RealGM Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #5 - 1966-67 Wilt Chamberlain

70sFan · Post #41 » by **70sFan** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 5:29 pm

I don't really know what changed that people decide to pick Curry clearly ahead of someone like Magic, Bird or Oscar. I get it that some people underestimated his impact, but isn't that too big overreaction?

DraymondGold · Post #42 » by **DraymondGold** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 5:38 pm

letskissbro wrote:So to be clear, 2017 Steph's argument largely revolves around his net ratings with Durant, Draymond, and Klay off the court, correct?

That's definitely not what the argument largely revolves around, haha :lol:

Definitely not what I was trying to say -- Sorry if I gave that impression!

My argument largely revolves around the variety of impact metrics and one-number metrics we have, with show Curry is absolutely in the same tier as this group of Kareem/Shaq/Hakeem/Duncan/Wilt, etc. These numbers actually suggest he actually has some separation over some of these players (e.g. Hakeem), and has arguments over other of these players. Doctor MJ's argument (as I understand it, but feel free to jump in Doctor MJ if I'm misrepresenting it!) looks at Curry's skill improvements after 2016 (he made some clear qualitative improvement since then) and using the time machine argument (Curry would arguably perform better in the modern era than many of the other players in this tier).

So then why is everyone bringing up is just on/off metrics? The on/off metrics are to disprove (or at least discount) the most common arguments against 2017 Curry, which try to undermine Curry's statistical and qualitative Pros by saying that Curry benefited from fit, that Durant was really more valuable than Curry, or that the Warriors were somehow too dominant for Curry's numbers to matter.

letskissbro wrote:I'm curious as to why people using this line of reasoning wouldn't apply it to someone like 2018 Chris Paul for example. Not an overly impressive season by the box score from him but as the lone star he anchored net ratings that were unarguably more impressive than Steph in 2017.

2017 Warriors

Steph on, KD/Dray/Klay off: 113.06 ORtg , +9.05 NET (105 minutes)

KD/Dray/Klay on, Steph off: 113.64 ORtg, +8.67 NET (77 minutes)

2018 Rockets

Paul on, Harden off: 117.19 ORtg, +12.37 NET (876 minutes)

Harden on, Paul off: 115.84 ORtg, +8.64 NET

Paul on, Harden/Capela off: 118.18 ORtg, +13.03 NET (546 minutes)

Harden/Capela on, Paul off: 115.68 ORtg, +10.02 NET (827 minutes)

As for the on/off, I'm glad you brought Chris Paul up! I think it might help to give few qualifications about my on/off argument, at least so you can better understand what I'm trying to say. Happy to discuss more if you disagree!

On/off is one of the single noisiest stats in Basketball. It's just not meaningful in small sample sizes. The "off" number you gave for Steph is only a 77 minute sample. That's absolutely too small. A 77 minute sample would be like taking 06 Kobes 2-game sample on January 20th and 22nd to say that Kobe should average 59 ppg in a season, except points per game are actually a more stable stat on average than on/off, and this game would have a higher minute sample lol (though I've admittedly cherry-picked these 2 games to make a point).

If you want to use the full 2017 on/off, you'll find 2017 Curry has the highest on/off of any Top 30 peak (https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/highest-plus-minus-per-game-season-in-nba-history). If you want to isolate the on/off for specific rotations (e.g. when Curry's off and the other 3 all-stars are on), I'd suggest using the full 3 year sample from 2017-2019 (https://www.pbpstats.com/wowy-combos/nba?TeamId=1610612744&Season=2018-19,2017-18,2016-17&SeasonType=Regular%2BSeason&PlayerIds=201142,201939,202691,203110). That will get you a much larger sample of minutes. And again, these on/off numbers might help you show who's more valuable to the GSW system (i.e. who's the Bus Driver

), but I'd recommend looking at the larger collection of impact metrics too when comparing with other players in this tier.

As for Curry vs Chris Paul, I think it's pretty clear who's the better peak player. Curry's higher in Ai: AuPM, Aii: Postseason AuPM, Bi: RAPM, Bii: Postseason PIPM (3 years for sample size), C: on/off, E: ESPN's RPM, F: Backpicks Corp, Gi: Backpicks BPM, Hi: BR's BPM, Hii: , Ii: WS/48 (and total WS). Paul only ahead in Prime WOWY (though Curry's WOWY sample is missing most of his prime), Postseason BPM for 2008, and Postseason WS/48. If you're switching to just 2018 CP3, Curry wins in every single stat except WOWY (which again is missing data for Curry).

capfan33 · Post #43 » by **capfan33** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 5:40 pm

5. 1993 Hakeem
Ultimately going Hakeem because I like his defense the most compared to Duncan and Wilt. Not entirely convinced by his offense, while I think his scoring was very resilient and consistent, he wasn't a great passer and I think may have benefitted from the advanced spacing the Rockets incorporated more than other players on this list. Also with Wilt, his FT shooting is a legitimate concern here, and I also think his offensive impact is somewhat tenuous based on his shot attempts/playstyle.

2. 2003 Duncan
Voting Duncan 3rd because I think he had about as little help as any major player has had in a title-run and basically did everything on both sides of the ball. I don't think the competition he faced was especially impressive compared to Wilt so I could be swayed but tentatively I think what Duncan did in 2003 was remarkable and he offers a combination of defense and post-scoring that's hard to beat.

3. 1967 Wilt
One of the more "perfect" seasons ever, where Wilt finally put it all together with the best team environment he had ever been in around him. I'm somewhat skeptical of how replicable this season was, specifically from an offensive standpoint as it took a pretty exceptional mix of factors for this to come together, but Wilt's defense and rebounding alone are ATG level and the offense is just the cherry on top for me.

