RealGM

Hello.

Link to the project thread.

Pick the top 5 individual single seasons in the Trail Blazers franchise history.

As Portland Trail Blazers from 1970-71 to today

Things to follow;
- This project is franchise bound, not city bound. Quick example; Philadelphia Warriors from 1949-50 to 1961-62 is part of the Golden State Warriors franchise history and 1952 Arizin is eligible for the GS Warriors history.
- We'll follow continuity of the franchise. I.e. Seattle SuperSonics and Oklahoma City Thunder are the same franchise. We'll use BBRef as reference for this.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/OKC/
- ABA seasons are included.
- 2020-21 season is yet to be completed, so, it's not eligible for this project.
- One season per player, no duplicates within the franchise history. Quick example; Shaquille O'Neal can be voted for only once for the LA Lakers franchise history, and he can be voted for the Orlando Magic franchise history. They are separate occasions.

- Reg. season and postseason play, both are included in evaluations.
- Votes will be counted per player, not per version of player.
- An easy going point system of 10/7/5/3/1, the same as Retro PoY project, will be used. Number of higher placement votes will be the tiebreaker (if two players are tied at 27 points for the 1st place, the player with more 1st place votes will get it).
- Explanation is needed, even in short forms.
- We'll be going alphabetically with franchise nicknames. Linked to the voting threads as well.


Results on Google Sheet

- The time frame for each franchise is 2 days (10:00 EST).

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This is quite like the Raptors in a way. Their best ever player missed a significant amount of games. But unlike 2019 Raptors, 1977 Blazers did considerably worse when Walton was out. Also quality wise the gap between Walton and Leonard is looking bigger than the gap between Lillard/Drexler and Carter to me right now. Despite my durability and motor concerns, I'll probably have Walton at #1.

But the rest is quite crowded with;
1991 Terry Porter
1992 Clyde Drexler
2000 Rasheed Wallace
2009 Brandon Roy
2011 LaMarcus Aldridge
2020 Damian Lillard

An interesting lot to compare.

1. Bill Walton, 1976/77 - I ended up doubting this selection a bit more than I initially thought I would. He missed quite a lot of games and I honestly believe he stepped up quite a bit in the 77/78 season and maybe makes his 76/77 season look a bit better than it actually was. His defense was probably his most valuable asset but he was a good scorer as far as defense-first centers go and his playmaking made him almost as good on offense as he was on defense. Statistically 92 Drexler could make an argument over him but we all know those stats underrate defense and beating both Kareem and Dr J at their peak in the WCF and Finals back to back is a bit too legendary for me to go against my first instinct.

2. Clyde Drexler, 1991/92 - Quite a clear number 2 in my mind. Arguably a better regular season than Walton's 77 season considering the missed games and even though he didn't really up his game in the play-offs he didn't really play much worse either. Dame and Porter had bigger drops in the play-offs than Drexler and while Roy arguably stepped up in the play-offs it was only marginally and in a small sample size.

3. Damian Lillard, 2018/19 - This regular season is slightly worse than the 2018 and 2020 seasons but both those seasons had 4 game play-off sample sizes that didn't inspire much confidence. His 2019 regular season isn't noticeably worse than 2018 or 2020 though and his play-offs were solid. I have a hard time seperating Dame and Porter but a few factors lead me to lean Dame for now. It is important to remember that Porter had a bit of an outlier season and wasn't the main guy on the team with Drexler around. I think Porter might've been the best player in the Jazz series but his Sonics and Lakers series don't inspire too much confidence. Dame performed better against OKC than Porter did at any point in the play-offs and while Dame was worse the next 2 rounds, not noticeably worse than Porter overall, arguably not at all.

4. Terry Porter, 1990/91 - Almost went with him at #3 and I can't really justify him any lower than this with my criteria.

5. Brandon Roy, 2008/09 - Very impressive regular season that isn't all that far behind the people ahead of him on this list and quite a bit ahead of anyone else in the Blazers franchise history. His post-season performance was impressive but it was only a first round loss with his performance not being better than the best series of any of the guys ahead either. Rasheed Wallace is my hardest omission to make as I really would have liked to give him a place on this list for his incredible performance against the Shaq/Kobe Lakers. His regular season wasn't quite as impressive though and his performance in the 1st and 2nd round are more in line with his regular season level than what he showed in the WCF. His 2001 regular season with his 2000 play-offs might've gotten the nod over Roy but as it stands I like Roy's 09 season over Sheed's 00 season.

