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I thought this would be an interesting question to ask because both stand out to me as the greatest offensive and defensive players of their era but I think its fair to say that Russell with his defense and rebounding had more impact than Oscar. So my question is at what point if we take both players at their peak(say 1964 for both) would Oscar be the more impactful player in the nba?

Cavsfansince84 wrote:I thought this would be an interesting question to ask because both stand out to me as the greatest offensive and defensive players of their era but I think its fair to say that Russell with his defense and rebounding had more impact than Oscar. So my question is at what point if we take both players at their peak(say 1964 for both) would Oscar be the more impactful player in the nba?

You mean what era? Definitely with the 3-point explosion, possibly as early as the '80s when offense seemed to surpass defense in importance.

Doctor MJ wrote:

Cavsfansince84 wrote:I thought this would be an interesting question to ask because both stand out to me as the greatest offensive and defensive players of their era but I think its fair to say that Russell with his defense and rebounding had more impact than Oscar. So my question is at what point if we take both players at their peak(say 1964 for both) would Oscar be the more impactful player in the nba?

You mean what era? Definitely with the 3-point explosion, possibly as early as the '80s when offense seemed to surpass defense in importance.

Well if you want to respond with an era you can or if you want to give an actual span of a few years that's fine too. It's also possible that he'd be more valuable in the 80's and then Russell would be again during the deadball era of 97-2010.

Oscar rarely was able to show his full impact. I honestly don't know what he could have accomplished had he had a good front office. IMHO Oscar is Mr triple double because he had to. I would bet that he would ideally have preferred to put up CP3 stats and had competent teammates.

I would say never. Oscar was an interior scorer primarily so he wouldn't get the huge bonus from the modern era of 3 point spamming, though Westbrook showed you can be great without a 3 in the modern era and Oscar is probably the better of the two. But Russell has the great rebounding in addition to the GOAT defense, plays horizontal defense as well as vertical which is only going to be a more valuable skill set in the modern era that very few bigs master even today, and is a good enough passing hub to not be a total Ben Wallace on offense. Plus Russell's teammates loved and believed in him; Oscar's had a much more mixed message as he was more a Chris Paul/Jimmy Butler personality which I believe may have been why the Royals, despite Jerry Lucas being the closest thing to a modern great spacing big, didn't do as well as one might expect with Oscar.

penbeast0 wrote:I would say never. Oscar was an interior scorer primarily so he wouldn't get the huge bonus from the modern era of 3 point spamming,

Worth noting that league-average FG% from 0-3 is up 10% since 2004. That, coupled to the increase in pace since then, has helped a lot of guys as much as 3pt shooting.

I think we all realize that a low-efficiency, high-D big man is an effective player in today's game, but that star perimeter players drive teams more so. Russell's value relative to his own time declines as fewer and fewer shots are taken in his zone of efficacy, and as scorers become more and more potent than they (mostly) were in his time.

He'd still be amazing, no doubt. More mobile than Gobert, who is himself a multiple DPOY and all that, and I bet he'd be a supercharged version of Clint Capela with better passing on offense, so that leaves him probably a little more interesting offensively in this era than he was in his own. But there is some point where an elite offensive player will drive a team further, I suspect.

Far too mobile for a Gobert comp; relative to his peers was more like Kevin Garnett or Draymond Green only with GOAT level shotblocking and outstanding rebounding.

penbeast0 wrote:Far too mobile for a Gobert comp; relative to his peers was more like Kevin Garnett or Draymond Green only with GOAT level shotblocking and outstanding rebounding.

Stylistically, sure. Bit of an edge taken off that shotblocking the farther forward he moves through NBA history, but yeah, he's certainly the gold standard there. Would be very interesting to see how he might have adapted to the far greater perimeter threat in later eras, too.