SickMother wrote:01 Duncan 02-03: 26.9 PER | .564 TS% | 109 TS+ | 16.5 WS | .248 WS/48 01 Duncan 02-03 Playoffs?!?: 28.4 PER | .577 TS% | 5.9 WS | .279 WS/48 [didn't quite dominate the regular season to the extent that Shaq/Kareem/Wilt above him on the list did, but Timmy kicked his game into a whole other gear for the playoffs posting the highest single postseason Win Share total of all time.]
02 Erving 75-76: 28.7 PER | .569 TS% | 110 TS+ | 17.7 WS | .262 WS/48 02 Erving 75-76 Playoffs?!?: 32.0 PER | .610 TS% | 3.7 WS | .321 WS/48 [a peak so high the NBA absorbed a whole other league to get this guy under their banner. Doctor turned in a top tier regular season, then followed it up with one of thee largest postseason efficiency increases of all time.]
03 Magic 86-87: 27.0 PER | .602 TS% | 112 TS+ | 15.9 WS | .263 WS/48 03 Magic 86-87 Playoffs?!?: 26.2 PER | .607 TS% | 3.7 WS | .265 WS/48 [topped the league in assists with career best scoring volume en route to 65-17 regular season, 8.32 SRS & a smooth 15-3 postseason cruise. Peak Magic Showtime.]
per and ws/48, besides not being rooted in winning and thereofre being a result of arbitrailiy weighed factors, use steals/blocks to estmimate defense which means they're going to have inflated scores for guards since guards often get steals/blocks off bigger players.
PER includes steals & blocks for its defensive component, but Win Shares uses DRtg for their defensive input.
Career leaders for defensive win shares are Russell (133.64), Duncan (106.34), Kareem (94.49), Hakeem (94.47), Wilt (93.92), Garnett (91.48), Hayes (83.65), Ewing (81.42), Robinson (80.14), Dwight (76.17), LBJ (75.59), Artis (75.54), Kidd (75.14).
So the top 11 are all C/PF & the first G doesn't show up until 14.
I understand that no individual statistic is perfect & they all have various flaws, which is why I use them more as signposts along the road than a hard & fast criteria.
1. Reasoning for Curry: In short, I think by the data, Curry clearly outperforms Hakeem and slightly outperforms Duncan.
1a. Curry >> Hakeem:
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem Aii. Postseason AuPM: (no data for peak Hakeem. 2017 Curry 2nd all time) Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: (no data for peak 93-95 Hakeem. Partial data in 85/88/91/96 and full data in 97 are far below Curry, who’s 7th all time). Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2017 Curry (8th all time) > 1994 Hakeem Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: (no data available for Hakeem. Curry 1st all time) Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: 1993-1995 Hakeem > 2016-2017 Curry (not sure about full prime WOWY. I brought in 16 Curry because Ben hasn't finished publishing Curry's mid/post-2017 WOWY numbers yet). Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: (no data for Hakeem. 16 Curry 2nd all time) Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem (healthy 2016 Steph Curry and 1993 Hakeem tied 4th all time)
2017 Curry beats 1994 Hakeem 4/4 of our most trusted stats, 4/4 playoff-only stats, and by 9/10 stats total. If we add 2016 Curry and either 1993 or 1994 Hakeem (whichever helps Hakeem more), Curry beats Hakeem in 8/10 stats with 1 tie. The only stats Hakeem ties or beats Curry in are WOWY (which is famously noisy and missing data for Curry) and CORP (which is Ben Taylor's personal evaluation). In the four of the stats that aren’t old enough for Hakeem, Curry is at least 2nd all time in three of them. In short: I don't think there's any statistical argument for Hakeem > Curry.
1b Curry > Duncan:
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan Aii. Postseason AuPM: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: 2003 Duncan > 2017 Curry Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2003 Duncan (1st all time) > 2017 Curry (8th all time) Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: 2017 Curry (1st all time) > 2003 Duncan Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Duncan > Curry (but Curry's stats are incomplete). Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan (2016 Curry 2nd all time) Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan (and healthy 2016 Steph Curry is 4th all time)
Curry beats Duncan by 3-2 in our most trusted metrics. Duncan beats Curry 7-6 in total stats, including 3 to 2 postseason stats with 1 postseason tie. If we add 2016 Curry and either 2002 or 2004 Duncan (whichever helps Duncan more), Curry beats Duncan by 3-2 in most-trusted stats and 8-5 in total stats. Contextual factors: Curry gains more value over Duncan if you value scalability/portability/ceiling raising or if you value the Time Machine argument to the present. Resilience, team fit, and health will be discussed below.
Counter to Curry 1: Better Fit allowed Curry to put up better stats than Hakeem and Duncan. The team around Steph did have an optimal fit, and the team was dominant. But the data seems to suggest the team's dominance was primarily driven by Curry. The other all stars obviously helped the team win, but superstars' individual stats usually decline when they have better teammates, because the better teammates take on-ball time away from the superstar. Instead, Curry's numbers seem as dominant as ever. This indicates Curry's GOAT-level ceiling raising ability.
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 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. This pattern remains in the playoffs (more info below).
Counter to Curry 2: Hakeem and Duncan have better Resilience than Curry. I would agree that the other all time peaks might be more resilient than Curry. But is do they improve enough to be better than him? I'm not sure... Curry's playoff decline almost entirely correlates with postseason health. Per Per BPM and AUPM, Curry actually improves in the playoffs when he's healthy. Even if the others improve more in the playoffs, the difference isn't significant enough for them to catch up to Curry (e.g. Shaq's career +0.67% improvement vs Curry's career +0.57% improvement), particularly when 2017 Curry outperforms his opponents per the above statistics. More in depth discussion of Curry's Resilience here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661
Counter to Curry 3: his Playoff Opponents weren't good enough. Here are the average playoff opponents' Overall SRS (playoff + regular season SRS) for some relevant teams: 1995 Rockets' opponents: +6.3 (Hardest opponent: Jazz and Spurs at +7.8) 2004 Rockets' opponents: +5.09 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +7.6) [note: partial regular season SRS for this stat] 1994 Rockets' opponents: +4.73 (hardest opponent: Knicks at +6.48) [note: regular season SRS for this stat] 2017 Warriors' opponents: +4.59 (hardest opponent: Cavs at +9.5) 2003 Spurs' opponents: +4.45 (hardest opponent: Mavs at +7.5) 1991 Bulls' opponents: +4.1 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +8.1) [note: added for context] 1986 Celtics' opponents: +2.77 (hardest opponent: Rockets at +7.4) 1987 Lakers' opponents: +1.53 (hardest opponent: Celtics at +5.3) So without counting for opponent injury, 2017 Curry's average playoff opponents were better the opponents of 2003 Tim Duncan, 1991 Jordan, 1986 Larry Bird, or 1987 Magic Johnson. If we downgrade Curry for facing injured opponents (without downgrading injuries faced by anyone else), Curry still had harder playoff opponents than Bird or Magic (see Sansterre's Warriors article for details). The 2017 Cavs were statistically a better opponent than any opponent faced by 1994-95 Hakeem, 2004 Garnett, 2003 Duncan, 1991 Jordan, 1986 Bird, or 1987 Magic. Source for opponent SRS: Basketball Reference, Sansterre's Top 100 Teams (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2012241).
This overall opponent difficulty does not account for the disproportionate defensive attention that Curry faced. For example, in the 2018 Finals, Curry faced double teams more than 20x more (2000% more) than Durant. (Source: Nbalogix and Clutch Points. 2017 Finals is locked behind a paywall)
Counter to Curry 4: Health Curry was healthy throughout the entire 2017 season, which is one of the reasons I take 2017 over 2016. However, if you want to dock Curry for being a health risk (even though he stayed healthy this season), that's understandable.
Counter to Curry 5: 2016 Curry > 2017 Curry I certainly see the arguments for 2016 Curry. If he had a healthy playoffs (or if you only care about players' chances of getting injured in a season, rather than whether they actually got injured or not), I could see 2016 Curry > 2017 Curry. Still, Doctor Mj and I have argued before that Curry actually was a better player in 2017. Specifically, I see him improving in his health, resilience (e.g. better strength, decision making, and handle), and scalability. I'm not concerned by that his decline in metrics from 2016 to 2017 show a decline in skill -- Curry openly admitted in interviews that mentally, he took too much of a step back and and got into a small slump when trying to accommodate KD. This shows good leadership and chemistry. Once he figured out how to play alongside KD, metrics / the eye test / player interviews all say 2017 Curry returned to 2016 form by the end of the 2017 regular seasons. More discussion on 2017 Curry > 2016 be found here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661
2. Reasoning for Duncan:
Spoiler:
Hakeem vs Duncan vs KG vs Bird: Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 2004 KG (3rd all time) > 2003 Duncan (7th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (9th all time) Aii. Postseason AuPM: 2003 Duncan (3rd all time) > 2004 Garnett (12th all time) [No older players] Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: 2004 Garnett (1st all time) > 2003 Duncan (3rd all time) > Bird (~20th all time, but small sample) > Hakeem (~20th all time, small sample) Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2003 Duncan (1st all time) > 1986 Bird (9th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (16th all time) > 2004 Garnett (20th all time) Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: 2003 Duncan > 2004 Garnett [no older players] Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Garnett > Duncan = Hakeem > Bird Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: (2005 Duncan) > 2004 Garnett (7th all time) > 2003 Duncan (8th all time) Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: (1993 Hakeem) > 2004 Garnett (5th all time) > (2002 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan (9th all time) > 1986 Larry Bird > 1994 Hakeem (would be 14 all time)
Box score-based data Gi. Backpicks BPM: 1986 Bird (10th all time) > 2004 Garnett (15th all time) > (1993 Hakeem 17th all time) > (2002 Duncan 20th all time) > 2003 Duncan > 1994 Hakeem Gii. Postseason Backpicks BPM: 1986 Bird (4th all time) > 2003 Duncan (tie 6th all time) > 1967 Wilt (12th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (13th all time) > (1993 Hakeem) > 2003/04 Garnett Additional box score stats: Hi. BR’s BPM: 2004 Garnett (13th all time) > 1986 Bird > (2004 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem Additional box score stats: Hii. BR’s Postseason BPM: (2002 Duncan would be 8th all time) > 2003 Duncan > 1986 Larry Bird > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem > 2004 Garnett [No Russell, Will] Additional box score stats: Ii. WS/48: 2004 Garnett > (2002/04 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan > 1986 Larry Bird > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem Total WS: 2004 Garnett > (2002 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan > (1993 Hakeem 93) > 1986 Larry Bird > 1994 Hakeem Additional box score stats: Iii. Postseason WS/48: 2003 Duncan > 1986 Larry Bird > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem > 2004 Garnett
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 > 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 is slightly favored. Do the Contextual Factors (Scalability, Resilience, Health, Defensive value being missed by the metrics, Fit, Time Machine) change anything? Duncan is clearly more Resilient, but KG is 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. Ultimately, I think Duncan's famous leadership skills and willingness to adapt his game to be more portable later on helps me feel the Portability/Fit/Time machine gap is smaller than Duncan's clearly large resilience advantage. I go Duncan here, with some hesitancy.
Duncan > Bird: 2003 Duncan beats 1986 Bird in 7 stats to 3. They’re tied 2-2 in most trusted stats (though Bird’s RAPM sample is small), and Duncan leads 3-1 in playoff-only stats. Any contextual factors (1. Scalability, 2. Resilience, 3. Health, 4. Defense not captured in impact metrics, 5. Team Fit exaggerating/limiting impact, 6. Time machine.)? Bird clearly wins scalability and probably time machine to today, but Duncan probably wins the other 4.
3. Reasoning for Bird: Bird > KG: 2004 KG and 1986 Bird are tied 4 stats to 4, but Bird’s up 3-1 in our most trusted stats, and Bird leads in 4/4 playoff-only stats.
Bird > Hakeem: 86 Bird beats 94 Hakeem in 4/4 of the most trusted stats, 4/4 of the playoff-only stats, and 9/10 of the total stats. If we add 93 Hakeem to the mix, 86 Bird still wins in 8/10 total stats (or 7/8 if you prefer total WS over WS/48).
Any contextual factors (1. Scalability, 2. Resilience, 3. Health, 4. Defense not captured in impact metrics, 5. Team Fit exaggerating/limiting impact, 6. Time machine.)? Bird is definitely more scalable and performs better in a time machine to today the Hakeem (though it's close for KG). KG doesn't have a resilience advantage, and Hakeem's Resilience advantage isn't enough to make up the difference according to playoff-only stats. Overall, the contextual factors aren't enough in KG or Hakeem's favor to make up for Bird's clear impact advantage.
