NO NOMINATION VOTE THIS THREAD BECAUSE 2 NOMINEES ADDED LAST TIME!
Our system is now as follows:
1. We have a pool of Nominees you are to choose from for your Induction (main) vote to decide who next gets on the List. Choose your top vote, and if you'd like to, a second vote which will be used for runoff purposes if needed.
2. Nomination vote now works the same way.
3. You must include reasoning for each of your votes, though you may re-use your old words in a new post.
4. Post as much as they want, but when you do your official Vote make it really clear to me at the top of that post that that post is your Vote. And if you decide to change your vote before the votes are tallied, please edit that same Vote post.
5. Anyone may post thoughts, but please only make a Vote post if you're on the Voter list. If you'd like to be added to the project, please ask in the General Thread for the project. Note that you will not be added immediately to the project now. If you express an interest during the #2 thread, for example, the earliest you'll be added to the Voter list is for the #3.
5. I'll tally the votes when I wake up the morning after the Deadline (I don't care if you change things after the official Deadline, but once I tally, it's over). For this specific Vote, if people ask before the Deadline, I'll extend it.
Here's the list of the Voter Pool as it stands right now (and if I forgot anyone I approved, do let me know):
Spoiler:
AEnigma Ambrose ceilng raiser ceoofkobefans Clyde Frazier Colbinii cupcakesnake Doctor MJ Dooley DQuinn1575 Dr Positivity DraymondGold Dutchball97 eminence f4p falcolombardi Fundamentals21 Gibson22 HeartBreakKid homecourtloss iggymcfrack LA Bird JimmyFromNz Joao Saraiva lessthanjake ljspeelman Lou Fan Moonbeam Narigo OhayoKD OldSchoolNoBull One_and_Done penbeast0 rk2023 ShaqAttac Taj FTW Tim Lehrbach trelos6 trex_8063 ty 4191 ZeppelinPage
Alright, the Nominees for you to choose among for the next slot on the list (in alphabetical order):
I think there is a lot of skepticism about Dr.J because of how he looked in the NBA. But I think his ABA stuff is more than enough to boost him up.
Even if one were to say the ABA wasn't as good competition, his teams were still not supposed to do what they did. Off the top of my head, I think one Dr.J team was upset or underachieved, the rest more or less exceeded expectations.
Even going back to Virginia, they are a terrible club that had barely any money in it. Dr.J took them to the playoffs twice even winning a series (going to the playoffs in a small league is nothing special, but both seasons Virginia did not have a losing record). The year after he left they were 28-56 (2nd to last in standings), which is about right for a team like that.
The year Dr.J joins the Nets they not only improved from a 30 win first round playoff team to the champions, but they swept an incredibly talented Kentucky team (and swept Utah in the finals as well).
The final ABA season the Nets aren't expected to do much. They had a huge collapse in the year prior in the post season, and then lose both their 2nd and third leading scorers due to financial troubles if I can recall. They beat the same team that inherits those players in the Spurs who have other NBA all-star level talent and a highly talented ensemble cast in the Nuggets (who would go on to be a good NBA team with many of their players intact post merger).
Now, those clubs are built much differently than Philly so it is entirely possible that the structure of Philly depressed Dr.J's impact (I think on many levels we do know that coaching was a problem for them).
It's a shame we do not have more advance data for the ABA because it seems clear that Dr.J's must have some type of incredible impact on his teams that he can carry them to defeat teams that should be way superior on paper. Maybe Dr.J is a bit like D-Wade in that he doesn't have the best impact stats but he seems to be the driving factor for winning games in a more crude manner.
ABA's competition whether because it was weaker than NBA or just a "non merged" league isn't really relevant to the fact that Dr.J can still anchor teams to upset much greater opponents. This contrasts the short comings that he had in the NBA.
Even in the NBA though, Dr. J was still putting up big numbers, won an MVP, and led his team to 2 Finals before taking a back seat to Moses and being the 2nd option on a championship team that straight up demolished its opponents in the playoffs.
Even if you completely disregard the ABA, Dr. J's NBA accomplishments are still really impressive. But then if you see that the ABA was actually comparable to the NBA in terms of talent at the time, then his career looks that much better and he would absolutely be a worthy pick here. Let's not forget that the 70s NBA was one of the weakest eras in terms of talent, specifically because half the talent was in the ABA. Dr. J would have been the consensus 2nd best player of the 70s if he played in the NBA at the time, and he may have challenged Kareem in certain seasons as well.
I don't think Mikan, Durant or Malone are good enough here.
This is Nowitzki vs Robinson for me.
I actually had thought I switched my vote for Robinson over Oscar Robertson last thread, but maybe I forgot to.
Many of the points about David Robinson's offensive stats being really crappy in the playoffs are valid. He never really played against many great defenses and still did Karl Maloneesque. The post highlighting David's head to head stats with Karl and pretty much being a bit worse than him framed well in my mind what you get with David Robinson.
And I think that is fine.
Here is the thing. Most of the anti-Robinson post are focused on tearing down his offense. This does make sense because a few of the pro-Robinson posters are pretty much trying to make it seem like David Robinson is a titan on both sides of the ball. The whole "he's almost as good on offense, but way better on defense" argument.
I don't buy that at all. David Robinson is nothing compared to Dirk Nowitzki on offense, just like he wasn't close to Oscar Robertson when someone compared him in the last thread. High PPG and TS% especially during the RS is not a great indicator of offensive dominance in its own.
So my vote is really between an all time great offensive player vs an all time great defensive player.