After this I'll be considering, Curry, Bird, Magic and Russell which I'm looking forward to. I think DraymondGold has done an excellent job explaining Curry's case.

I may have missed this but if you're basing Curry's case largely on impact stats, from what I remember his 2016 impact stats even in the postseason were quite impressive. As such, I'm curious how they stack up to 2017 directly. I definitely think if Curry hadn't gotten injured in 2016 it would clearly be seen as his peak and would have an extremely good case for top-5.

OhayoKD · Post #44 » by **OhayoKD** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 5:55 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
f4p wrote:i guess i don't understand picking Curry 2017. it's literally a season with a degree of difficulty of 0. a super easy regular season where the warriors were just on cruise control, limiting minutes, and not taking any chances with injuries and still won 67. and then the easiest playoff run ever thanks to adding durant to a 73 win team. and even when it seemingly might get hard, a goon took out kawhi and turned what could have been their one challenge into a joke series. having your best statistical playoffs in the playoffs where you had by far the least pressure doesn't say much to me. the impact metrics always love curry no matter how he looks so i don't see how this season is any different in the metrics overrating his actual impact. it feels like people want to have a curry season but know the 2016 playoffs make that season impossible, so they just pick the "way too easy to matter" 2017 season.

Okay, so consider the assumptions built into the perspective where "Degree of Difficulty" means what it means here.

You mean it is as: How strong your supporting cast is compared to other superstars who have won championships.

Which means you're likely looking at some of the guys who won championships simply because competition was weak that year - '03 Spurs, '06 Heat, '11 Mavs, etc - as if they accomplished something greater than those who actually led better teams.

I'm not saying this to say: So you're wrong!

But I do think it should be considered that not all basketball teams that earn the title "champion" are equally good at basketball , and you're saying you're unimpressed by the most valuable player on the best team in the history of basketball. (We can of course debate that claim, but whether it's true or not seems moot to your criticism. Obviously if another team is even better, then they surely had an equally easy time of things and thus a low Degree of Difficulty.

Do you realize how counter longer basketball history this is? Do you think that the NBA just came into existence and said "Hey, anyone want to play basketball for money?". No, the NBA is the END was the end product of decades of teams stealing player from each other teams and leagues stealing teams from other leagues...to say nothing of the league-wide colluding to get players into leagues or the barnstorming that dominated the game for large swaths of time plucking the talent they ran across in the towns they went to or players playing on a different team every night to make as much money as possible.

Things change once a league secures a monopoly on the best players and makes the fanbase feel there's some kind of morality in play to give their team a chance at winning the championship of that league, and certainly truly equal team achievement with unequal supporting help does say something about individual achievement...

but if you are specifically unimpressed when you view basketball elevated to the highest form (by competitive definition), I think you need to re-examine how you're processing what's happening out there on the wood.

The 11 mavs faced weak competition? They went 8-2 vs 55+ win teams before beating a heat team that was looking like the bulls for the first three rounds. I don't think "weak competitoin" works as a knock on the 11 mavs. They probably faced better competition than the warriors.

I think the problem with curry's 2017 is that the previous two years we saw great defenses completely tank his offense, the following year they were 3-2 down to a team similar to the spurs team that they didn't end up having to deal with, and the year after that curry wasn't playing like an mvp in the regular season and played poorly enough in the 2nd round that being on a normal contender probably gets him bounced. Ultimately the goal is to win a championship, not to win it by a million points, so currys' theoretical value as a "scalable" piece doesn't necceasrily make up for his demonstrated vulnerability when the deck isn't stacked.

If the warriors offense isn't nuked the previous two years by a defense anchored by a 30 year old wing+tristan thompson then maybe degree of difficulty doesn't matter. But as it is, when the degree of difficulty has increased cusrry hasn't been as good in the postseason and arguably those more difficult situations are more relevant to a player's capacity to win titles than the freak scenario that was 2017 where different players probably could have won if not as smoothly in curry's place.

Curry's competition here have all shown they can go from game 1 to 82 and from the first round to the finals without a signifcant drop-off in performance vs teams that aren't completely outclassed. And you can't really credit curry as the *reason, the warriors were outclassing everyone because they were not able to do that the previous two years.

OhayoKD · Post #45 » by **OhayoKD** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 5:57 pm

70sFan wrote:I don't really know what changed that people decide to pick Curry clearly ahead of someone like Magic, Bird or Oscar. I get it that some people underestimated his impact, but isn't that too big overreaction?

i mean bird's really just a worse version of curry with way less resilient postseason play. Idk why bird would have been ahead of curry in the first place.

Post #46 » by **Doctor MJ** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:16 pm

letskissbro wrote:So to be clear, 2017 Steph's argument largely revolves around his net ratings with Durant, Draymond, and Klay off the court, correct?

I'm curious as to why people using this line of reasoning wouldn't apply it to someone like 2018 Chris Paul for example. Not an overly impressive season by the box score from him but as the lone star he anchored net ratings that were unarguably more impressive than Steph in 2017.

2017 Warriors

Steph on, KD/Dray/Klay off: 113.06 ORtg , +9.05 NET (105 minutes)

KD/Dray/Klay on, Steph off: 113.64 ORtg, +8.67 NET (77 minutes)

2018 Rockets

Paul on, Harden off: 117.19 ORtg, +12.37 NET (876 minutes)

Harden on, Paul off: 115.84 ORtg, +8.64 NET

Paul on, Harden/Capela off: 118.18 ORtg, +13.03 NET (546 minutes)

Harden/Capela on, Paul off: 115.68 ORtg, +10.02 NET (827 minutes)

So, you're using 105 minutes of Curry's year during which he played 2600 minutes as if that represents his true level. I can't endorse that approach as meaningful, and that's before we get into the whole thing where those Warriors were the best in the playoffs, not the regular season.