Dutchball97 wrote:2. Clyde Drexler, 1991/92 - Quite a clear number 2 in my mind. Arguably a better regular season than Walton's 77 season considering the missed games and even though he didn't really up his game in the play-offs he didn't really play much worse either. Dame and Porter had bigger drops in the play-offs than Drexler and while Roy arguably stepped up in the play-offs it was only marginally and in a small sample size.

Wait, what Porter dropoff? In general seems to me that Porter faired really well in the playoffs.

I have to say, it's not clear to me that Drexler deserves stature over guys like Lillard, Sheed & Roy, and I think the debate between the teammates Drexler, Porter & Williams is to me something really worth thinking about, given that the Trailblazers couldn't get out of the first round until Buck showed and the team (other than Drexler) developed toughness.

I see Walton as a lock for #1, and Lillard as a lock for #2. Beyond that, I'm still chewing on it.

Doctor MJ wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:2. Clyde Drexler, 1991/92 - Quite a clear number 2 in my mind. Arguably a better regular season than Walton's 77 season considering the missed games and even though he didn't really up his game in the play-offs he didn't really play much worse either. Dame and Porter had bigger drops in the play-offs than Drexler and while Roy arguably stepped up in the play-offs it was only marginally and in a small sample size.

Wait, what Porter dropoff? In general seems to me that Porter faired really well in the playoffs.

I have to say, it's not clear to me that Drexler deserves stature over guys like Lillard, Sheed & Roy, and I think the debate between the teammates Drexler, Porter & Williams is to me something really worth thinking about, given that the Trailblazers couldn't get out of the first round until Buck showed and the team (other than Drexler) developed toughness.

I see Walton as a lock for #1, and Lillard as a lock for #2. Beyond that, I'm still chewing on it.

In general he faired well over his career but he didn't match his outlier 91 regular season impact in the ensuing post-season.

1) 1978 Bill Walton - Looks quite improved from the 1977 season. Short playoffs but got played more in the RS anyway.

2) 2001 Rasheed Wallace - Do it your all power forward. His reputation for defense while reputable, is still underrated due to not having freakishly high blocks per game or large TRB. But the comparison I always get in my head is "what makes Scottie Pippen so much better?". While I was comparing Rasheed to Ben I saw that pretty much every year Rasheed was freakishly high in RAPM, like top 3-5 placement was a thing every year of his prime more or less (I think I was looking at DRAPM, but if I can recall he placed high in both). His scoring is legit and he can score from different places, I think he is a decent #2 option as a scorer for sure - and of course he had a good jumper as well as a dynamic post game.

3) 1991 Terry Porter - I've always thought Porter was a more playoff reliant player than Clyde Drexler. Clyde is really a player I'm just not THAT convinced on of his goodness. His lack of half court offense seemed to be a serious problem and he certainly got pretty far due to having really stacked teams (so did Rasheed, but Rasheed doesn't get anywhere near the amount of credit or hype Clyde did). I think in turn, due to Clyde's exciting style and athletic gifts he made the perfect media rival for MJ, which in turn may have boosted how good he actually was ("he's the second best SG only behind Jordan!"). Terry Porter is the most underrated player of all time or close to it, the guy did it all and did it very well and efficiently.

4) 1992 Clyde Drexler - Drexler vs Roy vs Lillard is very difficult for me. I am fairly convinced of my top 3 but the rest are more of a toss up. I'm going to go with the benefit of the doubt and give Clyde a decent placing. Outside of scoring Clyde really is good though, competitive defender, good passer who is not always ball dominant but can occasionally play with the ball, good rebounder. I'm hesitant about his scoring though in the 1992 season, how much of his efficiency boost is coming from really good teammates - and if so, would guys like Damian and Roy scale better? We've seen a bit with Roy who had pretty decent teammates, but Damian hasn't really had that since he hit his prime. For now I'll go with the grain and put Clyde in my top 5.

