RealGM

Does Gary Payton have a case for top 10 PGs alltime?


Stats breakdown:

Career:
1335gms, 16.3pts, 46.6fg%, 0.8 3P, 31.7% 3P, 72.9ft%3.9reb, 6.7ast, 1.8stl, 2.3tos

Prime: 1995-2003
700gms, 21.4pts, 46.5fg%, 1.3 3P, 32.5% 3P, 73.9ft%, 4.6reb, 8.1ast, 2.1stl, 2.7tos


Among the best defensive PGs ever, not great length prime (~9 years).

Personally, I think he does. Based on RealGM's top 100 of 2023, these PGs are currently ranked above him:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2301069

Magic
Steph
Oscar
CP3
Nash
Stockton
Walt Frazier
Kidd
Westbrook
(Payton at 10)

I would place him above Westbrook. It also depends whether or not you consider Jerry West or James Harden as PGs too...then GP would be outside the top 10.

Fighting with guys like Isiah and Kidd for that spot but a case, sure. Jojo's list is missing Jerry West who I have 2nd or 3rd all-time.

Just a note, reading an interview from Payton last week where he said Stockton was a harder cover than Jordan (?!) because the triangle meant you could predict where Jordan was going to go whereas Stockton was always playing mind games and setting you up with one sequence for a variation in a future one.

penbeast0 wrote:Fighting with guys like Isiah and Kidd for that spot but a case, sure. Jojo's list is missing Jerry West who I have 2nd or 3rd all-time.

Just a note, reading an interview from Payton last week where he said Stockton was a harder cover than Jordan (?!) because the triangle meant you could predict where Jordan was going to go whereas Stockton was always playing mind games and setting you up with one sequence for a variation in a future one.

Payton talks a lot. And he talks a lot of nonsense, too. Meantime, the Utah offense was as predictable as the triangle, it was just well-orchestrated and tough to bust when they were hitting shots.

Meantime, Jordan actually generally did pretty well, and Payton only had 3 years of Jordan before he retired, then came back slower and much more oriented toward his post game, and his jumper in general. So maybe his opinion is influenced by that to some extent. And the difference between guarding a volume scorer and a guy who almost refused to shoot.

I know, just fun to post contrarian opinions from ATG players.

penbeast0 wrote:I know, just fun to post contrarian opinions from ATG players.

Fair. Payton certainly provides in that regard. Dude is the classic Old Head talking nonsense.

Pretty good in his day, though. A bit overrated on D, but a bit underrated on O. And a very entertaining personality in bite-sized doses.

His ceiling is probably 8/9 for me. Magic/Curry/CP3/Oscar/Nash/Stockton/Kidd/West?. But seems perfectly reasonable at that point.

eminence wrote:His ceiling is probably 8/9 for me. Magic/Curry/CP3/Oscar/Nash/Stockton/Kidd/West?. But seems perfectly reasonable at that point.

I think the main guy on that list he has a huge argument over would be Kidd, who was so much worse a scorer that has to erode some of the difference in his playmaking and what-not. But that's not a clear thing either, because Kidd was amazing.

I always wonder how much winning bias goes into including someone like Isiah on these lists, because he was generally much worse on offense than most of the rest of these guys and nothing like Kidd/Payton on D. And I wonder where someone like Walt Frazier might be, too.

eminence wrote:His ceiling is probably 8/9 for me. Magic/Curry/CP3/Oscar/Nash/Stockton/Kidd/West?. But seems perfectly reasonable at that point.

I can't see any argument but longevity (and recency bias) for him over Frazier. Clyde was the better defender, both man (see opposing guard performances) and team, the better scorer (more efficient on equivalent volume), and probably the better playmaker though the team offensive structures were different enough it's tough to be sure. Taller and probably better intangibles as well, though I liked Payton's personality as team leader in Seattle a lot.

penbeast0 wrote:I can't see any argument but longevity (and recency bias) for him over Frazier.

Heh, nice.

Yeah, I think Frazier gets forgotten a lot (though cheerfully, less so in this thread). And he surely doesn't have the longevity or the raw APG of others. But 69-78, he was a 20/6/6 guy, made 4 All-NBA 1st Teams and some second teams, lived on the All-Defensive 1st Team, and was a 108 TS+ guy (though he faded some after the very early 70s). His raw stats were undoubtedly suppressed in Holzman's system, but he also probably could have taken Reed's second Finals MVP and was an absolute demon for opposition PGs.

Also, he's vaguely amusing as a commentator now. xD

penbeast0 wrote:

eminence wrote:His ceiling is probably 8/9 for me. Magic/Curry/CP3/Oscar/Nash/Stockton/Kidd/West?. But seems perfectly reasonable at that point.

I can't see any argument but longevity (and recency bias) for him over Frazier. Clyde was the better defender, both man (see opposing guard performances) and team, the better scorer (more efficient on equivalent volume), and probably the better playmaker though the team offensive structures were different enough it's tough to be sure. Taller and probably better intangibles as well, though I liked Payton's personality as team leader in Seattle a lot.