If this is a regular season project, the answer is '15-16 Curry over any other Curry or Paul year.

If this is a project where the playoffs matter, the answer is Curry over Paul, and I don't think it's ever been more clear than in 2022 how qualitatively difference these players are to encounter in a playoff series.

Post #47 » by **Doctor MJ** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:22 pm

70sFan wrote:I don't really know what changed that people decide to pick Curry clearly ahead of someone like Magic, Bird or Oscar. I get it that some people underestimated his impact, but isn't that too big overreaction?

Let me put it this way:

I think 2015-16 Curry's regular season is clearly more impressive than any regular season any of these other guys ever had.

The challenging part of ranking Curry in a peak project is that his post-season that year was flawed. Those flaws are a reason why one might end up picking Magic or Bird ahead of him in general, but if someone is arguing that the flaws of that post-season aren't nearly as big of a statement about Curry's limitations as has been interpreted, I think it should be pretty clear why Curry should remain ahead of those other players.

I will say specifically: Bird is a tricky guy here because his game feels so un-optimized compared to Magic or Curry. You had the best 3-point shooter in the league regardless of height, and he was 6'9" and the smartest basketball brain on the planet. Seems like a recipe for GOAT...but that's not the level he reached at the time. What he did at the time was amazing in its own right, and I'm not going to call you crazy for preferring it over Curry, but I think you'd agree that the full extent of his capabilities were not tapped into with his approach at the time, and that makes it challenging to know how to peg him in cross-era conversations.

70sFan · Post #48 » by **70sFan** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:23 pm

OhayoKD wrote:
70sFan wrote:I don't really know what changed that people decide to pick Curry clearly ahead of someone like Magic, Bird or Oscar. I get it that some people underestimated his impact, but isn't that too big overreaction?

i mean bird's really just a worse version of curry with way less resilient postseason play. Idk why bird would have been ahead of curry in the first place.

He's a worse shooter than Curry, but I wouldn't call him a worse version of Curry. He was significantly better passer, post up player, rebounder, screen setter. His off-ball game was arguably just as good. He was likely a more impactful defender as well.

About resiliency, Curry isn't some kind of resilient monster himself. He struggled in a lot of postseason moments, it's not strictly about 2016. I think due to his great 2022 finals series, a lot of people forgot thay Curry wasn't always this top tier playoff performer.

It doesn't mean that he's better, but I think they were in similar tier.

70sFan · Post #49 » by **70sFan** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:29 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
70sFan wrote:I don't really know what changed that people decide to pick Curry clearly ahead of someone like Magic, Bird or Oscar. I get it that some people underestimated his impact, but isn't that too big overreaction?

Let me put it this way:

I think 2015-16 Curry's regular season is clearly more impressive than any regular season any of these other guys ever had.

The challenging part of ranking Curry in a peak project is that his post-season that year was flawed. Those flaws are a reason why one might end up picking Magic or Bird ahead of him in general, but if someone is arguing that the flaws of that post-season aren't nearly as big of a statement about Curry's limitations as has been interpreted, I think it should be pretty clear why Curry should remain ahead of those other players.

I will say specifically: Bird is a tricky guy here because his game feels so un-optimized compared to Magic or Curry. You had the best 3-point shooter in the league regardless of height, and he was 6'9" and the smartest basketball brain on the planet. Seems like a recipe for GOAT...but that's not the level he reached at the time. What he did at the time was amazing in its own right, and I'm not going to call you crazy for preferring it over Curry, but I think you'd agree that the full extent of his capabilities were not tapped into with his approach at the time, and that makes it challenging to know how to peg him in cross-era conversations.

It's not about Curry being ranked ahead, but him being signiciantly higher for some. I mean, nothing changed about 2016 during the last few years and now somehow people decided to go with Curry as top 5 peak ever and clearly ahead any other offensive sided player ever.

I'm aware of 2016 Curry and the confusion this season brings to the discussion, but most people knew that in the last 5 years and nothing changed in that matter - Curry didn't accomplish anything that would put him out of Magic/Bird tier. Why did that happen? I have one easy (not necessarily right) conclusion - people always overrate the most recent champions.

falcolombardi · Post #50 » by **falcolombardi** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:36 pm

I am a bit surpised myself curry is getting so much more love than magic at this point tbh

Magic peak offensive results have nothingh to envy of curry while playing with arguably less offensive talent (peak durant>late 30's kareem mpst likely) and is not like either 2017 curry or 87~ magic were big plus defenders

Is curry offense more impactful in era than russel defense? Team wide results also say no and yet russel has got almpst no traction compared to steph

Post #51 » by **Doctor MJ** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:40 pm

70sFan wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
70sFan wrote:I don't really know what changed that people decide to pick Curry clearly ahead of someone like Magic, Bird or Oscar. I get it that some people underestimated his impact, but isn't that too big overreaction?

Let me put it this way:

I think 2015-16 Curry's regular season is clearly more impressive than any regular season any of these other guys ever had.

The challenging part of ranking Curry in a peak project is that his post-season that year was flawed. Those flaws are a reason why one might end up picking Magic or Bird ahead of him in general, but if someone is arguing that the flaws of that post-season aren't nearly as big of a statement about Curry's limitations as has been interpreted, I think it should be pretty clear why Curry should remain ahead of those other players.

I will say specifically: Bird is a tricky guy here because his game feels so un-optimized compared to Magic or Curry. You had the best 3-point shooter in the league regardless of height, and he was 6'9" and the smartest basketball brain on the planet. Seems like a recipe for GOAT...but that's not the level he reached at the time. What he did at the time was amazing in its own right, and I'm not going to call you crazy for preferring it over Curry, but I think you'd agree that the full extent of his capabilities were not tapped into with his approach at the time, and that makes it challenging to know how to peg him in cross-era conversations.