Is the 2nd or 3rd best defender of all time good enough to go over Dirk Nowitzki? (who is pretty high up on the all time offensive player list). I think...yeah, why not?
I'll jot down a few thoughts/sub arguments that have went through my head. Keep in mind, some of this is crude, because going into this project I would have voted Nowitzki over Robinson easily, but I've been convinced over the last couple weeks of how good David Robinson is. Some of the data is based off of arguments posted in these threads, so I am explaining my rationale based off that data.
First off with my criteria. I don't care much for longevity. So this does punish Nowitzki (and Karl Malone). This benefits David Robinson and George Mikan for obvious reasons. Given my nomination is for Nikola Jokic, I am fairly consistent with being a peak oriented voter. I look at multi year stretches of players primes, not the totality value of their prime/career.
Second, I think if David Robinson wasn't seen as a whipping boy it'd be easier to buy how dominant he may have been despite his mediocre offense. David Robinson is arguably the best defensive player of all time not named Bill Russell. Center is typically the most impactful position of all time, and that is usually due to how much they impact defenses. Just based on positional dominance, Robinson already gives you everything you would want from a center. The existence of freaks like Kareem-Abdul Jabar and Hakeem Olajuwon makes him look second rate, but really if David Robinson never scored over 20 PPG in his career he would still be a superstar. That is pretty heavy.
Third, to conceptualize how good his defense is, look at Tim Duncan. It is almost universally agreed that David Robinson is a better defender than Tim Duncan. It is very difficult to parse through which elite defender is better than others, yet on this board, it feels like everyone is in agreement that Robinson > Duncan. Duncan is a top ten defensive player of all time, likely a full tier above someone like Rudy Gobert. Duncan's defense is by far the most impactful part of his play, and that is a guy who carried teams in the playoffs averaging 23-25 PPG per game in a slow paced era.
Four, we actually have David's impact stats to know that this isn't just pure theory crafting. His +/- does infer that his defensive impact is insane. If I can recall he rated higher than Duncan, though I will say that is because his role had changed. However, Robinson during the Twin Tower run doesn't get nearly as much credit as he did during the time that actually happened. The media had it right, they were seen as a 1A and 1B and that is pretty close to what they were. Similar to Dirk hosting a lot of elite offenses, we do see that Robinson hosted a lot of elite defenses (even when his team was pretty bad). Dominates everyone in WOWWY albeit that's because his team was really crappy. So the data is there to make reasonable assumptions.
Five, David is on the older side during the databall era. I think it isn't much of a stretch to give him a little boost for what most of his prime may have entailed. With pre-data ball era players we work with what we got, even if part of their career was in the data ball era. In other words, I assume that David's best years are not captured in RAPM variants.
Six, I think being a great 2nd option is more than enough to be a top 20 player of all time. Kevin Garnett was voted in the top ten and I am not sure if I consider him to be a "real #1". I don't really care either because at the end of the day, if you give KG 1 or 2 guys who are "just all-stars" on offense then that is enough to contend. I see David Robinson in that light, albeit, his skill set doesn't seem as transferable, and there is a lot more correlation between Garnett and good offense than Robinson and good offense (but this is why I'm not voting for Robinson in the top ten as well). If you gave Robinson a good scorer, doesn't have to be Michael Jordan or something, then David's own scoring isn't really a liability. We never saw David with a good offensive player for most of his career until Tim Duncan showed up (and then they won rather quickly, but that sample is ruined a bit because Tim is so good on defense too).
I am not entirely convinced Robinson > Nowitzki. But as I said, while reading this thread, I was hoping someone might comment on how David's defense may not be as good as advertised. A lot of the focus is on offense (which I suppose is to be expected), but I just don't think that is really the argument here. I think we should pull back on David Robinson's two way play and look at him more as a defensive juggernaut.
Alternate vote is for Julius Erving - I look at Dr.J as a "bigger" Dwyane Wade (who I think is a comparable player to Dirk). He doesn't dominate in the ways that you would think a superstar should in 2023. He doesn't have overly dominant defense. Isn't a point forward or a eyes behind the back passer. Doesn't have an amazing pull up game. Doesn't have a 3 ball.
What he does have though is really good decision making and insane athleticism. I think Bball IQ is the most scalable attribute in basketball. If you make the right decision then even if you a mediocre athlete you will come out ahead. Dr.J finds ways to get to the rim and leverage his insane athleticism.
While he doesn't look as good as he should in Phily, I think a lot of that comes down with coaching. The Sixers had good talent but they were not used properly, I think this goes without saying.
Dr.J's ABA career is enough proof to me of his dominance. Nearly every year his team upset another team in the post season and often had great records despite not having a very stacked team. Even when the Nets key players left the Nets still won titles, beating the very team that those players joined (the Spurs if I can recall). If Dirk's biggest claim to fame is carrying a team to a title that shouldn't have won, then Dr.J did the same thing (and quite frankly, there was more evidence that the 2011 Mavs should have won the playoffs regardless of what mainstream media thought).
I think Dr.J gets punished because of his aesthetics really. He doesn't play like how people want their best players to play, so he is assumed to be lesser than, but it doesn't really line up with what he did. He also is not properly interpreted as a 3 time champion as people often forget that the ABA titles are just as valid as NBA titles.
