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Scottie Pippen '95 has been enshrined. We move on.

Vote: Howard '11

As voted before. I think it's a dominant two-way player at the best of his abilities on court, and the off-court stuff isn't so devastating to me.

This next vote for me comes down to 96 Penny, 87 McHale, and 11 Howard. Leaning towards Penny, honestly.

Why Howard over McHale (it's been asked before)? McHale was a very good interior defender himself, and had the added versatility of being able to defend some perimeter players as well, such as Nique. Much better offensively too, as far as I'm concerned. I could be swayed though based on Howard's offense being better than I'm giving him credit for, and maybe the difference in terms of defense is bigger than I'm feeling right now.

Edit - Change my vote to 1996 Penny

Vote 2009 Howard

I'll throw this one out to see if that year can gain some momentum vs 2011, where I felt the Magic weren't on the same page nearly as much as 09, probably in part due to Dwight's FA situation

vote: 2011 Dwight Howard

A clear vote for me based on 2 prior discussions. That said, I'm fuzzier on Howard so it's still possible another one of the candidates could sway me here...

Vote: 2012 Kevin Durant

I actually didn't know the deadline for the last thread was tonight but I suppose it didn't matter because Pippen would have won anyways.

Durant is the best scorer left of the bunch. He is the ultimate portable player and does not need to dominate the ball to disrupt the flow of the offense similar to Karl Malone and Reggie Miller. He can take over games in the clutch as he shown all of last season in the post-season and in the regular season. An example would be game 5 in the WCF vs. the Spurs where Kevin Durant dropped 16 straight points against the Spurs to take the lead in the series. Durant wasn't like Miller either like I've heard being talked about. Durant wasn't reliant on screens to score like Miller was. Durant creates off the dribble all the time whether it's in the 1st quarter or the last shot of the game. Durant just uses screens very well and takes advantage of it, similar to MJ/Bird.

His all-around game is underrated.

He is a very good rebounder and averaged about 8 rpg last season and with a front-court of Nick Collison, Kendrick Perkins, Serge Ibaka, etc. one of the best defensive/rebounding front-courts in the league.

He has shown that he can be a good passer as well although he is not great at it and he is not as great as say Penny, Hill, or Tmac were, but he was still capable. The 2012 WCF showed what Durant's passing was all about, he averaged about 5-6 apg in the WCF iirc.

He is also a very good defender due to his length. He contests shots very well and synergysports show that Durant is one of the best isolation/contesting defenders last season. He is also a very good help defender with rotating, communicating, and also his length to disrupt the vision of the offensive player with the ball. I actually thought Durant defended Lebron the best in the 2012 finals, he just wasn't disciplined enough so he got into foul trouble and couldn't guard him full time but I thought of all the guys that defended Lebron between Thabo, Harden, and Durant, Durant was the best.

His only issue is his ball-control. He does have good ball-handles to create off the dribble but he doesn't take care of the ball too well in terms of turning the ball over.

Now factor in the intangibles such as his great leadership ability. He always works hard and everybody always talks about how hard he works whether it's in the off-season, in practice during the season, whatever. People always rave about Durant's amazing work-ethic and that's what you want in a leader. Durant never calls out his teammates either and he always sticks up for them. This means that this leader will have everybody else's back regardless of what happens and as a teammate you would like that from your leader because not all leaders are like that.

Dr Positivity wrote:Vote 2009 Howard

I'll throw this one out to see if that year can gain some momentum vs 2011, where I felt the Magic weren't on the same page nearly as much as 09, probably in part due to Dwight's FA situation

Dwight's FA problem wasn't an issue in 2011. It was an issue after that season though in the off-season and throughout the entire 2012 season though but that's a completely different season.

Honestly, 2009 Dwight is not even better than peak Yao so I'm not sure why you would even vote for 2009 Dwight at all here.

therealbig3 wrote:Why Howard over McHale (it's been asked before)? McHale was a very good interior defender himself, and had the added versatility of being able to defend some perimeter players as well, such as Nique. Much better offensively too, as far as I'm concerned. I could be swayed though based on Howard's offense being better than I'm giving him credit for, and maybe the difference in terms of defense is bigger than I'm feeling right now.

I suppose my issue more than anything else is that maybe I need to be sold more on McHale.

I believe in his peak in the sense that I know it was very, very good. I'm find putting his offense ahead of Howard's. However, the matter that he got to do that while defenses were primarily preoccupied with Larry Bird makes me cautious about treating him as if he were a top tier MVP candidate level guy. And I do understand that he got almost as much MVP attention that year as Bird did, and that it's not like it's at all normal for 2nd options to look as good as McHale did, but against Howard, he's being compared with someone who was the primary focus of the opponent every single moment he was on the court. You can't really say anything like that for McHale.

