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1) Michael Jordan 1990-91
2) Lebron James 2012-13
3) Wilt Chamberlain 1966-67
4) Shaquille O'neal 1999-20

As expected, it was an easy win for peak shaq, who had a big chance of getting in as #2 or #3. Now it should be between 03 duncan, kaj and bill russell, with duncan being favoured by the fact that what season is his best is pretty much a consensus, then I'm guessing it should be more open with guys like bird, magic, olajuwon and some others.

Time limit to get your vote in: 60 hours.

The rules

Reasoning/statistical support is required for votes to be counted. A simple list of names will not be counted.
Window time for votings: 48 hours/thread.

THE VOTING SYSTEM:

Everyone gives their 1st-ballot choice, 2nd-ballot choice, and 3rd-ballot choice. I'll award 4,5 pts for a 1st ballot, 3 for a 2nd ballot, and 2 for a 3rd. Highest point-total wins the spot (24-hour run-off will then only be done in the unlikely event of a tie).

Players don't get credit for all the votes they receive in a round, we just count the votes (and the points) for the designated year. At the end of the 48 hours (not sure about that) the season that has most points wins. Other voted seasons of the winning player will get a mention.

So, you can use your 3 choices to vote for more than 1 season of the same player (if you think that the best 3 seasons among the players left belong all to the same player, nothing is stopping you from using all you 3 choices on that player), but you can't continue voting for other seasons of that player once he wins and gets his spot. The final list will be 1 season per player, with a mention of the other seasons of the winning player who received votes.

Thank you for your partecipation!

Maybe too late, but my picks are:

1. 1977 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

2. 1974 Kareem Abdul Jabbar

3. 2003 Tim Duncan

Why Kareem over Duncan? Because his offensive gap is even higher than in Shaq's case and his defensive gap is smaller. It's all fluid but I feel comfortable with it.

I really think this is the time for Kareem. He should be in top 5 in my opinion. Because of his longevity and older era some people forget how amazing he was at his best.

My next votes will be for Hakeem and Russell.

70sFan wrote:Maybe too late, but my picks are:

1. 1977 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

2. 1974 Kareem Abdul Jabbar

3. 2003 Tim Duncan

Why Kareem over Duncan? Because his offensive gap is even higher than in Shaq's case and his defensive gap is smaller. It's all fluid but I feel comfortable with it.

I really think this is the time for Kareem. He should be in top 5 in my opinion. Because of his longevity and older era some people forget how amazing he was at his best.

My next votes will be for Hakeem and Russell.

How is it too late 10 minutes after I opened the thread? Only joking, I know you copy and pasted it from the #4 thread

I see a cluster of five very deserving candidates right now: Kareem, Duncan, Garnett, Hakeem and Russell (and Shaq and Wilt but those are gone now).

1. 2003 Tim Duncan
About as good as the #2 here (having less "small things" on O, but also more proven and resilient scoring). Good defensive cast, but the ability to crack a #7 offense nearly out of thin air (lacking on offense) is ultra rare for a player as good on defense as Duncan was. As we all know, he exploded on the post-season, confirming the scoring advantage and leading him past...

2. 2004 Kevin Garnett
Heeeere we go again. With a worse cast than his competition (we've already discussed this ad nauseam, feel free to disagree), led the 2nd best team by SRS and only fell (in a close series) on the WCF when his AS-level #2 got injured. That 24.9 (+3 rTS%) / 14.3 / 5.1 / 1.5 / 2.3 statline per 75 is absurd, and you've got to note that it is the best year, period, by Engelmann's PI RAPM dataset, peaking at +10 (about 1 point better than 03 Duncan, 1.5 points better than 00 Shaq, around 1 point better than multiple LeBron years).