As I've outlined a fair bit, D.Rob has the highest peak of the remaining players, combining a GOAT level defensive player in his prime with a superb if slightly flawed offensive player. He's just so far above the remaining candidates in that respect, that I don't care about his longevity; he has "enough" longevity that I'm just not fussed. I do go back and forth between him, Dirk and Dr J. But only one of those other candidates is available to me here, and for now I'm sticking with D.Rob. 7
More on D.Rob:
Spoiler:
One_and_Done wrote:Since Dirk has just edged past D.Rob for the nominee, I want to say a few words about D.Rob's impact. I can see if people think he didn't have enough longevity. Personally I'd take KD over him if Durant had enough support, and I can see the Dirk/K.Malone/Dr J arguments too. However in terms of peak D.Rob, he's better than any of those guys.
D.Rob was one of the GOAT defensive players, combining incredible instincts and timing with pogo stick, quick twitch athleticism. The guy ran the floor like a deer. When Tony Parker came to the Spurs, D.Rob was old and slow. Parker assumed he had always been that way. One day after practise someone showed Parker a video of a young Robinson running the floor. He couldn't believe how fast he was. They told him about the time David Robinson claimed he could walk on his hands the length of the practise court, being gymnast in college. The coach, incredulous, told him if he could do it everyone would get practise off. D.Rob proceeded to walk the length of the court on his hands, and the team took the day off. His dexterity at over 7 feet tall was basically unheard of.
Robinson's impact was clear from the day he joined the league. He came into a 21 win team, and turned them into a 56 win team. The team had a 11 point SRS turnaround. The Spurs were a contender for the first 7 years of D.Rob's career, during which time they averaged 55 a wins a year. Then at age 31 D.Rob had an injury and was never wholly the same again, and gradually degraded in impact. But that first 7 year impact is right up there with the top peaks. If D.Rob was merely a GOAT defensive player, he would be worthy of discussion here even if he was just an average offensive player. Unfortunately he was superb offensive player, who even though he had his shortcomings still did more than enough to warrant inclusion here. I set out his stats on page 1.
So who do I think we should nominate next. I’m torn between several candidates. First is KD, who would be my first choice for the reasons set out below. We now have nomination preferences so there's no reason not to just nominate KD every time until he gets in, with an alternate.
Spoiler:
As for Durant vs Kobe I don’t understand the argument for Kobe. Durant was a better scorer, better defender, and a better complementary piece who fit in more easily with others. His longevity is enough that any minor advantage Kobe has is negated.
Let’s just look at a peak to peak comparison to start with. Because KD has the consistency of a metronome (when he’s on the court), a number of different years can be advanced as his “peak”. But 2014 seems to have the strongest case. So let’s look at 2014 KD v.s 2008 Kobe (which is often advanced as Kobe’s best year).
KD: 41.8 pp 100, 9.6 rp 100, 7.2 ap 100, 123 Ortg, 104 Drtg, on an insane 635. TS%
Kobe: 36.5 pp 100, 8.1 rp 100, 6.9 ap 100, 115 Ortg, 106 Drtg, on 576. TS%
KD is better in literally every, single category, and not by a small margin. But let’s be fair to them and look at a bigger, more representative sample.
Here’s KD from 2010 to 2023, a 13 year stretch if we exclude 2020.
RS per 100: 38.2, 10, 6.3, 120 Ortg, 106 Drtg, on 631. TS%
So again, KD is basically beating him in every single category except for a trivial defensive rating difference, which could just be noise given how close it is and the sample size. He’s scoring more, and scoring more on insane efficiency. Even his assists are similar, despite Kobe’s supposed passing advantage (which FYI isn’t much of an advantage if you don’t like passing). The difference in Ortg is insane. KD is just cooking him.
On the defensive end KD is almost 7 feet tall with crazy long arms, so he can to a limited extent provide rim protection and switch on to bigger guys, all of which was key to his time on the Warriors. KD fits so much better than Kobe in so many situations, needing a lower usage and complementing other guys. KD was also misused to some degree in OKC, with it now being apparent in hindsight that Westbrook was not an optimal co-star for KD (to put it lightly). He often played with poor spacing in OKC, and thrived anyway.
But let’s turn to the one thing Kobe supporters can maybe argue, which is longevity. I don’t buy this, because KD has had enough longevity to score almost 27K points despite playing through several seasons cut short by COVID and lock outs, so at that point I’d say he has “enough” longevity that unless the person he’s being compared to is a comparably good player longevity isn’t enough to move the needle. But then I’m not even sure we can criticise KD’s longevity too much. Kobe has basically 12-13 healthy-ish, prime type seasons. His last few seasons were negative value add, and the early part of his career is mostly not adding too much. If we took out those years Kobe actually only has 28k+ points, so barely different to KD (who isn’t done yet either).
But what of KD? He was healthy from 2010 to 2014. That’s 5 prime seasons right there. 2016 healthy. That’s 6. 2017 and 2018 he was being rested and was out by design basically, I count those as healthy seasons. KD is up to 8 prime seasons. 2019? He was healthy all the way to the finals, then had an injury. I don’t dock him for that because it’s absurd. It would be rewarding guys like Kobe for getting bounced out in the first round, before they had a chance to injure themselves. That’s 9 prime seasons. In my mind that’s enough to overcome Kobe’s longevity easily. But I also feel KD added good value from 2021 to 2023. In those 3 seasons some of the games he missed were for rest, or due to reasons having nothing to do with injury; if he and the team were keen on him playing more, he could have. He was also healthy for the playoffs in 2021 and 2023 when it mattered (which is what he was being rested for).
I just don’t see what Kobe’s argument over KD would be. KD is just flat out better.
I’d also be interested in Karl Malone, who has more longevity than most if not all remaining candidates, and whose case v.s Kobe I discussed below. Moses Malone has a lot of longevity also, but I am doubtful about how his game would translate today. He feels like a player who was built for a different era, and that holds him back a little.
