RealGM

Adrian Dantley had a great seven years in Utah, averaging 29.6pts. Is his peak the best scoring for a SF alltime?

Pretty rare company for him to be in with the likes of Elgin Baylor, Rick Barry, Bird and LeBron.

Normally on this board, peak means best single year, prime means best roughly 5-10 year stretch, career covers from beginning to end.

I think Durant and Erving need to be in this conversation as well.

Dantley is the real GOAT, deal with it!

That title has to belong to Kevin Durant. Dantley's numbers are ridiculous, tho.

Give me some video or stats to back up your statement.

Ping Ping Ping, baseline fadeaway like Bernard King!

Adrian Dantley had a great seven years in Utah, averaging 29.6pts. Is his peak the best scoring for a SF alltime?

Either him or Durant.

An excellent midrange shooter, what made him different than all other high scoring SFs was the combination of the ability to draw fouls at an extraordinarily high rate, hit his FTs, and grab offensive rebounds.

Like the SF version of Charles Barkley.

kcktiny wrote:

Adrian Dantley had a great seven years in Utah, averaging 29.6pts. Is his peak the best scoring for a SF alltime?

Either him or Durant.

An excellent midrange shooter, what made him different than all other high scoring SFs was the combination of the ability to draw fouls at an extraordinarily high rate, hit his FTs, and grab offensive rebounds.

Like the SF version of Charles Barkley.

The fg% is what makes him incredible. The volume with that efficiency is petty much unmatched.

Considering the postseason, I am not sure he is even the best scoring small forward in his own peak year.

AEnigma wrote:Considering the postseason, I am not sure he is even the best scoring small forward in his own peak year.

That's only a eristic move, because King has one of the best postseason scoring seasons ever in 1984 and because Dantley didn't have a lot of postseason series throughout his prime.

That is why they call me AEristic

Absolutely not. Scoring has to provide actual offensive value for it to be worth something. I don't know if I'd even put Dantley in the top 5.

RCM88x wrote:Absolutely not. Scoring has to provide actual offensive value for it to be worth something. I don't know if I'd even put Dantley in the top 5.

Dantley averaged 25.1 IA PTS/75 (career) RS on +8.4 rTS% with a Passer Rating (Backpicks) of +3.2. Playoffs, 23.2 IA PTS/75 on 8.0 rTS% with a passer rating of +3.2.

From 79'-80' through 85'-86': 27.7 IA PTS/75, rTS%: 9.1%.

He's 6th in NBA History with +3109 True Shooting Added.

He's one of the greatest (prime) volume plus efficiency scorers in NBA History. Def one of the top few SF.

Why does everyone here trash him incessantly?

70sFan wrote:Dantley is the real GOAT, deal with it!

What's with all the hate and disdain for Dantley? What are your problems with him?

ty 4191 wrote:

70sFan wrote:Dantley is the real GOAT, deal with it!

What's with all the hate and disdain for Dantley? What are your problems with him?

My problem? He's one of my favorite players of all-time...

70sFan wrote:

ty 4191 wrote:

70sFan wrote:Dantley is the real GOAT, deal with it!

What's with all the hate and disdain for Dantley? What are your problems with him?

My problem? He's one of my favorite players of all-time...

Ah! I thought you were mocking him by saying he's GOAT.

My fault, brother. Still I'll ask again, why does almost everyone here trash him?

RCM88x wrote:Absolutely not. Scoring has to provide actual offensive value for it to be worth something. I don't know if I'd even put Dantley in the top 5.

I mean, he did provide offensive value. There's just a limitation to what pure scoring without high-end playmaking can do. That's a lesson we learned from a lot of guys, like King, like Dantley, like Nique (although he was never really that efficient), etc. That was a big part of why the early arguments against Jordan were that a scoring champion would never win a title, etc.

ty 4191 wrote:

70sFan wrote:

ty 4191 wrote:
What's with all the hate and disdain for Dantley? What are your problems with him?

My problem? He's one of my favorite players of all-time...

Ah! I thought you were mocking him by saying he's GOAT.

My fault, brother. Still I'll ask again, why does almost everyone here trash him?

Because in his key years in Utah, his teams did not do well. Great players whose numbers don't translate into wins lead to people looking hard for flaws; great players who win titles tend to get those flaws explained away.

penbeast0 wrote:

ty 4191 wrote:

70sFan wrote:My problem? He's one of my favorite players of all-time...

Ah! I thought you were mocking him by saying he's GOAT.

My fault, brother. Still I'll ask again, why does almost everyone here trash him?

Because in his key years in Utah, his teams did not do well. Great players whose numbers don't translate into wins lead to people looking hard for flaws; great players who win titles tend to get those flaws explained away.

Just to add some context. 80-86 Utah was 15th, 18th, 13th, 20th (only played 22 games), 9th, 21st and 20th on offense. Over that same period, he averaged +5.6 OBPM (peaking at +6.0). That's pretty decent impact (again, flawed and single number, la la la, just an early reference point). Durant is a +6.0 guy over his career to date. Higher peak, but similar stretch.

We've all had a look at Dantley at one time or another. His PPG and FG%/TS% numbers are really impressive. They perhaps slightly overstate his impact as a player, but he also didn't have a ton to work with. His big second scorer was Darrell Griffith, who put up decent raw averages on limp efficiency. And total offensive environment does change what players are able to do. And yeah, he didn't provide a lot else besides scoring, so he wasn't able to floor-raise super well.

But circling back to the thread, there aren't a lot of better options to choose from as scorers at the 3. KD and Lebron come to mind immediately, especially because they were going against POA defense and not moving as much off-ball while others created, which does change the tenor of things. I struggle to think of another 3 who was anywhere near as good from the post, too.

Dantley was a great scorer but I don't think he has a top 5 scoring peak for a SF. That would go to KD, LeBron, Erving, Barry and Baylor. I think Dantley belongs in the next group with Bird, Nique, English, Arizin and maybe Melo, Kawhi.