Rank these 5 power Forwards in their primes. Elton Brand, Pau Gasol, Chris Bosh, Amare and Carlos Boozer.

[Purch]

How would you rank them in their primes?

[f4p]

Without looking up any numbers:
Gasol would be my easy #1
Probably take peak Amare as a #1 option over Bosh but Bosh in the Miami situation over Amare.
People probably aren't high on Boozer but as a Rockets fan we couldn't seem to stop him in the playoffs.
Elton had bad situations but I was never that high on him anyways.

So
1. Gasol
2. Bosh
3. Amare
4. Boozer
5. Brand

[Stan]

Gasol
Amare
Brand
Bosh
Boozer

Boozer is clearly the worst of the group imo, the next 4 are admittedly close.

[penbeast0]

Brand is getting underrated a bit here; I'd take him over Amare. Amare was a great great scoring big; but gave it back with bad defense and mediocre passing. Phoenix didn't miss a beat when Amare missed the entire year in 06.

Brand was on bad teams (the Clippers!) and had injury issues so the shortest prime of the bunch but was a strong post defender for his size and a pretty good scorer. In his prime, I have him over Amare, Boozer, and close to Bosh.

[HeartBreakKid]

Without looking up any numbers:
Gasol would be my easy #1
Probably take peak Amare as a #1 option over Bosh but Bosh in the Miami situation over Amare.
People probably aren't high on Boozer but as a Rockets fan we couldn't seem to stop him in the playoffs.
Elton had bad situations but I was never that high on him anyways.

So
1. Gasol
2. Bosh
3. Amare
4. Boozer
5. Brand

You're putting Carlos Boozer over Elton Brand because he did good against the Rockets?

[SickMother]

Pau #1 & Carlos #5 for sure, two through four is pretty even for me so true preference would come down to fit & team composition since Amare, Elton & Chris each have pretty different styles from one another...

01 Gasol 10-11: 23.3 PER | 109 TS+ | 14.7 WS | .232 WS/48 | 4.8 BPM | +9.5 O/O

02 Amare 07-08: 27.6 PER | 122 TS+ | 14.6 WS | .262 WS/48 | 4.8 BPM | +6.2 O/O
03 Brand 05-06: 26.5 PER | 108 TS+ | 14.8 WS | .229 WS/48 | 6.6 BPM | +4.6 O/O
04 Bosh 07-08: 23.8 PER | 109 TS+ | 10.1 WS | .200 WS/48 | 4.4 BPM | +11.1 O/O

05 Boozer 06-07: 24.1 PER | 109 TS+ | 9.9 WS | .185 WS/48 | 4.6 BPM | -0.5 O/O

[No-more-rings]

Phoenix didn't miss a beat when Amare missed the entire year in 06.

This is not true.

2005 Suns: 62 wins 7.08 SRS
2006 Suns: 54 wins 5.48 SRS
2007 Suns: 61 wins 7.28 SRS

They also didn’t look as impressive in the playoffs needing 7 games to beat two sub 50 win teams.

They were still really good without him, but obviously better with him there.

[penbeast0]

True, they replaced him with Kurt Thomas and barely missed a beat but when Thomas went down, they slipped a bit.

[f4p]

Without looking up any numbers:
Gasol would be my easy #1
Probably take peak Amare as a #1 option over Bosh but Bosh in the Miami situation over Amare.
People probably aren't high on Boozer but as a Rockets fan we couldn't seem to stop him in the playoffs.
Elton had bad situations but I was never that high on him anyways.

So
1. Gasol
2. Bosh
3. Amare
4. Boozer
5. Brand

You're putting Carlos Boozer over Elton Brand because he did good against the Rockets?

apparently so. i don't think we would have lost the 2007 series to elton brand. although now that i've looked up the numbers, elton definitely looks better than i remember. it just felt like in any big moment, you knew you were getting an awkward elton turnaround post jumper that probably wasn't going in. he played on too many bad teams for me to remember seeing much of him, though.

[Owly]

Without looking up any numbers:
Gasol would be my easy #1
Probably take peak Amare as a #1 option over Bosh but Bosh in the Miami situation over Amare.
People probably aren't high on Boozer but as a Rockets fan we couldn't seem to stop him in the playoffs.
Elton had bad situations but I was never that high on him anyways.

So
1. Gasol
2. Bosh
3. Amare
4. Boozer
5. Brand

You're putting Carlos Boozer over Elton Brand because he did good against the Rockets?

apparently so. i don't think we would have lost the 2007 series to elton brand. although now that i've looked up the numbers, elton definitely looks better than i remember. it just felt like in any big moment, you knew you were getting an awkward elton turnaround post jumper that probably wasn't going in. he played on too many bad teams for me to remember seeing much of him, though.

I'd suggest this is why we keep stats.

Human memories are very fallible (forgetting, unconscious biases etc); records, whilst missing things, if honestly inputted and correctly stored give an accurate long term recording of the thing recorded. And in this case whilst as I say not every detail is recorded (though in the pbp era we're closer, if one has the knowledge, inclination etc to comb such ... that's not me I'll grant) this stuff is there for every game.


Brand's one prime playoff sample sees him do monster numbers, granted against non-elite defensive teams.

Boozer follows up '07 with '08 in which versus Houston he posts game BPMs of 1, -3, -0.1, -0.2, 4, and -0.7 and a series offensive rating of 98. Those might sound slightly disappointing for a notional star but it features 0 of his worst 4 BPM games of that playoff (all WCSF G5 -4.5; G1 -5.7; G6 -7.6; G4 -9.5). Overall box composites vary in degree but all consider him at least a fairly poor player for that run.