Doctor MJ wrote:

therealbig3 wrote:Why Howard over McHale (it's been asked before)? McHale was a very good interior defender himself, and had the added versatility of being able to defend some perimeter players as well, such as Nique. Much better offensively too, as far as I'm concerned. I could be swayed though based on Howard's offense being better than I'm giving him credit for, and maybe the difference in terms of defense is bigger than I'm feeling right now.

I suppose my issue more than anything else is that maybe I need to be sold more on McHale.

I believe in his peak in the sense that I know it was very, very good. I'm find putting his offense ahead of Howard's. However, the matter that he got to do that while defenses were primarily preoccupied with Larry Bird makes me cautious about treating him as if he were a top tier MVP candidate level guy. And I do understand that he got almost as much MVP attention that year as Bird did, and that it's not like it's at all normal for 2nd options to look as good as McHale did, but against Howard, he's being compared with someone who was the primary focus of the opponent every single moment he was on the court. You can't really say anything like that for McHale.

Ok, I get the 1st option vs 2nd option thing...but Howard's not the most impressive 1st option either. He's had a coach run a borderline gimmick offense tailor made to his strengths. They put 4 shooters around him at all times, or at least 3 shooters and a PF that can hit midrange jumpers with consistency, so that Howard can isolate on the block. He's not a good passer, and he has a tendency to turn it over. WIth that said, their offensive ranks since 08:

08: +3.8
09: +0.9
10: +3.8
11: +0.4

They've only had 2 very successful offensive seasons with Howard as the number 1 option, and in 08, Howard wasn't even their best offensive player...Turkoglu was. In 10, props to Howard, but that team was a well-balanced offensive unit, with perimeter scorers, stretch 4s, and solid role players off the bench. In fact, isn't it more concerning that Howard-led offenses haven't ever really been THAT great, and he's got some middling offenses thrown in there as well, despite playing with a bunch of 3pt shooters and a very good point forward in Turkoglu?

We know McHale was on some really awesome Celtics offenses, and we know Bird was the catalyst, and there are questions about whether or not McHale could have maintained the same offensive success without Bird, which is a legitimate question...but we saw in 89 that McHale at 31 put up very Dwight Howard-like volume and efficiency numbers as the number 1 option when Bird only played 6 games. And he kept his TOs at 2.5 per game.

And in the small sample size of games Bird missed in 87 (8 games), McHale averaged 25.6 pp36 and 1.8 TOp36 on 65.6% TS. He actually increased his volume and efficiency, while he decreased his TOs in the games Bird missed. He faced an average 108.4 DRating (+0.1), so he wasn't beating up on poor defensive teams either, he was going up against league average defense.

Like I said, small sample size, but McHale's skill set in the post was so good that it's hard for me to imagine that he wouldn't still dominate as the number 1 offensive threat on a team. In fact, he was being argued to be a superior offensive player to Duncan in earlier threads. Duncan is a guy I comfortably take over Howard offensively, despite the difference in TS%...not only does Howard not have the TS% edge over McHale, he still has the volume and skillset disadvantage.

I see a pretty obvious difference in terms of offense, and it's not insignificant by any means, even after considering Howard as the number 1 option vs McHale as the number 2 option.

Howard's argument is defense, and he could very well compensate for McHale's offense on that side of the ball, but where's the evidence? And like I said, McHale was more versatile, capable of defending certain perimeter players, and he was a very good interior defender in his own right. In fact, he was probably the guy I'd point to as the anchor of the Celtics defense during their peak periods, when they won primarily because of defense (even though their offense was fantastic). Of course he had a lot of help, with Parish, Bird, and DJ, but McHale has a very nice track record in terms of team offenses and team defenses, and it's very easy to see how he contributed to those rankings. With Howard, like I pointed out, he's led 2 teams that were good offensively, and he wasn't even the offensive anchor on one of them. He's led very good defensive teams despite not playing with renowned defensive players, and although RAPM and on/off consistently paint him as an elite defensive player, he's also not ranked as historically elite like KG and Duncan...so how much better than McHale is he really?

I'm voting 87 McHale

My next up:

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

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

EDIT: Changed to 96 Penny

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.

If 87 or 88 McHale was this good, and we know that Bird was still in his peak, shouldn't the celtics have had more success? It's not like the rest of the supporting cast sucked. They should have been much more successful if we are saying that they had a top 10 peak guy still in his peak and a top 30 peak guy with another HOF at center.

Lightning25 wrote:Durant is the best scorer left of the bunch.

Not really. Gervin is clearly better IMO and King has a strong case (I'll still take KD over King I think).

He is the ultimate portable player and does not need to dominate the ball to disrupt the flow of the offense similar to Karl Malone and Reggie Miller.

And they both lose points for not bring able to lead an offense.At this point in his career I do not believe KD has the ability to lead a great offense (I mean right now Westbrook runs the offense more than him).