Spoiler:
I am looking at the stats, and I'm not really seeing Kobe's case.
From 88 to 98 Malone's per 100 stats were 36.6/14.5/4.5 with 591 TS%.
From 00 to 10 Kobe's per 100 stats were 36.9/7.6/6.9 with 558 TS%
But Karl gets worse in the playoffs right? Um, ok a little bit, but not enough that his production drops below Kobe.
From 88 to 98 Malone's per 100 PS stats were 35.2/14.9/3.9 with 534 TS%.
From 00 to 10 Kobe's per 100 PS stats were 35/7/6.6 with 545 TS%
Then leave the stats aside. Karl Malone is a huge force on D, clearly more impactful than Kobe on that end. Malone certainly led the Jazz to successful seasons. He just didn't have the fortune to play with the stacked teams Kobe did. Kobe also juices his stats by playing alot of his prime during the post 2004 rule changes; Malone is doing it under less favourable scoring rules. Malone has a big longevity advantage too.
It seems like the Mailman just flat out delivered, regular season or not
Dr J seems to have peaked higher than Kobe, who has already been nominated, as I discuss below.
Spoiler:
I've already had threads discussing Malone and D.Rob's case, but let's look at Dr J. Underrated due to injuries later in his career that slowed him a little, and forced to take less shots to help manage the egos on his early NBA teams. However there's really no doubt in my mind he peaked higher than Kobe and had longer longevity than people think at first. He also has size, length, hands and athleticism that let him do stuff on both ends that Kobe never could.
1976 PS Erving: 37.4 pp 100, 13.6 r, 5.3a, 2.1, 2.2, 128 Ortg/103 Drtg, 610 TS%, and a title.
1976 ABA was as strong or stronger than 1976 NBA in terms of top teams.
There’s also D.Rob, who doesn’t have great longevity, but arguably has “enough” that it doesn’t matter. Giannis is another player in this category. Yeh, sure, Giannis only has 10 years in the league; but when Jordan first retired he only had 9 and people were already calling him one of the greatest ever. In today’s game would Jordan really be more impactful than Giannis? I have my doubts. Just comparing Giannis/D.Rob/Dirk/Kobe’s best seasons, here’s how they come out:
So the first observation is that Giannis is the best of the bunch and it’s not close. The only reason not to take him yet is if you don’t think he has “enough” longevity. He isn’t just a force offensively, he’s one of the best defensive players you could have in the modern era. Defense is something that’s hard to measure, but I think we can all agree D.Rob and Giannis are 2 of the best defensive players ever. Then on the other end they’d only need to be solid to be in discussion here. But they’re not just solid. Giannis is flat out better than the rest on offense, and while D.Rob is the “worst” of the 4 in the playoffs on O, he’s still close enough that I don’t know that the others have much of a case over him given his all-time defensive anchoring ability. If you’re taking Dirk or Kobe it’s got to be on longevity. Kobe looks the worst on balance by far. He’s 2nd of the group on volume scoring, but he does it by having bad efficiency which is probably part of why his TS% is the worst of anyone except playoffs D.Rob, and his Ortg is the worst of the bunch on balance (because regular season isn’t worthless, your performance there adds a lot of value). Then factor in this is literally Kobe’s very best stretch. If we’d run this from 00-10 for instance, he’d look so much worse (see above comparison with KD).
Dirk’s high end run in the 2011 playoffs is a level of impact neither D.Rob nor Kobe had during a singular playoff run, putting up 39.1 pp100, 11.5 rp100, 3.6 ap100 on 115 Ortg/105 Drtg, and 609 TS% while taking out Kobe’s Lakers, KD’s Thunder, and Blazers, and the first incarnation of the Heatles, is crazy impressive. Yeh, they’d have gone down to the 2012 Heatles once they balanced the team a little and figured out the line-ups to play, etc, but nobody expected them to win that year. They weren’t even supposed to beat the Lakers, and they ka-rushed them. Check out the stat-line of 32 year old Kobe v.s 32 year old Dirk. It’s not pretty. Kobe had 23.3 ppg, 3rpg, 2.5 apg on 519 TS%, v.s Dirk’s 25.3ppg, 9.3 rpg, 2.5apg on an insane 673 TS%.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
Running the same vote as last round. Am unsure whom my alt will be.
Vote - Dirk Nowitzki
I'm quite surprised Dirk hasn't gained much traction yet! In theory, I could see why people might not be the highest in the room on his game because of the general lack of (1) volume creation and (2) defense when compared to some of the recent selections and current nominees. When taking a deeper look and understanding basketball holistically however, there is a lot to like about Dirk (I mean the Mavericks won 50+ games for however many straight seasons with one key common denominator! ). To start, one key feather in his cap is longevity. Aside from a 2013 campaign where he was hurt, Dirk was at an All-NBA+ level from a 14 year span of 2001-14 (with 7 straight Mild MVP-level campaigns, imo). His box profile isn't the most gaudy, but the team results really speak for themselves here - where the spacing effect and scoring gravity Dirk brought for his time served as a very unique catalyst for elite team offense. More of this was felt through 2005-12, where Dirk was deployed as a "lone star" with some very solid, some very "meh" teammates around him following the Mavs' trade of Steve Nash. Before that, Dirk was very arguably the best player - albeit not as good as his heyday years - on historically good offenses (though the 2001-04 Maverick teams certainly did come with their question marks in terms of roster construction).