5) 2009 Brandon Roy - I originally had Damian Lillard at #4 and even wrote a giant paragraph for him. But as I'm scaling back and trying not to go with peer pressure, I think Roy seems a bit more convincing to me. The problem with Lillard is that his 2020 and 2021 RS look pretty similar, but the post season for 2021 is out of this world - while 2020 is more along Lillard's standards (still quite good). I am trying to figure out how much of 2021 Lillard is a hot streak and how much of 2020 Lillard is a cold one. Meanwhile, with Roy we really only have one good post season to go off of and he was pretty good in it. The 2009 run was only one round but so are a lot of Lillard's runs (and so were all of Clyde's pre 92 or so). It's quite impressive Roy was able to anchor the #1 offense with LMA while playing at the slowest pace, and his game translated really well into the only series we see. His numbers are modest due to pacing and era - I wouldnt' be surprised if he put up some juicy looking stats today. Roy was not a good defender, but Lillard was probably worse.


I'm trying to think of how good Lillard would be if he played with other stars and what not. I think that might be where Lillard may get separation from Roy and Drexler. It's possible that Lillard's crazy shooting ability makes him more scalable, but at the same time we haven't seen Roy or Drexler as 2nd options either (though we've seen Drexler with great ensemble casts).

Cliff Robinson should get some honorable mention consideration for either his '95 or '96 seasons. 38% from 3 on six attempts from the combo-forward spot along with the blocks and 20 ppg is nice for that era.

Honorable Mentions:
Rod Strickland
Kevin Duckworth

Zach Randolph?

Did not expect to see Sheed anywhere near #2 tbh. He's arguably becoming one of the most overrated players on this board due to his favorable skillset. Especially considering he only played 3 play-off games that year in which he posted a shocking 11.7 PER, .437 TS%, -0.1 WS and -1.1 BPM.

I know plenty of people here think you win a championship in the regular season but this is getting to absurd levels. Was Rasheed Wallace so much better in the regular season than Lillard, Drexler, Roy and Porter that his bad post-season shouldn't matter at all? I think you can almost objectively say no to that.

1. Walton - MVP that did everything at a high level
2. Lillard - a hair over Drexler, who I think gets underrated, but Dame's offense/clutchness was too much to pass up on
3. Drexler - practically a 2b; gets underrated because he was good at everything but not really elite at anything in particular (also MJ comparisons)
4. Sheed - savvy stretch big with a polished post game + above average defense; impact stats love him
5. Porter - Billups-esque pg that could shoot from outside, play on or off ball, and defend 1s and 2s comfortably

Dutchball97 wrote:Did not expect to see Sheed anywhere near #2 tbh. He's arguably becoming one of the most overrated players on this board due to his favorable skillset. Especially considering he only played 3 play-off games that year in which he posted a shocking 11.7 PER, .437 TS%, -0.1 WS and -1.1 BPM.

I know plenty of people here think you win a championship in the regular season but this is getting to absurd levels. Was Rasheed Wallace so much better in the regular season than Lillard, Drexler, Roy and Porter that his bad post-season shouldn't matter at all? I think you can almost objectively say no to that.

I mean yes, it was a 3 game sample size so obviously he may have shot better or worse. I could have obviously have picked 2000 which is a much longer sample size. I just don't simply think a player was his best in their deepest playoff run.

He wasn't bad in the post season, and some of those players weren't stellar themselves.


I think Sheed is more useful than all those players in the post season. I don't care much about the RS at all - again I could have picked several years from Rashed Wallace's prime he was a very consistent player. If you're asking me is it possible for Rasheed Wallace to be better than Clyde Dreler in the post season - yes, it's absolutely possible. We've seen Draymond Green out play players even better than Clyde Drexler, and I'm not convinced Green is even as good as Wallace.


Rasheed Wallace won nearly 3 championship titles so he was certainly not a regular season darling. I'm surprised someone would even suggest as much considering he has very modest boxscore stats - and boxscore is usually overrated in the RS not the PS.

HeartBreakKid wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:Did not expect to see Sheed anywhere near #2 tbh. He's arguably becoming one of the most overrated players on this board due to his favorable skillset. Especially considering he only played 3 play-off games that year in which he posted a shocking 11.7 PER, .437 TS%, -0.1 WS and -1.1 BPM.

I know plenty of people here think you win a championship in the regular season but this is getting to absurd levels. Was Rasheed Wallace so much better in the regular season than Lillard, Drexler, Roy and Porter that his bad post-season shouldn't matter at all? I think you can almost objectively say no to that.

I mean yes, it was a 3 game sample size so obviously he may have shot better or worse. I could have obviously have picked 2000 which is a much longer sample size. I just don't simply think a player was his best in their deepest playoff run.