He can take over games in the clutch as he shown all of last season in the post-season and in the regular season. An example would be game 5 in the WCF vs. the Spurs where Kevin Durant dropped 16 straight points against the Spurs to take the lead in the series. Durant wasn't like Miller either like I've heard being talked about. Durant wasn't reliant on screens to score like Miller was. Durant creates off the dribble all the time whether it's in the 1st quarter or the last shot of the game. Durant just uses screens very well and takes advantage of it, similar to MJ/Bird.

Nearly everyone left can score well in the clutch. I also have to say that I have an issue with how you describe Reggie Miller. Those screens are way better than the iso (which is why he and Ray Allen were so clutch). Also KD off the dribble is a bad option mainly because he nearly led the league in ball handling turnovers. Super sloppy handles (couldn't even bring the ball up court at times in the finals).

He is a very good rebounder and averaged about 8 rpg last season and with a front-court of Nick Collison, Kendrick Perkins, Serge Ibaka, etc. one of the best defensive/rebounding front-courts in the league.

WHAT?!? What is your definition of "one of the best" because many teams and frontcourts rebounded better. Perk was never good on the boards, Collison is old and last year had his worst performance on the boards ever, and Serge is only average. Defensively either their frontcourt wasn't too great or the backcourt was terrible because they ranked 10th and had one of the worst defensive performances in Finals history (and were average overall in the PS). I'm not saying KD was bad though. He is a above average rebounder (but no great rebounder gets shut out on the boards as bad as he was in the Finals).

He has shown that he can be a good passer as well

Hell no. He's average at best. On the PNR he throws way too many jump passes (I've seen him jump just to pass at times), when the double comes he usually gets in back out in time but not fast enough for a shot to go up, and while he kept turnovers surprisingly low this last season on passes I don't believe he has really gotten better at it (I could be wrong though). For a guy with so many passing opportunities opened up because of his scoring you expect more.

He is also a very good defender due to his length. He contests shots very well and synergysports show that Durant is one of the best isolation/contesting defenders last season.

Completely agree. His man defense is the best I can expect from someone his size and build. He really worked hard to improve that (but his post defense is still lacking).

He is also a very good help defender with rotating, communicating, and also his length to disrupt the vision of the offensive player with the ball.

I disagree. His help defense is definetly below average. The way he played those shooters in the Finals was very terrible. Actually I'm pretty sure I've seen a whole YouTube video dedicated to his "defense" (if you can call it that) in the Finals.

I actually thought Durant defended Lebron the best in the 2012 finals, he just wasn't disciplined enough so he got into foul trouble and couldn't guard him full time but I thought of all the guys that defended Lebron between Thabo, Harden, and Durant, Durant was the best.

Thabo wasn't bad so IDK. That being said none of them were effective. Harden is one of the worst defensive players in the league, KD defended with his arms and wasn't moving his legs at all (leading to many fouls and a MWP tweet), and Thabo played great but was just too weak to guard Lebron off ball or near the rim.

Now factor in the intangibles such as his great leadership ability. He always works hard and everybody always talks about how hard he works whether it's in the off-season, in practice during the season, whatever. People always rave about Durant's amazing work-ethic and that's what you want in a leader. Durant never calls out his teammates either and he always sticks up for them. This means that this leader will have everybody else's back regardless of what happens and as a teammate you would like that from your leader because not all leaders are like that.

Completely agree here but Penny, Hill, etc. were great leaders and teammates too so it doesn't really give him a edge as much as it levels the playing field.

I'm actually feeling higher on KD now but he's still under Grant Hill IMO (and Grant is at 8/9 on my list of players right now). Past Dwight I'm not sure about the next few after that so he might be able to come up a bit. I don't see it happening though.






Also I'm a big confused on Penny vs McHale. Penny is easily the best offensive player left but McHale is easily the best offensive big and I believe he could've been a 26/11/2 62TS guy if on his own. On the other hand Penny could've been a 25/5/7 59-60TS guy easily too. Both just had to sacrifice their games for two top ten guys on this list.

colts18 wrote:If 87 or 88 McHale was this good, and we know that Bird was still in his peak, shouldn't the celtics have had more success? It's not like the rest of the supporting cast sucked. They should have been much more successful if we are saying that they had a top 10 peak guy still in his peak and a top 30 peak guy with another HOF at center.

In 87 they lost to a possible GOAT team in the 87 Lakers (led by #8 on this project) in the Finals (so they were pretty good) and in 88 they lost McHale to injury in the regular season and Bird was injured badly against Detroit (another amazing team that deserved to win the Finals and ended up winning in 89 and 90) in the PS.

KD had a solid year in 2012, but I still see him around Gervin's level. He's just too one-dimensional impact-wise. OKC went as Westbrook went last year.

