Barkley's Phoenix threepeat 1993-95

[migya]

Barkley gets trashed by many for not winning a championship but if his Suns had beaten those Bulls in 93 and Rockets in 94 and 95 and winning those championships, where is Barkley ranked alltime and could he be considered the best PF ever?

Easily the best player on those teams and being superstar lead teams sto the championships.

[Owly]

As ever it depends what about his play you are actually changing.

I will say projecting a 6.27, 4.68, 3.86 SRS team (average 4.93666666666667) as a three-peat team (actually done by 40s-50s Lakers and 50s-60s Celtics (both in smaller leagues - then 90s Bulls and early 2000s Lakers) ... especially when those Suns teams don't have the excuse for RS slacking that an actual defending champ might ... seems like quite a stretch. Fwiw, 89-91 Suns average SRS was 6.80666666666667.

If we're projecting media/mainstream projections (including the alluded to Ringz crowd) as different with the player in question's performance not changing ... sure they would but that just highlights how meaningless those rankings are.

[Dr Positivity]

It's hard to just give him those titles while pretending he's the same player

93 - Suns lose Game 6 by 1 pt, so let's say they get to Game 7 at home, and would have completely flipped the series after the first 2 games. Maybe 60/40 chance of winning or so if they survive G6, similar to Jazz in 98.

94 - Another bizarre home/road series, but Phoenix gets outplayed after the first 2 games in this series, all of Houston's wins are by double digits, and by 10 in Game 7. Furthermore Phoenix would have work to do in the last 2 rounds, maybe they could beat the Jazz who the Rockets won in 5 games, but the Knicks series is no lock. The Knicks would have HCA unlike the Rockets series.

95 - Lose Game 7 by 1, but again they would have work to do even if we gave them going against 2 elite centers in Robinson and Shaq without Hakeem to match up with them.

Maybe you could give them 93 and 95 based on having some bad 1pt losses. Giving them 94 seems hardest.

[migya]

It's hard to just give him those titles while pretending he's the same player

93 - Suns lose Game 6 by 1 pt, so let's say they get to Game 7 at home, and would have completely flipped the series after the first 2 games. Maybe 60/40 chance of winning or so if they survive G6, similar to Jazz in 98.

94 - Another bizarre home/road series, but Phoenix gets outplayed after the first 2 games in this series, all of Houston's wins are by double digits, and by 10 in Game 7. Furthermore Phoenix would have work to do in the last 2 rounds, maybe they could beat the Jazz who the Rockets won in 5 games, but the Knicks series is no lock. The Knicks would have HCA unlike the Rockets series.

95 - Lose Game 7 by 1, but again they would have work to do even if we gave them going against 2 elite centers in Robinson and Shaq without Hakeem to match up with them.

Maybe you could give them 93 and 95 based on having some bad 1pt losses. Giving them 94 seems hardest.

Those Suns teams were talented and underachieved. They could have won all three years if just a few things went their way.

I think in 94 they run over the Jazz. The Knicks were tough but Phoenix played them well. Think KJ runs amok on the Knicks.

In 95 it’d be hard to beat the Spurs but they again had the personnel. Think Orlando would get outgunned but it could go either way.

Barkley would definitely be considered top 20, maybe top 15.

[Owly]

It's hard to just give him those titles while pretending he's the same player

93 - Suns lose Game 6 by 1 pt, so let's say they get to Game 7 at home, and would have completely flipped the series after the first 2 games. Maybe 60/40 chance of winning or so if they survive G6, similar to Jazz in 98.

94 - Another bizarre home/road series, but Phoenix gets outplayed after the first 2 games in this series, all of Houston's wins are by double digits, and by 10 in Game 7. Furthermore Phoenix would have work to do in the last 2 rounds, maybe they could beat the Jazz who the Rockets won in 5 games, but the Knicks series is no lock. The Knicks would have HCA unlike the Rockets series.

95 - Lose Game 7 by 1, but again they would have work to do even if we gave them going against 2 elite centers in Robinson and Shaq without Hakeem to match up with them.

Maybe you could give them 93 and 95 based on having some bad 1pt losses. Giving them 94 seems hardest.

Even this seems to be giving them ... "we'll allow you to hold advancing to round X as a given but allow you to flip the results where you want ..." (relevant because if one is willing to flip close results as they happened, '93 Suns don't outscore the Spurs in R2, outscore Seattle by one in R3 and though there margin is ... better [not great] versus the Lakers even that has a 5 pt win that's within possible flipping distance which turns it into a Laker win [and "unfairly" [i.e. unrepresenatively] as it transpires a Laker sweep].

