Who was the best offensive player in 94 and 95?

[Doctor MJ]

Barkley and Miller are pretty clearly the 2 here, Stockton may have a better case than i give him credit for. Don't think Hakeem's overall offense was ever that good.

I mean is Reggie's offense really better than what Hakeem did in winning a championship? A 33 ppg, 4.5 apg playoff run with his inside play generating tons of open 3's. Can't see Reggie putting together that volume of both scoring and creation (especially considering centers lose out to a lot of hockey assists), even if he has a TS% advantage.

I do think it's important to remember that Reggie showed no volume limitations in the playoffs. We're not talking about someone getting high efficiency by refusing to take anything but open shots, we're talking about a guy who was regularly burning teams for high volume in the playoffs if the defense played him that way.

With that said, something changes in the 1995 playoffs when Olajuwon scored 30+ in 16 games while leading an elite offense, and I wouldn't put Miller at that level. As such that also means I don't mind people putting Olajuwon's offense ahead of Miller's for '93-94 given that the players were obviously mostly the same from year to year in their capacity, but in terms of Olajuwon actually doing something offensively that goes flat out beyond what we saw from Reggie on offense, it was that 1995 playoffs for me.

[ShotCreator]

Gut tells me Kevin Johnson. Pretty explosive lead guard with a damn high playoff peak in this period.

In order:
KJ
Miller
Barkley
Hakeem
Shaq
Stockton
Malone
Robinson
Drexler
Pippen

[Doctor MJ]

May as well discredit 1993 Hakeem if a low scoring Game 7 is that damning.

the point wasn't the scoring, it was the attempts. it was the biggest game of reggie's career and arguably stayed that way considering i don't think most people thought the 2000 pacers could beat the lakers. it was right there and he took 1 shot in the whole 4th quarter, with 35 year old michael jordan keeping him from basically even doing anything. i just don't see anyone capable of taking hakeem out like that.

in 1993, hakeem had 20 true shot attempts to reggie's 15 in 1998, and hakeem added 9 assists to reggie's 4. credit to reggie for being overall efficient, but hakeem being an on-ball monster just seems to add more overall value and resilience.

even in 1995, reggie may have had a chance to face hakeem, but in game 7 against the magic, reggie had 13 shot attempts (no ft's) and 0 assists in 38 minutes. it just seems like taking reggie out of a game was more achievable. come hell or high water, hakeem was getting his shots up, often to great effect.

So, I think there's an important point here about how much sense it makes to equate FGA with "being in the game". For a rover, much of the player's impact comes with his gravity, and as such, if there's heavy pressure on a rover keeping him from getting more FGA, but his team is taking advantage of the gaps, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Aside from the fact that the Pacers played the '98 Bulls more effectively than anyone else, and had an offense with a considerably better ORtg in the series than the Jazz in the next round, if we zoom in on Game 7, what are the two team's eFG?

Indiana 53.6
Chicago 42.1

Even in the 4th quarter, the Pacers were shooting considerably more effectively than the Bulls, so, clearly the issue for Indiana wasn't that they weren't able to get good shots.

What was the big issue? I'd say it was the Bulls killing the Pacers by crashing the boards offensively - Bulls 22, Pacers 4. Both Jordan & Pippen got more offensive rebounds than the Pacers' starting center Rik Smits got TOTAL rebounds. You take away this advantage, and it's Indiana going to the finals.

None of this means "Miller > Player X" by any means, but it's problematic to think that Indiana's issue here was Miller being unable to get shots. Their issue was their inability to prevent second chances for the Bulls offense after they successfully stopped the Bulls' primary attack.

[RCM88x]

My belief would be to elect Miller for both years. Barkley probably has a pretty good argument in 94 though, Stockton and Shaq are probably up there as well.

[falcolombardi]

May as well discredit 1993 Hakeem if a low scoring Game 7 is that damning.

the point wasn't the scoring, it was the attempts. it was the biggest game of reggie's career and arguably stayed that way considering i don't think most people thought the 2000 pacers could beat the lakers. it was right there and he took 1 shot in the whole 4th quarter, with 35 year old michael jordan keeping him from basically even doing anything. i just don't see anyone capable of taking hakeem out like that.

in 1993, hakeem had 20 true shot attempts to reggie's 15 in 1998, and hakeem added 9 assists to reggie's 4. credit to reggie for being overall efficient, but hakeem being an on-ball monster just seems to add more overall value and resilience.

even in 1995, reggie may have had a chance to face hakeem, but in game 7 against the magic, reggie had 13 shot attempts (no ft's) and 0 assists in 38 minutes. it just seems like taking reggie out of a game was more achievable. come hell or high water, hakeem was getting his shots up, often to great effect.

