ardee wrote:KGtabake wrote:New Orleans has a better regular season record and they make the playoffs year after year but they can't advance past the 1st round.
The Lakers win the '20 championship again and they have good chances of getting one more in the years after.
Better career, better stats, a DPOY award most likely.
A top5 player comfortably.
Health plays a significant role just like motor.
Not sure about the Lakers.
Assuming that Robinson's career plays out the same way it did IRL, it would mean his 1997 seasons lines up with the 2020 Lakers, which is the year he was basically out the whole year, which means LeBron doesn't have any help.
You have to do it some way ... that said I'm not sure this is necessarily true.
There are two obvious ways of doing this (one more so than the other) and a third that's only possible (in a way that's distinct) in Robinson-specific that you've chosen.
By draft: The most obvious. You are swapping out one player for another and giving them an actual means of getting on to the roster.
By age: You're "swapping" them at birth and their age specific seasons align. This would get messy here for a guy starting at Reference age 19 and one at 24.
The player-season ... not draft edition - played-season variant: For players such as Robinson where they don't play straight away his first playing season is to align with Davis's [poste edited to finish incomplete sentence]. It gains a margin edge on draft and a bigger one on age in terms of avoiding messiness [edit: per above of comparing something to nothing] but loses what makes sense about how a player arrives on a team. How is Robinson arriving on this team he's not skipping out of Navy after his sophomore year (his last potential out IRL) doing the full term and then service afterwards and ... there was talk Robinson could have not signed with SA, become a free agent and taken Kareem's salary slot ... but I don't know the nuances of the rules then or now ... but in any case I can't see Robinson doing that to get to New Orleans.
And in any case once we're not holding a clearer constant like draft class (or age) you can mess with other means to try and get something realistic. You could argue with student-star-prospects doing four years going from the norm to unheard of Robinson arrives in the NBA at 20 rather than 24. This Robinson drafted onto NOH is the age 27 version which IRL aligns with 1993 though this version would be more seasoned but with more mileage.
And that leads us to the other problem "Assuming that Robinson's career plays out the same way it did IRL". Which injury wise with a different life, different stresses, different medical teams, different loads, different training ... it just won't. Beside which, though related ... if LA are in any position to compete Robinson and LA are both working towards him being available for the playoffs. In SA ... with the Duncan draft ... I think I recall some recovery timelines that suggested Robinson could have or would be expected to see him back in the RS ... but tanking/Duncan/conservatism (the latter with or without inverted commas) might have played a role in him not seeing further action.
Then too the alignment ... "Oh no, David Robinson won't be available [if he wasn't, see above] for the NBA playoffs happening in from ...
mid-April to June of 2020" ... well if we are matching these particular years up ... maybe that isn't such a big deal. Because nobody is available for those.
These things being said, whilst one could just happen upon a model that sees Robinson not healthy there are plenty that do. Not that I think these time travel, place swap, ring count things matter, in large part because they can be played many ways. But as I say I wouldn't be assuming Robinson would be injured for his best shot off that one variation (season's played alignment, injury identical, injury recovery identical [and perhaps conservative timeline], non-actual no Covid playoff time).