Any other candidates? Russell's the other player in the mix. Though he's obviously a lot harder to compare statistically (given our lack of data), I see him around the same level as Hakeem (who's clearly below Curry, Duncan, and Bird):
Spoiler:
DraymondGold wrote:Some discussion on Wilt > Hakeem ~ Russell. First, the stats: Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 1994 Hakeem (9th all time) [No older players] Aii. Postseason AuPM: [No older players] Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: > Hakeem (~20th all time, small sample) [No Russell, Will] Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 1994 Hakeem (16th all time) [No Russell, Will] Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: [no older players] Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Russell > Wilt > Hakeem Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: [No older players] Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: (1993 Hakeem) > 1967 Wilt (7th all time)> 1962-1964 Russell (10th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (would be 14 all time) > (1964 Wilt) >= (1965 Russell)
Box score-based data Gi. Backpicks BPM: 1967 Wilt (8th all time) > (1993 Hakeem 17th all time) > (1964 Wilt) > (65 Russell) > 1994 Hakeem > (62-64 Bill Russell) Gii. Postseason Backpicks BPM: 1967 Wilt (12th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (13th all time) > (1993 Hakeem) > (1965 Bill Russell) > (1964 Wilt) > 1962/64 Russell (not top 20) Additional box score stats: Hi. BR’s BPM: (1993 Hakeem not top 20) > 1994 Hakeem [No Russell, Will] Additional box score stats: Hii. BR’s Postseason BPM: (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem [No Russell, Will] Additional box score stats: Ii. WS/48: (1964 Wilt would be 1st all time) > 1967 Wilt (10th all time) > 1964 Russell > (1993 Hakeem) > (1965 Russell) > (1962 Russell) > 1994 Hakeem. WS/Game: (1964 Wilt) > 1967 Wilt > 1964 Russell > (1993 Hakeem) > (1965 Russell) > 1994 Hakeem > (1962 Russell) Additional box score stats: Iii. Postseason WS/48: (1964 Wilt) > (1965 Russell) > (1962 Russell) > 1967 Wilt > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem > 1964 Russell
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? 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.
I notice you have bird over hakeem. Does it give you any pause that hakeem in his 2nd year was able to take bird's superteam to 6 after taking out magic's superteam in 5? Rockets were .500 that season going by wowy and were much without him in surrounding seasons though i don't know how the rpam compares between the twp
Hi OhayoKD, thanks for the question! I do tend to have Duncan > Hakeem. Just to summarize, I have two main reasons for having peak Duncan > peak Hakeem: 1) Quantitatively: The metrics pretty clearly favor Duncan. Some people question the metrics, saying they either underrate defensive value or are capturing how good a player is in a certain role/context, rather than how good they are in general. For the defensive end, I think since both players are similar defensively (Hakeem probably edges out at his peak defense, but peak overall Hakeem isn't peak defense Hakeem), that's not enough to make a difference. I also tend to trust them since they're playing in a quite similar role / context -- they both have a similar play style (e.g. best value comes from defense, best offensive skill is scoring, both are resilient postseason risers, etc.) and both have some teammate similarities at their peak (e.g. no strong offensive perimeter star with them, good spacing, etc.) 2) Qualitatively: I tend to be lower on Hakeem's offense than others'. His regular season scoring is definitely a step back from some of the other All-time Peak players, and I'm overall quite low on his playmaking and passing. His defensive peak also doesn't align with his offensive peak (like others have said before me).
Before I answer your question, let me be the first to say -- I'm by no means an expert on the 80s Rockets. I'm happy to learn more if people have any analysis / footage / statistics to share. But there's 3 things that make me hesitant to be swayed by 86 Hakeem's performance vs 86 Bird.
1) How much should a player's performance when they're much younger or much older influence how we evaluate their peak?
I definitely don't think there's zero value. Even in a one year sample, there still can be some statistical noise and luck involved. Nearby years can give a stabler, larger sample to evaluate how good a player is (that's why the Thinking Basketball's Greatest peaks series used ~3 year samples for players). For example, looking at 2012 LeBron's playoff success might make us more comfortable being lenient with 2013 LeBron's small playoff dip (relative to expectations). But we have to be careful if we go too far out -- the further in time we look, the more likely we are to be comparing two players who are different. For example, the fact that 2016 LeBron showed great playoff success doesn't make me more confident that 2011 LeBron has the experience, resilience, and versatility to perform well against certain defenses.
For Hakeem, 1986 is 8 years away from the year most people take as his peak (1994). That's a fairly large separation. It's not that we can't learn anything from 1986 Hakeem (we can), but we have to be careful about it. Could it be his defensive motor and athleticism that enabled his younger self to succeed in the playoffs? If so, how much did those things decline by 1994?
2) How do we incorporate team performance when evaluating an individual's peak? How do we know team success is caused by one individual vs another?
Like point 1, I don't think there's zero value to be gained by team performance, but the key is to isolate how much team success came from the individual vs their teammates/coach/opponents/etc. To use an extreme example: Satch Sanders had a lot of playoff success, winning 8 Championships -- this is a championship in 62% of his seasons. If we just look at team performance, we'd miss the (rather obvious) context that the championships were probably driven by Big Russell, not Satch Sanders
For Hakeem, if we just look at team performance before his peak in 1993-1995, we'd see that he did indeed make the finals in 1986. But otherwise, they made the semifinals just once (1987). They lost in the first round in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. They didn't even make the playoffs in 1992. And remember, our first-guess expectation would be that Hakeem should be getting better in these later years (90, 91, 92), since that should be closer to his peak.
This makes me wonder how much the Rockets' playoff success in 1986 was caused by Hakeem having better teammates. If we look at his teammates, their pre-94 playoff success aligns fairly closely to Ralph Sampson's health. He was healthy in 1986 so they made the finals, he was injured but still occasionally played in 1987 so they made the second round, and then he got injured and became unplayable (and left), so they couldn't make it out of the 1st Round. To be clear, I still have 80s Hakeem as the better player over Ralph Sampson (and certainly still MVP level). But if we just look at team performance, it makes me wonder whether the 1986 playoff success was a case of better teammates, rather than a Herculean floor-raising effort that Hakeem succeeded at in 1986 but failed at from 1987-1992.
3) Assuming we do want to evaluate team performance, what's the best way to measure team success?
I also want to be careful about how we evaluate team success. Most analysts say team record is not the best way to measure team success. Most analysts prefer an adjusted Margin of Victory as a one-number metric. The first adjustment is to make a correction for strength of schedule (this adjusted MoV is called SRS). A popular secondary adjustment would be to lower the weighting of a blowout (is there really much difference between a 20 point blowout and a 30 point blowout, if the game went into garbage time with 6 minutes left?), though I'll admit there's no Consensus approach on how much to curve down blowouts.
Looking at adjusted Margin of Victory is even more important when looking at minuscule sample of games (like 1 series), since even one shot can drastically change the perceived record (the difference between winning 4/4 playoff games and 4/5 playoff games is a 20% difference in record! that's huge!). Now I do agree that there is value in still keeping the record. Some teams are better at closing games out in the clutch than others, and that can be captured in the record more easily than adjusted Margin of Victory. Personally, I like to use both adjusted MoV and team record, while also including the context, when trying to evaluate team success. [brief aside: more advanced stats like FiveThirtyEight's ELO may be even more effective than adjusted MoV or team record].
Anyway, it's true the Rockets took the 86 Celtics to 6 games. This seems like a fairly good team performance. But the Celtics' MoV was +6.2 points per game. In other words: it wasn't that close. Looking closer at the team record also shows this. The rockets happened to win Game 3 of the finals by just 2 points. It certainly could have been a 5 Game gentleman's sweep by the Celtics.
What if we add more context. Was this Game 3 steal driven by a Herculean effort of Hakeem? Not that I can tell (happy to be corrected if anyone wants to do any film analysis). To me, it looks like the Rockets kept the the possession game close. They committed fewer turnovers and almost as many rebounds, led by Ralph Sampson's 22 rebounds (including 7 offensive rebounds). The Rockets also shot better, which you'd think would be credit to Hakeem, but Hakeem actually shot poorly this game (though to his credit, he did get to the line). Indeed, Hakeem actually shot poorly throughout the finals, at -1.5% relative shooting, which seems a bit disappointing compared to the resilient scoring we expect of Hakeem at his peak.
Anyway, that's why 1988 Hakeem's team performance doesn't make me hesitant too much when choosing peak Bird > peak Hakeem (especially when the metrics favor 1986 Bird > 1994 Hakeem, even in the playoffs). But like I said, I'm not an expert on the 80s Rockets so feel free to jump in if you think I've missed anything!
falcolombardi wrote: Why are you significatively higher on hakeem> duncan? They seem essentially indistinguible to me
Floor raising a team to a ring as the only star? Check
Good but not great efficiency isolation scorer who is resilient in tge postseason? Check
All time great defender? Check
I would even argue duncan defense and offense peaks may have overlapped more neatly than hakeem's (2003 duncan was at his physical prime for defense, 94 hakeem was starting to slpw down in D per 70'sfan opinion)
70sFan may be mirroring Elgee's opinion, but they both seem to believe that the best overlap for Hakeem was 93 and not 94, as his defense had already started to slip noticably by then.
I dont have extensive tracking of hakeem like ben taylor or 70'sfan probably have so i would defer to other more knowledgeable ppsters here
But is not 93 seen as a year where hakeem vision and willingness to pass was still a level below? (Or was that just seattle defense being better at exploiting his passing?)
It leveled up in 93 both per film and I believe a book about Hakeem where new teammates and Tomjanovich's new offensive philosophy caused Hakeem to start trusting his teammates more, I believe it was actually a direct quote from him. Seattle was just a bad matchup for Hakeem regardless of year I think.
I don't have enough time to make a long post, but I will post my voting without much explaination. If you feel that it shouldn't be counted, I will understand that:
1. 1992/93 Hakeem Olajuwon (1993/94 Hakeem Olajuwon) 2. 2002/03 Tim Duncan (2001/02 Tim Duncan) 3. 1961/62 Bill Russell (1964/65 Bill Russell) (1962/63 Bill Russell) (1963/64 Bill Russell)
Quick explaination - I think that Duncan's passing ability and other non-scoring offensive skills (offensive rebounding, screen setting, off-ball movement, ball-handling) is enough to overcome Hakeem's extremely dominant, but one dimensional offense. Defensively, Hakeem peaked higher due to his physical profile and I don't think he really slowed down that much in 1993 yet.
I have the first two basically tied and can't pick a clear winner without bigger work on Duncan's defensive tendencies (which I hope to start next month, but my wedding is coming, so who knows? ).
Russell is the next choice, clearly above any other one-way player left. I get why people feel concerned about Russell's portability across eras, but:
a) I don't care about time machine argument b) I think Russell would lose significantly less in 2017 than Curry in 1962
The next one will be either KG or Magic most likely.
capfan33 wrote:Seattle was just a bad matchup for Hakeem regardless of year I think.
This didn't really become a thing until around 1995. Hakeem averaged 4.7 apg in the 1993 series as part of an overall 23/13/4.7/4.2/1.7 statline on 52% shooting. The series went 7, with the home team winning every game, including OT in game 7 And that's with Seattle being a +3.1 SRS favorite. Seattle was just really good, although just like they arguably underperformed their SRS here, they would go on to do even worse the next 2 years.
1994 Hakeem averaged 28 ppg against Seattle while shooting 13/20, 10/15, 16/21 and 9/14 (68.6%).
DraymondGold wrote:But there's 3 things that make me hesitant to be swayed by 86 Hakeem's performance vs 86 Bird.
1) How much should a player's performance when they're much younger or much older influence how we evaluate their peak?
...For Hakeem, 1986 is 8 years away from the year most people take as his peak (1994).
...But otherwise, they made the semifinals just once (1987). They lost in the first round in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. They didn't even make the playoffs in 1992.
...This makes me wonder how much the Rockets' playoff success in 1986 was caused by Hakeem having better teammates. If we look at his teammates, their pre-94 playoff success aligns fairly closely to Ralph Sampson's health. He was healthy in 1986 so they made the finals, he was injured but still occasionally played in 1987 so they made the second round, and then he got injured and became unplayable (and left), so they couldn't make it out of the 1st Round.
...Anyway, that's why 1988 Hakeem's team performance doesn't make me hesitant too much when choosing peak Bird > peak Hakeem (especially when the metrics favor 1986 Bird > 1994 Hakeem, even in the playoffs). But like I said, I'm not an expert on the 80s Rockets so feel free to jump in if you think I've missed anything!