So, I think there's an important point here about how much sense it makes to equate FGA with "being in the game". For a rover, much of the player's impact comes with his gravity, and as such, if there's heavy pressure on a rover keeping him from getting more FGA, but his team is taking advantage of the gaps, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Aside from the fact that the Pacers played the '98 Bulls more effectively than anyone else, and had an offense with a considerably better ORtg in the series than the Jazz in the next round, if we zoom in on Game 7, what are the two team's eFG?

Indiana 53.6
Chicago 42.1

Even in the 4th quarter, the Pacers were shooting considerably more effectively than the Bulls, so, clearly the issue for Indiana wasn't that they weren't able to get good shots.

What was the big issue? I'd say it was the Bulls killing the Pacers by crashing the boards offensively - Bulls 22, Pacers 4. Both Jordan & Pippen got more offensive rebounds than the Pacers' starting center Rik Smits got TOTAL rebounds. You take away this advantage, and it's Indiana going to the finals.

None of this means "Miller > Player X" by any means, but it's problematic to think that Indiana's issue here was Miller being unable to get shots. Their issue was their inability to prevent second chances for the Bulls offense after they successfully stopped the Bulls' primary attack.

While i agree i want to nitpick a small part of this comment to say offensive rebounding, turnovers, free throw rates and efg% are not thinghs thst happen in a vacuum off each other. A team personnel and tactics may make them great at one at the expense of another

A team that crashes the offensive boards as hard as the bulls did and plays heavy minutes to moderate to low efficiency scorers like rodman at the expense of spacing or scoring is pretty much sacrificing efg% for offreb%

This is unrelated to your main point, but wanted to highlight this

More than saying "efg% waz great even without miller scoring" we should say "pacers offense, as a whole was great even without miller scoring"

Because miller job is to make pacers a great offense (which he did), not a great efg%

[Doctor MJ]

the point wasn't the scoring, it was the attempts. it was the biggest game of reggie's career and arguably stayed that way considering i don't think most people thought the 2000 pacers could beat the lakers. it was right there and he took 1 shot in the whole 4th quarter, with 35 year old michael jordan keeping him from basically even doing anything. i just don't see anyone capable of taking hakeem out like that.

in 1993, hakeem had 20 true shot attempts to reggie's 15 in 1998, and hakeem added 9 assists to reggie's 4. credit to reggie for being overall efficient, but hakeem being an on-ball monster just seems to add more overall value and resilience.

even in 1995, reggie may have had a chance to face hakeem, but in game 7 against the magic, reggie had 13 shot attempts (no ft's) and 0 assists in 38 minutes. it just seems like taking reggie out of a game was more achievable. come hell or high water, hakeem was getting his shots up, often to great effect.

So, I think there's an important point here about how much sense it makes to equate FGA with "being in the game". For a rover, much of the player's impact comes with his gravity, and as such, if there's heavy pressure on a rover keeping him from getting more FGA, but his team is taking advantage of the gaps, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Aside from the fact that the Pacers played the '98 Bulls more effectively than anyone else, and had an offense with a considerably better ORtg in the series than the Jazz in the next round, if we zoom in on Game 7, what are the two team's eFG?

Indiana 53.6
Chicago 42.1

Even in the 4th quarter, the Pacers were shooting considerably more effectively than the Bulls, so, clearly the issue for Indiana wasn't that they weren't able to get good shots.

What was the big issue? I'd say it was the Bulls killing the Pacers by crashing the boards offensively - Bulls 22, Pacers 4. Both Jordan & Pippen got more offensive rebounds than the Pacers' starting center Rik Smits got TOTAL rebounds. You take away this advantage, and it's Indiana going to the finals.

None of this means "Miller > Player X" by any means, but it's problematic to think that Indiana's issue here was Miller being unable to get shots. Their issue was their inability to prevent second chances for the Bulls offense after they successfully stopped the Bulls' primary attack.

