Voting Post 
Vote:
Chris PaulAlternate: TBD, between Dr J and KD. I will edit later based on more research / others' arguments.
Nomination:
Nash I see Paul as having the best prime impact of this group, over Durant and Dr J and others. He also has a longevity advantage over Durant and Giannis. If you value strong peaks with good complementary longevity, three-way players who can score and create and defend, modernism, high performance in impact metrics, and are looking for 'goodness' more than looking at health concerns, I think there's a good case to vote in Paul.
Peak: I do give Durant a better peak, which is helped by Durant’s better scalability. I’m unconvinced by the arguments that we should discount Durant’s performance on the Warriors because it was so easy (when e.g. looking at team performance or box performance). Many superstars tried to form superteams to create the most dominant team ever. Only one did, and the vast majority of those superteams didn’t get close. That’s credit to Durant (and the rest of that team). Dr J also has an argument for peak over Paul: his upper bound definitely passes my mean evaluation for Paul, though Dr J has a wide uncertainty range with the ABA context and limits on available film/stats.
But. I wouldn't put Paul much lower than those two for peak. Paul has the longevity advantage over Durant (more below), and more consistent prime performance over Dr J (more below). While Durant has better scalability, I don’t see Paul as having terrible scalability: he’s a top 10 passer and facilitator, a good shooter, and an all-time guard defender, even if he is a bit ball dominant to maximize next to the best teammates.
Defense: I’m also unconvinced by people who argue guard defense is inconsequential enough to not be meaningful here (we saw a bit of this in the Stockton discussion). Just as a ballpark approximate, let’s look at defensive PIPM. There’s uncertainties in PIPM, there’s uncertainties in dividing offensive and defensive value, but it’s a good ballpark estimate.
Paul’s 5-year defensive PIPM peak is ~ +1.75. Compare that to Nash who’s ~ -1.15, and you get a +2.9 swing in favor of Paul. That’s a *massive* swing, ~75% of Nash’s overall 5-year peak value. Not that Paul is competing with Nash here — it’s just to illustrate the point.
Compare that to NBA Dr J, who has a 5-year (box estimate) defensive PIPM peak of ~ +1.4 (0.35 worse than Paul), or to Durant, who had a 5-year defensive PIPM peak of +0.55 (1.2 worse than Paul). This is not to say that Paul is clearly the better defenders than those two in the abstract or when accounting for per-game value in the playoffs or in terms of goodness. But it does suggest all-time Guard level defense can approach and possibly surpass… much less than all-time level forward defense.
Longevity: Dr J has better longevity over Paul and Durant as well (though we’ll see how it looks by the end of their career, as Paul is catching up). Dr J currently has 29 more regular season games than Paul -- not much, but it's more if we consider it era-relative -- and started off quicker than Paul.
But Paul has more longevity than Durant: he's played Paul has 23% more regular season games, and 20% more seasons!. Thinking Basketball has provided highly compelling evidence that longevity is underrated from a career value perspective.
For this project, I’ve been slightly more peak/prime-heavy than Thinking Basketball’s more longevity-focused approach. My criteria has usually been to focus on career value, but I’ve also tried to incorporate career goodness. Perhaps I haven’t always been perfectly consistent about how to blend these two goals, particularly in the case when career impact and goodness differ strongly. Who do you take when a player’s impact and goodness diverge slightly? Dirk’s longevity afforded him more career value in my estimation, but Robinson’s goodness surpassed Dirk’s in my estimation. It requires some amount of a judgement call, if I am going to incorporate career goodness into my criteria (either in how much I weigh the two criteria, or how I evaluate each player’s goodness separate from their impact). In the end, I see the longevity advantage helping push Paul over Durant and the consistency during his prime helping push Paul over Dr J.
Resilience: Paul has a reputation of being a playoff faller, but that’s not unique in this group.