As the Mavericks finally proved just like Denver did this past year, a solid defense can also be constructed around Dirk en-route to a title team - where such happened onwards from 2008 I'd say. Though I'm not that high on Dirk's defense and regard him as a neutral to a marginal positive for most of his 'lone-star' prime, I think it is a testament to his scalability and flexibility in terms of building around him Dallas was able to slant defensively around Dirk and have his offensive game serve as a very good safety net (in these seasons, his on-off looks the best of his career in a playoff setting as well. For some proof of concept of his scalability, I linked below how he fares in terms of offensive play-type from 2006-11. A Power Forward being this good in transition and as a spot-up player (keep in mind, this is compared to a holistic player pool) is no small feat. This is without even mentioning how well he serves as an isolation and post-up player in the half-court. High frequencies for either play, in a vacuum, may serve as an indicator a given player is deployed as a "ball stopper" without much playmaking utility. https://imgur.com/gallery/jBDHfUn
On film however, the opposite strikes me as true. I found a great article from 2014 published by Grantland depicting such. As seen on a lot of these film snippets, Dirk is a pretty decisive and proactive mover off-the-ball though not an outlier mover like Curry or outlier screener like Steven Adams or Jokic just for example(s). On top of that, he is skilled enough a player/scorer to put the ball on the floor and attack a mismatch for a post-up or isolation - an area he vastly improved upon following 2007's 1st round upset to Golden state. Dirk's turnover economy always has been stellar, but so was his toch economy per my speculation. Touches per Game and Time of Possession only have been tracked from 2014 onwards, but Dirk in 2014 only had the ball in his hands for 1.9 minutes of play. His volume was down compared to his prime in that year to be fair, but with extrapolation and some reasonable mental curving - I think it's perfectly fine to assume this style of play generally translated to a lot of his prime (especially in years sharing offensive responsibility with Finley and Nash). As for proof of concept towards Dirk's 'gravity', in Engelmann's study of teammate's effect on eFG% was 3.5 percentage points - one of the highest marks recorded across the entire 2001-14 sample. This checks out with how Dirk's spacing would open up lanes for teammates to attack or create hockey assists from further ball movement after Dirk warps a defenses' coverage.
However, in 2003 Dirk’s RAPM scores surpassed Kobe’s to date (Dirk’s score jumped to +7.3 in 2003, an elite amount of team lift) and he maintained that mark like a metronome for the next six years (RAPM between +7.2 and +8.0 every year between 2003 and 2008). What’s really interesting about Dirk’s flat-line major impact is that so much was changing around him. 2003 was the peak of Nellie-ball (where the Mavs had a legit title shot if Dirk doesn’t go down to injury against the Spurs) with Nash and Finley as side-kicks, while by 2008 Dirk had won an MVP and come within a breath of another possible championship in a team with a more defensive philosophy with Coach Avery Johnson and side-kicks Josh Howard and Jason Terry. The situations were dramatically different, the team philosophy at the opposite end of the spectrum, but Dirk’s impact remained rock solid at a level worthy of a reasonable MVP.
Spoiler:
Back to Dirk. After 2008 coach Johnson was out, to be replaced by Rick Carlisle. Carlisle was a defensive coach like Johnson, but by all accounts he was a better tactician and planner. While the Mavs continued to have 50+ win seasons in '09 and '10, they weren’t really championship contenders. And while Dirk continued to measure out with really good RAPM scores (+5.3 and +4.9), it was a step down from his Groundhog Day-like +7.5s through the middle of the decade. Seemingly it took those couple of years for Dirk to perfect the post-game that I mentioned above, for the Mavs to build a team that complimented him fully while also fitting Carlisle’s schemes, and for Carlisle to perfect the way that he wanted to use him. But it all came together in 2011, when the Mavs put on the floor a defensive-minded squad with tough, battle-tested vets at every position that were really strong and their complemntary roles. But a squad that would have been awful without an offensive engine…and it just so happens that the Mavs had one of the best offensive engines of all-time on their squad. Everyone knows that Dirk led the Mavs to the title in one of the more storied “superstar without big name help” runs that we’ve seen. But RAPM also recognized the incredible lift that Dirk was providing to those teams, as his +11.5 normalized RAPM in 2011 marked a career-high for Dirk and entered him into the pantheon of the top-10 highest RAPM scores measured since 1998.
So in Summary, Dirk: + Ability to fit with and provide notable impact in various contexts + Stellar turnover and touch economy, adds a theoretical vouch for his seamless fit to support the proof of concept in his prime + All-time++ caliber shot-making (both as a self-creator and off of) ball movement coupled with the two aforementioned points - Some more questionable on/off playoff data from the Nash X Dirk era and the beginning of his tenure as a low star - As the Mavs did get better at roster construction later on, there are some question as to how his defense would hold up across various roster contexts and how "situational" a positive-value defender he was
To conclude, here is how I value most of his prime using a framework similar to ElGee's CORP Model:
Mogspan wrote:I think they see the super rare combo of high IQ with freakish athleticism and overrate the former a bit, kind of like a hot girl who is rather articulate being thought of as “super smart.” I don’t know kind of a weird analogy, but you catch my drift.
I have him #13 on my personal list, and am thinking of moving him up to #12, displacing Larry Bird believe it or not. But in the 13 years of '89-'01, Malone had a 25.8 PER, .235 WS/48, and +6.5 BPM [for 13 f***ing years!], while playing the equivalent of 1.5 seasons more than Bird did in his entire career. And Malone has other value-adding years ('87, '88, '02-'04 [he's even an All-Star level player some of these]).