He wasn't bad in the post season, and some of those players weren't stellar themselves.


I think Sheed is more useful than all those players in the post season. I don't care much about the RS at all - again I could have picked several years from Rashed Wallace's prime he was a very consistent player. If you're asking me is it possible for Rasheed Wallace to be better than Clyde Dreler in the post season - yes, it's absolutely possible. We've seen Draymond Green out play players even better than Clyde Drexler, and I'm not convinced Green is even as good as Wallace.


Rasheed Wallace won nearly 3 championship titles so he was certainly not a regular season darling. I'm surprised someone would even suggest as much considering he has very modest boxscore stats - and boxscore is usually overrated in the RS not the PS.

He wasn't bad in the post-season? How can you claim that with the stats I literally just listed? This isn't about how good they were in their career and how likely it is that they'd have a good play-off showing, this is about one season peaks. Like you already said Rasheed really doesn't have an argument in terms of boxscore stats (Draymond vs Drexler would be a more interesting post-season comparison as yes, Draymond was definitely better at his peak in the post-season than Sheed).

I have to take a guess and assume you're using RAPM as gospel because otherwise I'm not sure how you'd be able to argue for Sheed over Drexler. I personally don;t value RAPM as a stat as much so I'm afraid we're just looking at this in different ways.

Dutchball97 wrote:

HeartBreakKid wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:Did not expect to see Sheed anywhere near #2 tbh. He's arguably becoming one of the most overrated players on this board due to his favorable skillset. Especially considering he only played 3 play-off games that year in which he posted a shocking 11.7 PER, .437 TS%, -0.1 WS and -1.1 BPM.

I know plenty of people here think you win a championship in the regular season but this is getting to absurd levels. Was Rasheed Wallace so much better in the regular season than Lillard, Drexler, Roy and Porter that his bad post-season shouldn't matter at all? I think you can almost objectively say no to that.

I mean yes, it was a 3 game sample size so obviously he may have shot better or worse. I could have obviously have picked 2000 which is a much longer sample size. I just don't simply think a player was his best in their deepest playoff run.

He wasn't bad in the post season, and some of those players weren't stellar themselves.


I think Sheed is more useful than all those players in the post season. I don't care much about the RS at all - again I could have picked several years from Rashed Wallace's prime he was a very consistent player. If you're asking me is it possible for Rasheed Wallace to be better than Clyde Dreler in the post season - yes, it's absolutely possible. We've seen Draymond Green out play players even better than Clyde Drexler, and I'm not convinced Green is even as good as Wallace.


Rasheed Wallace won nearly 3 championship titles so he was certainly not a regular season darling. I'm surprised someone would even suggest as much considering he has very modest boxscore stats - and boxscore is usually overrated in the RS not the PS.

He wasn't bad in the post-season? How can you claim that with the stats I literally just listed? This isn't about how good they were in their career and how likely it is that they'd have a good play-off showing, this is about one season peaks. Like you already said Rasheed really doesn't have an argument in terms of boxscore stats (Draymond vs Drexler would be a more interesting post-season comparison as yes, Draymond was definitely better at his peak in the post-season than Sheed).

I have to take a guess and assume you're using RAPM as gospel because otherwise I'm not sure how you'd be able to argue for Sheed over Drexler. I personally don;t value RAPM as a stat as much so I'm afraid we're just looking at this in different ways.

How do you prefer to measure Sheed’s massive defensive advantage over Drexler?


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Doctor MJ wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:

HeartBreakKid wrote:I mean yes, it was a 3 game sample size so obviously he may have shot better or worse. I could have obviously have picked 2000 which is a much longer sample size. I just don't simply think a player was his best in their deepest playoff run.

He wasn't bad in the post season, and some of those players weren't stellar themselves.


I think Sheed is more useful than all those players in the post season. I don't care much about the RS at all - again I could have picked several years from Rashed Wallace's prime he was a very consistent player. If you're asking me is it possible for Rasheed Wallace to be better than Clyde Dreler in the post season - yes, it's absolutely possible. We've seen Draymond Green out play players even better than Clyde Drexler, and I'm not convinced Green is even as good as Wallace.


Rasheed Wallace won nearly 3 championship titles so he was certainly not a regular season darling. I'm surprised someone would even suggest as much considering he has very modest boxscore stats - and boxscore is usually overrated in the RS not the PS.