96' Penny vs 09/11 Dwight is interesting. I still feel both were better than 03' Tmac.

C-izMe wrote:Not really. Gervin is clearly better IMO and King has a strong case (I'll still take KD over King I think).

No, Durant is the best scorer left. You can go ahead and prove how Gervin is the better scorer but I doubt you will be able to unless you want to make some agenda ridden post that completely dismisses everything Durant does like you usually do.

And they both lose points for not bring able to lead an offense.At this point in his career I do not believe KD has the ability to lead a great offense (I mean right now Westbrook runs the offense more than him).

I would suspect a PG runs an offense, the same way I would suspect a big man to anchor a defense in the paint.

Nearly everyone left can score well in the clutch. I also have to say that I have an issue with how you describe Reggie Miller. Those screens are way better than the iso (which is why he and Ray Allen were so clutch). Also KD off the dribble is a bad option mainly because he nearly led the league in ball handling turnovers. Super sloppy handles (couldn't even bring the ball up court at times in the finals).

I'm just saying Durant has serious versatility scoring. He can score off of screens like Miller but what separates himself from Miller is his ability to create off the dribble to score. It is why he is so clutch and was never stopped or even had his scoring contained all season.

WHAT?!? What is your definition of "one of the best" because many teams and frontcourts rebounded better.

Name them, because the Thunder were a top 5 rebounding team last season according to TRB%. 5th in particular with 51.4%

He is a above average rebounder (but no great rebounder gets shut out on the boards as bad as he was in the Finals).

He got shut down from rebounding in the Finals because he was guarding star players that took the majority of the shots and shooters like Chalmers, Miller, Lebron, and Wade. I'm not how you would suspect Durant getting rebounds at all guarding those guys.

Completely agree here but Penny, Hill, etc. were great leaders and teammates too so it doesn't really give him a edge as much as it levels the playing field.

Sure, Durant was still better than both of them though so I don't care, I was just adding more to his resume.

I'm actually feeling higher on KD now but he's still under Grant Hill IMO (and Grant is at 8/9 on my list of players right now). Past Dwight I'm not sure about the next few after that so he might be able to come up a bit. I don't see it happening though.

I'm sure you will never vote for Durant even if he goes all the way down to #50, but I'm sure others won't let him slide because they don't have an agenda against him.

Lightning25 wrote:No, Durant is the best scorer left. You can go ahead and prove how Gervin is the better scorer but I doubt you will be able to unless you want to make some agenda ridden post that completely dismisses everything Durant does like you usually do.

Gervin's career average pp36 is 26.9. KD averaged 26.2 last year. Gervin has more volume on a career average. His high is 32.6 (56TS) and his most efficent year is 25.2 (60.5TS). Saying he's worse than the arguable second best scorer ever isn't a slight on him. Go back to the 77-79 RPOY threads and read up on Gervin.

I would suspect a PG runs an offense, the same way I would suspect a big man to anchor a defense in the paint.

What players have been put in yet that couldn't either run an offense or anchor a defense?

I'm just saying Durant has serious versatility scoring. He can score off of screens like Miller but what separates himself from Miller is his ability to create off the dribble to score. It is why he is so clutch and was never stopped or even had his scoring contained all season.

Okay I get you.

top 5 rebounding

23rd in DRB% (72.1), 11th in ORB% (27.8).
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/OKC/2012.html

He got shut down from rebounding in the Finals because he was guarding star players that took the majority of the shots and shooters like Chalmers, Miller, Lebron, and Wade. I'm not how you would suspect Durant getting rebounds at all guarding those guys.

There were still many moments where he allowed inside position and literally let the ball get taken out of his hands. That's unacceptable.



And I'm going to ignore the last part because that's just immature. It's not like I'm not backing up my points. Personal attacks like that is why people drop out of projects.

The 86 and 87 Celtics WERE hugely successful, like GOAT-good. They won a title in 86, and lost to another GOAT-caliber team in 87.

Bringing up their 88 playoff success is unfair, because Bird was injured and it's not like they lost to a bad team...the 88 Pistons were stacked.

C-izMe wrote:And I'm going to ignore the last part because that's just immature. It's not like I'm not backing up my points. Personal attacks like that is why people drop out of projects.

It's also ironic coming from the guy who flat out admitted he was doing the same thing to T-Mac throughout the project.

Vote: '62 Elgin Baylor

I'm open to change my vote for other season (61 and 63) but personally, I think this one may be the best because of the incredibly sick season that he had overall.. you know like full filling his duties for the army, playing basketball without practice and still killing it on all stages..

Just amazing. However, people here have unfortunately created such a negative view as only a volume scorer (and ignoring his all-around brilliance) and I personally think unless some miracle happens, he won't get voted in the top 30 despite being easily up on pair with the likes of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson early on.