3. 1977 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
More knowledgable posters than me think this is his best year, and I'm not a big KAJ watcher so I'm gonna trust them on this. He went nuclear on those Warriors and Blazers but ultimately his team wasn't enough to get past the eventual champions. Some would think Kareem's (relative) shortcomings on creation meant his overmatched guards couldn't manage the creation load BUT 1) it would be kinda like shifting the blame of that loss to him, which is absurd 2) you could make a similar case to KG in regards to high-profile scoring (> 27 ppg kind of scoring) — both being unfair. I would only consider that creation shortcoming as a kind of tie-breaker between elite tier peaks, such as here. Contrarily to Duncan, his (in this case easily) stronger scoring is now countered with stronger defense, plus the other little advantages.

Not other KAJ years because: haven't seen that much year-specific film of him (pending since 2016).
Not Hakeem because: don't think he meshed hsi peak O and D together.
Not Russell because: not adjusting that much for era, although he has a clear #1 case if you go by pure era impact

Not 100% on my vote yet but currently I'm leaning (and I'm listing a lot more than 3 seasons because these are all extremely close):

1. Duncan 03
2. Hakeem 94
3. Kareem 77
4. Duncan 02
5/6. Dr. J 76/Kareem 76 (I feel like I can easily put Kareem's year at #1 and I'm only not rating it higher because they missed the postseason)
7. Magic 87
8. Russell 62
8. Kareem 74
9. Hakeem 93
10. Magic 86
11. Kareem 72
12. Oscar 63

My current next up order but there's a lot of space for movement depending on the arguments I see. There's probably a gap between 76 Dr. J and Kareem and Magic but it's slight enough that I can hear an argument to place Magic up with them even if currently I don't think I can put him on that level.

I'll probably make posts for each of these players (I'll pick one season for Hakeem and Duncan because they were the same players both years and I'll compare and contrast 72 Kareem with 77 Kareem) and their case when I have time but I'll start at the top and work my way down asking some clarifying questions I think will help me out with this order because man it's tough.

I'll also make a post (or possibly include it in my Duncan post since its first) on why I excluded certain players here (mainly KG and Bird since they're the ones people might be thrown off by).

Even though I'm no fan of per 75/100 numbers (because they're linear adjustments and basketball is not a linear game), I was curious to see Duncan's per 100 numbers after the 1st round in 2003 playoffs and here are the results, 18 games;
2nd r against the Lakers; 36.9 pts / 15.9 reb / 6.4 ast / 1.7 blk / 0.5 stl
WCF against the Mavs; 33.7 pts / 20.3 reb / 7.1 ast / 3.7 blk / 1.0 stl
NBA F against the Nets; 30.0 pts / 21.1 reb / 6.4 ast / 6.6 blk / 1.2 stl
Overall; 33.5 pts / 19.1 reb / 6.6 ast / 4.0 blk / 0.9 stl

In his best stretch, from game 4 of the Lakers series to game 1 of the Nets series, 10 games;
37.2 pts / 19.6 reb / 6.8 ast / 3.4 blk / 1.1 stl

1. 1986 Bird

Spectacular season, I think he falls short of the top 4 by a tiny bit mainly because of his defense being only really good instead of great. But I'd consider Bird to have a top 4 offensive peak along with LeBron, Magic and Jordan.

His numbers were spectacular, 26/10/7 on 50/42/90 in the RS, playing on a pretty loaded team. Getting 10 rpg as an SF, playing alongside McHale and Parish, is incredibly impressive. After LeBron he's probably the best passer/playmaker as a non PG ever. Very useful help defender, watch game 6 of the Finals and see how much he affected Hakeem.



It definitely still comes down to his offense though, and just how key he was to that Celtics team which might still be the best team ever (I have a hard time seeing Durant and Draymond from '17 guarding McHale and Parish down low). So the first 28 games of the season (Christmas), the Celtics were 21-7. Good but hardly GOAT caliber. Bird had been nursing back issues and averaged only 23.8/9.4/6.1 on 52.5% TS.