I don't really see anyway to discount Hakeem's playoffs in the 1980's. If we're just going by statistics, 1986-1988 Hakeem actually has better playoff numbers than Hakeem's oft-cited peak of 1993-1995. He wins in PER, WS48, TS%, and VORP/min. And it's not skewed by being great in his longest playoff run, as he has an otherworldly single-round playoff in 1988 and a 2-round playoff in 1987 with better numbers than the finals run. Now some of this is because advanced stats just seem to break with 1995 Hakeem and absurdly underrate him (Drexler had more playoff WS and Horry and Cassell barely trailed in WS48).
Either way, 80's Hakeem shows the exact same trends he would sustain for all of his career. Significant increase in stats and significant overperformance relative to regular season seeding/SRS. Beating the Lakers in the middle of a 4 year run where they won 3 titles, while only being on a 51 win team, as -4.7 SRS underdog while putting up 31/11/4 and 28 Game Score and completely outplaying 1st team Kareem in the WCF is amazing. Taking 2 off the '86 Celtics is amazing. Magic and Bird lost 9 games in the 1986 playoffs and 6 were to Hakeem.
In '87, he wins as a 6th seed in the first round and puts up huge numbers in both rounds. In 1988, he breaks the playoff PER record at 39.0 in a series where he averaged 37.5 ppg on 64 TS% with 16.8 rpg, 2.8 bpg, and as many steals as turnovers (9). It's almost impossible to do better than high volume scoring on high efficiency without turnovers while putting up DPOY defensive numbers.
Was it about his teammates? Of course. Just like MJ could get trounced in the 1st round and win titles without being much different due to way different teammates, it's no different for Hakeem or anyone else. Ralph basically fell out of the league and the backcourt got suspended for drugs and the team drafted no one of significance until Horry in 1992. That's how you fall off.
And even in '86-'88, we see how unbelievable Hakeem was at elevating above the regular season. Won as a huge underdog to make the Finals, won as an underdog in the 1st round the next year. This is crazy to think about, but if Hakeem had never won as an underdog, he would have a WCF appearance in 1986 and then would have never made it out of the 2nd round, and would have only made the 2nd round in 1993, 1994, and 1997. That's how vast his outperformance was. 13 of his last 15 series were as an SRS underdog (and 1 of the 2 was +0.09) and yet that includes 2 titles and a WCF appearance, in a league considered predictable and boring for often the favorites win.
falcolombardi wrote:Why are you significatively higher on hakeem> duncan? They seem essentially indistinguible to me
Floor raising a team to a ring as the only star? Check
Good but not great efficiency isolation scorer who is resilient in tge postseason? Check
All time great defender? Check
I would even argue duncan defense and offense peaks may have overlapped more neatly than hakeem's (2003 duncan was at his physical prime for defense, 94 hakeem was starting to slpw down in D per 70'sfan opinion)
Indistinguishable? That's a telling word my friend, because visually, they are very different from each other. Olajuwon's combination of explosion, coordination, improvisation, and learning capacity, is outlier.
Re: resilient in the playoffs. Both resilient, but I'd say Olajuwon has a healthy edge there.
Re: all-time great defender. I consider prime Olajuwon to be considerably more potent as a defensive player than Duncan ever was - though I will say it was very impressive the way Duncan was able to sustain his value into old age, which I think is in part to him never having as much explosion in his game to lose.
Re: Duncan's defensive and offensive peaks overlapped more. I'd agree with you there, though it's still not clear cut to me that that means Olajuwon's defense had fallen enough to lose his lead over Duncan on that side of the ball, and he has that offensive edge to boot.
falcolombardi wrote:Why are you significatively higher on hakeem> duncan? They seem essentially indistinguible to me
Floor raising a team to a ring as the only star? Check
Good but not great efficiency isolation scorer who is resilient in tge postseason? Check
All time great defender? Check
I would even argue duncan defense and offense peaks may have overlapped more neatly than hakeem's (2003 duncan was at his physical prime for defense, 94 hakeem was starting to slpw down in D per 70'sfan opinion)
Indistinguishable? That's a telling word my friend, because visually, they are very different from each other. Olajuwon's combination of explosion, coordination, improvisation, and learning capacity, is outlier.
Re: resilient in the playoffs. Both resilient, but I'd say Olajuwon has a healthy edge there.
Re: all-time great defender. I consider prime Olajuwon to be considerably more potent as a defensive player than Duncan ever was - though I will say it was very impressive the way Duncan was able to sustain his value into old age, which I think is in part to him never having as much explosion in his game to lose.
Re: Duncan's defensive and offensive peaks overlapped more. I'd agree with you there, though it's still not clear cut to me that that means Olajuwon's defense had fallen enough to lose his lead over Duncan on that side of the ball, and he has that offensive edge to boot.
Can you elaborate [in an evidentiary manner] on why you think Hakeem was a "considerably more potent defensive player" than Duncan? I suppose I can see the peak year argument for Hakeem > Duncan if we extend the tunnel vision to the extent that peri-peak years are disregarded......but even then I can't get as far as "considerably".
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
falcolombardi wrote:Why are you significatively higher on hakeem> duncan? They seem essentially indistinguible to me
Floor raising a team to a ring as the only star? Check
Good but not great efficiency isolation scorer who is resilient in tge postseason? Check
All time great defender? Check
I would even argue duncan defense and offense peaks may have overlapped more neatly than hakeem's (2003 duncan was at his physical prime for defense, 94 hakeem was starting to slpw down in D per 70'sfan opinion)
Indistinguishable? That's a telling word my friend, because visually, they are very different from each other. Olajuwon's combination of explosion, coordination, improvisation, and learning capacity, is outlier.
Re: resilient in the playoffs. Both resilient, but I'd say Olajuwon has a healthy edge there.
Re: all-time great defender. I consider prime Olajuwon to be considerably more potent as a defensive player than Duncan ever was - though I will say it was very impressive the way Duncan was able to sustain his value into old age, which I think is in part to him never having as much explosion in his game to lose.
Re: Duncan's defensive and offensive peaks overlapped more. I'd agree with you there, though it's still not clear cut to me that that means Olajuwon's defense had fallen enough to lose his lead over Duncan on that side of the ball, and he has that offensive edge to boot.
By indistinguible i meant their statistical production/output more than stylistic similarities or a qualitative comparision
For how much hakeem is the poster boy for resilient scoring big, duncan profile is up there with him without being exactly the same yet most people talk as if there is some clear gap between both which i just dont see
Is hakeem the more gifted/talented player? Of course. If you asked me i would tell you hakeem is the most gifted player in basketball history with the possible exception of lebron (once considering playmaking instincts) or wilt
He had a body and coordination and ability to finely control his body in a powerful 6'10 frame that is nearly unprecedented and as a prospect his ceiling was probably a fair amount higher than duncan (himself a percentile 99.9 prospect)
But potential=/=end result in players, and i feel that whether it was the fault of picking basketball too late or playing in a team situation that didnt develop his playmaking until late in his prime, hakeem just didnt start to develop into a playmaker who could take advantage and leverage his scoring gifts until the time his athletism and defense were starting to go in the (slight at the time) downhill
I compared a couple of games of both, duncan (vs nets and lakers in 2003) and hakeem (94 finals and vs suns) and yes, i am completely aware this is a terribly small sample size so take it for what js worth
But i saw duncan as the clear stronger passer of tge two, more willing to pass the ball and quicker ar doing it as well as more capable of exploiting gaps in the paint with interior bullets. Both created a ton of open shots with their interior gravity but duncan leveraged it better with (imo) underated playmaking
And in defense i didnt notice a huge gap either, hakeem was more mobile, runnint after wings and guards in the full court to pressure their fastbreaks or moving all across the court and stepping to the perimeter, the latter skill no doubt would be extrwmely useful if we were evaluating them for the 2010's and 2020's rather than their own eras
But duncan while more "static" in comparision had mpre than comparable rim protection
I mentioned it in the nets game post but he is always altering or dissuading shots, reacting quickly to position himself in a position to contest, keepinh blocked shots in play rather than sending to the rafters.
He is so sound it looks like he is just s tall dude standing in the paint waiting for shots to block yet you dont see many guys, as big and as tall and sometimes just as mobile guys anchoring the kind of defenses duncan did, he makes it seem so easy that it looks like he is not doing much
Remember how you say people take for granted curry being the motor of some of the best offenses we have ever seen? Duncan could do the same in the defensive end
I know you are high on plus-minus stats for curry and garnett, duncan is on par with them in rapm studies without the boxscore drop offs they often had at their peaks in postseason.
He is just one of the more impactful players ever to play and did so with picture perfect attitude and team first approach, helped lead a team to 4 rings and contributed to a 20 year run of great (almost uninterupted) contending teams while changing his role in the team frpm first to last without complaint. Another thingh you mention on curry
Ohh, and he also took one of the least talented teams post merger to a ring in his peak season while beating a 3-peat team
I am just baffled he gets taken for granted at times as if he was not really on the level of guys like hakeem, shaq, etc
DraymondGold wrote:But there's 3 things that make me hesitant to be swayed by 86 Hakeem's performance vs 86 Bird.
1) How much should a player's performance when they're much younger or much older influence how we evaluate their peak?
...For Hakeem, 1986 is 8 years away from the year most people take as his peak (1994).
...But otherwise, they made the semifinals just once (1987). They lost in the first round in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. They didn't even make the playoffs in 1992.
...This makes me wonder how much the Rockets' playoff success in 1986 was caused by Hakeem having better teammates. If we look at his teammates, their pre-94 playoff success aligns fairly closely to Ralph Sampson's health. He was healthy in 1986 so they made the finals, he was injured but still occasionally played in 1987 so they made the second round, and then he got injured and became unplayable (and left), so they couldn't make it out of the 1st Round.
...Anyway, that's why 1988 Hakeem's team performance doesn't make me hesitant too much when choosing peak Bird > peak Hakeem (especially when the metrics favor 1986 Bird > 1994 Hakeem, even in the playoffs). But like I said, I'm not an expert on the 80s Rockets so feel free to jump in if you think I've missed anything!
I don't really see anyway to discount Hakeem's playoffs in the 1980's. If we're just going by statistics, 1986-1988 Hakeem actually has better playoff numbers than Hakeem's oft-cited peak of 1993-1995. He wins in PER, WS48, TS%, and VORP/min. And it's not skewed by being great in his longest playoff run, as he has an otherworldly single-round playoff in 1988 and a 2-round playoff in 1987 with better numbers than the finals run. Now some of this is because advanced stats just seem to break with 1995 Hakeem and absurdly underrate him (Drexler had more playoff WS and Horry and Cassell barely trailed in WS48).
Either way, 80's Hakeem shows the exact same trends he would sustain for all of his career. Significant increase in stats and significant overperformance relative to regular season seeding/SRS. Beating the Lakers in the middle of a 4 year run where they won 3 titles, while only being on a 51 win team, as -4.7 SRS underdog while putting up 31/11/4 and 28 Game Score and completely outplaying 1st team Kareem in the WCF is amazing. Taking 2 off the '86 Celtics is amazing. Magic and Bird lost 9 games in the 1986 playoffs and 6 were to Hakeem.
In '87, he wins as a 6th seed in the first round and puts up huge numbers in both rounds. In 1988, he breaks the playoff PER record at 39.0 in a series where he averaged 37.5 ppg on 64 TS% with 16.8 rpg, 2.8 bpg, and as many steals as turnovers (9). It's almost impossible to do better than high volume scoring on high efficiency without turnovers while putting up DPOY defensive numbers.
Was it about his teammates? Of course. Just like MJ could get trounced in the 1st round and win titles without being much different due to way different teammates, it's no different for Hakeem or anyone else. Ralph basically fell out of the league and the backcourt got suspended for drugs and the team drafted no one of significance until Horry in 1992. That's how you fall off.
And even in '86-'88, we see how unbelievable Hakeem was at elevating above the regular season. Won as a huge underdog to make the Finals, won as an underdog in the 1st round the next year. This is crazy to think about, but if Hakeem had never won as an underdog, he would have a WCF appearance in 1986 and then would have never made it out of the 2nd round, and would have only made the 2nd round in 1993, 1994, and 1997. That's how vast his outperformance was. 13 of his last 15 series were as an SRS underdog (and 1 of the 2 was +0.09) and yet that includes 2 titles and a WCF appearance, in a league considered predictable and boring for often the favorites win.
This part of it isn't all that impressive, Kareem was 39 and Hakeem wasn't even guarding him most of the time. But was a superb playoff run.
His net on-court rating in the post-season really stands out at +9.1. For comparison, Curry only eclipsed that once without KD (2015 while eclipsing it with KD in 2017 and 2018) but Duncan did so playing a whopping 42.5 Minutes Per Game. Duncan was able to draw fouls at a tremendous clip (56.3% FTR)which rivals Shaq's rate in 2000 and 2001 and is nearly double what Hakeem's was in 1992, 1993 and 1994.