It's not about Curry being ranked ahead, but him being signiciantly higher for some. I mean, nothing changed about 2016 during the last few years and now somehow people decided to go with Curry as top 5 peak ever and clearly ahead any other offensive sided player ever.

I'm aware of 2016 Curry and the confusion this season brings to the discussion, but most people knew that in the last 5 years and nothing changed in that matter - Curry didn't accomplish anything that would put him out of Magic/Bird tier. Why did that happen? I have one easy (not necessarily right) conclusion - people always overrate the most recent champions.

I wouldn't say I put Curry is a distinct tier apart from Bird & Magic, so much as I see an edge for him over them. I'll say flat out that Bird & Magic are guys I'm actively considering for my next ballot.

Re: people always overrate the most recent champions. There's truth there and I know you're talking about more than just me, but do remember that possibly the most annoying thing about me is the way I've been calling the PC Board out for drastically underrating Curry for the past few years. So for me, this is less about me changing my perspective on Curry and more about me feeling like it's important that people feel forced to re-consider how they evaluated Curry from 2016 to 2022.

I find it so easy for people to act like, for example, Curry was actively failing relative to LeBron all through the KD years, the gap of accomplishment getting wider the entire time, all with Curry being the MVP of the best team in the world most of the time whenever he was healthy over the past 8 years.

As I've said, this all came as a shock to me beginning in 2020. Prior to that point I hadn't realize how much people were defaulting back to seeing Curry through an unimpressed lens. So now in 2022, with a great shock to the system happening, despite the fact it makes people surely sick of hearing from me, I consider it actually important for people to be grabbed by the collar and shook, because I think the Bayesian updating in their brain isn't sufficient for them to go back and reinterpret the things they previously thought they knew.

Post #52 » by **Doctor MJ** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 6:56 pm

falcolombardi wrote:Is curry offense more impactful in era than russel defense? Team wide results also say no and yet russel has got almpst no traction compared to steph

So on Russell, this is part of something bigger I'm struggling with.

For a good long time I had Russell as my GOAT. To this day, I still admire him more than any other athlete...

but he was the best in the world at a sport that didn't realize what humans could do at shooting a basketball.

In a sport where guys can shoot like they do now, you can't have the same defensive impact you did in the past, and thus Russell would be a lesser player than he was today even if there were no 3-point line, but with the 3-point line, yikes. I say this all while saying I think Russell would probably be the best defender in today's game, but that only takes you so far.

This dilemma of what to do with the game changing, and different players' strong suits scaling different to the modern state of the art, is very hard to know what to do with. I'm not going to tell other people how they should choose to do it - I think each must decide for themselves - but it's something that holds Russell back here for me.

One more thing though:

It's not like Russell didn't clearly have limitations in his own time. By his own account, he lacked the fine motor coordination of the high school basketball stars around him, and he was nothing close to the best basketball player on his high school team and it really wasn't until he got obsessed with defense while playing on a traveling high school all-star team (which he got on because the more in-demand players from his high school weren't available) and proceeded to figure out a bunch of things he could do with his unprecedented length, agility, and leaping ability.

This to say that as impressive as what Russell did was, it's not like he was "the perfect player for his own period and I'm criticizing him for something utterly irrelevant to his time". He found a cheat code that people didn't realize existed before, which then ended up driving the game to focus more on outside shooting, which then naturally would reduce the cheat code's effectiveness today.

Make of all that what you will in terms of a GOAT list, but Russell's career should be understood first and foremost in terms of the new things he brought to the game, and the new things that then emerged in his wake.

70sFan · Post #53 » by **70sFan** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 7:21 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
70sFan wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
Let me put it this way:

I think 2015-16 Curry's regular season is clearly more impressive than any regular season any of these other guys ever had.

The challenging part of ranking Curry in a peak project is that his post-season that year was flawed. Those flaws are a reason why one might end up picking Magic or Bird ahead of him in general, but if someone is arguing that the flaws of that post-season aren't nearly as big of a statement about Curry's limitations as has been interpreted, I think it should be pretty clear why Curry should remain ahead of those other players.

I will say specifically: Bird is a tricky guy here because his game feels so un-optimized compared to Magic or Curry. You had the best 3-point shooter in the league regardless of height, and he was 6'9" and the smartest basketball brain on the planet. Seems like a recipe for GOAT...but that's not the level he reached at the time. What he did at the time was amazing in its own right, and I'm not going to call you crazy for preferring it over Curry, but I think you'd agree that the full extent of his capabilities were not tapped into with his approach at the time, and that makes it challenging to know how to peg him in cross-era conversations.

It's not about Curry being ranked ahead, but him being signiciantly higher for some. I mean, nothing changed about 2016 during the last few years and now somehow people decided to go with Curry as top 5 peak ever and clearly ahead any other offensive sided player ever.

I'm aware of 2016 Curry and the confusion this season brings to the discussion, but most people knew that in the last 5 years and nothing changed in that matter - Curry didn't accomplish anything that would put him out of Magic/Bird tier. Why did that happen? I have one easy (not necessarily right) conclusion - people always overrate the most recent champions.

I wouldn't say I put Curry is a distinct tier apart from Bird & Magic, so much as I see an edge for him over them. I'll say flat out that Bird & Magic are guys I'm actively considering for my next ballot.

Re: people always overrate the most recent champions. There's truth there and I know you're talking about more than just me, but do remember that possibly the most annoying thing about me is the way I've been calling the PC Board out for drastically underrating Curry for the past few years. So for me, this is less about me changing my perspective on Curry and more about me feeling like it's important that people feel forced to re-consider how they evaluated Curry from 2016 to 2022.