I see Paul’s biggest issue as health: 2012 groin injury, 2015 hamstring strain, 2016 broken hand, 2018 hamstring strain, 2021 shoulder and COVID, 2023 groin strain. Is Paul really perceived as such a playoff choker if he doesn’t get these injuries? How much of his decline over a series is just wear and tear accumulating? I don’t see Paul’s play style as the most resilient play style ever, but I do think injury is likely the largest source of decline. And I tend to be more forgiving of a lack of resilience from poor health, which isn’t guaranteed, compared to poor ability, which can’t be avoided (i.e. poor health lowers total season ‘impact’, but it doesn’t reduce their season ‘goodness’).
What about Durant’s resilience? I see Durant’s resilience as tied in with his scalability and fit. If you put him next to an offensive star like young Westbrook, Curry, Harden who can handle the playmaking and dribble, then Durant becomes incredibly resilient in a finishing ceiling-raising role with less defensive attention. Put him on a team where he’s the primary playmaker and the primary focus of the defense like in 2013 or 2022, and his poorer handle, passing, and decision making let him down. Notably Durant also has imperfect postseason health (2015, 2017, 2019, 2020), though it’s absolutely not as poor as Paul.
Dr J too suffers from a decline in volume from poor fit in the late 70s, though he was perceived as having less of a postseason-specific decline (one wonders if that was because he had already declined in the regular season).
Here's Dr J's ranking *on his own team* in NBA regular season AuPM: 1st in 77, 2nd in 78, 4th in 79, 1st in 80, 3rd in 82, 1st in 82, 3rd in 83, 1st in 84, 6th in 85.. Now we're missing his best years in the ABA, and like Durant with the Warriors, Dr J had some great and resilient performance with a better fit. But this is pretty inconsistent performance in the middle of his prime: he was ranked 4th on his own team at age 28, 3rd on his own team at age 30.
Regardless, I tend to see playoff changes as one of the overrated factors people consider. Let’s consider AuPM: Durant (pre-2022) falls -1%, Paul falls -4%. Most stars are within ~ +/- 8%. It’s a change, but not really that much. In overall postseason value, Paul is at +3.88, Durant is at +3.89. So Durant isn't quite good enough to make up for the longevity or the regular season disadvantage.
Some statistical evidence:
Moonbeam’s RWOWY:
-Durant: 1-2 samples touching 100th percentile line, 4 over 97th percentile, 8 over 90th, 11 over 75th, 12 over 50th
-Dr J: 0 touching 100th percentile line, 1 over 97th percentile, 6–7 over 90th percentile, 13 over 75th, 16 over 50th
-Paul: 1 sample touching 100th percentile line, 6–7 touching 97th percentile, 10 over 90th, 12 over 75th, 16 over 50th
By peak: Paul > Durant > Dr J
By prime: Paul > Durant > Dr J
By longevity: Dr J >= Paul > Durant
RAPTOR: Career + Prime:
Paul: 196.9 (if 2023 was like 2022)
Durant: 138.4 (if 2023 was like 2022)
So Paul > Karl. Dr J missing earlier years. Durant lower than Paul.
Plus minus based stats:
Paul looks best.
Paul vs Durant: Using Goldstein RAPM for 97–19 and Shotcharts RAPM for 20–23, Paul has 5 top 5 years and 10 top 10 years. Durant has only 5 Top 10 years. Paul also looks better in EPM, a plus minus hybrid stat that’s generally considered the best advanced stat on the market.
Paul vs Dr J an: Dr J has lower on/off and AuPM in his NBA years than desirable for this tier. For example…
in AuPM: Paul > Durant > NBA Erving.
I suspect Dr J has higher plus minus in the ABA during his peak than in the late-70s NBA, because 1. Health, 2. Spacing and ruleset (no 3 point line in 70s NBA), 3. Surrounding stars not being as good fit in the NBA, 4. ABA competition was estimated at ~90% NBA competition. This is supported by the fact that his ABA RWOWY impact looks better in his ABA years. However, I do think this suggests Dr J has certain athleticism and fit requirements to get the Superstar level impact I’m looking for in this group.
Overall, I think these stats support choosing Paul at this point. But I think there's a clear and fair case to be made for the other candidates, and I won't be upset if they win out.
(dating from 1998 - 2012) -
I'm a little generous with the last few KD years, but even having them as a weak MVP value, I still think KD has the highest peak of the current group.