It seems to me the most logically consistent positions are:
a) Everything happened as it did. I don't care about counterfactuals or think everything is predestined or ... whatever along that line of thinking.

or

b) What happened informs us, but we're looking at running this back and figuring the probabilities starting from a more neutral point (start of season, start of playoffs).

If, hypothetically, (picked fairly arbitrarily and for ease, as implied above, time of choice would be a factor) one considered the Suns to have a 10% chance at each title, then a three-peat is a one in a thousand outcome. At around 21.6% for each year it becomes a 1% chance for all three.

[Jaivl]

I mean, those teams except 1993 are not really ring-worthy, much less three-peat worthy, Barkley was at the tail end of his prime by 1993, and he's not that much better than healthy KJ to begin with, AND they need perfect health to even have a chance. Just a lot of assumptions to make here.

[Colbinii]

They would have been relatively weak champions in 1994 and 1995, just as Houston was [The actual winner].

The league was wide open those years with a relatively weak level of talent in the league. I think taking this into consideration then it wouldn't have held much weight.

[migya]

I mean, those teams except 1993 are not really ring-worthy, much less three-peat worthy, Barkley was at the tail end of his prime by 1993, and he's not that much better than healthy KJ to begin with, AND they need perfect health to even have a chance. Just a lot of assumptions to make here.

Read the OP. Hypothetical scenario this is.

[sp6r=underrated]

As others have said it is highly unlikely the Suns could 3peat given the quality of their performance. They didn't play anything like a three peat club. But remember the post-season is a small sample size.

Neither Rockets team played at the level of a title club and they won back to back.

So for sake of the hypo, let's assume they win all those titles. My assumptions to make the hypo interesting:
1. Barkley plays the same as he did in our time line
2. Phoenix wins those series because random players play above their head in each of those series.
3. They get lucky and opponents just have abnormally bad shooting.
4. And their defense overperforms, with Barkley not being a cause.

So how would this impact Barkley's reputation? It would rise up enormously. Almost everyone overweighs the post-season in their evaluation of players.

As an example, in this hypo Phoenix holds on and wins G7 in 95 which is very conceivable unlike 94. Hakeem no longer has the famous performance against Robinson and the mythical performance against Shaq. Those are only 10 games but they loom large in the evaluation of Hakeem. And they are only 10 games, rough .6 of the games Hakeem played in NBA RS/PS.

Back to Barkley, I suspect in this world:
1. People would assume Barkley's large than life personality makes him a GOAT team leader that directly improves the effort/quality of teammates.
2. His offensive impact on teammates is much larger than commonly recognized.
3. People would play up his rather obvious strengths as a player.
4. The clear 2nd best player of his era who just aged poorly.

I'd like to think I wouldn't be influenced by the change. After all I stipulated he played exactly the same so why would I change the evaluation. But I suspect I would be strongly influenced by it in ways I don't appreciate most likely in the form of interpreting all ambiguous data in his favor.

I mean, those teams except 1993 are not really ring-worthy, much less three-peat worthy, Barkley was at the tail end of his prime by 1993, and he's not that much better than healthy KJ to begin with, AND they need perfect health to even have a chance. Just a lot of assumptions to make here.

Yup.

As ever it depends what about his play you are actually changing.

I will say projecting a 6.27, 4.68, 3.86 SRS team (average 4.93666666666667) as a three-peat team (actually done by 40s-50s Lakers and 50s-60s Celtics (both in smaller leagues - then 90s Bulls and early 2000s Lakers) ... especially when those Suns teams don't have the excuse for RS slacking that an actual defending champ might ... seems like quite a stretch. Fwiw, 89-91 Suns average SRS was 6.80666666666667.

yup

[Stan]

We really giving somebody a threepeat in a stretch they didn't win a single title

[migya]

We really giving somebody a threepeat in a stretch they didn't win a single title

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

[falcolombardi]

what if westbrook threepeats with Oklahoma 17-19?/s


Now seriously, barkley probably is seen as a top 10 all time player by most even if he played exactly the same

a good example of winning bias

[Owly]

But remember the post-season is a small sample size.

An important and very worthwhile note.

And there's noteworthy honest self-awareness in the post in general.

Neither Rockets team played at the level of a title club and they won back to back.