Playoff drop-off is a concern, though in that same 13-year span he was a 23.1 PER, .162 WS/48, +5.4 BPM (in >40 mpg) in the playoffs. That's still a pretty substantial player. Did I mention the guy missed 6 games total in those 13 years (rs + ps)? He was 2nd in the league in rs AuPM in '94, 5th in '95 and '96, 14th in NPI RAPM in '97 (that includes playoffs), 8th in PI RAPM in '98, 16th in '99, 19th in '00. So his impact profile lags slightly behind his box-based profile......but only slightly.
And if the reffing gaffs I'd previously mentioned didn't occur, and Karl Malone had a title and FMVP in '98 (not a sure-thing, but a better than coin-flip chance)........not a single poster would blink at me for putting him in the top 15 (or the top 12), even if his playoff performances were exactly the same. In fact, I'm pretty confident in saying he would not still be on the table at this point if those things had happened, despite how many claim team results do not play a lot into their thinking.
Seriously, putting a..... *2-time MVP (8th all-time in total shares) *who is 2nd all-time in career rs pts (8th all-time in playoffs) *and 8th all-time in career rs reb (7th all-time in playoffs) *a PF who's primarily known as a scorer, but who's also 61st all-time in rs assists (44th all-time in playoffs), and made 3 All-D teams *and who won a title as the best player, winning FMVP.....
....putting him in the top 16? Madness!!!
I don't want to get into his personal life or how well you like the guy (and yes, I'd speculate those things leave a small imprint on his ranking for some, too, as has even been implied in other threads). I don't like him either. And while there have been cautions about not telling others what this list is or isn't, I'm fairly certain how much we personally do or do not "like" a guy is not intended to be a component of criteria. The guy was really good at basketball, for a really long time, and almost never missed any games until his 19th and final season. That's the consideration that matters. Honestly puzzles me how he could fall as far as 19th or 20th, though that looks like what may happen.
DRob had a super-high peak and was still a solid contributor (I'd gauge him as at least sub All-Star) in his final season: thirteen healthy seasons [not counting '97], having come into the league a superstar [solid All-NBA level] player and never declining below Sub All-Star (and peaking somewhere between MVP and "All-Time Tier")......it amounts to a lot of career value, even without the extended prime that Nowitzki or Malone had.
For any who did not see much of Robinson, he was an athletic freak, sort of like a 7'1" version of Giannis Antetokounmpo: similar [I think] wingspan, fast in the open court, could elevate quickly off the ground, strong upper body. Not quite as lithe and agile as Giannis [to my eye, anyway], but then he was 2" taller in the balance. Just a phenomenal athletic specimen.
He combined that with good defensive instincts and timing, decent mid-range and FT shooting, a fair/decent BBIQ (he wasn't a savaant, but he wasn't Dwight Howard either) which helped translate into very solid big-man ball-control (despite consistently facing doubles/triples constantly in his prime).
While I know few people here agree, I'm of the opinion that he peaked marginally higher than Hakeem defensively, while also being a helluva good offensive player. This was, after all, a guy who once led the league in scoring on very good shooting efficiency and turnover economy, while simultaneously averaging a team-best 4.8 apg and anchoring the 4th-rated offense (again: facing double-teams/triple-teams A LOT; that's where most of the assists came, in fact).
He was doing that while being in the conversation as the best defensive player in the league......a league containing prime/peak versions of Hakeem, Mutombo, and Ewing. Seriously think about that.
It's a narrative thing, but I'll say it again: the Spurs circa mid-90s were asking of Robinson---nay, requiring of Robinson [in order to succeed]---to be Michael Jordan on offense AND Bill Russell on defense. And the guy was so f***ing phenomenal, that he damn near pulled it off........in the regular season.
Therein lies the [small] catch. While I'm of the opinion that his defensive value mostly held up in the ps, his offensive value did not. He fell from being a "diet Jordan" level offensive talent in the rs to being more, idk..........something notably less than that (can't think of a good comp; Dan Issell, maybe) in the ps. And sadly, the Spurs just never had the offensive talent around him to adequately pick up the slack. Sean Elliott [not there until '95], Avery Johnson [gone in '94], an aging Dale Ellis [gone by '95] and Dennis Rodman [for his offensive rebounding] were the best offensive talents he was ever surrounded by (note two weren't there in '94, the season I've referenced above).
I still believe if Rodman had not gone supernova toxic in the '95 playoffs (and I'm sorry, I refuse to hold Robinson accountable for another man's bull****), and had, you know......actually played any defense on Robert Horry (the principle thing his reputation would have you expect of him), then the Spurs may have won that series, and we'd have an entirely different perception of Robinson (and Hakeem, for that matter). Or alternately, Rodman can still be a dink, and the perimeter core doesn't wet the bed from behind the arc, maybe the Spurs still win the series. I know I know: if "if's" and "buts" were candy and nuts....... Gosh, there are so many little contextual twists and turns and elements of chance in the NBA's history, though. Truly.
Robinson shapes out as one of the very best of his generation in the impact metrics we have (rs AuPM ['94-'96], RAPM ['97 onward]), despite very little of that falling in his prime:
'94: 1st in league [by silly margin: +1.5 over 2nd place (K.Malone)] '95: 1st in league [by even sillier margin: +2.8 over 2nd place (S.Pippen)] '96: 1st in league [+0.2 over returned Michael Jordan] **Honestly, I think you could make an argument that David Robinson, peri-peak, was the regular season GOAT.
PI RAPM [playoffs included] after returning from injury (and well into his 30s, fwiw): '98: 23rd '99: 3rd (1st in NPI, fwiw) '00: 4th Remained top 10 in '01 [NPI], still top 20 in '02, bounces back to fringe top-10 in '03 [more limited minutes].