I find it so easy for people to act like, for example, Curry was actively failing relative to LeBron all through the KD years, the gap of accomplishment getting wider the entire time, all with Curry being the MVP of the best team in the world most of the time whenever he was healthy over the past 8 years.

As I've said, this all came as a shock to me beginning in 2020. Prior to that point I hadn't realize how much people were defaulting back to seeing Curry through an unimpressed lens. So now in 2022, with a great shock to the system happening, despite the fact it makes people surely sick of hearing from me, I consider it actually important for people to be grabbed by the collar and shook, because I think the Bayesian updating in their brain isn't sufficient for them to go back and reinterpret the things they previously thought they knew.

Fair enough, but you are not one of the posters I talked about. You were always higher on Curry than on Magic (compared to me).

70sFan · Post #54 » by **70sFan** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 7:31 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
falcolombardi wrote:Is curry offense more impactful in era than russel defense? Team wide results also say no and yet russel has got almpst no traction compared to steph

So on Russell, this is part of something bigger I'm struggling with.

For a good long time I had Russell as my GOAT. To this day, I still admire him more than any other athlete...

but he was the best in the world at a sport that didn't realize what humans could do at shooting a basketball.

In a sport where guys can shoot like they do now, you can't have the same defensive impact you did in the past, and thus Russell would be a lesser player than he was today even if there were no 3-point line, but with the 3-point line, yikes. I say this all while saying I think Russell would probably be the best defender in today's game, but that only takes you so far.

This dilemma of what to do with the game changing, and different players' strong suits scaling different to the modern state of the art, is very hard to know what to do with. I'm not going to tell other people how they should choose to do it - I think each must decide for themselves - but it's something that holds Russell back here for me.

One more thing though:

It's not like Russell didn't clearly have limitations in his own time. By his own account, he lacked the fine motor coordination of the high school basketball stars around him, and he was nothing close to the best basketball player on his high school team and it really wasn't until he got obsessed with defense while playing on a traveling high school all-star team (which he got on because the more in-demand players from his high school weren't available) and proceeded to figure out a bunch of things he could do with his unprecedented length, agility, and leaping ability.

This to say that as impressive as what Russell did was, it's not like he was "the perfect player for his own period and I'm criticizing him for something utterly irrelevant to his time". He found a cheat code that people didn't realize existed before, which then ended up driving the game to focus more on outside shooting, which then naturally would reduce the cheat code's effectiveness today.

Make of all that what you will in terms of a GOAT list, but Russell's career should be understood first and foremost in terms of the new things he brought to the game, and the new things that then emerged in his wake.

Do you think a three point shooting revolution would happen without three point line?

DraymondGold · Post #55 » by **DraymondGold** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 7:32 pm

Some discussion on Wilt > Hakeem ~ Russell. First, the stats:

Spoiler:

What year for Wilt? For 1964 Wilt vs 1967, 67 Wilt wins in 3/5 stats. It’s definitely close, but the only stat 64 Wilt wins are regular season and postseason Winshares, which are possibly the least trusted stat in this group (they’re the least effective at predicting future wins). I go 67, particularly when we also consider the improved portability/scalability and the greater postseason difficulty.

Wilt > Hakeem: We lack many of the best metrics for Wilt and Hakeem. From what we do have, 1967 Wilt beats 1994 Hakeem in 6/6 stats, and in 2/2 playoff-only stats. If we add 1993 Hakeem to the mix, Wilt wins in 5/6 stats (only falling behind in Corp, which is Ben Taylor’s personal evaluation. At least by the stats we have, 67 Wilt > 93/94 Hakeem.
Contextual factors:

Spoiler:

1. Scalability: Wilt > Hakeem. Here, Wilt clearly wins over Hakeem. The Dream's large passing and rebounding disadvantage makes his peak a worse fit as an offensive ceiling raiser compared to Wilt.
2. Resilience: Wilt ~ Hakeem? People will default to Hakeem in resilience conversations, but 67 is one of Wilt's best playoff years, and he comes out on top in the two playoff-only metrics we have. I also think just looking at changes to BPM or WS or AuPM (if we had it) from the regular season to the playoffs greatly undersells Wilt's difficulty advantage over Hakeem. Wilt spent 75% of those playoffs facing the GOAT defender ever and the GOAT Big Man man-defender ever. Even if Hakeem improves more in the playoffs in an average year, Wilt's performance against that level of defensive opposition makes it hard for me to see this as a clear advantage to Hakeem.
3. Health. N/A
4. Defense. Do the metrics underrate either of their defensive values? Possibly. I have Hakeem as the better defender in a vacuum, but Wilt was still a top 10 defender ever. Plus, Hakeem's relatively pedestrian performance (by all-time standards) in the limited impact stats we have that should capture his defensive value (RAPM, PIPM, etc.) makes me wonder whether the Box stats are really underrating Hakeem that much, or whether the defensive gap with Wilt is as large as people say (at least relative to their own era).
5. Fit. Hard to know. Wilt's coaching fit this year was fantastic. At the same time, Hakeem had fantastic fit by being surrounded by 3 point shooters, which minimized his passing disadvantage and made it harder to double his ISO scoring attempts.
6. Time machine. Hard to know. I think Hakeem would do better as a defender if brought into the modern era, and his scoring range might be better him offensively, but his passing disadvantage is pretty severe. Wilt on the other hand would probably improve with better coaching and statistics, which might help him find a better balance between his scoring/creation/defensive value.

Russell ~ Hakeem: As for 1994 Hakeem vs peak Russell (what year?), it’s much closer. 62 and 65 Russell barely edge out 94 Hakeem in these stats, while 64 Russell equals 94 Hakeem in these stats. If we look at a larger sample (62/64/65 Russell vs 93-95 Hakeem), they’re tied 3-3 in these stats.
Do the contextual factors help us decide?

