RealGM

This is prompted by discussions in the current Top 25 peaks project. People have discussed how some players, e.g. Curry or Giannis, have their best regular season and playoffs in different seasons (2016 RS vs 2017 PS Curry; 2019/2020 RS Giannis vs 2021/2022 Giannis).

Which player had the largest separation in time between their peak in the regular season vs their peak in the postseason?
Which players have their RS and PS peaks in the exact same season?

How does a player having their RS and PS peaks in the same season or different season effect your evaluation of that player?

It affects it quite a bit imo, especially if there is more than a year separating rs/ps peaks. I personally have been advocating for the idea of a peak being best rs+ps regardless of year because of this. To me its the only way to really capture what a player was capable of doing and I'm not saying its a perfect way to do it either but it avoids all this stuff like 09 being used as Kobe's peak when it was probably like his 5th best rs or other similar things like 2011 getting used for Dirk because generally speaking people choose a player's best playoff run or one that ended in a title if possible. In terms of biggest separation of time between them you could prob go with LeBron in 09/18 if you prefer his 18 ps over all the others.

I don't parse things in this way (the player is the same...), but:

One could argue 2009/2016 or even 2009/2018 for LeBron. 06/11 or 07/11 for Dirk.

But of course that'd be wrong, because the answer, as always, is Ricky Rubio (peaks accolade-wise on the 2012 regular season, wins Worlds MVP on the 2019 post-postseason).

One of those guys with essentially no PO success maybe - Wilkins/McGrady/others I’m not thinking of. It’s hard to rate too highly when they never reached double digit game samples.

Going the other way - ‘05 Manu comes to mind.

I want to go look up best role guy playoff runs now.

Not to say there isn't value in asking the question ...

but this gets to the heart of the difficulty of comparing playoffs. There's other stuff too in terms of uneven competition etc ...

But what sample do you need for the playoffs? If you are insisting on a larger sample then you're cutting down the number of guys who can be considered in general
Are you just asking their best (average?) standard of performance (obviously opponents will impact this though also opponents aren't necessarily exactly at RS standard for a single series) in the playoffs. I don't like punishing a guy for the team advancing and longer runs are less subject to luck but if you're playing worse I can't ignore that either. IDK ...

Anyway one ... maybe ... possibility for a gap larger than the LeBron possibility cited above ... Parish's RS box peaks in 81 where his playoff box peaks in '82 ... or '91 (Reference box-aggregates probably on average tilt '82 with a clearer BPM win though PER and WS/48 are a little better in '91 -- '82 has a lot more blocks and higher usage, '91 has efficiency by a lot, no passing but a bit more on the offensive glass, a few more steals). Both of these are 2-round runs in the 10-12 game range.

eminence wrote:One of those guys with essentially no PO success maybe - Wilkins/McGrady/others I’m not thinking of. It’s hard to rate too highly when they never reached double digit game samples.

Going the other way - ‘05 Manu comes to mind.

I want to go look up best role guy playoff runs now.

I think the idea is chronological, not in standard.

But if going at it from that angle ... and granting the above ... 01-05 playoff McGrady, by the boxscore at least, seems to be holding up his end of the deal.

As above very hard to do this fairly, very small samples but at least pick on someone actually notably dropping like a John Drew.

Hmm, interesting question.

One could potentially go for 2009/2018 LeBron, but the problem there is that LeBron probably performed better individually in the playoffs in 2009 than he did in 2018. So that is probably out. Leaving aside the achievement of winning a title, 2009 is probably LeBron’s peak on both ends, unless you think he had some flaws in his game that didn’t come out through to the ECF that he fixed later.

Kobe is a potential one. I think you could plausibly argue that 2008 was his best regular season while 2001 was his best playoffs.

Stockton is another potential answer. Probably played his best in the playoffs in 1988 or 1989 and probably had his best regular season in 1995.

After that, there’s a bunch of players with like a 5-year gap:

- Kareem’s regular-season peak was probably 1972, while his playoff peak was probably 1977, so there’s a decent gap there.

- Dirk has a pretty sizable gap too—with 2006 or 2007 being his regular season peak, and 2011 being his playoff peak.

- Oddly, I think one could potentially argue that 1999 was David Robinson’s playoff peak, while 1994 was clearly his regular season peak.

- Anthony Davis probably has regular season and playoff peaks in 2015 and 2020 respectively.

2010/2018 Lebron.

Tom "The Mad Russian" Meschery's best years were 1968 and 1969, but his big playoff run was in 62 when they were openly doubling and tripling Wilt.

Id think the answer would be a player who languished on a bad team in his physical prime and then became a star role player later in his career.

Maybe someone like Brook Lopez, RS peak 2013 Playoff peak 2020/21?

EmpireFalls wrote:Id think the answer would be a player who languished on a bad team in his physical prime and then became a star role player later in his career.

Maybe someone like Brook Lopez, RS peak 2013 Playoff peak 2020/21?

Oh, this is a good line of thinking. Which makes me think that Andre Iguodala is probably a good one to think about here. Regular season peak is probably 2008, and his playoff peak is surely 2015.

lessthanjake wrote:Hmm, interesting question.

One could potentially go for 2009/2018 LeBron, but the problem there is that LeBron probably performed better individually in the playoffs in 2009 than he did in 2018. So that is probably out. Leaving aside the achievement of winning a title, 2009 is probably LeBron’s peak on both ends, unless you think he had some flaws in his game that didn’t come out through to the ECF that he fixed later.

Kobe is a potential one. I think you could plausibly argue that 2008 was his best regular season while 2001 was his best playoffs.

Stockton is another potential answer. Probably played his best in the playoffs in 1988 or 1989 and probably had his best regular season in 1995.

After that, there’s a bunch of players with like a 5-year gap:

- Kareem’s regular-season peak was probably 1972, while his playoff peak was probably 1977, so there’s a decent gap there.

- Dirk has a pretty sizable gap too—with 2006 or 2007 being his regular season peak, and 2011 being his playoff peak.

- Oddly, I think one could potentially argue that 1999 was David Robinson’s playoff peak, while 1994 was clearly his regular season peak.

- Anthony Davis probably has regular season and playoff peaks in 2015 and 2020 respectively.

Robinson played well in 95 PS, which was his mvp season. He was outplayed by Olajuwon but performed well overall those PS in a deep run.