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Two of the more overlooked/underrated big men of the 2000's in my opinion. Who do you think was the better all-around player when they were both at their respective peaks?

100% Elton Brand; he was actually good on offense, whereas JO was very much not.

tsherkin wrote:100% Elton Brand; he was actually good on offense, whereas JO was very much not.

True, but at the same time, I think it's pretty clear that JO was the better defensive player. To be fair, Brand was no slouch in that aspect of the game either, but in terms of all-around defensive impact, O'Neal definitely takes the cake.

AStark1991 wrote:

tsherkin wrote:100% Elton Brand; he was actually good on offense, whereas JO was very much not.

True, but at the same time, I think it's pretty clear that JO was the better defensive player. To be fair, Brand was no slouch in that aspect of the game either, but in terms of all-around defensive impact, O'Neal definitely takes the cake.

Brand was a good defender. JO was not a good offensive player at his peak. He was a weak passer and an inefficient fadeaway merchant, like a crappy version of someone's idea of Kevin Garnett.

2003 was a pretty good year from JO on lower volume, though I doubt that's the season most think of when they think of his peak.

And to be fair, I'm being a LITTLE hyperbolic, because it's not like he was tanking out his efficiency or anything. He was just a below-average efficiency guy who didn't pass well, and the gap between him and Brand was immense at their peak, particularly because Brand was such a good offensive rebounder.

'06 Elton Brand is an All-Time singular season Power Forward peak, better than Pau Gasol, better than Chris Webber, Rasheed Wallace ever were.

Playoffs averaging 25 PPG +6% rTS 2.6

I'm with tsherkin: 100% going with Brand on this one. His peak is so distinctly set apart from the rest of his career that if you took ANY other year of Brand and compared it to peak Jermaine O'Neal.....yeah, I could see going with J.O.

But not with '06 Brand. I think people sleep on how good he was that year.

Defense is a comfortable edge to Jermaine, but Brand was no revolving door. His block numbers overstate his actual defensive impact; but that said, you don't block 2.5 shots per game with a respectable 19.9% DREB% and committing fewer than 3 fpg......without leaving a positive imprint defensively (or at least it would be difficult to do so).

Worth noting the Clippers were a -2.6 rDRTG that year (8th of 30 teams), with Brand leading the team in minutes.
2nd in minutes was Cuttino Mobley (a good/respectable defensive guard, if memory serves, though not quite considered a "stopper", I don't think; and not a major disrupter in terms of turnovers, etc).
3rd was a 36-year-old Sam Cassell (might generously be described as a "capable" defender).
4th was a young Chris Kaman (excellent defensive rebounder, but otherwise not at all a noteworthy defensive center).
5th was a young Shaun Livingston (a decent defender).
6th was Quinton Ross (a very good wing defender [sort of what his short journeyman career was built upon, as he was an empty uniform on offense]).
7th was Daniel Ewing (okayish 6'3" defender).
8th and 9th were Maggette and Vlad Rad (neither special defenders).
10th and 11th were James Singleton and Chris Wilcox (fair-to-decent defensive players, iirc).

So there's not many "bad" defensive players in this supporting cast, though outside of Quinton Ross not too many notably good ones either. Still managed the 8th-rated defense. Further worth noting that where they excelled most was in the team DREB% (3rd in the league), and opp eFG% (5th; and 5th specifically in 2pt%, too)--->these are the aspects of the team defense that we usually expect the big men to have the biggest imprint upon.

It's suggestive of Brand having been a notable positive for their defense.


And offensively, the comp is not overly close....
Though they were a marginally below average offense, it's worth noting that he didn't have much help: 2nd-best offensive player (by a comfortable margin) was 36-year-old Sam Cassell. Pretty much the ONLY other teammate who was actually a "good" offensive player was Corey Maggette, who was injured most of the year and was thus only 8th in total minutes. Literally EVERYONE else is a below average offensive player.

Brand was obviously the focal point, and delivered nearly 25 ppg [and 2.6 apg] with only 2.2 topg [solid turnover economy for a big man] and +4.4% rTS.
Compare that to peak O'Neal, who delivered fewer points, fewer assists [with marginally more turnovers], and -2.7% rTS (that's -7.1% compared to peak Brand's rTS [and -9.1% in absolute terms, fwiw]).


I'm also going to show a collection of rankings in Brand's rate metrics that year. I know some posters poo-poo on the practice of showing a collection of metrics and then saying "See?", but I do believe there's some merit to it, at least when it's both box-based and non-box and not cherry-picked (that is: when they're ALL kinda telling you the same thing).

A pure box-based metric may not be telling us as much as we think, because filling a box sheet doesn't necessarily = rendering positive impact. However, it often is the case (because good [positive impact] players tend to accumulate the things that fill the stat-sheet). That's why if we look at the list of greatest ever PER's, it's dominated by names like Jokic, LeBron, Jordan, Giannis, Wilt, and so on.
Even with a stat like that which doesn't consider the success of the team one is filling the stat-sheet for, and barely gives a hoot about shooting efficiency, the cream still rises to the top, basically.
Other metrics assess aspects of volume while also giving recognition of team success and shooting efficiency.
And then pure impact stats don't give a damn about the box-score at all.
So I'm just going to list Brand's league-rank for a few of the classic rate metrics in '06......

PER - 6th
WS/48 - 7th
BPM - 7th
His impact signal lags a little behind the box, but not by much:
PI RAPM - 17th

^^^This is all while being 12th in mpg, too, fwiw (only TWO of the 16 players ahead of him in RAPM played higher mpg).

So those are impressive rankings. Bear in mind that's while '06 contained [in their primes, if not at their peaks] the following players:
LeBron
Garnett
Duncan
Wade
Kobe
Dirk
Nash
.....as well as such '2nd-tier' stars [all in their primes]:
Shaq [maybe just down to this level by '06?]
TMac
Yao
Paul Pierce
Chauncey Billups
Manu Ginobili
Shawn Marion
Andrei Kirilenko
Rasheed Wallace
Allen Iverson
Ray Allen
Carmelo Anthony

It was among THAT company that Brand so distinguished himself.


And let's not forget that he didn't fall off at all in the playoffs, either: he went [relative to the rs] for +0.7 pts, +1.4 ast, +0.3 reb at the expense of just +0.2 tov and virtually identical shooting efficiency. This while the Clippers soundly beat a good Denver team 4-1, then took a near-contender level Suns team to 7 games [marginally outscored them in the series]. Fwiw, Brand was nigh on unstoppable in that WCSF series: 30.9 ppg @ 62.8% TS with 4.3 apg and only 2.0 topg (and avereged >10 rpg and >3 bpg, too).


So peak to peak, gimme Brand.

trex_8063 wrote:I'm with tsherkin: 100% going with Brand on this one. His peak is so distinctly set apart from the rest of his career that if you took ANY other year of Brand and compared it to peak Jermaine O'Neal.....yeah, I could see going with J.O.

Yes, I think that is phrased well. His peak scoring season is just a huge outlier compared to the rest of his career. He was solidly a 27-29 PTS100 player from 2000-2008, and the still a 20-23 PTS100 guy for an additional four seasons after that... but he was up over 33 PTS100 in 2006. He was still killing the boards and playing solid defense. And he was just much more useful as an offensive weapon. +4.4% rTS, killer offensive rebounding, better passer, etc, etc. 9.3% TOV, which is an underrated element of offense with high usage.

It was just a huge separation from the rest of his career. Things become a little more interesting if you look beyond single-season peak, but in that particular year? Hard to conceive of the pro-JO argument.