Prime for prime I'd take Walt pretty easily, but find it reasonable to prefer Payton for his longevity edge. Somewhat similar to Paytons case against Westbrook.

Probably should've mentioned Harden as a potential PG candidate too.

So maybe a ceiling of 7-10 depending on if one counts Curry/Harden/West as PGs or SGs.

Cousy/Thomas/Billups/Lowry/Dame other guys that'd be perfectly reasonable over Payton. Davies if I'm feeling frisky. Maybe there's a window for Parker if one is notably higher on his importance to those SA teams than I am. That's probably about the complete list of guys I can imagine over him for career.

Certainly. I'd knock out negative defender Nash for him. Any day!

I think there's two sides to the game. Gary was one of the greats.

Caneman786 wrote:Certainly. I'd knock out negative defender Nash for him. Any day!

I think there's two sides to the game. Gary was one of the greats.

I agree pretty much, playing both ends is a big plus. Payton affected the game more than his numbers. It's a big uplift for him how his team in the 90s for at least six years was among the best and he was the best player for them for a few of those years.

Magic
Steph
Oscar
CP3
Nash
Stockton
Walt Frazier
Kidd
Westbrook
(Payton at 10)

Gary Payton among PGs all time - Does he have case for top 10

Definitely top 10, arguably top 5.

I think there's two sides to the game. Gary was one of the greats.

He absolutely was.

It's amazing all the credit Nash fanboys give to the idea he was better than Stockton because he scored better, even though Stockton was the vastly superior defender.

Yet in Payton you have a PG that was great on both ends of the floor - defense and offense. Scored far better than Nash. Nash never scored even 19 pts/g in a season, over his best 10 year stretch of scoring averaged just 16.8 pts/g. Payton's best 10 year stretch scored 20.8 pts/g, and 7 times scored 20+ pts/g. The scoring gap between Payton and Nash is far more than the scoring gap between Nash and Stockton, and both were far better defenders than Nash.

Payton also missed very few games. Played a ton of minutes - had 8 seasons of 3000+ minutes played, 13 seasons of 2500+ minutes played.

Over an entire decade (1993-94 to 2002-03) Seattle had the 4th best W-L record in the league (501-287). Got to the Finals in 1995-96. Payton averaged 39 min/g over that decade. Nash never played more than 35 min/g in any season, in his best decade of playing time averaged playing only 34 min/g.

Over that decade the Sonics were the 2nd best team in the league in offensive efficiency (107.5 pts/100poss allowed, only Utah was better), and Payton:

- was - by far - the best scorer on the team, scoring 15,745 points, no other Sonics player scored even 7000 points during that time
- was - by far - the best passer on the team with 5951 assists, no other Sonics player had even 1700 assists during that time

So Payton was first and foremost the key reason why that team was 2nd best in the league offensively over an entire decade.

Plus over that decade Seattle was the 8th best team in the league in defensive efficiency at 102.8 pts/100poss allowed.

However they ranked just 20th in lowest 2pt FG% allowed (47.5%), and just 23rd in highest defensive rebounding percentage (68.9%). So where did the team excel on defense? In forcing turnovers - 1st in the league with 10.4 st/100poss over the decade, 1st in opponent turnovers forced at 18.0 to/100poss. And over that decade Payton:

- had 1618 steals, no other Sonics player had even 550

He alone accounted for over 21% of the team's total steals over an entire decade.

During that time Payton was all-defensive 1st team 9 times, all-NBA 9 times (2 times all-1st, 5 times all-2nd, 2 times all-3rd).

Among all PGs in the league that decade Payton was:

- 1st in points scored (15745), no other PG scored even 11300 points
- 1st in steals (1658), 200+ more than any other PG
- 2nd in blocked shots (184)
- 2nd in rebounds (3507)
- 3rd in assists (6157)

That's about as dominant a performance over such a long stretch of time as any PG.

tsherkin wrote:

penbeast0 wrote:Fighting with guys like Isiah and Kidd for that spot but a case, sure. Jojo's list is missing Jerry West who I have 2nd or 3rd all-time.

Just a note, reading an interview from Payton last week where he said Stockton was a harder cover than Jordan (?!) because the triangle meant you could predict where Jordan was going to go whereas Stockton was always playing mind games and setting you up with one sequence for a variation in a future one.

Payton talks a lot. And he talks a lot of nonsense, too. Meantime, the Utah offense was as predictable as the triangle, it was just well-orchestrated and tough to bust when they were hitting shots.

Meantime, Jordan actually generally did pretty well, and Payton only had 3 years of Jordan before he retired, then came back slower and much more oriented toward his post game, and his jumper in general. So maybe his opinion is influenced by that to some extent. And the difference between guarding a volume scorer and a guy who almost refused to shoot.

I don’t think it’s crazy what he said. Stockton was constantly moving in a Steph sort of way making it exhausting to cover/guard. While Jordan would get to his spots. I just took his comment as that…it was exhausting as hell to guard him. I’m sure some player who’s had to guard Steph and LeBron now might say Steph was harder due to the same thing. Just being exhausted after running around all night. Not that Stockton was better than Jordan or Steph is better than LeBron.