He was a beast, plain and simple. Lot of accumulated value during his span, imo.
(not sure if still doing noms, given we have six candidates this round, but....) Nomination #1: Charles Barkley Alt. Nomination: John Stockton
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
ijspeelman wrote:I got really the last three days and didn’t vote due to lack of research on nomination candidates. Let David Robinson down
I’ll be back for this thread
Yes. You did. And Colbini & Dr P & Rk who probably would have voted for him but cast defunct or nol preferences.
I'm unsure if i prefer Robinson's career to Malone/KD/Paul - which I'm figuring out at the moment. They're generally the same tier for me, but I'd like to throw out an alt when I'd have a better sense of whom to take gun-to-my-head if I had to pick one.
Mogspan wrote:I think they see the super rare combo of high IQ with freakish athleticism and overrate the former a bit, kind of like a hot girl who is rather articulate being thought of as “super smart.” I don’t know kind of a weird analogy, but you catch my drift.
Vote: David Robinson I think Robinson's defense is top 5, probably top 3 in NBA history, and I don't think that is something that drops off in the playoffs. Further, in his era, and for most of NBA history, the big man had an outsized impact on play particularly defensively. Yes, his playoff drop and his longevity of primacy issues are both real but as a Navy brat growing up, got to give it to the Admiral.
Alternative vote: Karl Malone: I could easily have gone Kevin Durant here if not for his off court issues which lead to my questioning his leadership. Karl Malone obviously had off court issues too but they didn't affect his play or his team until his final year in LA. Otherwise he was a monstrously hardworking ironman who played with consistent intensity during regular seasons and playoffs. I have both Malone and Durant over Nowitzki here, Malone for his consistency and defense, Durant for both offensive and defensive play.
Nomination: Giannis. Alternate Nomination: Jokic Not sure these guys deserve this spot in front of guys like Frazier, Erving, or Ewing, but not sure they don't. When in doubt, I will go with the active player knowing that sometimes I don't give them enough credit for what they've done.
“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination,” Andrew Lang.
Hey, so there was conversation about Early vs Late performance in playoff series, and so I've done some work with the data. I may share the spreadsheet after I pretty it up.
Before I list out some data, let me know that this came up in debate surrounding Chris Paul, and I noted at the time that it would not capture everything I'd be looking to capture. Very coarse, looking at aggregate totals without matchup analysis, etc.
All that said, I figured I'd share data for players likely to be relevant to the project as candidates or major teammates.
So this is Early (Game 1-4) vs Late (Game 5-7) PM/G data in the playoffs for guys I've thought to look up specifically so far. Note that I've sorted by Late PM/G, and color-coded for better salience.
Player Early Late (Late Games) Anthony Davis +2.6 +9.0 (11) Nikola Jokic -0.7 +8.5 (20) Dennis Rodman +2.1 +7.6 (8) Michael Jordan +7.5 +7.0 (10) Chauncey Billups +3.0 +6.2 (42) Richard Hamilton +1.9 +6.2 (40) Pau Gasol +0.4 +5.6 (33) Ben Wallace +1.8 +5.6 (38) Jeff Hornacek +1.2 +5.4 (14) Tayshaun Prince +2.3 +5.4 (42) Tim Duncan +4.1 +5.3 (60) Manu Ginobili +4.1 +5.1 (59) Draymond Green +6.9 +4.8 (42) LeBron James +4.7 +4.6 (70) Kawhi Leonard +4.9 +4.5 (38) Joel Embiid +5.5 +4.4 (16) Scottie Pippen +3.0 +4.4 (17) Karl Malone +0.5 +4.1 (21) Steph Curry +7.5 +3.8 (41) Shawn Marion +0.4 +3.6 (27) Kobe Bryant +2.3 +3.4 (53) Shaquille O'Neal +3.6 +3.4 (38) Kevin Garnett +1.6 +3.1 (42) Kevin Durant +4.8 +2.9 (44) Rasheed Wallace +1.5 +2.7 (48) Dwyane Wade +2.3 +2.6 (50) Ray Allen +3.8 +2.5 (54) John Stockton +1.1 +2.4 (16) Steve Nash +1.6 +2.2 (32) Jason Kidd +0.4 +2.0 (34) Tony Parker +2.8 +1.9 (59) Jayson Tatum +3.4 +1.6 (30) James Harden +2.3 +1.3 (47) Paul Pierce +0.9 +1.1 (55) Giannis Antetokounmpo +4.4 +1.0 (21) David Robinson +6.0 +0.9 (12) Reggie Miller +2.1 +0.8 (24) Russell Westbrook +1.0 +0.7 (34) Jimmy Butler +0.1 +0.5 (34) Dwight Howard -0.9 +0.5 (23) Klay Thompson +5.2 +0.5 (43) Gary Payton 0.0 -0.6 (26) Chris Paul +1.3 -1.0 (31) Dirk Nowitzki +0.8 -1.2 (39) Allen Iverson -2.2 -1.4 (16) Rudy Gobert -2.2 -1.7 (16) Damian Lillard -4.2 -3.0 (13) Carmelo Anthony -3.6 -3.1 (19) Tracy McGrady -2.1 -5.8 (14)
Feel free to ask questions. Lots to chew on, all things that we should be cautious about.
I do think though that we do see trends with Paul and Dirk (and I'm sure others) where there's a slip from positive to negative over the course of series, and I think we should reckon with what we think that means.
