are off the chart. He had Ben Wallace impact, maybe even more.

[Dr Positivity]

Vote 2009 Dwight Howard. A true defensive anchor, draws a lot of attention for shooters with his power, 59 Ws and making the Finals with a cast of shooters is a massive impact. I'm fine with him going here.

Interested to see some early thoughts on the upcoming SFs: Barry, Durant, King, Pierce, Pippen, Drexler, Havlicek. I'm leaning towards Barry first and Durant second of that group

[Doctor MJ]

I'm leaning toward Howard as well. Sounds like we've got an '09 vs '11 debate going. I can understand people going in both directions, but one thing I want to emphasize:

If you're going for '09 because of the playoffs, consider that '11 Howard played better in the 1st round than '09 Howard did.

[Dr Positivity]

Perhaps it's winning bias, but I felt like the Magic's chemistry was already corrupted to an extent by 2011. I felt like Dwight's FA situation in 2009 put his team in a situation more likely to come together to win/overperform

[Doctor MJ]

Perhaps it's winning bias, but I felt like the Magic's chemistry was already corrupted to an extent by 2011. I felt like Dwight's FA situation in 2009 put his team in a situation more likely to come together to win/overperform

I see. Well, if you're willing to blame Howard for enough off court stuff, that would make a difference.

Quite clearly, the team got worse in no small part because the team felt so desperate to get better so quickly, which they never would have done Howard had been more on board.

[Lightning25]

2009 Howard really? 2009 Howard had a lot of flaws and I don't even think he was better than 2009 Yao. 2011 was clearly Howard's peak.

[therealbig3]

Vote: 95 Pippen

ElGee talked about this before...Pippen is SUPER portable, and he's one of the best defensive players ever, not just among wings. I honestly do think his defensive impact is comparable to that of the 2nd tier big man anchors (Howard, Ewing, Mourning, etc.).

So why Howard over Pippen? Unless you're so sold on the fact that Howard's defense blows Pippen's out of the water, hard for me to imagine Howard compensating for Pippen's offensive advantages.

Pippen vs Barry/Drexler...I'll just say there's a reason why whenever people make fantasy teams here, Pippen is one of the most common SFs of choice, and Barry/Drexler are rarely mentioned. Pippen just fits any type of team you want to have like a glove, and he'll give you major impact regardless. Drexler fit in nicely as a 2nd option with Houston, but he didn't play the 2nd option role as well as Pippen, and I'm not seeing super impressive results with him as a 1st option anyway, not really any more impressive than Pippen in 94 and 95. Barry is similar to Iverson to me. Inefficient volume scorer who can drag poor offensive squads to respectability, and that happened to be good enough to win a championship one year when the league was pretty weak. I consider him better than Iverson, because I trust Barry's IQ as a teammate more, but unless volume scoring regardless of efficiency matters that much, I'm taking Pippen over him too.

[therealbig3]

IMO, 11 Howard was clearly a better player than 09 Howard. Most notably on the offensive end...yeah, he turned it over like crazy against Atlanta, but he was volume scoring on amazing efficiency, and his ORating was an overall 113 anyway, so he was still playing at an elite level offensively.

According to RAPM and on/off, he was also better defensively in 11, which makes sense, since defense might be the most experience-dependent part of the game, imo.

[C-izMe]

I'm voting 87 McHale

My next up:

1. McHale
2. Penny
3. Pip
4. Zo
5. Dwight
6. Barry
7. Baylor
8. King or Hill

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y6=1987

I ask Dwight voters why him? His numbers aren't far ahead of the pack so is his defense that good to where we'll take him over well superior offensive players?

Look back to the RPOY and see how his years stand up. 3rd in 11 and 4th in 09. Penny was third in 96, Gilmore 3rd in 75, McHale 6th in 87,Scottie 6th in 94, and Zo 2nd in 2000. These guys are right there with him and he's getting a high amount of support for some reason. The recency bias might be showing here because doing as good as these guys with no real competition at your position is less impressive then outshining Shaq as a third year player, winning DPOY over prime Deke and peak Shaq, or taking over for a team after the GOAT leaves and leading them to near championship level.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm voting 87 McHale

My next up:

1. McHale
2. Penny
3. Pip
4. Zo
5. Dwight
6. Barry
7. Baylor
8. King or Hill

No Pettit?

[Dr Positivity]

Rick Barry isn't that inefficient. League average eFG in 75 was around 4 pts worse than it is now, so that turns .51 into .55 if the same adjustment is made to TS%. It's efficiency closer to Nique than Durant and King, but he was as efficient as them it wouldn't be a contest vs them, since Barry is a better passer. I do wonder if the difference between Barry and Pierce has been overrated, skillset wise Pierce can do most of the things Barry can, it's just the latter had volume scoring

[C-izMe]

I'm voting 87 McHale

My next up:

1. McHale
2. Penny
3. Pip
4. Zo
5. Dwight
6. Barry
7. Baylor
8. King or Hill

No Pettit?

I know he should fit in somewhere but IDK where. I know for a fact I rank him under Baylor (mostly due to Baylor's volume and all around play).