He wasn't bad in the post-season? How can you claim that with the stats I literally just listed? This isn't about how good they were in their career and how likely it is that they'd have a good play-off showing, this is about one season peaks. Like you already said Rasheed really doesn't have an argument in terms of boxscore stats (Draymond vs Drexler would be a more interesting post-season comparison as yes, Draymond was definitely better at his peak in the post-season than Sheed).

I have to take a guess and assume you're using RAPM as gospel because otherwise I'm not sure how you'd be able to argue for Sheed over Drexler. I personally don;t value RAPM as a stat as much so I'm afraid we're just looking at this in different ways.

How do you prefer to measure Sheed’s massive defensive advantage over Drexler?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure if I have the right RAPM site here as like I said I don't usually use this so correct me if I'm wrong. Rasheed was 41st in DRAPM in the 99/00 regular season, while he was 54th in DRAPM those play-offs. In the 00/01 season HBK chose because of it being such a great RAPM outlier shows him as 30th in DRAPM in the regular season and outside the top 100 with a negative DRAPM in the play-offs. Either this is a different RAPM or Sheed being top 5 DRAPM is simply not even close to being true.

Besides that, how would you even use DRAPM to compare Sheed and Drexler when RAPM isn't available for the 91/92 season?

1. 1977 Bill Walton - Elite level impact for Blazers on both ends that goes beyond the numbers, which are still pretty good.

2. 1992 Clyde Drexler - May be legit the 2nd best season in the league this year

3. 2020 Damian Lillard - Played in an easier era to put up stats but those numbers compared with the spacing at PG is hard to deny

4. 2009 Brandon Roy - Excellent offensive creator who's stats look better when considering slow pace

5. 2000 Rasheed Wallace - Always high impact player while still being the highest scorer on a realistic champion team

1. Walton, 1977.

Honestly, though, as a player he was even better in 1978. Yes, he got injured again, but when he played, the Blazers were dominant and after he was injured, well, not so good. Blazers had the #2 defense that season but after Walton got injured at the end of February, they had I think 4 or 5 games in which their DRtg was at or below their season average with Walton. I think Backpicks has the number someplace but DRtg went up like 5 to 6 points per 100 possessions which is crazy and why he has such a high WOWYR number.

But just too much time missed in 1978.

2. Rasheed, 2000.

Sheed’s RAPM numbers from 1999 and 2000 show how much he was involved in just about every positive Blazers’ lineups. In the 1997–2019 PI RAPM data set, Sheed’s 1999 comes out as the 36th highest and 2000 as the 72nd highest. There are 10,597 seasons in this data set, and only 78 seasons of +6 or greater. Sheed has 3 of these seasons.

Lebron, 10
KG, 9
Shaq, 8
Duncan, 7
Dirk, 5
Nash, 5
Rasheed, 3
Chi’s Paul, 3
Mourning, 2
Curry, 2
Wade, 2
Mookie, 2

That’s crazy.

3. Drexler, 1992.

One his more efficient offensive seasons, good defense as well. 1992 Blazers were a top defensive team DESPITE a terrible defensive center, which is astonishing. Drexler was a big part of that though he did gamble a good deal on defense but was a plus defender. His late career defense in Houston was really solid as he was a plus defender the year he retired.

4. Lillard, 2020.

Better offensive player in 2020 and this year, of course, than in 2019. Got shut down by the Lakers who very aggressively took the ball out of hands. Overall feel Drexler is a better all around peak but Lillard provides a higher peak per game that has to be accounted for 30 feet from the basket.

5. Porter, 1991.

Feels wrong to put him this low. He had impact all the way through his career. Old Porter was as impactful or more than Prime Roy. 1991 Porter was a very, very good player.

1. 1977 Bill Walton
Already talked about him.

2. 1992 Clyde Drexler
3. 2000 Rasheed Wallace
4. 2020 Damian Lillard
Well, I think that there's too much emphasis on Drexler's 1992 season as there was a forced narrative to glorify Jordan even further. And I see the need to correct it. But sometimes, we move the needle too much and it's an overcorrection. Drexler's ability to utilise the open court was one of the reasons why the Blazers were that good and also gave them good chances to exploit certain schemes with Adelman's brilliant passing lanes. It must be said that Drexler was rather limited on half-court offense though.