He got rolling after that, and led them to a 43-6 record in the next 49 games, averaging 27.6/10.2/7.2 on 61% TS. 43-6!! The team cooled down towards the end, this could've EASILY been a 70 win team, and it all revolved around Bird. McHale got injured on Jan 22nd, and basically sat until Feb 26th. In that span Bird picked up the rebounding slack, taking his averages to 26.8/12.6/7.1 and during a time the team could've faltered led them to key double digit wins over other contenders, the Lakers (twice) and the Bucks, in a 14-3 stretch.

Can't say enough about this guy and this season honestly. One of my favorites, absolutely deserves top 5.

2. 1987 Larry Bird

Was having a huge Hakeem/Duncan debate in my head (always sided with 'Keem but E-Balla's posts have made me consider Duncan more) but then I realized I could just go here.

Almost the same player more or less, just slightly worse defensively IMO (the eye test doesn't show me that harassing quality he had from the previous year) and his 3 didn't fall as well in the Playoffs. That's it. Otherwise he's still GOAT caliber. Had possibly the best 3 game stretch against an elite defense until 2016 Finals LeBron in the last 3 games of the Detroit series. 36/10/7 on 66% TS

Get the Legend in the top 5 folks.

3. 2003 Tim Duncan

E-Balla's posts convinced me to have him over Hakeem. I think while Hakeem was a better post-up scorer, Duncan was just a better offensive player in general. He operated within the flow of an offense better and was definitely a better passer. Hakeem was probably a better defender but given Duncan was averaging five and a half blocks per game for the Finals I don't think the gap was that big in these particular years... Also think Duncan's teammates were worse than what Hakeem was working with during his peak.

Russell 62
Russell 65
Russell 64

The most dominant player of all time, the defensive ratings his Celtics put up are consistently among the best all time whether the personnel around him were bad defenders or good. The only conclusion is that the greatest dynasty of all time was all due to Russell. If it's about putting up stats or winning individual matchups, I can see having Russell outside the top 5. If peak performance is about contribution to your team's winning, especially winning a title, I think he's already fallen too far.

Gotta make this brief since I'm traveling for work.

1. Kareem '71 - anchored a +11.9 SRS squad to a title (yes, aware there was talent dilution), was dominant in the playoffs against Thurmond, Wilt & Unseld.

2. Kareem '77 - counter to the W/L Record & the sweep arguments that might be coming:

W/L record - the following year, in a weaker year, the Lakers would play at a 49 win pace when Jabbar played vs. a 32 W pace when he was injured; two years prior in Milwaukee, the Bucks would play at a 44 win pace with vs. a 14 W pace when he was injured. His impact goes beyond the box score based on the two times when he was hurt (and didn't have his strongest years).

The Sweep - Jabbar put up 30/16/4/4/66% TS against the 2nd best player in the league & someone who's own season will likely land in the top 25 of this project.

3. Olajuwon, Bird, Magic & Duncan are all excellent candidates for this slot; I'm not going to beat anyone up if they go in a different direction than me.

For now I'll go '94 Olajuwon - my GOAT #5. Even though the '93 season is better metrics wise, I'll go with the '94 season because of what he achieved in the playoffs & the fact that he led an underwhelming cast to the title, overcoming significant hurdles to do so. I think his defensive impact is the best on the board (outside of Russell), and his offensive finish in the Finals against one of the GOAT Defenses solidifies it for me.

Kareem ‘71- A perfect regular season. Dropped off a bit in the post season season but that’s expected considering the competition he faced.

Duncan ‘03 - Led a subpar cast to an amazing regular season and playoff run. Knocked off the 3peating champs. I am very high on this season.

Bill Russell ‘65 - I honestly have no clue what season to pick for Russell. He was consistently dominant from the moment he stepped on the court until the moment he retired. Went with 65 because they dominated Wilt’s Sixers and West’s Lakers in the playoffs.

Ok so parsing through I'll flat out say here I took away credit for people for some dumb stuff. Easy example is I put Duncan in 02 a half step back just because I think he did better against LA in 03 relative to the strength of the Lakers. That's really the only reason I had, when we're talking players this great small nitpicks encompass the gap.