[therealbig3]

I was just curious how the box score stats of Pippen/Pierce/Barry would look if they were pace-adjusted, per 75:

75 Barry: 25.3 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 5.1 apg, 50.9% TS (+0.7%)

94 Pippen: 22.5 ppg, 8.9 rpg, 5.7 apg, 54.4% TS (+1.6%)

06 Pierce: 26.8 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 4.7 apg, 58.2% TS (+4.6%)


Strictly from a box score perspective, Pierce actually looks very impressive compared to Barry and Pippen. Clearly a better pure scorer than either imo. Always been a strong rebounder too. The assists numbers overrate his actual playmaking ability though imo, especially compared to Pippen and Barry...he's decent, but he's never been that great of a ball handler or that great of a passer. We don't have TO numbers for Barry, but you can somewhat see evidence of this when you see that 94 Pippen averaged 3.3 TO/75 possessions, and 06 Pierce averaged 3.5 TO/75 possessions, despite averaging a full assist less.

So, you can still separate Pippen/Barry from Pierce based on that extra facet of their offensive game of being very good point forwards, while Pierce is merely above average. However, why Barry over Pippen? Like I said, other than pure volume scoring (which doesn't even seem to better at all really, considering their pace-adjusted volume was actually pretty close, with Pippen being more efficient), I wouldn't take Barry over Pippen. Pippen imo is a comparable facilitator, while being a better rebounder, better defender, and more portable...and none of those are even close.

Furthermore, if people want to criticize his volume scoring, which is admittedly not elite, he was able to maintain decent efficiency after transitioning from 2nd option to 1st option in 94 and 95, and still averaged over 21 ppg in both seasons.

[Doctor MJ]

I know he should fit in somewhere but IDK where. I know for a fact I rank him under Baylor (mostly due to Baylor's volume and all around play).

See, I'll almost certainly have Pettit ahead of Baylor. You can elaborate on the all around play, but I think for the most part people are going based on Baylor's extreme volume scoring, and to me this is a touch wacky. Volume is not a goal, and we know that Baylor was both less able to efficient than Pettit period, and prone to continue in this trend even when he had a super-capable teammate in West. Just as Wilt's scoring didn't actually help his team very much, I think it's quite easy to just fixate on 38 PPG and think that must have been happening because he was unstoppable...when it just happened because it happened. Baylor shot so much that dang well better get 38 points out of it.

[Doctor MJ]

Rick Barry isn't that inefficient. League average eFG in 75 was around 4 pts worse than it is now, so that turns .51 into .55 if the same adjustment is made to TS%. It's efficiency closer to Nique than Durant and King, but he was as efficient as them it wouldn't be a contest vs them, since Barry is a better passer. I do wonder if the difference between Barry and Pierce has been overrated, skillset wise Pierce can do most of the things Barry can, it's just the latter had volume scoring

I think though it's a touch dangerous to adjust for efficiency like that. If you do that across the board you get the impression that West & Oscar were absolutely insane in their efficiency early in their career, but their efficiency did not keep improving with the league as everything went along.

I'm not going to claim Barry should be looked at as a counterproductive chucker, but he was most certainly a far less effective scorer than West. Of course, I started voting for West at 14, so I'm pretty much fine with Barry getting some love now, but anyone who really had doubts about West I'd expect to see Barry's much inferior efficiency and see a sizable gap.

[Lightning25]

I have no idea how Pippen is this high in terms of peak. I would take Hill's peak over Pippen and possibly Hardaway's as well.

[JordansBulls]

Vote: 1996 Anfernee Hardaway

I'm leaning towards 1996 Penny Hardaway. He was 3rd in MVP voting behind MJ and Robinson and finished ahead of Hakeem and Shaq. He led the Magic while Shaq was out to a 20-8 record. He also had a 14.4 Win Share total which was the same that Dwight posted in 2011.

[C-izMe]

I know he should fit in somewhere but IDK where. I know for a fact I rank him under Baylor (mostly due to Baylor's volume and all around play).

See, I'll almost certainly have Pettit ahead of Baylor. You can elaborate on the all around play, but I think for the most part people are going based on Baylor's extreme volume scoring, and to me this is a touch wacky. Volume is not a goal, and we know that Baylor was both less able to efficient than Pettit period, and prone to continue in this trend even when he had a super-capable teammate in West. Just as Wilt's scoring didn't actually help his team very much, I think it's quite easy to just fixate on 38 PPG and think that must have been happening because he was unstoppable...when it just happened because it happened. Baylor shot so much that dang well better get 38 points out of it.

I agree and it bugs me too. This is a man that was top 2 in scoring (and decent efficency wise from 61-63), top 5 in rebounds, and top 10 in assists. That led to top 2 PER finishes each year. He was basically Lebron when it came to numbers.

[ardee]

Ok, so it's between '75 Pric-excuse me, Rick Barry, '61 Baylor and '63 Baylor.

It'll be a darn shame if Baylor falls out of the top 30, I'd have already voted for him had I not been stuck voting for West for like 7 threads in a row

Gonna expand a bit more in a while, looking forward to hearing discussions on Baylor's peak though.