Spoiler:

1. Scalability. Russell's clearly the more scalable player. His passing and willingness to be the "glue guy" and do "whatever it takes" on offense scales better than Hakeem's preference for ball-dominant iso scoring
2. Resilience: ? Not sure who wins here. Traditional narratives favor Hakeem as improving more in the playoffs. That said, I personally just don't know enough about how Russell changed in the playoffs. The playoff-only stats aren't conclusive. I would be inclined to say Hakeem improved more, but Russell's team had a 10-0 record in Game 7s and a 22-0 record in elimination games (https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/l81hr6/its_pretty_well_known_that_bill_russell_was_210/). That's just crazy!
3. Health. N/A
4. Defense: Are any of the metrics underrating their defense? Possibly, but I tend to say this favors Russell > Hakeem. The fact that Russell is so high above the rest in WOWY (our only plus/minus-like stat for him), while being clearly a step below in the Box Plus Minus stats makes me wonder whether BPM underrates Russell. Russell’s value comes from the defensive end more than any other all-time peak, and BPM stats tend to underrate defense, especially when we’re lacking Russell’s defensive box stats. Our more advanced stats for Hakeem that should capture defensive value better (RAPM, PIPM) don't make him seem tremendously underrated here.
5. Fit. Hard to know, given the era differences.
6. Time machine. Hakeem > Russell. I think Russell would clearly be the better defender in any era by a bit, but Hakeem's offensive advantage in future eras is pretty strong. Russell would have to change his game a fair bit, modeling it after some combination of Giannis (in transition and as a roll-man) or Draymond (with half-court passing at the elbow), and overall greatly improving his scoring efficiency. Could he do it? Well, he is Bill Russell... he was a GOAT (or near-GOAT) level athlete and basketball mind. But it's far from a given that this transition would work, or that it would work well enough to close the gap with Hakeem offensively.

Let me know if people have arguments for Hakeem vs Bill Russell! I'd love to hear people's thoughts.

f4p · Post #56 » by **f4p** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 7:43 pm

Colbinii wrote:I think if Curry had stayed healthy in 2016 he would have been a clearly argued as a Top 5 peak--but he didn't.

and that was the crux of my first post. people who like curry really want him to have a top peak season but he didn't play well in the 2016 playoffs so now we're just pretending 2017 curry is up there with the greatest peaks.

Then Durant joined the Warriors and it was difficult to assess Curry since he team was the most talented and loaded in NBA History and people assumed Curry wasn't replicating anything close to his 2016 levels because of Box-Scores but more importantly, Kevin Durant.

Now, we see Curry dominate in the post-season again and it allows many people to look back at 2017 and say "Hey look, Curry was actually on a similar level as 2016 and stayed relatively healthy."

Hindsight and things we learn in the now can affect how we view things from the past.

but did he really dominate in these playoffs? at least at a level above what he's done before that would warrant a change in peak ratings? it felt like 2015. golden state once again had the best defense in the league to make them very difficult to score on (see boston not cracking 100 in the last 3 games much like cleveland when the warriors were down 2-1), clearly had the better team in all of their matchups, and steph had a very good but hardly amazing playoffs (at least by counting/conventional advanced stats compared to any of his other runs) where the warriors won basically as expected. it would have taken a fairly disappointing playoffs from steph to not have won, just like in 2015. so i don't see why this suddenly elevates 2017.

even ignoring that the 2017 regular season was the chillest season ever, allowing the warriors to stay fresh for the playoffs in a way a lot of these other peak guys couldn't afford to rest, it must say something that steph's best statistical playoffs come in by far his most stress-free playoffs, with nary an important game to be seen. we're basically rewarding someone without a great playoff vs regular season history for finally having a great playoffs with no pressure and no stress.

DraymondGold · Post #57 » by **DraymondGold** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 7:57 pm

Some discussion on Hakeem vs Duncan vs KG. First, the stats:

Spoiler:

Duncan > Hakeem: Duncan beats Hakeem by 9 stats to 2, with 1 tie (Prime WOWY). Duncan wins 5/6 of the more trusted stats, and wins 5/5 of the postseason-only stats. Do the contextual factors (Scalability, Resilience, Health, Defensive value being missed by the metrics, Fit, Time Machine) change anything? Not enough to make a difference. I think Duncan wins this.

Duncan vs KG: They’re tied 3-3 in the most trusted metrics. KG wins 8-6 in the total metrics, while Duncan wins 5/5 in the playoff-only metrics. This is very close, but statistically I think Duncan's resilience is slightly favored. Do the Contextual Factors (Scalability, Resilience, Health, Defensive value being missed by the metrics, Fit, Time Machine) change anything? Maybe! Duncan is again more Resilient, but I have KG as clearly mores scalable, with worse fit (which would undermine his metrics), and KG would improve more in a time machine. Health is a wash, and it’s hard to know who’s more underrated defensively in the Box one-number metrics.
 Here, I think it comes down to whether you like KG’s scalability/fit/time machine argument more than Duncan’s resilience. Anyway, I’d love to hear people’s thoughts!

Post #58 » by **Doctor MJ** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 7:58 pm

OhayoKD wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
f4p wrote:i guess i don't understand picking Curry 2017. it's literally a season with a degree of difficulty of 0. a super easy regular season where the warriors were just on cruise control, limiting minutes, and not taking any chances with injuries and still won 67. and then the easiest playoff run ever thanks to adding durant to a 73 win team. and even when it seemingly might get hard, a goon took out kawhi and turned what could have been their one challenge into a joke series. having your best statistical playoffs in the playoffs where you had by far the least pressure doesn't say much to me. the impact metrics always love curry no matter how he looks so i don't see how this season is any different in the metrics overrating his actual impact. it feels like people want to have a curry season but know the 2016 playoffs make that season impossible, so they just pick the "way too easy to matter" 2017 season.