Either way Duncan in 03 ended up #1 on my preliminary list. I don't think anyone else in league history has a carry job as impressive as this. Looking at the roster we have:

Duncan
2nd best player is most likely Bruce Bowen who was a positive player overall but not much.
3rd best was probably rookie Emmanuel Ginobili who averaged 9/4/3 in the playoffs and less than that in the regular season.
4th best was probably DRob who was great but hit his old age after getting hurt in Feb and averaged about 6/6 in both the 2nd half of the season and the playoffs prior to the Finals while basically filling in as a warm body for 6 fouls against the Lakers in the most important series.
Stephen Jackson is probably the only other player on the team that wasn't a net negative and that's still iffy.

They had no business winning a ring. They had 60% of the cap tied up in Danny Ferry (played 101 minutes in the playoffs), Steve Smith (played 66 minutes in the playoffs), and old man DRob. It's insane to think a team like that beat not only the defending champions with Shaq and Kobe but more impressively beat the deep ass 03 Mavericks squad. I know Dirk got hurt but I posted the numbers in a previous thread of how Duncan performed when Dirk was playing, I don't think they'd win if Dirk stayed healthy and they were already down 2-1 to San Antonio when he went down. Either way Duncan elevated that supporting cast to a win against:

Dirk, Nash, Finley, "bum ass" Raef LaFrentz, NVE, and Shawn Bradley. You can easily make an argument that after Duncan Dallas had the 6 best players in the series depending on how you felt about Bowen's defense in a series where Finley averaged 23/6/3 on 65 TS% and D.Rob's hard decline at the tail end of the season. San Antonio still won.

Hakeem in 94 is usually the other year mentioned with Duncan in 03 but I feel a lot of the credit given to the 94 postseason run is really credit being given to the 95 postseason run (which is Hakeem's best IMO). Outside of the Finals the competition just wasn't as good as Duncan's IMO. Utah was a team that annually had bad postseasons thanks to Karl Malone's predictable drop off, Portland had a disgruntled star that asked out and the rest of their squad wasn't really great, and his defense against Phoenix shouldn't be ignored but their defense was garbage and Hakeem had an easy job scoring in that series. I feel like it's hard to separate 94 from 95 mentally but once I do that I realize that while I think Hakeem WOULD perform great against better competition like the Knicks, he didn't. Beat who was in front of him and dominated, but his competition wasn't better than Duncan's so I can't take him over Duncan.

Now with all that said we get into Kareem in 77 who is 3rd on my preliminary list. This is a season that statistically stands only with LeBron in 09 in terms of how eye poppingly unbelievable the numbers are. 26/13/4 with slightly over a steal and 3 blocks a game on 61 TS% seems amazing, but not THAT amazing, until you add in a few key factors:

Turnovers weren't tracked yet which screwed over players at the top. In 78 his numbers across the board (like all of them) were down outside of his steals, yet his PER was a 29.2 because the inclusion of TOVs made it more accurate. I think if there were TOV numbers in 77 Kareem would've easily cleared a 30 PER. Another way to show this dominance is to look at his lead compared to others. 2nd place in PER had a 23. 2nd place in WS had over 5 less than Kareem.

He was 2nd in scoring, lead the league in rebounds, lead the league in blocks, was 1st in FG%, 2nd in TS% (unfortunately the most efficient PG in league history was just starting to blossom in Portland), all while being 9th in minutes, and if you extrapolate his scoring to 2019 numbers (using rTS%) he had the equivalent to a 66 TS%. 20 TSA per 75 on +10 rTS% is Curry type scoring production.

Then in the playoffs he was outed in the WCF but faced a GOAT tier team (at least when healthy) in the 77 Blazers that featured a player that would've been picked already if it wasn't for injuries, Bill Walton. I'm not holding that against him at all given how he played.

