eminence wrote:OhayoKD wrote:eminence wrote:
Could you expand a bit on 'era-translation'?
I think not to much degree, I'll think of how the player may have done in the few surrounding years, how 'fluky' the year feels to me, but not much beyond that. Eg. Julius loses a tier here.
No thoughts on how Shaq would do in the 50s or anything like that.
Do you penalize players for not transporting into the future well?
Russell was the name that sparked the question. You said you don't consider "winning with a 30-40-win team historically special, but it's not something some players ranked above or at the same tier have managed in similar situations, never mind the relative difficulty of opponents faced or replication in surrounding years.
No, I don't do any era transportation like that (fwiw I think Russell would translate pretty well to every era that's yet occurred and struggle to imagine one where he wouldn't).
Of course, not all players have the same situations/accomplishments flowing from their situation. Are there players in particular you feel strongly about in those 2nd/3rd tiers? I have KAJ at the bottom of tier 2 as his offense feels a bit 'fragile' to me. Russell at the top of tier 3, edging out Magic..
I have Kareem and Russell gaining pretty clear seperation from everyone besides Lebron in an era-relative lens and Russell getting seperation from everyone.
Starting with what I think is the weaker case, Kareem's offense is "fragile" relative to non-bigs(ball-handling is the big issue), but I don't see it as fragile relative to anyone else with 77 probably being the most "consistent" postseason performance overall and him also going off against an atg Lakers team in 72(outscored despite oscar being hobbled) and going off in the 74 finals. The flipside is Kareem is a much better defender and adding the two together seems to produce a higher value baseline than anyone else(replication is an important component here though even in terms of one-year stuff, 77 and 72 win-out against any MJ/Magic/Curry/Shaq mark as far as "impact" goes looking at the rs and playoffs(curry/Shaq never put it together for a postseason and regular season). It's not that it's impossible for Kareem to not have been more valuable, but I can't think of a strong positive argument for anyone else that it's "likely"(aka, did more in a similar context, did as much with less, replicated influence here or there) and I can think of the reverse with Kareem for everyone else(ex: a very pessimistic appraisal of 77 working off 75(82 games) still scores higher than me assuming Jordan deserves every piece of credit for the Bulls improvement between 84 and 88, 2000 Lakers do not maintain regular season performance in the postseason and the 2001 lakers do not perform in the regular season like they do in the postseason). Kareem has led an all-time team(71, 72) without a big-scheme-induced improvement(curry, mj), has led contenders with less(55-win full strength in 77 with a 30-win team-many key players)) and everything(73 postseason drop-off aside) for nearly a decade suggests he has a base-level of value comparable to the very best signals of everyone else(with multiple highs that are higher in one way or the other).
I generally find Russell/Celtics opponents faced underwhelming, with real competition not arriving until Hannum took over the Sixers
The Problem here is that Russell smoked an all-time gauntlet as a retiree player coach:
OhayoKD wrote:ShaqAttac wrote:rk2023 wrote:James
If you want to go strictly by year, #1, #2, and #4 were all knocked out en-route to a title with a team that is 35-win(3-5 that year) the next year with the same roster(potentially better actually). If you want to go by era(acknowledging that a team like the 2017 warriors can actually be more difficult than a team like the 2015 warriors), and utilize surrounding years as a reference, 1969 was an outlier year for the era where there were a bunch of +4 teams(in other stretches there'd be 1 in 2 years) and a +4 team that was really a +8 team once they got their playoff rotation set.
The Celtics faced all the toughest teams of that season to win an 11th championship in 13 years. Beating the Bullets, the Knicks and the Lakers(4-1, 4-2, and 4-3) is the 60's equivalent of beating the 2018 Warriors, a juiced variant of the 13 spurs, and a juiced variant of 10's OKC en route to a title. In the regular season the Celtics were marginally behind the outlier-srs Knicks(compare to say the 90 Bulls with a significantly better cast having half the srs of 4 teams, and ranking 9th overall) and then they elevated significantly in the playoffs
(13 spurs -> wins title next year, suped because they're a bigger outlier for the era in terms of srs(much bigger if you use their final roster), (12 thunder, push "14 spurs" to 7 soon after outlier regular season of their own, suped coz again, bigger outlier), (18 warriors, 2nd best player of the era joins 4th best player who led a team that was "best ever" pre-injury, coaching issues hinder)People unironically arguing "russell was just wes unseld" because he did not have the offensive portfolio of a modern great is wild. What Russell did as a retiree player-coach has not been replicated by anyone, not shaq, not jordan, not lebron. Maaaybe you can some case for 2016(weaker competition though) or 72?*(kareem goes off as his bucks outscore a all-time team despite his best teammate being hobbled), but off course jabbar is actually 4th here so
I'm guessing people are just used to lebron or jordan being number 1 and 2, because there is no real reason for someone using "championship likelihood" as rationale to be marking up players losing to the orlando magic or scrapping buzzer-beater wins over the injury-punked 89 Cavs as similar era-relative accomplishments to what Russell managed in 1969(nvm the ramifications if you think he was past his prime)
Russell is well and truly unassailable. You can dismiss everything as noise due to uncertainty, but you can't really construct a positive case for anyone against him unless you take the most favorable one-year stuff(use 2016 wowy instead of net-rating to call the cavs a 20-win team, assume no improvement for the rockets between when they were 20-win without him in 92 and when they were winning titles in 95) or rely on cross-era srs(in which case 69 Russell is merely a tier-2 guy) to pretend the 2018 raptors were a bigger championship than the 69 lakers, knicks, and bullets.
As of now, the counterpoints I've seen against 69 are
-> sam jones was a distant third best scorer on an average offense
-> Celtics won 48-games(contention-worthy in the 60's by record, era-outliers and best-in-the-league lvl by srs)
-> How dare you use surrounding seasons to inform your evaluation(russell always winning isn't relevant, unprecedented pre-college lift not relevant, career-wide wowry/wowy not relevant, team still being best in the league with key players missing isn't relevant, ect ect)
-> Russell was past his peak in 69 and its impossible for russell to have a bunch of years better than everyone else(why tho?)
Seems people place russ at or lower than modern greats on vibes and then dress it up as theory post-hoc