Okay, so consider the assumptions built into the perspective where "Degree of Difficulty" means what it means here.

You mean it is as: How strong your supporting cast is compared to other superstars who have won championships.

Which means you're likely looking at some of the guys who won championships simply because competition was weak that year - '03 Spurs, '06 Heat, '11 Mavs, etc - as if they accomplished something greater than those who actually led better teams.

I'm not saying this to say: So you're wrong!

But I do think it should be considered that not all basketball teams that earn the title "champion" are equally good at basketball , and you're saying you're unimpressed by the most valuable player on the best team in the history of basketball. (We can of course debate that claim, but whether it's true or not seems moot to your criticism. Obviously if another team is even better, then they surely had an equally easy time of things and thus a low Degree of Difficulty.

Do you realize how counter longer basketball history this is? Do you think that the NBA just came into existence and said "Hey, anyone want to play basketball for money?". No, the NBA is the END was the end product of decades of teams stealing player from each other teams and leagues stealing teams from other leagues...to say nothing of the league-wide colluding to get players into leagues or the barnstorming that dominated the game for large swaths of time plucking the talent they ran across in the towns they went to or players playing on a different team every night to make as much money as possible.

Things change once a league secures a monopoly on the best players and makes the fanbase feel there's some kind of morality in play to give their team a chance at winning the championship of that league, and certainly truly equal team achievement with unequal supporting help does say something about individual achievement...

but if you are specifically unimpressed when you view basketball elevated to the highest form (by competitive definition), I think you need to re-examine how you're processing what's happening out there on the wood.

The 11 mavs faced weak competition? They went 8-2 vs 55+ win teams before beating a heat team that was looking like the bulls for the first three rounds. I don't think "weak competitoin" works as a knock on the 11 mavs. They probably faced better competition than the warriors.

I think the problem with curry's 2017 is that the previous two years we saw great defenses completely tank his offense, the following year they were 3-2 down to a team similar to the spurs team that they didn't end up having to deal with, and the year after that curry wasn't playing like an mvp in the regular season and played poorly enough in the 2nd round that being on a normal contender probably gets him bounced. Ultimately the goal is to win a championship, not to win it by a million points, so currys' theoretical value as a "scalable" piece doesn't necceasrily make up for his demonstrated vulnerability when the deck isn't stacked.

If the warriors offense isn't nuked the previous two years by a defense anchored by a 30 year old wing+tristan thompson then maybe degree of difficulty doesn't matter. But as it is, when the degree of difficulty has increased cusrry hasn't been as good in the postseason and arguably those more difficult situations are more relevant to a player's capacity to win titles than the freak scenario that was 2017 where different players probably could have won if not as smoothly in curry's place.

Curry's competition here have all shown they can go from game 1 to 82 and from the first round to the finals without a signifcant drop-off in performance vs teams that aren't completely outclassed. And you can't really credit curry as the *reason, the warriors were outclassing everyone because they were not able to do that the previous two years.

Do you think the '11 Mavs beat the '09 or '10 Lakers? I don't.
Do you think the '11 Mavs beat the '12 or '13 Heat? I don't.
Do you think the '09 or '10 Lakers or '12 or '13 Heat would win titles today? I don't.

Re: "previous two years completely tank his offense". First off that's not true and something I've been trying to get people to understand recently.

People seem to have gotten the idea that they can look at raw ORtg numbers for teams in the playoffs and if those numbers are lower than the regular season, then they were "shut down", but that's not a reasonable way to look at things.

An essential part of judging a playoff offense that has deep playoff runs is to compare that team's ORtg to other team's ORtg against the same opponent. That alone doesn't tell the full story of course, but if you're not doing this, you haven't actually scratched the surface.

Leaving aside the Durant years when he played, this is the Warrior playoff track record in the 8 years of Kerr's time there:

2015 - better ORtg than all others against all of their playoff opponents.
2016 - 2 exception to bring up in a second.
2019 - better ORtg than all others against all of their playoff opponents.
2022 - 1 exception to bring up in a second.

What are those 3 exceptions:

in 2016, the Pistons had a higher ORtg against the Cavs than the Warriors did. However, the Pistons lost every game of the series, and in the regular season had a below average ORtg this year, just like they now have for the past 11 years (hell of a streak), so I don't think anyone should be wanting to argue that the Pistons were more impressive as a playoff offense than the Warriors.

In 2016, the Spurs had a higher ORtg against the Thunder than the Warriors did. Those Spurs were a 67-15 juggernaut that rightly should be seen as one of 4 champion level teams that, for example, would have destroyed the 2011 Mavs, so they are a serious threat...but the Spurs only have the higher ORtg because of a great Game 1. If you look at the ORtgs deeper in the series, it's the Warriors easily.

In 2022, the Nets had a higher ORtg against the Celtics than the Warriors did. Those Nets despite losing every game deserve offensive respect but it should be remembered that they played a Celtic team without Robert Williams. The Warriors actually had a better ORtg in the Williams-less minutes than the Nets did, and Curry had a higher ORtg than KD did in their respective Celtic series even ignoring the higher degree of difficulty of Williams.

So literally, the 3 exceptions we're talking about, not really really damning exceptions. By and large these past 8 years, when Curry's been playing in the playoffs, we've seen him lead offenses that are more impressive than any other contemporary offense could be expected to achieve in the same circumstances.

