Post#18 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Nov 16, 2025 1:34 am
Okay, seeking to get my head around this perhaps just one more time.
Some players I'm considering who have made my Top 5 POY ballots (or I recall being discussed here), along with their top 4year RAPM number:
#2
Jayson Tatum 6.8
Ben Wallace 4.4
We see a major gap between the two which certainly does speak to some degree at least about the ability to continue the magic from year to year. I'm pretty comfortable siding with Tatum there.
#3
Jimmy Butler 6.1
Jason Kidd 5.9
Rudy Gobert 5.8
Marc Gasol 3.4
Here there's a big metric gap between the first 3 and Gasol, but I also see Jimmy & Kidd as considerably more reliable as leaders and playoff performers.
I'd expect to have Tatum, Jimmy & Kidd on my ballot over either Ben or Rudy.
#4
Joel Embiid 7.7
Dwight Howard 5.3
Ray Allen 4.9
Tyrese Haliburton 0.7
We see Hali getting wrecked because he doesn't actually have something like a 4-year prime yet, so I don't want to hold this number against him, but I think he's probably going to miss out on getting on any of ballots for this project.
What about Embiid with that towering RAPM score? Well, I think it's a good time to consider just the raw +/- here, given that we know how much time Embiid has missed.
Did you know that Embiid's peak raw +/- season came in '17-18? In that year, he had a +529.
Of the other guys I've listed so far (9), how many do you think have topped that? 6 of the 9: Tatum, Ben, Kidd, Rudy, Dwight, Ray. Only Jimmy, Marc & Hali fail to top Embiid.
So, while 529 is perfectly respectable, it's not actually off the charts compared to the competition - and here I'd tend to zero really in on the other bigs Ben, Rudy & Dwight where the comparison are closest too apple-to-apple. Of the 3, I find it easiest to argue Embiid over Gobert. They are prime contemporaries, I think we've all seen Embiid as generally the better player, and while Gobert's Golden year of '20-21 gives him a legit argument, I do think it was perhaps an even weirder season than the one before it with all sorts of top players gone with injury, and even with that Gobert's regular season powerhouse got eliminated in the same round as Embiid's.
While there's definitely a strong argument for Embiid over Howard, I also find Howard to be the easiest of the 3 to argue for over Embiid. Of that quarter, these are the two guys who their teams absolutely were looking to ride to the promised land on both sides of the ball, and which franchise was able to do that more successfully? The Magic with Howard.
Big Ben, as I've said before is incredibly hard to place. What's undeniable is that there was a moment in time when Ben was the fulcrum around which the best core in the league was assembled, and he pushed them to deliver with the chance they had. But the offensive limitations are major, and there's no way around that. Among the players I'm talking about Ben is clearly the most "right place right time" of the bunch.
Now, what about the perimeter guys?
Jimmy failing to top Embiid is fascinating and I'll note I can't even point to a massive playoff advantage for Jimmy despite him legendarily leading underdogs to the finals and temporarily imbuing Embiid team with a fight we never saw before or after from them. I'll have to think more about that.
Beyond that we get Tatum, Kidd & Allen, and Allen only had the edge because of his Boston years when I'd say his peak was in Milwaukee.
Looking at all of this group, I'm feeling good with Tatum at the top, but after that there's a group that mostly has me pondering 3 bigs (Ben, Dwight, Joel) and then among the perimeter players, at this moment I'm thinking highest about Kidd with a feeling that I need to think more about Jimmy.
#5
Kyrie Irving 5.9
Paul Pierce 5.7
Russell Westbrook 5.5
Chauncey Billups 5.4
Pau Gasol 3.6
Allen Iverson 3.0
Jalen Brunson 2.9
Okay so, drop the bottom 3 from consideration really and we're looking at 4 perimeter guys (Kyrie, Pierce, Westbrook, Billups).
I'm going to scratch Kyrie too, and note that that Peak RAPM stuff for him is really about the Brooklyn-Dallas years, not about the Cavs years. I love seeing Kyrie figuring out how to be a mature player out there with gorgeous feel for the game, but I kinda don't feel comfortable elevating his later years up there with the best on this list yet (it really could still change going forward), and the reason he's on this list of mine is the chip year in Cleveland. But man, I really see that greatness from young Kyrie as fleeting and unreliable.
Westbrook is the opposite of unreliable, but I have to say I have more confidence in Pierce & Billups if I'm trying to build a contender, and of the two I'd have to give Pierce the nod, and I'll add him to that list of guys most actively on my mind.
Others
Paul George 7.8
Kyle Lowry 7.8
Andrei Kirilenko 6.9
Rasheed Wallace 6.4
Jrue Holiday 5.8
Damian Lillard 5.7
Vince Carter 5.6
Tracy McGrady 4.2
So these are guys that are something of a grab bag. If I believed everything relevant to what a guy did or could contribute was captured by this stat, then guys like PG, Lowry & AK, would certainly be on my list.
