falcolombardi wrote:fit players into these tiers based only on their offense, there is a max number in some tiers but feel free to have as many as you feel (example you can have a single guy in goat tier if you want, but not more than 6)
1-Goat tier (max 6 players)
2-Borderline Goat (max 6 players)
3-All time great (max 12 players)
4-borderline OPOY: guys who are good enough to be discussed among the best offensive players in a season but not -THE- best at may given year (any number)
5-High end offensive players: guys who are really good but not enough to be considered offensive mega stars, aka never truly in the discussion for best offensive player in the league (any amount you want to rank)
feel free to evaluate longevity or weight playoffs vs regular season as you prefer or use as many players per tier as you want without going over the tier lmit
what would your tiers look like ?
So I'll tell you, I'm in the middle of doing another deep dive in history on this and am not ready to commit to new rankings/tierings, but feel an urge to respond anyway with some takeaways from deeper history.
If we begin with the starting year of the BAA in 1946, I do believe that the top offensive player through the '40s was George Mikan, but he then falls off dramatically in the '50s in a way that doesn't seem to be explainable simply by age. I believe that a major factor was the league getting considerably stronger quite quickly, and this having a major mitigating effect on the value of interior scoring. On defense, by contrast, the big man continued to dominate and I'd say Mikan was the top defensive player in the league basically as long as he kept playing.
In the '50s, we have a split up era.
First, we have the continued domination of the Rochester Royals offense, led by Bob Davies. This offense was (likely) stronger than the Laker offense even in the '40s, but I don't believe Davies or anyone else individually was as valuable as Mikan at that time...yet the Royals continued to be very effective offensively until Davies retirement.
Next, we have the 2-year run of Alex Groza before the NBA banned him based on a college pointshaving scandal. Groza likely would have been the "Offensive Player of the Decade" in the '50s had that not happened.
If there was someone better than Groza, it was Paul Arizin, whose career was all broken up by military service, but still represents the top offensive player in the league - by my estimation - more years than anyone else in the '50s (3 times).
Early '50s require a shout out to the Boston Celtics with two great scorers (Ed Macauley and Bill Sharman) and a playmaker who could be very valuable as long as he was passing to great scorers rather than calling his own number too much (Bob Cousy). As Macauley started faded, the Celtics traded him to get Bill Russell and took on a defensive focus - all except Cousy who just kept jacking shots at a worse and worse efficiency.
Last great offense of the '50s was the St. Louis Hawks led by Bob Pettit and Cliff Hagan. While Pettit had the better career, I think Hagan was actually the better scorer at his best.
We don't get an extended period of 'this guy is clearly the most effective offensive player in the league' until Oscar Robertson shows up. For the next half-decade he leads the best offense in the league before some competition actually emerges. Ironically the main competition there is his draftmate Jerry West who took longer to emerge as arguably the best offensive player in the world - undoubtedly held back by the presence of Elgin Baylor as the guy the Lakers kept insisting on treating as their first scoring option for many years after he clearly should not have been.
For the backhalf of the '60s, Oscar & West both have arguments as the best offensive players in the world, and then in the '70s we get the arrival of Kareem who by his 2nd year has a strong case for the best of the bunch.
And then with the '80s, we see the arrival of Bird & Magic, who each have a strong argument for being smarter offensive players than anyone in the history of the game to that point. Bird's the more spectacular basketball mind, but Magic's style of play - which we can call a proto-heliocentric role as it matures - is the one that seems to always work. I definitely see analogies between Oscar & Magic and West & Bird.
Those two guys dominate the '80s, but as the '90s came to pass, Michael Jordan became the clear cut top offensive player.
I'll stop there, as that's what I'm analyzing right now, but one thing I'll say is that It's very interesting to ask who the second best offensive player of the '90s was. Peak-wise it's hard for me to side against Hakeem Olajuwon's 1995 playoff performance, but beyond that, everybody has pros and cons.