Against Golden State they won in 7 with Kareem averaging 37/19/4 with 3.6 bpg on 64 TS% (the Warriors allowed opponents to have a 51 TS% in the regular season). In the last 4 games of the series Cap averaged 41/21 on 66 TS%. He carried that rare form into the 77 series against Portland and averaged 30/16/4 on 66 TS% against peak Bill Walton. They got swept but make no mistake Kareem was dominant.

So why is a year this dominant so low? Well his team (as bad as they were outside of him) wasn't that great. Way better than they had any business being but not nearly as good as the Spurs and Rockets which leaves me with the thought it's not as impressive. Like sure Kareem carried a team to being a +2-3 team but Duncan carried a team to being a +6ish team. I just think it pales in comparison. I also think I might be shaded in picking 77 over his other seasons because most of his game's I've watched the full games of are from the late 70s.

I'll get to Duncan in 02 and why it's over 76 Kareem and Erving next time I get a chance to post.

E-Balla wrote:Ok so parsing through I'll flat out say here I took away credit for people for some dumb stuff. Easy example is I put Duncan in 02 a half step back just because I think he did better against LA in 03 relative to the strength of the Lakers. That's really the only reason I had, when we're talking players this great small nitpicks encompass the gap.

Either way Duncan in 03 ended up #1 on my preliminary list. I don't think anyone else in league history has a carry job as impressive as this. Looking at the roster we have:

Duncan
2nd best player is most likely Bruce Bowen who was a positive player overall but not much.
3rd best was probably rookie Emmanuel Ginobili who averaged 9/4/3 in the playoffs and less than that in the regular season.
4th best was probably DRob who was great but hit his old age after getting hurt in Feb and averaged about 6/6 in both the 2nd half of the season and the playoffs prior to the Finals while basically filling in as a warm body for 6 fouls against the Lakers in the most important series.
Stephen Jackson is probably the only other player on the team that wasn't a net negative and that's still iffy.

They had no business winning a ring. They had 60% of the cap tied up in Danny Ferry (played 101 minutes in the playoffs), Steve Smith (played 66 minutes in the playoffs), and old man DRob. It's insane to think a team like that beat not only the defending champions with Shaq and Kobe but more impressively beat the deep ass 03 Mavericks squad. I know Dirk got hurt but I posted the numbers in a previous thread of how Duncan performed when Dirk was playing, I don't think they'd win if Dirk stayed healthy and they were already down 2-1 to San Antonio when he went down. Either way Duncan elevated that supporting cast to a win against:

Dirk, Nash, Finley, "bum ass" Raef LaFrentz, NVE, and Shawn Bradley. You can easily make an argument that after Duncan Dallas had the 6 best players in the series depending on how you felt about Bowen's defense in a series where Finley averaged 23/6/3 on 65 TS% and D.Rob's hard decline at the tail end of the season. San Antonio still won.

Hakeem in 94 is usually the other year mentioned with Duncan in 03 but I feel a lot of the credit given to the 94 postseason run is really credit being given to the 95 postseason run (which is Hakeem's best IMO). Outside of the Finals the competition just wasn't as good as Duncan's IMO. Utah was a team that annually had bad postseasons thanks to Karl Malone's predictable drop off, Portland had a disgruntled star that asked out and the rest of their squad wasn't really great, and his defense against Phoenix shouldn't be ignored but their defense was garbage and Hakeem had an easy job scoring in that series. I feel like it's hard to separate 94 from 95 mentally but once I do that I realize that while I think Hakeem WOULD perform great against better competition like the Knicks, he didn't. Beat who was in front of him and dominated, but his competition wasn't better than Duncan's so I can't take him over Duncan.