But PG is a guy who I see as streaky & yip-prone on the court, capricious off, and rather delusional all over. It frankly seems kind of crazy to me to allege these things about a guy who seems to be showing such consistent impact in high primacy roles, and so it's important I keep perspective. George is a great player that I have a tendency to perhaps tier below where his value warrants by overindexing on a particular set of cons.
For Lowry, depending on the conversation I might go in a very different direction. I consider Lowry an absolute must for the Hall and the greatest Raptor of all time. But he's also a guy was still having some major yips issues in the playoffs basically all through his 20s - perhaps in part because it took him a while to be trusted enough to earn primacy on a playoff team - and so when I'm talking about Lowry, I'm talking about a 32-year-old-ish guy. Now that 30 something guard was still a good defender, which was damn impressive, but aloo implies some limitations that, yeah, were real, and yeah, I think made his impact then more fragile, or vibe interactive, than you'd like if you want to just choose him as your keystone and try to win like that.
For AK, oh man, I love this player so much. I'm honestly just happy he hasn't been forgotten, but I can't point to a moment where I ever felt like he cemented an epic season like I was hoping to. I do think he was an epic talent though.
For Sheed, I really do tend to see myself as someone who argued for him a lot in the years after his career ended, but in this context where he's literally being pitted against Ben & Chauncey, I just can't. During his Blazer peak he was probably the more talented than either of the other two ever were, but while he was valuable, there were issues that grew in prominence as Sheed's primacy did. It's not all his fault, but he was the star of the team, and his behavior was very clearly adding to the strife rather than quieting it. When he came to the Pistons it felt like he got to be his best self, and it will always impress the hell out of me, but it's also important not to overrate "the final piece of the puzzle" relative to the existing foundation to the piece is now planted simply because their was high synergistic fit impact.
Now, how about Jrue & Dame. So amusing to me to consider them together now that they were traded for one another. In that trade, Dame was obviously consider the major asset. I - as did many others - had major qualms with the decision, and I wasn't surprised when he & Giannis failed to instantly shine with harmonious two-man game, but frankly, it might have been the right move they had to make if they wanted to keep Giannis, and it's quite understandable that they would prioritize that above all.
It's undeniable that Dame is the bigger star, as well as that he is the better scorer and offensive player, and of course those things tend to go to gether. It's also undeniable that Jrue is the better defensive player and has now joined two teams that then immediately went out and won the title.
In a career comparison we'd note approvingly about Dame basically being a successful star player from day 1, whereas for Jrue it took until his 14th season for him to get his second (and probably final) all-star appearance. I would also note that Jrue's undeniably slow start has helped contribute to the sense that his a tier (or more) below a guy like Dame.
But what's also going on here is that Jrue just kept getting better. He learned to play solidly well in either an on or off ball role, he's come aa long way as a shooter and offensive decision maker...while also seeming to get strong and stronger without losing any agility (until quite recently) and earning a reputation as THE Shut You Down in the Playoffs guard of his generation.
Jrue can't do what Dame coulld, and I don't think it would have been impossible to build a champion around Dame.
But Dame can't do what Jrue can do, and we've twice seen teams become champions when replace not-quite-good-enough guards (Bledsoe; Smart). Whose to say this isn't the more valuable thing?
Well, apparently not the simple metric above which puts Jrue ever so slightly ahead of Dame. I wouldn't cite that as evidence that Jrue should rate higher here, but I do think it's another reason for each to entertain the question in their mind.
But realistically, probably neither make my list despite how much fun I have comparing them...
Finally we get to the cousins VC & Tracy.
Let me first just say that I think Carter was really a great player who found new ways to be quite good as his body lost its bouncy youth. I think he does deserve to be in discussion here even if I think it's pretty clear that I've already been through enough guys with better peaks that I don't think he has much chance to make my ballot.
And then I finally reach the end with T-Mac. We start by noting that for a Peak project, clearly a 4-year metric isn't going to work for a guy with such a short peak. Ssince I think nbarapm actively avoids single year RAPM - I'll head over to thebasketballdatabase has him 13th for RAPM and 2nd in O-RAPM for '02-03.
So small sample, but the superficial read of that is that T-Mac was about as good as impactful on offense as folks thought he was, but maybe the defense was holding the overall back a bit.
Now, all of this would amount to little if we saw, say, at least one run where T-Mac channeled Bernard King and led his team to striking playoff advancement, but of course we didn't get to see that.
What we got to see was a guy who absolutely separated himself from the vast majority of NBA players over the course of the season... but not by so much to necessarily warrant a place here from what I've seen analytically. The competition is too fierce for the slim shadow his career cast for me to have certainty that he belongs over the lot of the rest of these guys.
Wrapping up, I don't think any of this last group will be on my ballot, though I fear I'm underrating George.
Main guys I'm thinking about Tatum, Embiid, Howard, Wallace, Kidd, Butler, Pierce, with T-Mac looking at me with a sly eye and while Westbrook looms incognito with fake, red glasses.
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