Alright, here we go:
C Tim Duncan '06-07
F LeBron James '08-09
F Kevin Garnett '07-08
G Kobe Bryant '07-08
G Steve Nash '06-07
At Center:So I was actually thinking I'd be voting for Howard here. I really don't want to knock him at all in this window...but Duncan was classified as a center in '06-07, and I'm going with Duncan here without hesitation. Duncan is Duncan.
At Forward:LeBron & KG are easy choices here for me. LeBron should be an easy choice for everyone so I won't belabor that.
KG in Boston transformed an organization that honestly had lost all trace of winning culture. Any kind of off-court impact that people want to be attributed to Doc Rivers or Paul Pierce should be given to KG...and then you add in he had the definitive defensive season of the 21st century this year.
I'll say that I think Dirk was worthy of a 1st team spot here based on how good he was, but I didn't seriously consider him.
At Guard:Let me touch upon Kobe first before the longer explanation I feel I need to give with Nash. Back in this era, I really wasn't sold on Kobe > Wade. I've since come to have a greater appreciation for Kobe's shot-making compared to someone like Wade.
I have always respected Wade and his attitude a ton, and loved watching him play. But I feel like his offensive attack is best suited for floor raising. That first title, Wade was the MVP no doubt, but the team won with defense, and he was not the MVP of the defense. I think he got even better by 2009, but the team's offense still wasn't actually torching teams.
What about Wade vs Nash? Didn't I just give Wade the nod over a Nash-like guy in Chris Paul?
So to begin, those who know me know I've long been a Nash guy. I consider him to have been the best offensive player of his era. I can just lean on that and say that I rate Nash a smidge better than Paul in general, which is true, but I thought this would be a good time use bkref's new Adjusted Shooting numbers, specifically TS Add.
So first, here's a link to the 2007 numbers because this stuff still hasn't been incorporated into their Stathead features so far as I can tell:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2007_adj_shooting.htmlIf you sort by TS Add, the top 3 will look like this:
1. Amar'e Stoudemire 249.8
2. Steve Nash 242.8
3. Dirk Nowitzki 201.2
So first off, I'm not aware of another year - though haven't done a complete search - of another year where the top 2 guys are from the same team. Second, pretty sizable gap between those top 2 and everyone else.
Next: Obviously Nash was allowing Amar'e to do this. Amar'e never broke 100 without Nash. So with Nash you have a guy who is having an unusual type of impact on his main partner while also being an outlier himself (and also having similarly striking if lesser in pure magnitude effects on other teammates).
I don't want to pretend that my opinions on Nash are based on this stat that I only gained access to recently, but I'll note that you're not seeing numbers like this from Chris Paul whose peak by this method is a 163.6 and whose non-Harden teammates aren't getting massive TS Add numbers (and Harden's peak year came before Paul arrived, and he was on pace for an even higher year this year). Paul is an incredible point guard, but he's not Nash. You can point out his strengths relative to Nash and argue that they outweigh Nash's strengths, but there are ways where Nash pops out in a way that Paul just doesn't.
Back to Wade, it's not a shocker I'd imagine that his TS Add peak (148.0) isn't in the same ballpark as Nash's, but I think I owe a bit more explanation of why it appears I'm more impressed with Wade in '10-11 compared to earlier, in part because I found I was asking myself the same question.
The truth is that when I was comparing Wade to Harden & Paul last time, I was asking myself if I thought those guys could do as well as Wade as LeBron's teammate, and concluded the answer was no. Key thing is that Wade showed an ability to be both alpha and beta. Paul's never been able to play beta, which is why he was banished to a team this year where getting into the playoffs at all was an accomplishment. Harden maybe could have, but from the time he's truly been in his prime, he's not just been an alpha, but a jealous alpha.
The way Wade willingly took a backseat in the middle of his prime to LeBron and worked together with him while also being ready to go alpha as needed impressed me.
But meanwhile, I think Nash's intelligence and team focus would allow him to basically thrive next to basically any scorer. You can argue that Wade's defense made him better overall than Nash, but I am very, very impressed by Nash's offensive CV.
Last note: What about Kobe vs Nash? The age old question, and one that because of the CFFGG format I don't have to answer, but I will throw Kobe fans a bone here:
I do think that regular season advanced stats underrate Kobe, and I do think that in today's game Nash's defensive limitations might truly be a problem that can't be solved. While they both played people overstated Nash's negative impact on defense, but I wonder how things would be today.