Now with all that said we get into Kareem in 77 who is 3rd on my preliminary list. This is a season that statistically stands only with LeBron in 09 in terms of how eye poppingly unbelievable the numbers are. 26/13/4 with slightly over a steal and 3 blocks a game on 61 TS% seems amazing, but not THAT amazing, until you add in a few key factors:

Turnovers weren't tracked yet which screwed over players at the top. In 78 his numbers across the board (like all of them) were down outside of his steals, yet his PER was a 29.2 because the inclusion of TOVs made it more accurate. I think if there were TOV numbers in 77 Kareem would've easily cleared a 30 PER. Another way to show this dominance is to look at his lead compared to others. 2nd place in PER had a 23. 2nd place in WS had over 5 less than Kareem.

He was 2nd in scoring, lead the league in rebounds, lead the league in blocks, was 1st in FG%, 2nd in TS% (unfortunately the most efficient PG in league history was just starting to blossom in Portland), all while being 9th in minutes, and if you extrapolate his scoring to 2019 numbers (using rTS%) he had the equivalent to a 66 TS%. 20 TSA per 75 on +10 rTS% is Curry type scoring production.

Then in the playoffs he was outed in the WCF but faced a GOAT tier team (at least when healthy) in the 77 Blazers that featured a player that would've been picked already if it wasn't for injuries, Bill Walton. I'm not holding that against him at all given how he played.

Against Golden State they won in 7 with Kareem averaging 37/19/4 with 3.6 bpg on 64 TS% (the Warriors allowed opponents to have a 51 TS% in the regular season). In the last 4 games of the series Cap averaged 41/21 on 66 TS%. He carried that rare form into the 77 series against Portland and averaged 30/16/4 on 66 TS% against peak Bill Walton. They got swept but make no mistake Kareem was dominant.

So why is a year this dominant so low? Well his team (as bad as they were outside of him) wasn't that great. Way better than they had any business being but not nearly as good as the Spurs and Rockets which leaves me with the thought it's not as impressive. Like sure Kareem carried a team to being a +2-3 team but Duncan carried a team to being a +6ish team. I just think it pales in comparison. I also think I might be shaded in picking 77 over his other seasons because most of his game's I've watched the full games of are from the late 70s.

I'll get to Duncan in 02 and why it's over 76 Kareem and Erving next time I get a chance to post.

Really good post, I have to say one thing though - 2003 Spurs team was nothing spectacular as far as supporting cast goes, but it was still clearly better than 1977 Lakers. It's tough to imagine any player doing better than Kareem when you watch Lakers playoffs games, especially against Blazers. Jabbar dominated Walton and Portland help defense without any help and even Duncan wouldn't carry that so well.

70sFan wrote:

E-Balla wrote:Ok so parsing through I'll flat out say here I took away credit for people for some dumb stuff. Easy example is I put Duncan in 02 a half step back just because I think he did better against LA in 03 relative to the strength of the Lakers. That's really the only reason I had, when we're talking players this great small nitpicks encompass the gap.

Either way Duncan in 03 ended up #1 on my preliminary list. I don't think anyone else in league history has a carry job as impressive as this. Looking at the roster we have:

Duncan
2nd best player is most likely Bruce Bowen who was a positive player overall but not much.
3rd best was probably rookie Emmanuel Ginobili who averaged 9/4/3 in the playoffs and less than that in the regular season.
4th best was probably DRob who was great but hit his old age after getting hurt in Feb and averaged about 6/6 in both the 2nd half of the season and the playoffs prior to the Finals while basically filling in as a warm body for 6 fouls against the Lakers in the most important series.
Stephen Jackson is probably the only other player on the team that wasn't a net negative and that's still iffy.

They had no business winning a ring. They had 60% of the cap tied up in Danny Ferry (played 101 minutes in the playoffs), Steve Smith (played 66 minutes in the playoffs), and old man DRob. It's insane to think a team like that beat not only the defending champions with Shaq and Kobe but more impressively beat the deep ass 03 Mavericks squad. I know Dirk got hurt but I posted the numbers in a previous thread of how Duncan performed when Dirk was playing, I don't think they'd win if Dirk stayed healthy and they were already down 2-1 to San Antonio when he went down. Either way Duncan elevated that supporting cast to a win against:

Dirk, Nash, Finley, "bum ass" Raef LaFrentz, NVE, and Shawn Bradley. You can easily make an argument that after Duncan Dallas had the 6 best players in the series depending on how you felt about Bowen's defense in a series where Finley averaged 23/6/3 on 65 TS% and D.Rob's hard decline at the tail end of the season. San Antonio still won.