Now to be clear, none of that means that Curry necessarily has the edge over Magic or Bird, only that if you think that you've seen the Warrior offense fall apart again and again in the playoffs, you're just plain wrong. There have been struggles along the way and I don't mean to imply otherwise - the 2016 Cavs beat them fair and square first and foremost - but the narrative of the Warrior offense being actually-not-good in the playoffs is something that you only see if you don't look closely enough.

f4p · Post #59 » by **f4p** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 8:04 pm

DraymondGold wrote:From 2017–2019 (larger sample to give more stable values), here's the net rating with each of the stars on or off:
-All 4 stars on: +17. (that's 20% better than the 1996 Chicago Bulls across 3 seasons!)
-Only Klay off: +15.64.
-Only KD off: +13.54 (still better than the 96 Chicago Bulls even with KD off)
-Only Draymond off: +12.77
-Only Steph on, all 3 other stars off: +10.81
-Only Steph off: +1.94
When all four stars are on the court, the 17-19 Warriors are significantly better than the 1996 Bulls. With all 3 other all stars off, and just Steph on, the 17-19 Warriors have a better net rating than the 16 Warriors, 13 Heat, 2000 Lakers, 91 Bulls, 87 Lakers, or 86 Celtics. With all 3 all stars on, and just Steph off, the 17-19 Warriors are worse than this season's 2022 Cavs.

If we include both the regular season and the playoffs, the difference decreases, but Curry still dominates (only KD off: +11.08. only Steph off: +3.66). Lots of people have said that Curry's had a better fit than other peaks, and that his team was stacked. This is true. But, as far as I can tell, they only dominated when Curry was on the court,

here's the problem, at least for me. curry ALWAYS dominates these plus/minus stats. i won't go look up the others, but for something like RPM, steph practically comes out as the best player every year for the last decade. and yet there hasn't been a single season that ended where anyone said curry was the best player (well, maybe ElGee). at some point, like with chris paul and david robinson, i have to start at least somewhat discounting crazy good looking advanced stats that don't seem to match reality. steph would be practically the best player of all time if we just looked at some of these stats, and yet plenty of times we get to the playoffs and when they're over, we're pretty assured he's not the best player of all time.

and it only gets compounded with the "everyone else on the warriors didn't matter, it was actually all steph" plus/minus numbers. so why did the warriors go from losing a 3-1 finals lead to the most dominant season ever when adding kevin durant, if kevin durant has no impact on the warriors?

why does the last 8 years of warriors history look like: klay thompson plays 5 straight years, warriors make 5 straight finals, klay thompson misses 2 years, warriors miss 2 straight playoffs (maybe they could have eked their way in if steph played in 2020 but the early results were not dissimilar to 2021), klay comes back, warriors make finals again. at some point, the "it's all steph" stuff stops being believable. the guy is basically tom brady without the longevity at this point. amazing coaching, amazing defensive support, stats don't quite hold up in the playoffs, but still wins all the time, whether he has an amazing playoffs or a "meh" playoffs.

f4p wrote:and even when it seemingly might get hard, a goon took out kawhi and turned what could have been their one challenge into a joke series. having your best statistical playoffs in the playoffs where you had by far the least pressure doesn't say much to me.
This seems to suggest their playoff opponents were easy. I agree it certainly may not have been one of the hardest ever, but I think this might undersell it. In Sansterre's Top 100 Teams Ever list, they found the Warriors faced the 73rd hardest average opponent defense of all time and the 12th hardest average opponent offense.

sansterre also thought the 2018 rockets were the 95th best team ever, like 60 spots behind the mighty 2010 orlando magic. it was a great project, but not the Bible, especially as it couldn't take into account things like injuries.

you could argue Kawhi's injury makes the Spurs overrated in the system (though the 2017 Warriors still come out on top in that team list if you reduce the Spurs' SRS by 50% to account for the injury),

and i will argue that. it took a +7 SRS team and turned them into a joke, with i believe both curry and durant posting +17 rTS% numbers against the #1 defense, in a series where they were getting shellacked in game 1 with kawhi healthy. where does the warriors playoff run come out if the spurs win game 1 and maybe steal another? mandhandling the 2017 cavs is certainly impressive buy stylistically probably less so than a healthy spurs (b/c the cavs had no defense).

f4p · Post #60 » by **f4p** » Sat Jul 2, 2022 8:14 pm

Dr Positivity wrote:1. Wilt 1967 (b. 1964, c. 1968)
2. Russell 1965 (b. 1962 c. 1963)
3. Curry 2019 (b. 2015, c. 2017)

Wilt has one of the most dominant seasons in history, like Mikan level vs the competition

Russell is hard to rank of course, but 65 is a great season, he is highly efficient for that era in the playoffs, Celtics drop a 62-18

With Curry it's not quite as good a regular season, but it's still a pretty great 1st team All NBA year. I really favor his playoff run here with helping close out the Rockets without Durant, having arguably his best series ever against the Blazers and then a strong finals performance against elite D.

2019 curry is basically his worst prime year, though? he wasn't even close to the best in the regular season of just that year, much less all time, and then posted a 22.6 PER/0.185 WS48 playoffs, which is basically right in line with similarly weak 2016/2018 playoffs and no where close to all-time peaks seasons. he "closed out the rockets" after having his worst series ever up through halftime of game 6. through 5.5 games, he was at 20.0 ppg on 48 TS% and had something like 4 apg and 4 rpg. it would be on one of the worst playoff series by a prime Top 20 player ever. only through being on such a stacked team and durant being amazing for the first 4.75 games were the warriors even around for curry to go off in the second half. even after game 6, he was behind draymond in series Game Score, basically tied with chris paul (who did not play well) and 10 points behind harden. 1 of the warriors 2 wins in the finals was in the game durant played 12 minutes and provided all of the margin of victory in those minutes.

i don't see much of an argument for 2019 curry being better than 2019 kawhi, harden, or giannis and 2019 lebron was still clearly a better player even if he was injured a lot for the first time and didn't make the playoffs.