While i agree i want to nitpick a small part of this comment to say offensive rebounding, turnovers, free throw rates and efg% are not thinghs thst happen in a vacuum off each other. A team personnel and tactics may make them great at one at the expense of another

A team that crashes the offensive boards as hard as the bulls did and plays heavy minutes to moderate to low efficiency scorers like rodman at the expense of spacing or scoring is pretty much sacrificing efg% for offreb%

This is unrelated to your main point, but wanted to highlight this

More than saying "efg% waz great even without miller scoring" we should say "pacers offense, as a whole was great even without miller scoring"

Because miller job is to make pacers a great offense (which he did), not a great efg%

Good points, and I certainly don't want to imply that Jordan & co were failing on offense. The teams made the choices they did, the Bulls won and I don't think anyone wants to argue that Miller looked like the best player in that series.

I say what I say because what I call the "dominance" argument - that is, looking to judge players by who can make sure he can "get his" in any situation - assumes that the "get his" part of things is paramount to evaluate a player primarily known for scoring.

The main guy we have these conversations about, of course, isn't Reggie but Super-Reggie - aka, Steph Curry. There's a natural tendency for many reasons for us to want to judge a scorer's true capacity based on how well he can continue to get his when he has the ball and the camera is literally on him...but the latent impact of a player's outside shooting threat makes this problematic.

Tangent:

One of the things Ben's talked about as he tries to analyze older and older games is how often the camera work makes it literally impossible to see everything that's going on on the court. This is of course true in any era to some degree, but I think it's telling that such a bias was actually baked into those watching the game on TV to an even greater extent in the past.

I find it very interesting large north-south field sports like the various forms of football or hockey because it really makes it hard for the TV audience to ever understand the game. Basketball's smaller court gives the sport a putative advantage in this way, but only when the camera's choose to prioritize that.

When they don't - or just when any of us do the natural human thing and follow the ball - the stuff that we underestimate actually is the stuff that the teams are trying to make their opponents underestimate.

[f4p]

Barkley and Miller are pretty clearly the 2 here, Stockton may have a better case than i give him credit for. Don't think Hakeem's overall offense was ever that good.

Thing about Barkley is, it's really not clear he was the best offensive player on his own team.

If you look at that '94-95 series between Houston & Phoenix, Olajuwon & KJ seemed pretty clearly the two most effective offensive players in the series, and had Barkley been more effective than he was, Phoenix wins.

It's a bit unfair to say that because of course Phoenix was having to decide about whether to focus on attacking through Barkley or KJ, and so it's not so much that Barkley failed to show up but that KJ took control.

Incidentally, I think KJ has an argument here, and had he led his team through the playoff gauntlet I think he'd be a pretty clear choice, but he didn't, and was injured a lot, so he doesn't feel appropriate to me as the pick.

if anyone ever wants to see what the old illegal defense rules could do, watch game 7 between Houston and Phoenix in 1995. The suns just continually drag Hakeem above the free throw line with a big at the 3 point line and then have KJ iso on the wing about 17 feet out. Every play is just a race between Hakeem and KJ to get to the basket, with KJ just torching kenny smith and sam cassell over and over again.

also, if anyone ever wants to see why it's ridiculous to think they didn't call any fouls back in the day, watch this same game. 22 ft's for KJ. Kenny Smith and KJ each get free throws in the final minute on ridiculously ticky tack calls that would never be called at the end of a big playoff game today.

[falcolombardi]

Barkley and Miller are pretty clearly the 2 here, Stockton may have a better case than i give him credit for. Don't think Hakeem's overall offense was ever that good.

Thing about Barkley is, it's really not clear he was the best offensive player on his own team.

If you look at that '94-95 series between Houston & Phoenix, Olajuwon & KJ seemed pretty clearly the two most effective offensive players in the series, and had Barkley been more effective than he was, Phoenix wins.

It's a bit unfair to say that because of course Phoenix was having to decide about whether to focus on attacking through Barkley or KJ, and so it's not so much that Barkley failed to show up but that KJ took control.