2. Kevin Garnett 2004
Garnett is an interesting player. There are typical molds or roles of players which are easy to identify two of which are The High-Volume Wing Scorer[b] who is a plus defender and playmaker like Jordan, Kobe and Durant and The Two-Way Big Man[/b] who anchors a defense as a Rim Protector and Offensively as a hub like Wilt, Duncan and Hakeem.
Garnett, like other players though, is extremely unique in how he fits on a team. He checks off the boxes a team requires in a weird way but also in a Looks like I have a coverall in Bingo way.
Jumping into a defensive play where Garnett is able to stay in front of and then Block Prime Kobe Bryant on the fast break[/b], showing casing how Kevin Garnett was the most versatile defender we have ever seen play in the NBA. He can guard every position 1-5 and he has the ability switch every pick and roll. [/b]
Kobe Bryant flies by Anthony Peeler as he brings the ball to half-court.
Garnett picks up Bryant, forcing him inside to the help defense (Rasho Nesterovic)
Garnett has Kobe where he wants him, trying to finish over Rasho Nesterovic while being on Kobe's blind side
Garnett's length and skill allows him to block Bryant
This quality sucks. Kobe runs the pick and roll with a goal to get an isolation on the right side of the court. Garnett switches onto Kobe.
Garnett forces Kobe to go inside, where his help is. Keep in mind, there are no players to the top right of the picture. The entire side of the court is open, yet Garnett is still able to force Kobe into the crowded paint. KG is also able to stay in front of a young Kobe Bryant with the use of great hand and foot work.
Kobe is forced to pass the ball out to the perimeter where the Lakers will have to reset with little time left on the shot clock.
Garnett starts on Robert Horry. An interesting part of this play is before Horry was at the top of the key, he was on the elbow. Garnett forced him back that far as he attempted to post up and receive an entry pass from the wing.
Garnett follows the entry pass seamlessly and begins to rotate onto Shaq while the ball is still in the air.
By the time Shaq takes one dribble, Garnett is already in position for a block attempt.
Garnett is able to block Shaq from behind without a foul. The block deflects off the backboard and right into a Timberwolves hands. It was likely easier for Garnett to block the shot to the sideline and out of bounds, but his ability to control his blocks is once again at the forefront.
There is no question that Garnett's defensive versatility sets him apart from every single player to ever play the game. Their were better rim protectors, but their hasn't been a player who was required to do the list of things Garnett did while in Minnesota on the defensive end.
Some Data: Shooting percentage of opponents within 5 feet of the rim against Kevin Garnett from 2004 2004: 53.7% on 20.7 attempts/game
When we compare these to Tim Duncan, he was between 49% and 52% when he played next to David Robinson. Without David Robinson, he was between 53% and 56%, in line with what Garnett played with in Boston and his peak season in 2004.
Timberwolves/Celtics Defensive Rating with Kevin Garnett On/Off (League Rank): 2004: 98.5 (5th), 104.6 (20th) (Net -6.1)
Scoring Numbers (At the Rim): Kevin Garnett 2004: 67.9% on 452 attempts (63.8%) Tim Duncan 2003: 68.6% on 535 attempts (51.0%)
Midrange (10-16 Ft): 2004: 47.3% on 476 attempts (53.3%)
Here is Dirk Nowitzki from the same zone: 2001: 46.8% on 250 attempts (57.3%) 2002: 42.9% on 226 attempts (54.6%) 2003: 50.5% on 376 attempts (46.3%) 2004: 46.0% on 276 attempts (52.0%) 2005: 43.6% on 349 attempts (45.4%) 2006: 48.4% on 516 attempts (35.2%) 2007: 49.3% on 363 attempts (36.9%) 2008: 48.1% on 370 attempts (43.3%) 2009: 49.0% on 567 attempts (41.0%) 2010: 45.6% on 472 attempts (46.5%) 2011: 49.2% on 429 attempts (42.7%)
What can we see here? Not that Garnett was superior to Duncan down-low or that Garnett was superior from mid-range, but rather a player like Garnett is somewhat [i]comparable to both players. Again, this shows just how versatile a player Garnett was, and versatility means a player can find more ways to impact a game of basketball. Are we sure this impact exists? Well, look at the numbers for Kevin Garnett's Offensive On/Off:
2004: 108.3 (3rd), 93.8 (Last)
3. 1993 Hakeem 3b. 1994 Hakeem
Exceptional athlete and dominated for 10+ years while is offense culminated in the mid-1990s where he became truly unstoppable with an insane increase in production during the post-season. His offense puts him ahead of my next center, Bill Russel.
DraymondGold wrote:As I see it, the metrics clearly favor Duncan. 2003 Duncan beats 1994 Hakeem in 6/6 of the more trusted stats, and he wins 5/5 of the postseason-only stats.
Duncan is like Curry, the metrics always favor him. You might think you saw Tim Duncan struggle to score on 40 year old (literally) Karl Malone while his team blows a 2-0 series lead, but the metrics will let you know you are wrong. If I took Hakeem/Duncan metrics at face value (at least the ones I commonly see) and looked at the teammates and coaching they both got, I would expect Duncan to have 7 or 8 titles and Hakeem to have none. But of course that didn't happen. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't take 2003 Duncan by a hair over 1994 Hakeem (I didn't) but this never looks good with the plus/minus type metrics.
Thanks for the reply! It's funny you say this. When I see someone have a drop in scoring but still have good metrics, I wonder: "could they be doing something else that's valuable?" It sounds like you wonder: "Why are the metrics wrong, or missing what I'm seeing?"
Scoring and the eye test are definitely important. But these metrics are based on how much teams actually improve from a single player (RAPM is basically just that). The other metrics just make slight adjustments to try to isolate goodness regardless of context, or they try to estimate a player's true value in a way that's stable in smaller sample of games.
To me, if a player still helps their team win more even when their scoring declines, that makes me wonder whether their full value as a player isn't just their scoring.
Just to reply to a few specifics that you mentioned: -I don't think 2003 Tim Duncan faced Karl Malone in the playoffs, unless I'm missing something? -I think the "Duncan would win 7-8 titles and Hakeem would have none" point is overstating things (by quite a bit actually). To be clear: In all the metrics, Hakeem is basically a top 20 peak (at worst), with many metrics supporting him being higher (and the ability to argue that he's even higher with context). That still sounds like a championship-winning peak to me. It's just that the metrics pretty universally have Duncan higher. (though no metric has any peak high enough to win 7-8 championships in the modern era).
f4p wrote:
DraymondGold wrote:
I've used the metrics to show Curry also has a fairly convincing statistical case over Hakeem (and I'm happy to discuss more if people want!), but since there's been some discussion of that already, let me introduce a new question.
Most people who have Hakeem over Curry cite his two-way impact. It's definitely true that Hakeem is an all-time two way player, and he's obviously the better defender.
My question for Curry vs Hakeem is: could we be overrating the defensive gap, while underrating the offensive gap (particularly the playmaking gap)?
Curry seems to be even more favored by metrics. Either you or someone else said that even in the 2016 playoffs, his impact numbers still looked really good. His team basically won the first round and went up 2-1 in the 2nd round without him, so the supporting cast must be pretty good, and then in one of the two full series he did play, he looked awful and the team blew a 3-1 lead. If the impact metrics still say he is great after that performance (I'm guessing even better than Hakeem), then I have to stop trusting them or start discounting them heavily. I don't always, or even usually, trust my lying eyes over stats, but the numbers can't just tell me up is down and black is white.
That wasn't me, though I also remember seeing that. To be clear: in all the metrics I've look at, 2016 Playoffs Curry is worse than 2016 Regular Season Curry or 2017 Playoffs Curry. Up is still up and black is still black.
I think (?) what they were trying to say was that even though injured 2016 Playoffs Curry might be worse than Healthy 2016 Curry, his injured version is still pretty good (and possibly underrated).
With a player like Curry, I think the eye test can be hard because so much of his playmaking value is off-ball (arguably more than any other player in history). I mentioned in my Ballot that his teammates improve their shooting accuracy more when Curry's on the court than any other superstar in the past ~10 years (e.g. more than LeBron, Harden, Westbrook, Jokic, Luka, etc.). Why is that? Curry's great at getting assists, but it's not like he outperforms those players by assists. I think this value comes from his off-ball creation, the defensive attention he demands (e.g. being double-teamed 20x more than KD in the NBA finals), and his gravity.
With players like LeBron, if you focus on defending his scoring, he just switches to passing. And while some people over-index on scoring, most people with a keen eye or a good nose for stats can see LeBron's still valuable when he's driving and kicking out. But with players like Curry (and I'd argue Bird), if you focus on defending his on-ball scoring, he might switch to being an off-ball threat. This can still be just valuable at creating good shots for the team (e.g. drawing the double team, passing to a rolling Draymond, then having Dray make the final pass for an open layup) -- but it can be harder to catch in the (non plus-minus) stats or if you're not looking closely with the eye test (this is definitely not to say you're not looking closely enough! -- just to say that there are people who miss this stuff among NBA fans).
f4p wrote: Hakeem and even metric god Duncan always seem to show up poorly on offense, but I have a hard time thinking they weren't somewhat impactful offensive players. Their teams went to them all the time because they were the only consistent shot creator and they got their teammates tons of open looks. I simply can't believe that their teams would have benefited from a different offensive system or that they weren't helping on offense and Rudy T and Pop just both missed it. It seems even less believable in Hakeem's case, considering Rudy made him probably the most heliocentric non-Jordan player in the league and the Rockets immediately produced much better results than in the past and, you know, won 2 titles. I mean, I suppose somehow the poor numbers are saying that, if you want their massive defensive impact, then the only way you can run your offensive is through both of them and that's not as good offensively as if they just weren't on the court (even though your defense would be awful), but it doesn't pass the smell test to me.
And at least in Hakeem's case, he simply has too many playoff runs of basically being unstoppable offensively (1986-88 and 1993-95 and 1997) and often turning them into huge team overperformance compared to seeding/SRS to make me think the two aren't heavily correlated.
Defensively, I don't buy Hakeem and Duncan only being worth 3.5 SRS, especially if they somehow don't have any offensive value. Then their team results make no sense as 94 Hakeem and 03 Duncan won against fairly good opponents with fairly weak supporting casts.
That's a thoughtful response! I liked the point about Rudy T and Pop
Perhaps I misspoke or was misleading, so I just want to clarify what I was trying to say. I'm not arguing that Hakeem and Duncan aren't good offensive players, or those teams could have had a better offensive system with those rosters. What I am arguing is that they aren't as good offensively as other all-time great offensive players. I'm not trying to say their teams' offense would be better with them off the court -- I'm saying their offense would be better with better offensive players like Bird, Jordan, Curry, Shaq, or Kareem.
And this fits the smell test. The 1994 Rockets were not elite on offense, while they were on defense. Their offense ranked 15th in the league, while their defense ranked 2nd. The offense did improve in the playoffs, but it still wouldn't have ranked in the top 10 regular season offensive ratings. Similarly, the 2003 Spurs were good on offense, while they were better on defense. Their offense ranked 7th (pretty good!), while their defense ranked 3rd (definitely better).
Just to give example numbers, I'm suggesting 1994 Hakeem or 2003 Duncan might be +3.25 on Offense and +3.25 on Defense (=6.5 SRS improvement total), while a player like Curry might be +6.25 on Offense and +0.25 on defense (=6.5 SRS improvement total). I'm not trying to argue these specific decimal values -- this is just to give a ballpark estimate.
Does this pass the smell test? I'd say so. Are Hakeem and Duncan significantly better on defense than Curry? Sure! Over 12x as valuable on defense! Is Curry more valuable on offense? Sure thing! He's one of the best facilitators of all time, while Duncan and Hakeem are clearly not, so it makes sense he would be quite a bit better on offense (especially when he also has the scoring edge -- see my ballot)/. And these contributions would fit with their teams performance. Hakeem and Duncan add more defensive value than other players, so their teams are better on defense. Curry adds more value on offense, so his team's better on offense (see 2017 offensive rating).
The key takeaway I'm suggesting is: Even with the defensive disadvantage, Curry could still have similar total value to Hakeem and Duncan. [If I were to tweak these, I'd have Duncan and Curry having slightly higher total value than Hakeem since almost all the metrics support this conclusion, but those numbers were just a ballpark.]