Sheed was a proper impact player, especially with his defense. He has all the +/- numbers to support it. I definitely see Sheed's case over Drexler with his defensive performance. I just think that Drexler's enabling offensive play was still slightly more impactful.

Lillard's easily the best offensive centrepiece of the 3. But he's also the worst defensively. He brings too much defensive worries.

5. 1991 Terry Porter
Considering the swing in Drexler's productivity from the season before and the after, it shouldn't be crazy to think that Porter was the 1a instead of the 1b in 1991 for the Blazers, and Porter was 1a on a 63W/+8.5NRtg, WCF team.

HM; 2009 Brandon Roy (too much defensive issues against Porter, slightly better defense and he'd make the top 5 over Porter for me.)

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GeorgeMarcus wrote:I know I need explanations for my vote to count but I would go
1. Walton
2. Lillard
3. Drexler
4. Sheed
5. Porter

Even single liners would count. Not much needed. Any vote is welcomed of course.

Dutchball97 wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:
He wasn't bad in the post-season? How can you claim that with the stats I literally just listed? This isn't about how good they were in their career and how likely it is that they'd have a good play-off showing, this is about one season peaks. Like you already said Rasheed really doesn't have an argument in terms of boxscore stats (Draymond vs Drexler would be a more interesting post-season comparison as yes, Draymond was definitely better at his peak in the post-season than Sheed).

I have to take a guess and assume you're using RAPM as gospel because otherwise I'm not sure how you'd be able to argue for Sheed over Drexler. I personally don;t value RAPM as a stat as much so I'm afraid we're just looking at this in different ways.

How do you prefer to measure Sheed’s massive defensive advantage over Drexler?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure if I have the right RAPM site here as like I said I don't usually use this so correct me if I'm wrong. Rasheed was 41st in DRAPM in the 99/00 regular season, while he was 54th in DRAPM those play-offs. In the 00/01 season HBK chose because of it being such a great RAPM outlier shows him as 30th in DRAPM in the regular season and outside the top 100 with a negative DRAPM in the play-offs. Either this is a different RAPM or Sheed being top 5 DRAPM is simply not even close to being true.

Besides that, how would you even use DRAPM to compare Sheed and Drexler when RAPM isn't available for the 91/92 season?

Well, my main point here is that we know that Drexler was an actual problem on defense. He wasn't a good defender, and his lackadaisical leadership was generally seen as antithetical to quality defense, which is why they acquired Buck Williams to come in and lead the team and bring the discipline and toughness.

Look at this poster man. Consider what it means that Buck is the one leading the way:



Sheed doesn't have to be DPOY level in order to be a major upgrade relative to Drexler on defense, and that's really all I'm trying to say here. Drexler is a far better offensive player than Sheed, so if people are ranking Sheed ahead of Drexler, defense is the clear thing to discuss. It's fine if you still put Drexler ahead - I expect the strong majority of folks would - but do understand that in part we're speaking to problems with Drexler that you flat out don't get in guys like other volume scoring Blazer guards like Lillard or Roy (or Porter for that matter).

On DRAPM, here's the thing: I don't take the split between ORAPM and DRAPM too seriously. Consider for example, the distinction between the actual action of defensive rebounding compared to how it would get classified in terms of offensive vs defensive RAPM. Successful defensive rebounding makes offensive success in the next possession more likely, so we'd thus expect defensive rebounding to have a positive effect on offensive RAPM despite it being definitionally a defensive play.

I do look at ORAPM & DRAPM and don't want to pretend I merely scoff at them, but I'm really cautious about discounting a respected 2-way player because RAPM seems to say he's getting his big impact on offense and he's not an elite alpha.

Doctor MJ wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:
How do you prefer to measure Sheed’s massive defensive advantage over Drexler?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure if I have the right RAPM site here as like I said I don't usually use this so correct me if I'm wrong. Rasheed was 41st in DRAPM in the 99/00 regular season, while he was 54th in DRAPM those play-offs. In the 00/01 season HBK chose because of it being such a great RAPM outlier shows him as 30th in DRAPM in the regular season and outside the top 100 with a negative DRAPM in the play-offs. Either this is a different RAPM or Sheed being top 5 DRAPM is simply not even close to being true.

Besides that, how would you even use DRAPM to compare Sheed and Drexler when RAPM isn't available for the 91/92 season?