I would have some caveats to this and comments to relevance and general comments.

'95 Rockets had significant injuries and didn't play really ever play with their actual eventual playoff core for an extended spell otoh (Drexler's first full game 17th Feb, Horry misses late-Feb to mid-late-March, Olajuwon misses late-March to mid-April). Fwiw, I tend to accept the idea (though haven't looked too closely) that defending champs are less likely to max out in the next RS.

Those Rockets teams might be raised because they occur within the same span or because they are perhaps the flukiest B2B champs - I'd argue the latter is more relevant.

Even taking the two titles as a given then giving them a refresh on '93 a title and so a three-peat would be unlikely, though a fairer analysis would be a refresh on all 3. So per the above, some very unlikely things will have happened at some point, but this asking for a Suns 3-peat asks for it to happen to a specific team and is not asking for unlikelyish thing x unlikelyish thing (a repeat, as the Rockets managed); rather it's looking it's looking for UT cubed (per above if the Suns [or Rockets or any specific team in a specific window] were a 10% chance each year, and we were looking at it specifically happening to them, it's the difference between a 1% chance and a 0.1% chance).

I think Hakeem probably is overrated off those two titles. I do tend to skew far less towards playoffs than most though.


I guess what I'm saying (insofar as there is a coherent theme) is the Rocket's unlikely B2B is perhaps slightly relevant in that there's a bit of a window for an unlikely champ and reiterating that some unlikely things do happen (and that small sample making upsets likelier). But [to my mind and my reading] its mention is giving some cover to the idea that this isn't wildly unlikely and I think it is (and I think you do too).

[homecourtloss]

We really giving somebody a threepeat in a stretch they didn't win a single title

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

Was waiting to see how long this would be posted by OP

The Suns nor Barkley were ever good enough to be a three-peat type of team even if you want to prop the ‘90s and Jordan’s competition.

In that 1993 series vs. the Bulls, Barkley was -12 on court (-10, +0, -7, -7, +15, -3). He had a chance (as Malone had a chance) but didn’t play well enough. Perhaps the elbow injury can be a mitigating factor and not having Ceballos, but they kept on losing close series even to an ostensibly inferior Rockets team.

[falcolombardi]

We really giving somebody a threepeat in a stretch they didn't win a single title

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

Was waiting to see how long this would be posted by OP

The Suns nor Barkley weren’t ever good enough to be a three-peat type of team even if you want to prop the ‘90s and Jordan’s competition.

In that 1993 series vs. the Bulls, Barkley was -12 on court (-10, +0, -7, -7, +15, -3). He had a chance (as Malone had a chance) but didn’t play well enough. Perhaps the elbow injury can be a mitigating factor and not having Ceballos, but they kept on losing close series even to an ostensibly inferior Rockets team.

superteam is when lebron has good teammates, he is not allowed to win that way lol

now on topic, i wouldnt harp too much on barkley performance or single series plus-minus, suns played bulls incredibly close and barkley played jordan fairly close which is as much as can be asked of him imo

suns were great (In 93), 94 amd 95 are more dissapointing, but hakeem was the better player over barkley just like jordan was so is whatever

[migya]

We really giving somebody a threepeat in a stretch they didn't win a single title

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

Was waiting to see how long this would be posted by OP

The Suns nor Barkley were ever good enough to be a three-peat type of team even if you want to prop the ‘90s and Jordan’s competition.

In that 1993 series vs. the Bulls, Barkley was -12 on court (-10, +0, -7, -7, +15, -3). He had a chance (as Malone had a chance) but didn’t play well enough. Perhaps the elbow injury can be a mitigating factor and not having Ceballos, but they kept on losing close series even to an ostensibly inferior Rockets team.

It is a valid point. If Lebron had level of talent around him like Ewing did his whole career he wouldn't have any championships. He was on superteams, unless you disagree?

Those Barkley Suns teams certainly were talented enough to three peat and they only lost to the eventual champions.

[ronnymac2]

The NBA must be very happy this did not happen in retrospect. The increased attention on Kevin Johnson and subsequent negative publicity years later would be far sharper. As is, they can keep him out of the HOF and not get much pushback from fans uninformed about the scumbag he is.

To answer the question, yeah, if Barkley's level of play doesn't change, I hope that I would not increase his rank.

But of course I would. Everybody's warts get covered up perception-wise if those warts don't stop the team from winning. It's not fair, and it's hard to filter out.