1. Reasoning for Curry: In short, I think by the data, Curry clearly outperforms Hakeem and slightly outperforms Duncan.
1a. Curry >> Hakeem:
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem Aii. Postseason AuPM: (no data for peak Hakeem. 2017 Curry 2nd all time) Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: (no data for peak 93-95 Hakeem. Partial data in 85/88/91/96 and full data in 97 are far below Curry, who’s 7th all time). Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2017 Curry (8th all time) > 1994 Hakeem Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: (no data available for Hakeem. Curry 1st all time) Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: 1993-1995 Hakeem > 2016-2017 Curry (not sure about full prime WOWY. I brought in 16 Curry because Ben hasn't finished publishing Curry's mid/post-2017 WOWY numbers yet). Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: (no data for Hakeem. 16 Curry 2nd all time) Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem (healthy 2016 Steph Curry and 1993 Hakeem tied 4th all time)
2017 Curry beats 1994 Hakeem 4/4 of our most trusted stats, 4/4 playoff-only stats, and by 9/10 stats total. If we add 2016 Curry and either 1993 or 1994 Hakeem (whichever helps Hakeem more), Curry beats Hakeem in 8/10 stats with 1 tie. The only stats Hakeem ties or beats Curry in are WOWY (which is famously noisy and missing data for Curry) and CORP (which is Ben Taylor's personal evaluation). In the four of the stats that aren’t old enough for Hakeem, Curry is at least 2nd all time in three of them. In short: I don't think there's any statistical argument for Hakeem > Curry.
1b Curry > Duncan:
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan Aii. Postseason AuPM: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: 2003 Duncan > 2017 Curry Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2003 Duncan (1st all time) > 2017 Curry (8th all time) Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: 2017 Curry (1st all time) > 2003 Duncan Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Duncan > Curry (but Curry's stats are incomplete). Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan (2016 Curry 2nd all time) Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2017 Curry > 2003 Duncan (and healthy 2016 Steph Curry is 4th all time)
Curry beats Duncan by 3-2 in our most trusted metrics. Duncan beats Curry 7-6 in total stats, including 3 to 2 postseason stats with 1 postseason tie. If we add 2016 Curry and either 2002 or 2004 Duncan (whichever helps Duncan more), Curry beats Duncan by 3-2 in most-trusted stats and 8-5 in total stats. Contextual factors: Curry gains more value over Duncan if you value scalability/portability/ceiling raising or if you value the Time Machine argument to the present. Resilience, team fit, and health will be discussed below.
Counter to Curry 1: Better Fit allowed Curry to put up better stats than Hakeem and Duncan. The team around Steph did have an optimal fit, and the team was dominant. But the data seems to suggest the team's dominance was primarily driven by Curry. The other all stars obviously helped the team win, but superstars' individual stats usually decline when they have better teammates, because the better teammates take on-ball time away from the superstar. Instead, Curry's numbers seem as dominant as ever. This indicates Curry's GOAT-level ceiling raising ability.
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 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. This pattern remains in the playoffs (more info below).
Counter to Curry 2: Hakeem and Duncan have better Resilience than Curry. I would agree that the other all time peaks might be more resilient than Curry. But is do they improve enough to be better than him? I'm not sure... Curry's playoff decline almost entirely correlates with postseason health. Per Per BPM and AUPM, Curry actually improves in the playoffs when he's healthy. Even if the others improve more in the playoffs, the difference isn't significant enough for them to catch up to Curry (e.g. Shaq's career +0.67% improvement vs Curry's career +0.57% improvement), particularly when 2017 Curry outperforms his opponents per the above statistics. More in depth discussion of Curry's Resilience here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661
Counter to Curry 3: his Playoff Opponents weren't good enough. Here are the average playoff opponents' Overall SRS (playoff + regular season SRS) for some relevant teams: 1995 Rockets' opponents: +6.3 (Hardest opponent: Jazz and Spurs at +7.8) 2004 Rockets' opponents: +5.09 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +7.6) [note: partial regular season SRS for this stat] 1994 Rockets' opponents: +4.73 (hardest opponent: Knicks at +6.48) [note: regular season SRS for this stat] 2017 Warriors' opponents: +4.59 (hardest opponent: Cavs at +9.5) 2003 Spurs' opponents: +4.45 (hardest opponent: Mavs at +7.5) 1991 Bulls' opponents: +4.1 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +8.1) [note: added for context] 1986 Celtics' opponents: +2.77 (hardest opponent: Rockets at +7.4) 1987 Lakers' opponents: +1.53 (hardest opponent: Celtics at +5.3) So without counting for opponent injury, 2017 Curry's average playoff opponents were better the opponents of 2003 Tim Duncan, 1991 Jordan, 1986 Larry Bird, or 1987 Magic Johnson. If we downgrade Curry for facing injured opponents (without downgrading injuries faced by anyone else), Curry still had harder playoff opponents than Bird or Magic (see Sansterre's Warriors article for details). The 2017 Cavs were statistically a better opponent than any opponent faced by 1994-95 Hakeem, 2004 Garnett, 2003 Duncan, 1991 Jordan, 1986 Bird, or 1987 Magic. Source for opponent SRS: Basketball Reference, Sansterre's Top 100 Teams (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2012241).
This overall opponent difficulty does not account for the disproportionate defensive attention that Curry faced. For example, in the 2018 Finals, Curry faced double teams more than 20x more (2000% more) than Durant. (Source: Nbalogix and Clutch Points. 2017 Finals is locked behind a paywall)
Counter to Curry 4: Health Curry was healthy throughout the entire 2017 season, which is one of the reasons I take 2017 over 2016. However, if you want to dock Curry for being a health risk (even though he stayed healthy this season), that's understandable.
Counter to Curry 5: 2016 Curry > 2017 Curry I certainly see the arguments for 2016 Curry. If he had a healthy playoffs (or if you only care about players' chances of getting injured in a season, rather than whether they actually got injured or not), I could see 2016 Curry > 2017 Curry. Still, Doctor Mj and I have argued before that Curry actually was a better player in 2017. Specifically, I see him improving in his health, resilience (e.g. better strength, decision making, and handle), and scalability. I'm not concerned by that his decline in metrics from 2016 to 2017 show a decline in skill -- Curry openly admitted in interviews that mentally, he took too much of a step back and and got into a small slump when trying to accommodate KD. This shows good leadership and chemistry. Once he figured out how to play alongside KD, metrics / the eye test / player interviews all say 2017 Curry returned to 2016 form by the end of the 2017 regular seasons. More discussion on 2017 Curry > 2016 be found here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661
2. Reasoning for Duncan:
Spoiler:
Hakeem vs Duncan vs KG vs Bird: Plus-minus based stats: Ai. AuPM: 2004 KG (3rd all time) > 2003 Duncan (7th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (9th all time) Aii. Postseason AuPM: 2003 Duncan (3rd all time) > 2004 Garnett (12th all time) [No older players] Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: 2004 Garnett (1st all time) > 2003 Duncan (3rd all time) > Bird (~20th all time, but small sample) > Hakeem (~20th all time, small sample) Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2003 Duncan (1st all time) > 1986 Bird (9th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (16th all time) > 2004 Garnett (20th all time) Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: 2003 Duncan > 2004 Garnett [no older players] Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Garnett > Duncan = Hakeem > Bird Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: (2005 Duncan) > 2004 Garnett (7th all time) > 2003 Duncan (8th all time) Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: (1993 Hakeem) > 2004 Garnett (5th all time) > (2002 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan (9th all time) > 1986 Larry Bird > 1994 Hakeem (would be 14 all time)
Box score-based data Gi. Backpicks BPM: 1986 Bird (10th all time) > 2004 Garnett (15th all time) > (1993 Hakeem 17th all time) > (2002 Duncan 20th all time) > 2003 Duncan > 1994 Hakeem Gii. Postseason Backpicks BPM: 1986 Bird (4th all time) > 2003 Duncan (tie 6th all time) > 1967 Wilt (12th all time) > 1994 Hakeem (13th all time) > (1993 Hakeem) > 2003/04 Garnett Additional box score stats: Hi. BR’s BPM: 2004 Garnett (13th all time) > 1986 Bird > (2004 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem Additional box score stats: Hii. BR’s Postseason BPM: (2002 Duncan would be 8th all time) > 2003 Duncan > 1986 Larry Bird > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem > 2004 Garnett [No Russell, Will] Additional box score stats: Ii. WS/48: 2004 Garnett > (2002/04 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan > 1986 Larry Bird > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem Total WS: 2004 Garnett > (2002 Duncan) > 2003 Duncan > (1993 Hakeem 93) > 1986 Larry Bird > 1994 Hakeem Additional box score stats: Iii. Postseason WS/48: 2003 Duncan > 1986 Larry Bird > (1993 Hakeem) > 1994 Hakeem > 2004 Garnett
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 > 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 is slightly favored. Do the Contextual Factors (Scalability, Resilience, Health, Defensive value being missed by the metrics, Fit, Time Machine) change anything? Duncan is clearly more Resilient, but KG is 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. Ultimately, I think Duncan's famous leadership skills and willingness to adapt his game to be more portable later on helps me feel the Portability/Fit/Time machine gap is smaller than Duncan's clearly large resilience advantage. I go Duncan here, with some hesitancy.
Duncan > Bird: 2003 Duncan beats 1986 Bird in 7 stats to 3. They’re tied 2-2 in most trusted stats (though Bird’s RAPM sample is small), and Duncan leads 3-1 in playoff-only stats. Any contextual factors (1. Scalability, 2. Resilience, 3. Health, 4. Defense not captured in impact metrics, 5. Team Fit exaggerating/limiting impact, 6. Time machine.)? Bird clearly wins scalability and probably time machine to today, but Duncan probably wins the other 4.
3. Reasoning for Bird: Bird > KG: 2004 KG and 1986 Bird are tied 4 stats to 4, but Bird’s up 3-1 in our most trusted stats, and Bird leads in 4/4 playoff-only stats.
Bird > Hakeem: 86 Bird beats 94 Hakeem in 4/4 of the most trusted stats, 4/4 of the playoff-only stats, and 9/10 of the total stats. If we add 93 Hakeem to the mix, 86 Bird still wins in 8/10 total stats (or 7/8 if you prefer total WS over WS/48).
Any contextual factors (1. Scalability, 2. Resilience, 3. Health, 4. Defense not captured in impact metrics, 5. Team Fit exaggerating/limiting impact, 6. Time machine.)? Bird is definitely more scalable and performs better in a time machine to today the Hakeem (though it's close for KG). KG doesn't have a resilience advantage, and Hakeem's Resilience advantage isn't enough to make up the difference according to playoff-only stats. Overall, the contextual factors aren't enough in KG or Hakeem's favor to make up for Bird's clear impact advantage.
Any other candidates? Russell's the other player in the mix. Though he's obviously a lot harder to compare statistically (given our lack of data), I see him around the same level as Hakeem (who's clearly below Curry, Duncan, and Bird):
Spoiler:
I notice you have bird over hakeem. Does it give you any pause that hakeem in his 2nd year was able to take bird's superteam to 6 after taking out magic's superteam in 5? Rockets were .500 that season going by wowy and were much without him in surrounding seasons though i don't know how the rpam compares between the twp
Hi OhayoKD, thanks for the question! I do tend to have Duncan > Hakeem. Just to summarize, I have two main reasons for having peak Duncan > peak Hakeem: 1) Quantitatively: The metrics pretty clearly favor Duncan. Some people question the metrics, saying they either underrate defensive value or are capturing how good a player is in a certain role/context, rather than how good they are in general. For the defensive end, I think since both players are similar defensively (Hakeem probably edges out at his peak defense, but peak overall Hakeem isn't peak defense Hakeem), that's not enough to make a difference. I also tend to trust them since they're playing in a quite similar role / context -- they both have a similar play style (e.g. best value comes from defense, best offensive skill is scoring, both are resilient postseason risers, etc.) and both have some teammate similarities at their peak (e.g. no strong offensive perimeter star with them, good spacing, etc.) 2) Qualitatively: I tend to be lower on Hakeem's offense than others'. His regular season scoring is definitely a step back from some of the other All-time Peak players, and I'm overall quite low on his playmaking and passing. His defensive peak also doesn't align with his offensive peak (like others have said before me).
Before I answer your question, let me be the first to say -- I'm by no means an expert on the 80s Rockets. I'm happy to learn more if people have any analysis / footage / statistics to share. But there's 3 things that make me hesitant to be swayed by 86 Hakeem's performance vs 86 Bird.
1) How much should a player's performance when they're much younger or much older influence how we evaluate their peak?
