1st ballot: Bill Walton '77Majority of my evaluation of him can be seen in post #4 of the #11 thread. My eye-test and scrutiny of various aspects of his play put him as basically a wash with Robinson while on the court. The biggest dividing line between him and Robinson is durability and minutes. And his impact on this team cannot be denied, and as per my evaluation on the aforementioned post.
He's a player who can provide very good moderate volume scoring (unsure if he'd be able to handle massive volume too well, though), who had good (but not great) back-to-the-basket game, good (but not great) range, good to excellent finisher, fair to decent FT-shooter for a big man. He combined this with elite-level passing/playmaking for a big-man (in the convo for GOAT in this regard). I'd also have to put him in the pantheon alongside Wes Unseld for the non-boxscore skill of screen-setting; and as far as technique and timing, I don't think anyone ran the pnr better than Walton. No big ever ran the two-man game better either.
He's an elite-level rebounder, and defensively has to be among the top 8-10 bigs of all-time AT LEAST (arguably top 5). Watching video of '77 Walton......he's all over the place defensively: he pops out on penetrators, cutting them off before they can get to the rim; he was blocking around 4 shots/100 possessions and changing God knows how many others, while simultaneously maintaining a hyper-elite DREB rate; he's talking/pointing/communicating; he's got those long arms out horizontal when in the paint off ball (taking up as much horizontal space as possible).....just so fundamentally sound in these ways. And he was an elite low-post defender, too.
Consummate teammate, as well.
Minutes/durability concerns sustained, he just feels like the biggest impact two-way player left on the table to me.
2nd ballot: Oscar Robertson '64After much deliberation, I'd moved Oscar ahead of Erving. Kinda occurred to me when I was replying to drza on a quick&dirty comp of Oscar and Erving to Robinson. I questioned the parity of the offense of either Oscar or Erving to the defense of Robinson. At that time I realized I considered Oscar's offense probably is at the same level.......but couldn't say the same thing for Dr. J. I have two separate formulas for quantifying peaks, and both rate '64 Oscar at least marginally ahead of '76 Erving, fwiw. And I don't consider the '64 NBA appreciably weaker as an era than the late ABA either. So I'd made the change, and I'm sticking with it.
Anyway, Oscar's an interesting one. I've watched fair bit of game tape of him, and I've never been really blown away by any single plays; he never amazes in the same way that some other greats can do. Yet you get to the end of the game and he's got like 29/9/11 or some such.
Big big body for a PG (he'd be strong even for a modern SG), could just back guys down to where he wanted to be. Then had that short-mid range turnaround (odd one-hander form) that was so effective (could turn over either shoulder, too); and he turned his shoulders so late that it was really hard for defenders to swipe at. And the slow-mo highlight reels don't do justice to how quick the release often was. I wish we had the shooting data to say exactly, but Oscar must have been lights out in that 10-17 ft range. Good athlete, very very fine FT-shooter. All in all, he scored an awful lot of points at MUCH higher efficiency than the vast majority of his peers.
I don't consider him in the class of Magic, Nash, Paul, or Kidd (or Bird or Lebron) as a passer/playmaker, but obv he was quite adept. Kareem has little but praise for his passing. Again, nothing too flashy, but some precision entry passes and hitting cutters; good at putting it someplace easy for teammate to catch and finish smoothly.
Led I think 4 or 5 consecutive #1 offenses (admittedly none of them were on an all-time level, but still..).
Rebounding.....well pace (and minutes) inflate his prowess as a rebounding guard to near-legendary proportions. I do NOT consider him the best rebounding PG of all-time; but I do consider him 3rd-best (behind Magic and Kidd), which is still awfully good.
Defensively.....I always thought he looked decent (again, not jumping off the screen at me; but solid). I've read a few peer reviews praising his defense as a seriously under-appreciated aspect of his game. So it's perhaps even a pinch better than I've given him credit for.
3rd ballot: Kevin Durant '14OK, I've gone ahead and made the switch. I'm less and less certain of Erving the more I think on it.
I freely acknowledge the Durant is a completely average defender overall. But again: very good to elite as both a rebounder and playmaker for a SF. And then GOAT-level pure scorer: 41.8 pts/100 possessions @ 63.5% TS
. fwiw, I'd also constructed formula founded on Moonbeam's Score+ rating (I called mine "Modified Score+").......'14 Durant is the 2nd-highest MS+ rating on record (just barely behind '88 Barkley, and just barely ahead of '83 Dantley).
He couldn't quite maintain that in the playoffs, but still......35.9 pts/100 poss @ 57.0% TS while playing 42.9 mpg; that's still very elite level scoring. And bear in mind the defense he was facing while he did that:
1st round: -2.1 rDRTG (ranked 7th of 30; being guarded primarily by Tony Allen)
2nd round: -1.9 rDRTG (9th of 30)
3rd round: -4.3 rDRTG (3rd of 30; being guarded by Kawhi Leonard)
How does the playoff scoring look now?