Hakeem in 94 is usually the other year mentioned with Duncan in 03 but I feel a lot of the credit given to the 94 postseason run is really credit being given to the 95 postseason run (which is Hakeem's best IMO). Outside of the Finals the competition just wasn't as good as Duncan's IMO. Utah was a team that annually had bad postseasons thanks to Karl Malone's predictable drop off, Portland had a disgruntled star that asked out and the rest of their squad wasn't really great, and his defense against Phoenix shouldn't be ignored but their defense was garbage and Hakeem had an easy job scoring in that series. I feel like it's hard to separate 94 from 95 mentally but once I do that I realize that while I think Hakeem WOULD perform great against better competition like the Knicks, he didn't. Beat who was in front of him and dominated, but his competition wasn't better than Duncan's so I can't take him over Duncan.

Now with all that said we get into Kareem in 77 who is 3rd on my preliminary list. This is a season that statistically stands only with LeBron in 09 in terms of how eye poppingly unbelievable the numbers are. 26/13/4 with slightly over a steal and 3 blocks a game on 61 TS% seems amazing, but not THAT amazing, until you add in a few key factors:

Turnovers weren't tracked yet which screwed over players at the top. In 78 his numbers across the board (like all of them) were down outside of his steals, yet his PER was a 29.2 because the inclusion of TOVs made it more accurate. I think if there were TOV numbers in 77 Kareem would've easily cleared a 30 PER. Another way to show this dominance is to look at his lead compared to others. 2nd place in PER had a 23. 2nd place in WS had over 5 less than Kareem.

He was 2nd in scoring, lead the league in rebounds, lead the league in blocks, was 1st in FG%, 2nd in TS% (unfortunately the most efficient PG in league history was just starting to blossom in Portland), all while being 9th in minutes, and if you extrapolate his scoring to 2019 numbers (using rTS%) he had the equivalent to a 66 TS%. 20 TSA per 75 on +10 rTS% is Curry type scoring production.

Then in the playoffs he was outed in the WCF but faced a GOAT tier team (at least when healthy) in the 77 Blazers that featured a player that would've been picked already if it wasn't for injuries, Bill Walton. I'm not holding that against him at all given how he played.

Against Golden State they won in 7 with Kareem averaging 37/19/4 with 3.6 bpg on 64 TS% (the Warriors allowed opponents to have a 51 TS% in the regular season). In the last 4 games of the series Cap averaged 41/21 on 66 TS%. He carried that rare form into the 77 series against Portland and averaged 30/16/4 on 66 TS% against peak Bill Walton. They got swept but make no mistake Kareem was dominant.

So why is a year this dominant so low? Well his team (as bad as they were outside of him) wasn't that great. Way better than they had any business being but not nearly as good as the Spurs and Rockets which leaves me with the thought it's not as impressive. Like sure Kareem carried a team to being a +2-3 team but Duncan carried a team to being a +6ish team. I just think it pales in comparison. I also think I might be shaded in picking 77 over his other seasons because most of his game's I've watched the full games of are from the late 70s.

I'll get to Duncan in 02 and why it's over 76 Kareem and Erving next time I get a chance to post.

Really good post, I have to say one thing though - 2003 Spurs team was nothing spectacular as far as supporting cast goes, but it was still clearly better than 1977 Lakers. It's tough to imagine any player doing better than Kareem when you watch Lakers playoffs games, especially against Blazers. Jabbar dominated Walton and Portland help defense without any help and even Duncan wouldn't carry that so well.