Well, my main point here is that we know that Drexler was an actual problem on defense. He wasn't a good defender, and his lackadaisical leadership was generally seen as antithetical to quality defense, which is why they acquired Buck Williams to come in and lead the team and bring the discipline and toughness.

Look at this poster man. Consider what it means that Buck is the one leading the way:



Sheed doesn't have to be DPOY level in order to be a major upgrade relative to Drexler on defense, and that's really all I'm trying to say here. Drexler is a far better offensive player than Sheed, so if people are ranking Sheed ahead of Drexler, defense is the clear thing to discuss. It's fine if you still put Drexler ahead - I expect the strong majority of folks would - but do understand that in part we're speaking to problems with Drexler that you flat out don't get in guys like other volume scoring Blazer guards like Lillard or Roy (or Porter for that matter).

On DRAPM, here's the thing: I don't take the split between ORAPM and DRAPM too seriously. Consider for example, the distinction between the actual action of defensive rebounding compared to how it would get classified in terms of offensive vs defensive RAPM. Successful defensive rebounding makes offensive success in the next possession more likely, so we'd thus expect defensive rebounding to have a positive effect on offensive RAPM despite it being definitionally a defensive play.

I do look at ORAPM & DRAPM and don't want to pretend I merely scoff at them, but I'm really cautious about discounting a respected 2-way player because RAPM seems to say he's getting his big impact on offense and he's not an elite alpha.

My question is do we really know that Drexler was this huge defensive liability? He always had positive DBPM, his DRTG was always among the best on the team (both before and after the arrival of Buck Williams) and in the 97 season where we do have RAPM for he had a slightly higher DRAPM than Sheed the same season or in the relevant 00 and 01 seasons for that matter. In 98 he was in his last season and clearly washed on the defensive end. His DBPM and DRTG were clearly the worst marks in his career and his DRAPM reflects that. I'm inclined to look at the 97 season as much more indicative of his overall career performance than the 98 season.

Even though defensive stats are wonky at best, I'm not sure if it's fair to lable someone a massive liability on that end when the stats don't reflect that. Looking at the Blazers as a team they were a middle of the pack defensive team before Buck and a top 5 defense once Buck got there. So I have a hard time seeing where exactly Drexler's defense became a problem for them.

Now I'm not trying to argue Drexler is a better defender than Sheed but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for Sheed to be so much better on defense than Drexler for it to compensate the actually gigantic gap in offensive performance.

If I can recall, Sheed out did Ben Wallace in impact stats every season, usually by a considerable amount. Why can't Rasheed be a DPOY caliber defender? He is likely a better defender than say, Giannis from the eye test.

Perhaps if he is short of that, he would still be a decent amount ahead of Clyde in that department.


From the big years, Sheed seems to be about top 20 in RAPM - considering some players ranked above him are role players, that would seem like he is quite effective in his perspective role. His RAPM is ranked right next to 00 Karl Malone, and he is not far off from Kevin Garnett.

We don't have a lot of evidence for Clyde because of his era. However, I think there is at least evidence that supports Rasheed Wallace was an incredibly impactful player. I'm not saying that Rasheed Wallace was the best basketball player in the league, or that he was even a sure fire top ten guy - my impression is he is not. However, I don't see Clyde Drexler as a world beater either.

I kind of scale back to another scenario - is Rasheed Wallace really that much worse than Scottie Pippen? I wouldn't say Scottie Pippen is really a "DPOY" kind of guy, but at the same time it wouldn't surprise me if he could come close to being the DPOY (obviously there have been worse defenders than him who have won the title). Like Wallace, I don't look at Scottie Pippen as a sure fire top ten guy, yet in it seems like Pippen is often ranked over many volume scorers for respect of his well rounded play and dominant defense. So it it that Scottie really is way better than someone like Wallace, or is it more along he gets a lot of benefit of the doubt from being on the most publicized team of all time?

I could be off base, but wouldn't Scottie Pippen often get ranked above Clyde Drexler? Maybe, he wouldn't.

And I want to clarify, I'm not saying Wallace and Pippen are the same player, or even exact equals. But I feel like we are naturally not comfortably ranking someone who doesn't really have sexy numbers like Rasheed over boxscore stuffers. We already know Rasheed does play a brand of winning basketball, so what would it take for us to be sold on him? Would he have to be #1 in RAPM? Is top 25 not enough?