I definitely don't think there's zero value. Even in a one year sample, there still can be some statistical noise and luck involved. Nearby years can give a stabler, larger sample to evaluate how good a player is (that's why the Thinking Basketball's Greatest peaks series used ~3 year samples for players). For example, looking at 2012 LeBron's playoff success might make us more comfortable being lenient with 2013 LeBron's small playoff dip (relative to expectations). But we have to be careful if we go too far out -- the further in time we look, the more likely we are to be comparing two players who are different. For example, the fact that 2016 LeBron showed great playoff success doesn't make me more confident that 2011 LeBron has the experience, resilience, and versatility to perform well against certain defenses.
For Hakeem, 1986 is 8 years away from the year most people take as his peak (1994). That's a fairly large separation. It's not that we can't learn anything from 1986 Hakeem (we can), but we have to be careful about it. Could it be his defensive motor and athleticism that enabled his younger self to succeed in the playoffs? If so, how much did those things decline by 1994?
2) How do we incorporate team performance when evaluating an individual's peak? How do we know team success is caused by one individual vs another?
Like point 1, I don't think there's zero value to be gained by team performance, but the key is to isolate how much team success came from the individual vs their teammates/coach/opponents/etc. To use an extreme example: Satch Sanders had a lot of playoff success, winning 8 Championships -- this is a championship in 62% of his seasons. If we just look at team performance, we'd miss the (rather obvious) context that the championships were probably driven by Big Russell, not Satch Sanders
For Hakeem, if we just look at team performance before his peak in 1993-1995, we'd see that he did indeed make the finals in 1986. But otherwise, they made the semifinals just once (1987). They lost in the first round in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. They didn't even make the playoffs in 1992. And remember, our first-guess expectation would be that Hakeem should be getting better in these later years (90, 91, 92), since that should be closer to his peak.
This makes me wonder how much the Rockets' playoff success in 1986 was caused by Hakeem having better teammates. If we look at his teammates, their pre-94 playoff success aligns fairly closely to Ralph Sampson's health. He was healthy in 1986 so they made the finals, he was injured but still occasionally played in 1987 so they made the second round, and then he got injured and became unplayable (and left), so they couldn't make it out of the 1st Round. To be clear, I still have 80s Hakeem as the better player over Ralph Sampson (and certainly still MVP level). But if we just look at team performance, it makes me wonder whether the 1986 playoff success was a case of better teammates, rather than a Herculean floor-raising effort that Hakeem succeeded at in 1986 but failed at from 1987-1992.
3) Assuming we do want to evaluate team performance, what's the best way to measure team success?
I also want to be careful about how we evaluate team success. Most analysts say team record is not the best way to measure team success. Most analysts prefer an adjusted Margin of Victory as a one-number metric. The first adjustment is to make a correction for strength of schedule (this adjusted MoV is called SRS). A popular secondary adjustment would be to lower the weighting of a blowout (is there really much difference between a 20 point blowout and a 30 point blowout, if the game went into garbage time with 6 minutes left?), though I'll admit there's no Consensus approach on how much to curve down blowouts.
Looking at adjusted Margin of Victory is even more important when looking at minuscule sample of games (like 1 series), since even one shot can drastically change the perceived record (the difference between winning 4/4 playoff games and 4/5 playoff games is a 20% difference in record! that's huge!). Now I do agree that there is value in still keeping the record. Some teams are better at closing games out in the clutch than others, and that can be captured in the record more easily than adjusted Margin of Victory. Personally, I like to use both adjusted MoV and team record, while also including the context, when trying to evaluate team success. [brief aside: more advanced stats like FiveThirtyEight's ELO may be even more effective than adjusted MoV or team record].
Anyway, it's true the Rockets took the 86 Celtics to 6 games. This seems like a fairly good team performance. But the Celtics' MoV was +6.2 points per game. In other words: it wasn't that close. Looking closer at the team record also shows this. The rockets happened to win Game 3 of the finals by just 2 points. It certainly could have been a 5 Game gentleman's sweep by the Celtics.
What if we add more context. Was this Game 3 steal driven by a Herculean effort of Hakeem? Not that I can tell (happy to be corrected if anyone wants to do any film analysis). To me, it looks like the Rockets kept the the possession game close. They committed fewer turnovers and almost as many rebounds, led by Ralph Sampson's 22 rebounds (including 7 offensive rebounds). The Rockets also shot better, which you'd think would be credit to Hakeem, but Hakeem actually shot poorly this game (though to his credit, he did get to the line). Indeed, Hakeem actually shot poorly throughout the finals, at -1.5% relative shooting, which seems a bit disappointing compared to the resilient scoring we expect of Hakeem at his peak.
Anyway, that's why 1988 Hakeem's team performance doesn't make me hesitant too much when choosing peak Bird > peak Hakeem (especially when the metrics favor 1986 Bird > 1994 Hakeem, even in the playoffs). But like I said, I'm not an expert on the 80s Rockets so feel free to jump in if you think I've missed anything!
Well, depending on how seriously you take wowy with hakeem you could credibly argue what he did after 86 was as or more impressive. Ala, 10 win pace rockets in 88 win at 45 win pace with him. 2-10 rockets(without hakeem) in 92 go 40-20 with him and then win 53 games the following season with hakeem playing the whole year. Taken at face value those are argubale _more_ impressive than the 86 regular season though we don't really get a fair playoff comparison.
What happens if you compare bird to hakeem's best scoring years rs and ps instead of specfically 94.
capfan33 wrote:This part of it isn't all that impressive, Kareem was 39 and Hakeem wasn't even guarding him most of the time. But was a superb playoff run.
On the one hand, you are very right. On the other, the NBA world seemed to think Kareem was the 1st team center and apparently Hakeem took that personally.
falcolombardi wrote:Why are you significatively higher on hakeem> duncan? They seem essentially indistinguible to me
Floor raising a team to a ring as the only star? Check
Good but not great efficiency isolation scorer who is resilient in tge postseason? Check
All time great defender? Check
I would even argue duncan defense and offense peaks may have overlapped more neatly than hakeem's (2003 duncan was at his physical prime for defense, 94 hakeem was starting to slpw down in D per 70'sfan opinion)
Indistinguishable? That's a telling word my friend, because visually, they are very different from each other. Olajuwon's combination of explosion, coordination, improvisation, and learning capacity, is outlier.
Re: resilient in the playoffs. Both resilient, but I'd say Olajuwon has a healthy edge there.
Re: all-time great defender. I consider prime Olajuwon to be considerably more potent as a defensive player than Duncan ever was - though I will say it was very impressive the way Duncan was able to sustain his value into old age, which I think is in part to him never having as much explosion in his game to lose.
Re: Duncan's defensive and offensive peaks overlapped more. I'd agree with you there, though it's still not clear cut to me that that means Olajuwon's defense had fallen enough to lose his lead over Duncan on that side of the ball, and he has that offensive edge to boot.
Can you elaborate [in an evidentiary manner] on why you think Hakeem was a "considerably more potent defensive player" than Duncan? I suppose I can see the peak year argument for Hakeem > Duncan if we extend the tunnel vision to the extent that peri-peak years are disregarded......but even then I can't get as far as "considerably".
I don't know if I can give an answer that satisfies you. Duncan doesn't move like Hakeem. Doesn't mean he's necessarily a weaker defender overall, but do you agree there's a difference there?
falcolombardi wrote:Why are you significatively higher on hakeem> duncan? They seem essentially indistinguible to me
Floor raising a team to a ring as the only star? Check
Good but not great efficiency isolation scorer who is resilient in tge postseason? Check
All time great defender? Check
I would even argue duncan defense and offense peaks may have overlapped more neatly than hakeem's (2003 duncan was at his physical prime for defense, 94 hakeem was starting to slpw down in D per 70'sfan opinion)
Indistinguishable? That's a telling word my friend, because visually, they are very different from each other. Olajuwon's combination of explosion, coordination, improvisation, and learning capacity, is outlier.
Re: resilient in the playoffs. Both resilient, but I'd say Olajuwon has a healthy edge there.
Re: all-time great defender. I consider prime Olajuwon to be considerably more potent as a defensive player than Duncan ever was - though I will say it was very impressive the way Duncan was able to sustain his value into old age, which I think is in part to him never having as much explosion in his game to lose.
Re: Duncan's defensive and offensive peaks overlapped more. I'd agree with you there, though it's still not clear cut to me that that means Olajuwon's defense had fallen enough to lose his lead over Duncan on that side of the ball, and he has that offensive edge to boot.
By indistinguible i meant their statistical production/output more than stylistic similarities or a qualitative comparision
For how much hakeem is the poster boy for resilient scoring big, duncan profile is up there with him without being exactly the same yet most people talk as if there is some clear gap between both which i just dont see
Is hakeem the more gifted/talented player? Of course. If you asked me i would tell you hakeem is the most gifted player in basketball history with the possible exception of lebron (once considering playmaking instincts) or wilt
He had a body and coordination and ability to finely control his body in a powerful 6'10 frame that is nearly unprecedented and as a prospect his ceiling was probably a fair amount higher than duncan (himself a percentile 99.9 prospect)
But potential=/=end result in players, and i feel that whether it was the fault of picking basketball too late or playing in a team situation that didnt develop his playmaking until late in his prime, hakeem just didnt start to develop into a playmaker who could take advantage and leverage his scoring gifts until the time his athletism and defense were starting to go in the (slight at the time) downhill
I compared a couple of games of both, duncan (vs nets and lakers in 2003) and hakeem (94 finals and vs suns) and yes, i am completely aware this is a terribly small sample size so take it for what js worth
But i saw duncan as the clear stronger passer of tge two, more willing to pass the ball and quicker ar doing it as well as more capable of exploiting gaps in the paint with interior bullets. Both created a ton of open shots with their interior gravity but duncan leveraged it better with (imo) underated playmaking
And in defense i didnt notice a huge gap either, hakeem was more mobile, runnint after wings and guards in the full court to pressure their fastbreaks or moving all across the court and stepping to the perimeter, the latter skill no doubt would be extrwmely useful if we were evaluating them for the 2010's and 2020's rather than their own eras
But duncan while more "static" in comparision had mpre than comparable rim protection
I mentioned it in the nets game post but he is always altering or dissuading shots, reacting quickly to position himself in a position to contest, keepinh blocked shots in play rather than sending to the rafters.
He is so sound it looks like he is just s tall dude standing in the paint waiting for shots to block yet you dont see many guys, as big and as tall and sometimes just as mobile guys anchoring the kind of defenses duncan did, he makes it seem so easy that it looks like he is not doing much
Remember how you say people take for granted curry being the motor of some of the best offenses we have ever seen? Duncan could do the same in the defensive end
I know you are high on plus-minus stats for curry and garnett, duncan is on par with them in rapm studies without the boxscore drop offs they often had at their peaks in postseason.
He is just one of the more impactful players ever to play and did so with picture perfect attitude and team first approach, helped lead a team to 4 rings and contributed to a 20 year run of great (almost uninterupted) contending teams while changing his role in the team frpm first to last without complaint. Another thingh you mention on curry
Ohh, and he also took one of the least talented teams post merger to a ring in his peak season while beating a 3-peat team
I am just baffled he gets taken for granted at times as if he was not really on the level of guys like hakeem, shaq, etc
Lots of good thoughts here, and I think it's good that people push back defending Duncan.
You acknowledge that Hakeem is the more gifted/talented player, and that's interesting given that you're arguing he didn't have the peak advantage because of his playmaking limitations. Aside from the fact that I do think that playmaking is part of talent (not central to the point of discussion here), there is the matter that Houston won a title with a dominant playoff offense built around peak/prime Hakeem. If you can do that, is playmaking really a clear cut problem? Others will certainly have a playmaking edge over Hakeem, but I struggle with the idea that it was truly a problem here.
Re: ton of open shots with interior gravity. Do you have something statistical to point to here in '02-03? Because superficially, the Rockets were the team that seemed to be doing a lot more with those open shots.
Re: static but more rim protection. If offenses are trying to score only driving to the basket, this is your ideal defender. If not, it's not. In general, the guys I rate as the best defenders in history are the bigs with both vertical and horizontal game in the model of Bill Russell - and that was true before the game was optimized around the 3-point line which made it a considerably bigger deal. Duncan ain't in that club. Hakeem is.
You mention Duncan leading some of the best defenses in history, but consider how he looks against teams that space the floor. From the SSOL Suns to the early Curry Warriors, when a team spaced the floor, it hurt Duncan's effectiveness. The same would be true for all bigs to a degree, but the better a player's quickness, the better his horizontal game, the less he's hurt by this.
Re: untalented 2003 team. This is a team that doesn't win titles in most years even at the time. The Laker team they beat was destroying itself with the combined unprofessional of two unquenchable egos, and they were not playing anywhere as good as they did at their best.
Re: 4 rings. Just because it's relevant and I think people will find it important that I think this: Duncan was never the best offensive player on a championship team after 2003, and those first two rings (1999 & 2003) were won with defense.