The Lakers were definitely less talented. Like considerably less. For all the crap San Antonio gets at least they weren't a bunch of terrible defenders too. Still it's less impressive to carry a team to +2 level than to carry a team to +6 level.

I intend to make some arguments for Russell and to a lesser extent Bird and Duncan who I have coming in after him, but in case I don't get time today, here are my votes.

First Vote: William Felton Russell in the year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Five.

Second Vote: Larry Joe Bird peaking during the sixth year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, 1986.

Third Vote: Timmy Teddy Duncan Fundamentally Fantastic in '03

1. 2003 Tim Duncan
2. 1965 Russell
3. 1962 Russell

lebron3-14-3 wrote:1) Michael Jordan 1990-91
2) Lebron James 2012-13
3) Wilt Chamberlain 1966-67
4) Shaquille O'neal 1999-20

Shaq is so good that he peaked for 20 seasons

1-Larry Bird 1986 - been voting for him since the #1 thread so no explanation needed
2-Magic Johnson 1987 - same, already explained
3-Larry Bird 1987

1. Kareem 71 - he utterly dominated this year, and his quickness was at his peak. He didn’t have the experience of later years, but his fundamentals were at an all time level after playing under Wooden for 4 years. Elite win shares in both PS and RS on the way to anchoring one of the greatest teams of all time (notably by SRS, although I don’t endorse it as the end all be all of team rankings)

2. Larry Bird 86 - Also unlocked an all time great team, the Celtics terrified opponents as Bird was central to an offense that couldn’t be stopped. Although his defense is criticized, he’s actually a very solid PF defender and he was playing off position. One of, if not the, greatest offensive player ever.

3. Hakeem 94 - the perfect trifecta of MVP, DPOY, FMVP. Led a very weak team to a championship through solid competition. His defensive and offensive capability and role were such that likely no other player in nba history could’ve led this team to a title.

1st ballot - '77 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - In scaled [PER and WS/48] terms, '77 Kareem comes out looking like potentially the best season ever (with a couple of Wilt's seasons being comparable [or arguably better] once we factor in mpg [as these are rate metrics]). But best ever scaled figures (while avg 36.8 mpg in rs and 42.5 in the playoffs) really puts this version in the mix of things. This version of Kareem is scoring very high volume at near-ridiculous efficiency (especially in the playoffs), despite doing so primarily in post isolations, in an era with crap spacing, playing with limited ancillary scoring threats, and facing double [and triple] teams all night long.
He's still capable of near DPOY-level defense [in spurts, at least] at this stage too, and is one of the better/best big man passers in the league. And he doesn't miss a single game.


2nd ballot - '03 Tim Duncan - TD at his peak was an absolute monster. 23.3/12.9/3.9 with 2.9 bpg (and this at an absolute slogging 90.0 pace) and good shooting efficiency and anchoring a 3rd-rated defense. In the playoffs he went for 24.7 ppg [on even better shooting efficiency than in rs], 15.4 rpg, 5.3 apg, 3.3 bpg en-route to a title, with a not overwhelming supporting cast (I'll not use the term "carry", because it's WAAAY overused [especially recently ] and I generally loathe the term). Fantastic locker-room/bench leader, too.
E-Balla made a really nice post regarding '03 Duncan previously itt to compliment this. He's a solid candidate at this stage, imo.


3rd ballot - '94 Hakeem Olajuwon - I could see going with '04 Garnett for my third ballot, but my gut is pulling me slightly toward Hakeem. Not a ton of offensive talent on that Rockets team, but he managed to anchor a semi-respectable offense while simultaneously anchoring an elite defense in the rs. And then he kinda stepped up everything [except the rebounding] in the playoffs en-route to a title. Just one of the most versatile two-way talents in league history. I'd like to write more, but I'm a bit crunched for time just now. I could be convinced to swing this vote to '04 Garnett, fwiw, as they're basically even stevens to me.