A What-If - what if Barkley's Suns win the three titles and Barkley's REG SEA play doesn't change, but for three consecutive postseasons, Barkley displays defensive impact he never shows again (before or after)? Let's assume this defensive impact over the 45-55 game sample that is these three straight playoffs is corroborated by box-score stats, team defensive rating, advanced on-off, and the eye test (Not all-time great defense, but let's say if he played like this his whole career he would have made two all-defense second teams). Let's say he has one amazing series against Utah and contains Karl Malone (26 PPG on sub-50% True Shooting with a poor Ast/Tov ratio and a video montage of Barkley laterally moving his feet and playing solid positional defense over the course of 6 games).

This isn't a completely unfeasible alteration in the career/makeup of Barkley. If you had these pieces to build a narrative/case for Barkley, how high could you rank him?

[Owly]

We really giving somebody a threepeat in a stretch they didn't win a single title

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

I get that there's a smilie here but ...

I don't get "no superteams".
1) Didn't most of these "superteams" live and die with whether LeBron was on court? I struggle to see how "super" many of these rosters are without him (with or without a replacement superstar) versus other championship winning teams "casts" (or "casts" of such a level).
2) The perception that '13 or '16 or '20 consist of "super" rosters after the top player after accounting for depth, injuries seems ... let's say debatable.
3) Let's put aside whether what happened were superteams (though the nebulousness of that term will come up) ... I still don't unterstand what the implication is ...
Does "no superteams" mean to imply that it is certain, or at least that the probability is that LeBron doesn't win a championship over the next decade in this "no superteam" set of scenarios.

One possible route: The objection to superteams seems to be joining an established star. In 2010 the Bulls didn't have that yet (Rose an all-star but not All-NBA nor very close). Supposedly they were in play as a landing spot for all 3 "Heatles". Rose and Noah were keepable anyhow (and Gibson and Asik from what I read). If they don't bring Wade, the guy who has advanced past the second round and been an MVP contender (unlike Bosh), they can probably keep Deng and other pieces. Is that team unlikely to lift a title?

I don't know the odds, not least because I don't know what others' idea of a superteam is (if indeed there is any real consensus). But I'd be curious if anyone has some numbers behind this. Fwiw, IRL the odds are the prospects of playing with LeBron passively recruits a better team than chance anyway (and that a team with prime LeBron prioritizes winning now).

[falcolombardi]

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

Was waiting to see how long this would be posted by OP

The Suns nor Barkley were ever good enough to be a three-peat type of team even if you want to prop the ‘90s and Jordan’s competition.

In that 1993 series vs. the Bulls, Barkley was -12 on court (-10, +0, -7, -7, +15, -3). He had a chance (as Malone had a chance) but didn’t play well enough. Perhaps the elbow injury can be a mitigating factor and not having Ceballos, but they kept on losing close series even to an ostensibly inferior Rockets team.

It is a valid point. If Lebron had level of talent around him like Ewing did his whole career he wouldn't have any championships. He was on superteams, unless you disagree?

Those Barkley Suns teams certainly were talented enough to three peat and they only lost to the eventual champions.

you are stretching the definition of "good enough to threpeat" a fair bit, a ton of teams were contenders for 3+ years, we dont call them as 3-peat level teams, specially if they won none

the only teams who three peat or came close to it were all better than barkley suns

[Owly]

And Jerry West only won 1 but that doesn't mean much. Point here is how much higher alltime is Barkley ranked.

If Lebron never win anything championships (ie. No superteams ) He wouldn't be seen as the 2 best ever (which he isn't even that high), so championships count.

Was waiting to see how long this would be posted by OP

The Suns nor Barkley weren’t ever good enough to be a three-peat type of team even if you want to prop the ‘90s and Jordan’s competition.

In that 1993 series vs. the Bulls, Barkley was -12 on court (-10, +0, -7, -7, +15, -3). He had a chance (as Malone had a chance) but didn’t play well enough. Perhaps the elbow injury can be a mitigating factor and not having Ceballos, but they kept on losing close series even to an ostensibly inferior Rockets team.

i wouldnt harp too much on barkley performance or single series plus-minus

Now I wouldn't harp on single series plus-minus much either in evaluating a player. It's a tiny sample and super noisy ...

But, if the case being put is "what if his team happened to win these championships" and they don't win them in the time he's on the floor but in the time he's off it, doesn't that undermine the usage of the team-level accolades to boost the individual.