Boozer's impact numbers too align with reports that he was not a strong defender and this aligns with the 97-14 RAPM. In general for career Brand looks higher impact and fwiw the very noisy playoff on-off tilts towards this too.

Personally I'd feel fairly confident taking Brand and ... would be inclined to - if your process is indeed as you described it - look at a more robust means of player assessment (making no claims to perfection here, nor close to it).

[f4p]

Personally I'd feel fairly confident taking Brand and ... would be inclined to - if your process is indeed as you described it - look at a more robust means of player assessment (making no claims to perfection here, nor close to it).

yeah, i didn't mean i don't look at numbers. i sometimes worry i look at them too much. so, in a comparison that isn't as serious as say a Top 100 or Top Peaks series, i just wanted an exercise in seeing how i thought about them from having watched them and how good i felt when i rooted for them or how terrified i felt when i rooted against them. what can i say, when a guy puts up 41 in one game and 35/14 in a game 7 to close your team out, it creates an impression. i looked at the numbers after i posted and certainly boozer looks the worst of the bunch and brand has a very nice peak season (though quite an outlier). i wanted the clippers to beat the suns and i don't remember thinking "oh sweet, i've got elton brand on my side". on the other hand, he put up 31/11/4 on 59% shooting so maybe i should have thought that, but apparently that series didn't sear into my brain like the boozer series. it's fun to sometimes just remember players without checking a bunch of numbers to essentially recreate your memories for you.

[Ginoboleee]

yeah, i didn't mean i don't look at numbers. i sometimes worry i look at them too much. so, in a comparison that isn't as serious as say a Top 100 or Top Peaks series, i just wanted an exercise in seeing how i thought about them from having watched them and how good i felt when i rooted for them or how terrified i felt when i rooted against them. what can i say, when a guy puts up 41 in one game and 35/14 in a game 7 to close your team out, it creates an impression. i looked at the numbers after i posted and certainly boozer looks the worst of the bunch and brand has a very nice peak season (though quite an outlier). i wanted the clippers to beat the suns and i don't remember thinking "oh sweet, i've got elton brand on my side". on the other hand, he put up 31/11/4 on 59% shooting so maybe i should have thought that, but apparently that series didn't sear into my brain like the boozer series. it's fun to sometimes just remember players without checking a bunch of numbers to essentially recreate your memories for you.

I wish I could give this post an And2.

[Purch]

So my thing with Boozer/Amare is its really hard for me to evaluate their impact independent of Nash/D-will

[Heat4lyf]

1. Gasol
2.Amare
3. Bosh
4. Brand
5. Boozer

[Narigo]

Gasol
Bosh
Brand
Amare
Boozer

[LAL1947]

Gasol over Amar'e??

Do you guys not remember Amar'e when he first came into the league and had two good knees? Man, he was giving Duncan such problems with his size and movement. Has Gasol ever scored 30 points against the Spurs? If I remember right, Amar'e had quite a few 40+ point games against them going 1-v-1 against Duncan... and there's no way he was a worse defender than Pau. Yes, we all know points scored is not everything... I'm just using this example of a head-to-head match against another top PF/C in Duncan to indicate quality is all.

1) Amar'e
2) Bosh
3) Gasol
4) Brand - I'm not sure whether he should be #3 or #4, so I gave Pau the edge as he played on title winning teams.
5) Boozer

[Purch]

Gasol over Amar'e??

Do you guys not remember Amar'e when he first came into the league and had two good knees? Man, he was giving Duncan such problems with his size and movement. Has Gasol ever scored 30 points against the Spurs? If I remember right, Amar'e had quite a few 40+ point games against them going 1-v-1 against Duncan... and there's no way he was a worse defender than Pau. Yes, we all know points scored is not everything... I'm just using this example of a head-to-head match against another top PF/C in Duncan to indicate quality is all.

1) Amar'e
2) Bosh
3) Gasol
4) Brand - I'm not sure whether he should be #3 or #4, so I gave Pau the edge as he played on title winning teams.
5) Boozer

What? Amare was a much worse defender than Pau, what makes you think otherwise? Teams used to light Amare up inside.

[LAL1947]

Gasol over Amar'e??

Do you guys not remember Amar'e when he first came into the league and had two good knees? Man, he was giving Duncan such problems with his size and movement. Has Gasol ever scored 30 points against the Spurs? If I remember right, Amar'e had quite a few 40+ point games against them going 1-v-1 against Duncan... and there's no way he was a worse defender than Pau. Yes, we all know points scored is not everything... I'm just using this example of a head-to-head match against another top PF/C in Duncan to indicate quality is all.

1) Amar'e
2) Bosh
3) Gasol
4) Brand - I'm not sure whether he should be #3 or #4, so I gave Pau the edge as he played on title winning teams.
5) Boozer

What? Amare was a much worse defender than Pau, what makes you think otherwise? Teams used to light Amare up inside.

Teams used to light Amar'e up? I do not remember this happening in his early years... especially not to the same extent that players used to light Pau up before he got some bodyguards like Odom, Bynum, Artest/Ariza and Kobe around him. When Pau first joined the Lakers, fans of every other team were clowning us on forums because of how soft he was on defense and were saying he was the worst defender in the league.

[70sFan]

Amar'e was always all-time bad defender, it didn't matter if he had healthy knees or not. Gasol was much better defensively than him.

[Jaivl]

If I remember right, Amar'e had quite a few 40+ point games against them going 1-v-1 against Duncan... and there's no way he was a worse defender than Pau.

OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I JUST READ

Iguodala locked LeBron down a couple times... and there's no way he was a worse scorer than Kobe.