Re: as if not at the level of Hakeem, Shaq. Leaving Hakeem aside here, Shaq & Duncan went head to head prime vs prime, and it really left no doubt in anyone's mind who was better. The debate at the time was more Shaq vs prime Jordan.
I'm now a lot lower on Shaq than most because of the strategic advances in the sport, but back in their day, I certainly felt Shaq had the edge at his best even as I was very critical of the damage he did to his franchises, and that I'd rather draft Duncan than Shaq.
capfan33 wrote:Seattle was just a bad matchup for Hakeem regardless of year I think.
This didn't really become a thing until around 1995. Hakeem averaged 4.7 apg in the 1993 series as part of an overall 23/13/4.7/4.2/1.7 statline on 52% shooting. The series went 7, with the home team winning every game, including OT in game 7 And that's with Seattle being a +3.1 SRS favorite. Seattle was just really good, although just like they arguably underperformed their SRS here, they would go on to do even worse the next 2 years.
1994 Hakeem averaged 28 ppg against Seattle while shooting 13/20, 10/15, 16/21 and 9/14 (68.6%).
Won't claim to have done tight analysis on Seattle versus Houston and Seattle versus Hakeem.
And anything looking at 4 games is going to be subject to noise.
That said looking at 1993 RS Hakeem averages 4.5 turnovers and just 1.75 assists. If the passing isn't there (and the turnovers are) that diminshes the value of inside out Olajuwon-centric offense. Even the scoring is ... okay? 23ppg, 0.515002239 TS%.
Even in the series cited, clearly better there is the 4.142857143 tpg, a little high and a significant part of how Seattle's defense would in general tend to be effective.
Not to say strongly that a specific given date is correct but the turnover numbers seem relevant and the '93 RS numbers superficially don't look great, at least at first glance (as before small samples, don't know what the Supersonics did to other post players etc).
OhayoKD wrote:I notice you have bird over hakeem. Does it give you any pause that hakeem in his 2nd year was able to take bird's superteam to 6 after taking out magic's superteam in 5? Rockets were .500 that season going by wowy and were much without him in surrounding seasons though i don't know how the rpam compares between the twp
Hi OhayoKD, thanks for the question! I do tend to have Duncan > Hakeem. Just to summarize, I have two main reasons for having peak Duncan > peak Hakeem: 1) Quantitatively: The metrics pretty clearly favor Duncan. Some people question the metrics, saying they either underrate defensive value or are capturing how good a player is in a certain role/context, rather than how good they are in general. For the defensive end, I think since both players are similar defensively (Hakeem probably edges out at his peak defense, but peak overall Hakeem isn't peak defense Hakeem), that's not enough to make a difference. I also tend to trust them since they're playing in a quite similar role / context -- they both have a similar play style (e.g. best value comes from defense, best offensive skill is scoring, both are resilient postseason risers, etc.) and both have some teammate similarities at their peak (e.g. no strong offensive perimeter star with them, good spacing, etc.) 2) Qualitatively: I tend to be lower on Hakeem's offense than others'. His regular season scoring is definitely a step back from some of the other All-time Peak players, and I'm overall quite low on his playmaking and passing. His defensive peak also doesn't align with his offensive peak (like others have said before me).
Before I answer your question, let me be the first to say -- I'm by no means an expert on the 80s Rockets. I'm happy to learn more if people have any analysis / footage / statistics to share. But there's 3 things that make me hesitant to be swayed by 86 Hakeem's performance vs 86 Bird.
1) How much should a player's performance when they're much younger or much older influence how we evaluate their peak?
I definitely don't think there's zero value. Even in a one year sample, there still can be some statistical noise and luck involved. Nearby years can give a stabler, larger sample to evaluate how good a player is (that's why the Thinking Basketball's Greatest peaks series used ~3 year samples for players). For example, looking at 2012 LeBron's playoff success might make us more comfortable being lenient with 2013 LeBron's small playoff dip (relative to expectations). But we have to be careful if we go too far out -- the further in time we look, the more likely we are to be comparing two players who are different. For example, the fact that 2016 LeBron showed great playoff success doesn't make me more confident that 2011 LeBron has the experience, resilience, and versatility to perform well against certain defenses.
For Hakeem, 1986 is 8 years away from the year most people take as his peak (1994). That's a fairly large separation. It's not that we can't learn anything from 1986 Hakeem (we can), but we have to be careful about it. Could it be his defensive motor and athleticism that enabled his younger self to succeed in the playoffs? If so, how much did those things decline by 1994?
2) How do we incorporate team performance when evaluating an individual's peak? How do we know team success is caused by one individual vs another?
Like point 1, I don't think there's zero value to be gained by team performance, but the key is to isolate how much team success came from the individual vs their teammates/coach/opponents/etc. To use an extreme example: Satch Sanders had a lot of playoff success, winning 8 Championships -- this is a championship in 62% of his seasons. If we just look at team performance, we'd miss the (rather obvious) context that the championships were probably driven by Big Russell, not Satch Sanders
For Hakeem, if we just look at team performance before his peak in 1993-1995, we'd see that he did indeed make the finals in 1986. But otherwise, they made the semifinals just once (1987). They lost in the first round in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. They didn't even make the playoffs in 1992. And remember, our first-guess expectation would be that Hakeem should be getting better in these later years (90, 91, 92), since that should be closer to his peak.
This makes me wonder how much the Rockets' playoff success in 1986 was caused by Hakeem having better teammates. If we look at his teammates, their pre-94 playoff success aligns fairly closely to Ralph Sampson's health. He was healthy in 1986 so they made the finals, he was injured but still occasionally played in 1987 so they made the second round, and then he got injured and became unplayable (and left), so they couldn't make it out of the 1st Round. To be clear, I still have 80s Hakeem as the better player over Ralph Sampson (and certainly still MVP level). But if we just look at team performance, it makes me wonder whether the 1986 playoff success was a case of better teammates, rather than a Herculean floor-raising effort that Hakeem succeeded at in 1986 but failed at from 1987-1992.
3) Assuming we do want to evaluate team performance, what's the best way to measure team success?
I also want to be careful about how we evaluate team success. Most analysts say team record is not the best way to measure team success. Most analysts prefer an adjusted Margin of Victory as a one-number metric. The first adjustment is to make a correction for strength of schedule (this adjusted MoV is called SRS). A popular secondary adjustment would be to lower the weighting of a blowout (is there really much difference between a 20 point blowout and a 30 point blowout, if the game went into garbage time with 6 minutes left?), though I'll admit there's no Consensus approach on how much to curve down blowouts.
Looking at adjusted Margin of Victory is even more important when looking at minuscule sample of games (like 1 series), since even one shot can drastically change the perceived record (the difference between winning 4/4 playoff games and 4/5 playoff games is a 20% difference in record! that's huge!). Now I do agree that there is value in still keeping the record. Some teams are better at closing games out in the clutch than others, and that can be captured in the record more easily than adjusted Margin of Victory. Personally, I like to use both adjusted MoV and team record, while also including the context, when trying to evaluate team success. [brief aside: more advanced stats like FiveThirtyEight's ELO may be even more effective than adjusted MoV or team record].
Anyway, it's true the Rockets took the 86 Celtics to 6 games. This seems like a fairly good team performance. But the Celtics' MoV was +6.2 points per game. In other words: it wasn't that close. Looking closer at the team record also shows this. The rockets happened to win Game 3 of the finals by just 2 points. It certainly could have been a 5 Game gentleman's sweep by the Celtics.
What if we add more context. Was this Game 3 steal driven by a Herculean effort of Hakeem? Not that I can tell (happy to be corrected if anyone wants to do any film analysis). To me, it looks like the Rockets kept the the possession game close. They committed fewer turnovers and almost as many rebounds, led by Ralph Sampson's 22 rebounds (including 7 offensive rebounds). The Rockets also shot better, which you'd think would be credit to Hakeem, but Hakeem actually shot poorly this game (though to his credit, he did get to the line). Indeed, Hakeem actually shot poorly throughout the finals, at -1.5% relative shooting, which seems a bit disappointing compared to the resilient scoring we expect of Hakeem at his peak.
Anyway, that's why 1988 Hakeem's team performance doesn't make me hesitant too much when choosing peak Bird > peak Hakeem (especially when the metrics favor 1986 Bird > 1994 Hakeem, even in the playoffs). But like I said, I'm not an expert on the 80s Rockets so feel free to jump in if you think I've missed anything!
Well, depending on how seriously you take wowy with hakeem you could credibly argue what he did after 86 was as or more impressive. Ala, 10 win pace rockets in 88 win at 45 win pace with him. 2-10 rockets(without hakeem) in 92 go 40-20 with him and then win 53 games the following season with hakeem playing the whole year. Taken at face value those are argubale _more_ impressive than the 86 regular season though we don't really get a fair playoff comparison.
What happens if you compare bird to hakeem's best scoring years rs and ps instead of specfically 94.
For me I'm not sure it would be "credible" to be that selective with the WoWY samples.
Overall his WoWY stuff is very good I believe but the 86, 88, 91 and 91-92 composite numbers from Ben's old spreadsheet are far more pedestrian. Latterly '95 looks very good, '96 good, '97 pedestrian, I would suggest.
Sidenote: The nature of the '92 absence too, may, depending on your reading, harm Olajuwon from an intangibles perspective.
Doctor MJ wrote: Indistinguishable? That's a telling word my friend, because visually, they are very different from each other. Olajuwon's combination of explosion, coordination, improvisation, and learning capacity, is outlier.
Re: resilient in the playoffs. Both resilient, but I'd say Olajuwon has a healthy edge there.
Re: all-time great defender. I consider prime Olajuwon to be considerably more potent as a defensive player than Duncan ever was - though I will say it was very impressive the way Duncan was able to sustain his value into old age, which I think is in part to him never having as much explosion in his game to lose.
Re: Duncan's defensive and offensive peaks overlapped more. I'd agree with you there, though it's still not clear cut to me that that means Olajuwon's defense had fallen enough to lose his lead over Duncan on that side of the ball, and he has that offensive edge to boot.
By indistinguible i meant their statistical production/output more than stylistic similarities or a qualitative comparision
For how much hakeem is the poster boy for resilient scoring big, duncan profile is up there with him without being exactly the same yet most people talk as if there is some clear gap between both which i just dont see
Is hakeem the more gifted/talented player? Of course. If you asked me i would tell you hakeem is the most gifted player in basketball history with the possible exception of lebron (once considering playmaking instincts) or wilt
He had a body and coordination and ability to finely control his body in a powerful 6'10 frame that is nearly unprecedented and as a prospect his ceiling was probably a fair amount higher than duncan (himself a percentile 99.9 prospect)
But potential=/=end result in players, and i feel that whether it was the fault of picking basketball too late or playing in a team situation that didnt develop his playmaking until late in his prime, hakeem just didnt start to develop into a playmaker who could take advantage and leverage his scoring gifts until the time his athletism and defense were starting to go in the (slight at the time) downhill
I compared a couple of games of both, duncan (vs nets and lakers in 2003) and hakeem (94 finals and vs suns) and yes, i am completely aware this is a terribly small sample size so take it for what js worth
But i saw duncan as the clear stronger passer of tge two, more willing to pass the ball and quicker ar doing it as well as more capable of exploiting gaps in the paint with interior bullets. Both created a ton of open shots with their interior gravity but duncan leveraged it better with (imo) underated playmaking
And in defense i didnt notice a huge gap either, hakeem was more mobile, runnint after wings and guards in the full court to pressure their fastbreaks or moving all across the court and stepping to the perimeter, the latter skill no doubt would be extrwmely useful if we were evaluating them for the 2010's and 2020's rather than their own eras
But duncan while more "static" in comparision had mpre than comparable rim protection
I mentioned it in the nets game post but he is always altering or dissuading shots, reacting quickly to position himself in a position to contest, keepinh blocked shots in play rather than sending to the rafters.
He is so sound it looks like he is just s tall dude standing in the paint waiting for shots to block yet you dont see many guys, as big and as tall and sometimes just as mobile guys anchoring the kind of defenses duncan did, he makes it seem so easy that it looks like he is not doing much
Remember how you say people take for granted curry being the motor of some of the best offenses we have ever seen? Duncan could do the same in the defensive end
I know you are high on plus-minus stats for curry and garnett, duncan is on par with them in rapm studies without the boxscore drop offs they often had at their peaks in postseason.
