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Some stats

Elton Brand: 24.7/10/2.6 with 2.5 Blocks, 1.0 Steals, 2.2 Turnovers
Chris Webber: 27.1/11.1/4.2 with 1.7 Blocks, 1.3 Steals, 2.8 Turnovers

Elton Brand: 52.7 FG%, 58 TS%, .396 FTR
Chris Webber: 48.1 FG%, 51.6 TS%, .282 FTR

Post Season Elton Brand: 25.4/10.3/4.0 with 2.6 Blocks, .9 Steals, 2.4 Turnovers
Post Season Chris Webber: 23.3/11.5/3.1 with 1.0 Blocks, 1.1 Steals, 3.9 Turnovers

The Clippers took the 5.48 SRS Suns to 7 games, while the Kings got swept by the Lakers (to be fair, arguably the greatest postseason run of all time).

Discuss

Brand, for me.

It's interesting to me how much greater interest in both these guys, especially Brand, remains at this board than anywhere else (that I've noticed).

Better player in a Vacuum: Brand, no question

Better player for the Kings at the time: Tougher question, Brand has never shown a propensity for passing like Webber has done consistently (likely his only truly excellent trait), which was a big factor in making the Kings offense so dangerous.

Greater player? Webber, easily.

Greater season? Dicier. That was Brand's one brush with greatness season, his only All League season, and the only season he was more than just a 20-10 borderline All-Star guy. It's become kind of an unhealthy fascination around here given its outlier status (mostly he just took more shots, the rest of the numbers were right on average for him).

Winsome Gerbil wrote:Greater player? Webber, easily.

Greater season? Dicier. That was Brand's one brush with greatness season, his only All League season, and the only season he was more than just a 20-10 borderline All-Star guy. It's become kind of an unhealthy fascination around here given its outlier status (mostly he just took more shots, the rest of the numbers were right on average for him).

Well we're talking about 2006 Elton Brand only, not about his entire career. So I don't care if it's an outlier year, that's the year we're discussing.

About the taking more shots... it's really not about that. A 6.4 gap in ts% is a very big one. Scoring wise it's Brand, and by a clear margin.

2006 Brand is right up there with 2003 T-Mac as one of those obvious outlier years that tends to get pretty overrated. It's funny though, because Brand's 2002 season isn't that much lesser than 2006 (nearly identical efficiency, VORP, BPM, and WS/48) unless you put that much stock into the 20+ PPG achievement. But with the 2001 playoffs being by far the worst of Webber's prime playoff years, this is pretty obviously Brand, and I think that '01-02 Webber would have been the better year to pick.

Ron Swanson wrote:2006 Brand is right up there with 2003 T-Mac as one of those obvious outlier years that tends to get pretty overrated. It's funny though, because Brand's 2002 season isn't that much lesser than 2006 (nearly identical efficiency, VORP, BPM, and WS/48) unless you put that much stock into the 20+ PPG achievement. But with the 2001 playoffs being by far the worst of Webber's prime playoff years, this is pretty obviously Brand, and I think that '01-02 Webber would have been the better year to pick.

Like most "outlier" seasons, but unlike 2003 T-Mac, Brand's 2006 campaign wasn't an outlier. He just was playing with slightly better talent than normal. Brand wasn't anything special as a floor raiser. That was a big problem with the teams he joined. The post-MJ bulls and 00s Clippers were shipwrecks that Brand wasn't capable of lifting.

Anyway on topic I consider Brand marginally better than Webber and will go with him.

Brand for me, comfortably. Far more efficient scorer, and I value that more than C-Webb's playmaking from a bigman. Man, 51.6% TS for an offense-first bigman is terrible, even by 2001 standards.

Brand compares favorably based on most metrics in the regular season, and owns C-Webb in the playoffs. Playoff gap is seriously shocking, regardless if it's compared to the competition they faced or not, the gap is so large that it's not even a debate, at all.

I think Webber is overrated offensively and underrated defensively (especially 2004 season makes me think so, if you notice how the Kings improved offensively without C-Webb, but declined defensively by a massive margin), but I would say Brand was also better on D.

sp6r=underrated wrote:Like most "outlier" seasons, but unlike 2003 T-Mac, Brand's 2006 campaign wasn't an outlier. He just was playing with slightly better talent than normal. Brand wasn't anything special as a floor raiser. That was a big problem with the teams he joined. The post-MJ bulls and 00s Clippers were shipwrecks that Brand wasn't capable of lifting.

Brand has some pretty good years in RAPM in addition to his stellar box-score stats, so certainly I think that it was his supporting casts that should be blamed. Even KG in his prime in 2006 and 2007 had two seasons when his Wolves were in the lottery, with low 30s wins (32-50 and 33-49), but there's no doubt that Garnett had a major impact even in those years (numbers back it up, and anybody who watched those Wolves definitely noticed how much worse they were without him, whether he was sitting on the bench or not playing at all, as he missed 6 games both years). That seems to be the case with Brand, too (obviously to a lesser extent, as Brand wasn't as good as Garnett, with the exception of '06).

I would take Brand just slighty better acorss the board.

That is the way this board goes, but man. You kids must be young. Brand was not really in that league. Just a hard working plugger. The Mike Conley of PFs during his day. Maybe a little better. But not one of the special ones. You would think reading this board he was an 8x All Star with half a dozen All-NBA seasons.

It would be a bit like comparing Zach Randolph and Blake Griffin. Just two different levels of animal, even in Zach's outlier year.

P.S. BTW, whether intentionally or not, people conveniently ignore that Elton's 12 playoff games in 2006 were against the Denver Nuggets and the Phoenix Suns. While he played 43 min a night. He was having a big year, so there's no reason to really doubt the numbers, but consider this look through the minutes and pace at per100 stats.

Brand per100 2006 reg season: 33.0pts 13.3reb 3.5ast 1.4stl 3.4blk 2.9TO
Brand per100 2006 playoffs: 30.4pts 12.3reb 4.8ast 1.1stl 3.1blk 2.9TO

That's still better than Webber's struggle, but ignoring that the big raw playoff numbers came against the league's two preeminent at the time smallball running teams is silly.