I'm doing this in conjunction with the previous recognition that Paul has an absurd number of Fall-From-in-Front series losses (8 times) compared to anyone else I've seen.
I really don't think this is just noise. I think the decisions to be made here are: 1. Is the non-noise component here simply about him wearing down? 2. If it is about him wearing down, as opposed to opponent adaptation, what does that change in our holistic evaluation?
And yes, so folks know, this is hurting Dirk for me as well. I kinda came into this project thinking I'd champion him harder, but I'd forgotten the scale of Dirk's struggles in his early-to-mid prime.
Owly wrote:Okay so 1) If "pressure and effort of a good defense" causes players to drop was established as a real thing ... I'd feel better about it. It seems more like, it seems to have happened in this instance, let's backfit a semi-plausible narrative to explain it.
Is fatigue affecting free-throw shooting just semi-plausible?
Because if fatigue does effect free-throw shooting than how those free-throws were earned(as well as the volume) would probably be relevant
Fatigue affecting anything if there's enough of it is plausible.
And yes the manner earned would matter. But neither is measured by opponent team level regular season defense. That would be physiological and the manner of the foul.
For the broader picture see the full response that's taken from. If this were a real thing, I'd imagine we'd see greater variance at a career level in free throw shooting, especially on the downside. Based on the evidence cited above, I believe it isn't there and bucket variations, like yearly variations, are noise from small samples (in this instance a single player, playoff only, partial career, 621 attempts split into smaller buckets, exact size of each bucket not given).
If you actually do this analysis with all players, look at their RS splits between defense levels because you think fatigue-based free throw team level defense is real and significant thing and you have the evidence I'm willing to listen. (Or if you now find it a compelling theory and want to try it now, perhaps compelled by the theory of David Robinson being 85% against bad defenses and 65% against good ones as sustainable ...)
However my suspicion is that you don't do this and this theory is, per above, an ad hoc back-fitting of a rationalization onto noise.
I said I won't engage anymore, but I have seen this discussion in the last thread and I actually made such calculations for defense faced production in RS for 5 years stretches and I did 1992-96 Robinson. Here are the results:
Against bad (+2.0 or better per Basketball-Reference) defenses: 27.6/10.9/3.6 with 2.7 tov on 55.2 FG%, 75.3 FT% and 61.5 TS% (+7.8 rTS%) in 136 games and 37.1 mpg Against good (-2.0 or better per Basketball-Reference) defenses: 25.1/11.5/3.3 with 2.8 tov on 49.4 FG%, 73.7 FT% and 56.5 TS% (+3.0 rTS%) in 114 games and 39.8 mpg
Don't have pace adjustments unfortunately, but for per36 here are the differences:
Neither here nor there in context of this vote, but what a resilient bunch the 00s Pistons were (given that data, too).
Mogspan wrote:I think they see the super rare combo of high IQ with freakish athleticism and overrate the former a bit, kind of like a hot girl who is rather articulate being thought of as “super smart.” I don’t know kind of a weird analogy, but you catch my drift.
rk2023 wrote:Neither here nor there in context of this vote, but what a resilient bunch the 00s Pistons were (given that data, too).
I think they're probably the best example of just riding a death lineup that I've ever seen. The core 5 largely played together, and they were great, even against great competition.
Makes it arguably the wrong thing to do to ask how good each individual player was - more valuable is understanding how those five, (Billups, Rip, Prince, Sheed, Ben) worked so well together.
Wonder why Wade hasn't gotten any kind of traction
SinceGatlingWasARookie wrote:I don’t think LeBron was as good a point guard as Mo Williams for the point guard play not counting the scoring threat. In other words in a non shooting Rondo like role Mo Williams would be better than LeBron.
Dirk’s result is a bit interesting because while I knew he had a strong rate of success in Game 7s (4-1 is a top ten mark for superstars), he was 10-12 in game 5s and 4-8 in game 6s. I was actually planning to comment on how he might have a similar issue as you see with Shaq, where he may be resilient in a truly close series, but in a more immediately imbalanced series, he has no real path to a comeback. With Shaq of course still being a substantial distance higher as an overall talent.
tone wone wrote:Wonder why Wade hasn't gotten any kind of traction
He was my second nominee choice after Erving last time, so I'll probably be picking him this time around.
I think the longevity thing really hurts in perception compared to a guy like Paul because they are seen as contemporaries, but Wade's career ended long ago and Paul is still going.
I think this study isn't going to be all that accurate given what is considered a late playoff game (g5-7). Assuming PM means +/- that isn't going to give much to work with on that sample size.
But that aside, I am not sure if your impact dropping off toward elimination games really means anything. There isn't much of a difference between being absolutely phenomenal at the start and being so-so at the end.
We could make an extreme assumption like assume someone had some 100 point game in game 1 and then did nothing for the series and his averages might be "inflated" relative to how he helps his team win a series, but that isn't something that really reflects reality very well.
). To start, one key feather in his cap is longevity. Aside from a 2013 campaign where he was hurt, Dirk was at an All-NBA+ level from a 14 year span of 2001-14 (with 7 straight Mild MVP-level campaigns, imo). His box profile isn't the most gaudy, but the team results really speak for themselves here - where the spacing effect and scoring gravity Dirk brought for his time served as a very unique catalyst for elite team offense. More of this was felt through 2005-12, where Dirk was deployed as a "lone star" with some very solid, some very "meh" teammates around him following the Mavs' trade of Steve Nash. Before that, Dirk was very arguably the best player - albeit not as good as his heyday years - on historically good offenses (though the 2001-04 Maverick teams certainly did come with their question marks in terms of roster construction).