He is just one of the more impactful players ever to play and did so with picture perfect attitude and team first approach, helped lead a team to 4 rings and contributed to a 20 year run of great (almost uninterupted) contending teams while changing his role in the team frpm first to last without complaint. Another thingh you mention on curry
Ohh, and he also took one of the least talented teams post merger to a ring in his peak season while beating a 3-peat team
I am just baffled he gets taken for granted at times as if he was not really on the level of guys like hakeem, shaq, etc
Re: ton of open shots with interior gravity. Do you have something statistical to point to here in '02-03? Because superficially, the Rockets were the team that seemed to be doing a lot more with those open shots.
You mention Duncan leading some of the best defenses in history, but consider how he looks against teams that space the floor. From the SSOL Suns to the early Curry Warriors, when a team spaced the floor, it hurt Duncan's effectiveness. The same would be true for all bigs to a degree, but the better a player's quickness, the better his horizontal game, the less he's hurt by this.
Re: untalented 2003 team. This is a team that doesn't win titles in most years even at the time. The Laker team they beat was destroying itself with the combined unprofessional of two unquenchable egos, and they were not playing anywhere as good as they did at their best.
Re: 4 rings. Just because it's relevant and I think people will find it important that I think this: Duncan was never the best offensive player on a championship team after 2003, and those first two rings (1999 & 2003) were won with defense.
Re: as if not at the level of Hakeem, Shaq. Leaving Hakeem aside here, Shaq & Duncan went head to head prime vs prime, and it really left no doubt in anyone's mind who was better. The debate at the time was more Shaq vs prime Jordan.
I'm now a lot lower on Shaq than most because of the strategic advances in the sport, but back in their day, I certainly felt Shaq had the edge at his best even as I was very critical of the damage he did to his franchises, and that I'd rather draft Duncan than Shaq.
You acknowledge that Hakeem is the more gifted/talented player, and that's interesting given that you're arguing he didn't have the peak advantage because of his playmaking limitations
Is not that i dont consider vision/bball iq as part of talent as much as i dont know if hakeem had the potential to be a better playmaker early on (and maybe peaking higher there) if hr was put in a situation to develop.
Hakeem had issues with his teammates and apparently openly adnitted he didnt trust teammates enough to pass to until 1993~ and was in a situation where he was asked/allowed to play 1 vs 5 often
Remember your criticisms on okc for letting westbrook too loose with the reins of the team and develop bad habits?
I see a possible situation like that here. Is possible that if he had been drafted by the popovich spurs and pur in a system where even early on he was asked to pass and trust to his teammates more early on he could have been aa good or better a passer than duncan? I dont think is impossible to imagine that, specially with how relatively quickly/well he took to tomjanpvich offensw once he bought into being a willing passer (shades of 67 wilt under holzman?)
Houston won with a great offense built around hakeem passing, f you can do that, is playmaking really a clear cut problem?
I would mention first that houston in 94 was more offensively slanted/talented than 2003 spurs who were mpre defensively oriented. Notice that i never argued duncan was a better defender thab hakeem based on team defense being much better, i wouldnt do the opposite for hakeem offense either
Also rockets while maybe only a bit more talented in offense, were -MUCH- more ahead of their time tactically as a spacing and 3 point shooting team than the 2003 spurs, specially relative to eras
Add to this that rockets shooting in 94 may have been a outlier from 3 and i dont put that much weight into the ortg difference
And while you are totally right hakeem passing didnt limit rockets neither did duncan lesser "horizontal" defense limit spurs defense....so in my approach i look at them in their own eras context and dont see either as a issue
Re: static but more rim protection. If offenses are trying to score only driving to the basket, this is your ideal defender. If not, it's not. In general, the guys I rate as the best defenders in history are the bigs with both vertical and horizontal game in the model of Bill Russell - and that was true before the game was optimized around the 3-point line which made it a considerably bigger deal. Duncan ain't in that club. Hakeem is
.
I have peak hakeem above peak duncan in defense mainly thanks to this, but i just dont see it as a big enough gap in their eras as it would be now, and i try to evaluate in era as much as i can
Notice that i have duncan and hakeem as essentially a virtual tie where i marginally prefer duncan even though i was more imprrssed by analizing duncan passing so i do value the defensive edge for hakeem
You mention Duncan leading some of the best defenses in history, but consider how he looks against teams that space the floor. From the SSOL Suns to the early Curry Warriors, when a team spaced the floor, it hurt Duncan's effectiveness
I am a bit unsure why you went as far as 2014 to make your point (specially when 2014 spurs remained a excellent defense anchored by a 37 years old duncan) but to adress the suns point
The suns were the best offense -period- duncan ever faced, by offense relative to era they may be just the absolute best ever in nba history
And more importantly, they were not there in 2003 which is the year in question, for the era duncan peaked in his defense impact never was in question agains any rival
Hakeem never faced rivals like that either, for all wr know his defensive impact may have too a equal hit, specially as he alsp played in a era that didnt have experience dealing with somethingh like those suns
If duncan (or hakeem) played in the pick akd roll and 3 point shot era they would have teammates, training and schemes designed to deal with offenses like the nash suns, just look at how old al horford (by no means a mpre mobile big than peak duncan), robert williams or brook lopez, remain effective against 2022 offense, let alone 2005 or 2006 offense
to argue a comparision here we saw a elite defense tailored to defend hakeem well (the sonics) stiffle even peak hakeem, and that type of defense that skirted the limits of illegal defense rules would ve even more common and developed today, a style of defense i subjectively believe duncan would do better against as a mpre willing and quicker to give the ball than hakeem (by subjective evaluation)
So do we question hakeem historically lauded offense resiliency cause a elite defense (not by as much as suns offense) tailored specifically to his weaknesses could slow him down a ton ?
I would guess you amd most of us here probably dont think so
Re: ton of open shots with interior gravity. Do you have something statistical to point to here in '02-03? Because superficially, the Rockets were the team that seemed to be doing a lot more with those open shots.
We dont have that much data for the era but i think elgee has compared this wity hakeem and duncan, will research it when i get some time and post it
That said, as i mention before, rockets were the nuch more aheas of their time offense with the most 3 point shooters regardless of duncan/hakeem
Shaq & Duncan went head to head prime vs prime, and it really left no doubt in anyone's mind who was better
Lots of people would disagree with this, i know 70sfan does for example
Prime duncan and shaq went head tp head 4 times from 99-2003 going 2-2, both won years when they had the clear talrnt edge (99,01) duncan clearly outplayed shaq in 2003 and by the numbers did too in 2002
the argument shaq was clearly and unarguably better than duncan when the head tp head doesnt seem to bear that out, duncan had the edge in impact metrics/plus-minus (surprised you dont include them here since you use them a ton too) and head to head box stats semm to favpr duncan if anythingh (when shaq edge over duncan is offense at that) doesnt seem convincing
That people compared the bigger brand and personality in the nuch bigger market (shaq) to jordan and not duncan to jordan is npt surprising or relevant to me in the slightest
People also compared kobe to be on jordan level more too for example
Edit: alsp anpther point about duncan defense
When people look back and say x or y center woulsnt be as effective today they often seem to mean in absolute rather than relative terms
We know that bill russel couldnt anchor 90 or lower defensive rating defenses yearly in the 2010's no mattter what, our real question shpuld be if he could still anchor relative -6 to -8 defenses yearly
A 104 defensive rating in a 112 average league (-8) is (almost) as valuable for winning as a 96 defensive rating in a 104 average league
The 2003 spurs, a -4 defense at 100 def rating could allow 6 more points per 100 in 2022 and be the league best regular season defense anyway, the 2004 spurs, a -9 defense anchores by peak duncan, could allow 12 more points per 100 and remain the league best defense in 2022
In 2022 the celtics had the co-leading defebse in the league playing two traditional centers in old horford and rob williams. Neither of which is much more suited mobility wise to defending the perimeter than tim duncan
They did so with a defense that would have been one of the league worst in 2003
Do you get my idea? I am not at all convinced you couldnt create a league best defense around duncan in 2022 if that is the concern here
DraymondGold wrote:But there's 3 things that make me hesitant to be swayed by 86 Hakeem's performance vs 86 Bird.
1) How much should a player's performance when they're much younger or much older influence how we evaluate their peak?
...For Hakeem, 1986 is 8 years away from the year most people take as his peak (1994).
...But otherwise, they made the semifinals just once (1987). They lost in the first round in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. They didn't even make the playoffs in 1992.
...This makes me wonder how much the Rockets' playoff success in 1986 was caused by Hakeem having better teammates. If we look at his teammates, their pre-94 playoff success aligns fairly closely to Ralph Sampson's health. He was healthy in 1986 so they made the finals, he was injured but still occasionally played in 1987 so they made the second round, and then he got injured and became unplayable (and left), so they couldn't make it out of the 1st Round.
...Anyway, that's why 1988 Hakeem's team performance doesn't make me hesitant too much when choosing peak Bird > peak Hakeem (especially when the metrics favor 1986 Bird > 1994 Hakeem, even in the playoffs). But like I said, I'm not an expert on the 80s Rockets so feel free to jump in if you think I've missed anything!
I don't really see anyway to discount Hakeem's playoffs in the 1980's. If we're just going by statistics, 1986-1988 Hakeem actually has better playoff numbers than Hakeem's oft-cited peak of 1993-1995. He wins in PER, WS48, TS%, and VORP/min. And it's not skewed by being great in his longest playoff run, as he has an otherworldly single-round playoff in 1988 and a 2-round playoff in 1987 with better numbers than the finals run. Now some of this is because advanced stats just seem to break with 1995 Hakeem and absurdly underrate him (Drexler had more playoff WS and Horry and Cassell barely trailed in WS48).
Oh for sure! That post wasn't to discredit 80s Hakeem, who like you say performs well in many of the metrics and is probably the GOAT modern-era defender. There are some small sample size issues in late 80s Hakeem (4 playoff games or less from 88-92), but like you say there are longer postseason runs and we can look at the average across multiple postseasons.
My post was to discredit exclusively use team record as evidence for a superstar's impact, and to caution using 1986 Hakeem as evidence for 1994 Hakeem.
If it were up to me, I think I'd have 80s Hakeem slightly higher than the average poster here and have 94/95 Hakeem slightly lower (though still better than 80s Hakeem). But 80s Hakeem was still a great MVP-level player!
f4p wrote:Either way, 80's Hakeem shows the exact same trends he would sustain for all of his career. Significant increase in stats and significant overperformance relative to regular season seeding/SRS. Beating the Lakers in the middle of a 4 year run where they won 3 titles, while only being on a 51 win team, as -4.7 SRS underdog while putting up 31/11/4 and 28 Game Score and completely outplaying 1st team Kareem in the WCF is amazing. Taking 2 off the '86 Celtics is amazing. Magic and Bird lost 9 games in the 1986 playoffs and 6 were to Hakeem.
In '87, he wins as a 6th seed in the first round and puts up huge numbers in both rounds. In 1988, he breaks the playoff PER record at 39.0 in a series where he averaged 37.5 ppg on 64 TS% with 16.8 rpg, 2.8 bpg, and as many steals as turnovers (9). It's almost impossible to do better than high volume scoring on high efficiency without turnovers while putting up DPOY defensive numbers.
Was it about his teammates? Of course. Just like MJ could get trounced in the 1st round and win titles without being much different due to way different teammates, it's no different for Hakeem or anyone else. Ralph basically fell out of the league and the backcourt got suspended for drugs and the team drafted no one of significance until Horry in 1992. That's how you fall off.
And even in '86-'88, we see how unbelievable Hakeem was at elevating above the regular season. Won as a huge underdog to make the Finals, won as an underdog in the 1st round the next year. This is crazy to think about, but if Hakeem had never won as an underdog, he would have a WCF appearance in 1986 and then would have never made it out of the 2nd round, and would have only made the 2nd round in 1993, 1994, and 1997. That's how vast his outperformance was. 13 of his last 15 series were as an SRS underdog (and 1 of the 2 was +0.09) and yet that includes 2 titles and a WCF appearance, in a league considered predictable and boring for often the favorites win.
I agree, Hakeem was definitely resilient and his teams improved in the playoffs. But Hakeem is pretty universally agreed (by the metrics, by analysts, by posters here, etc.) to be starting from a lower point in the regular season vs some of his competition (Curry, Duncan, Bird, etc.).
So the question becomes: does Hakeem improve enough in the playoffs to overcome the regular season gap? And that's far less certain. In single-playoff samples, I don't have 93/94/95 Hakeem performing better in the postseason than 03 Duncan, 86 Bird, or 17 Curry (he certainly doesn't gain any major separation above them, and they can be argued over him). And since those players are better in the regular season too, that's why I have them over peak Hakeem.
That said, I'd definitely hear arguments about young Hakeem being better in the playoffs than young Bird, young Duncan, and young Curry though. Like you say, 80s Hakeem was pretty great!
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