Incidentally, I think KJ has an argument here, and had he led his team through the playoff gauntlet I think he'd be a pretty clear choice, but he didn't, and was injured a lot, so he doesn't feel appropriate to me as the pick.

if anyone ever wants to see what they old illegal defense rules could do, watch game 7 between Houston and Phoenix in 1995. The suns just continually drag Hakeem above the free throw line with a big at the 3 point line and then have KJ iso on the wing about 17 feet out. Every play is just a race between Hakeem and KJ to get to the basket, with KJ just torching kenny smith and sam cassell over and over again.

also, if anyone ever wants to see why it's ridiculous to think they didn't call any fouls back in the day, watch this same game. 22 ft's for KJ. Kenny Smith and KJ each get free throws in the final minute on ridiculously ticky tack calls that would never be called at the end of a big playoff game today.

Do people here think that? We can just look at the numbers and realize that free throws per possesion have consistently gone down and are lower than ever

The answer when this is brough up is that they are only lower cause teams spam 3's but we can use stats again from the late 90's to now and realize that most of the increase in 3 point shooting came at the expense of 2 point jumpshooting while shots in the paint area have stayed mostly consistent across eras

Post ups have gone down but they have been replaced mostly by drives which may create even more free throws.

Teams dont charge the offensive boards as much anymore tho which may he a big part of why free throws went down

And yes. Illegal defense was a silly rule

[Dr Positivity]

I'm going with either Stockton or Shaq here. Shaq is the best scorer in the league to me, but Stockton level playmaking and PG play is always valuable on that end.

[f4p]

Thing about Barkley is, it's really not clear he was the best offensive player on his own team.

If you look at that '94-95 series between Houston & Phoenix, Olajuwon & KJ seemed pretty clearly the two most effective offensive players in the series, and had Barkley been more effective than he was, Phoenix wins.

It's a bit unfair to say that because of course Phoenix was having to decide about whether to focus on attacking through Barkley or KJ, and so it's not so much that Barkley failed to show up but that KJ took control.

Incidentally, I think KJ has an argument here, and had he led his team through the playoff gauntlet I think he'd be a pretty clear choice, but he didn't, and was injured a lot, so he doesn't feel appropriate to me as the pick.

if anyone ever wants to see what they old illegal defense rules could do, watch game 7 between Houston and Phoenix in 1995. The suns just continually drag Hakeem above the free throw line with a big at the 3 point line and then have KJ iso on the wing about 17 feet out. Every play is just a race between Hakeem and KJ to get to the basket, with KJ just torching kenny smith and sam cassell over and over again.

also, if anyone ever wants to see why it's ridiculous to think they didn't call any fouls back in the day, watch this same game. 22 ft's for KJ. Kenny Smith and KJ each get free throws in the final minute on ridiculously ticky tack calls that would never be called at the end of a big playoff game today.

Do people here think that? We can just look at the numbers and realize that free throws per possesion have consistently gone down and are lower than ever

The answer when this is brough up is that they are only lower cause teams spam 3's but we can use stats again from the late 90's to now and realize that most of the increase in 3 point shooting came at the expense of 2 point jumpshooting while shots in the paint area have stayed mostly consistent across eras

Post ups have gone down but they have been replaced mostly by drives which may create even more free throws.

Teams dont charge the offensive boards as much anymore tho which may he a big part of why free throws went down

And yes. Illegal defense was a silly rule

i mean in the wider NBA community, not here, where it is basically considered gospel that any time before now was an uber-physical game where the refs never blew the whistle. and when i say wider, i mean basically everywhere but here. even places that might be semi-serious can be blind-sided by the fact free throws are much lower instead of much higher. it honestly is one of the more successful pieces of propaganda i've ever seen. the soviet union might still exist if they had 80's nba players running things. these 80's and early 90's guys, who played in remarkably non-physical games with sometimes up to 30 fta/gm averages, somehow have convinced everyone that the lowest free throw era is easily the highest, all because of a few flagrant foul videos mostly from one particular team (the bad boys) in a few year span. when free throw totals, as you point out, can just be looked up.

[falcolombardi]

if anyone ever wants to see what they old illegal defense rules could do, watch game 7 between Houston and Phoenix in 1995. The suns just continually drag Hakeem above the free throw line with a big at the 3 point line and then have KJ iso on the wing about 17 feet out. Every play is just a race between Hakeem and KJ to get to the basket, with KJ just torching kenny smith and sam cassell over and over again.

also, if anyone ever wants to see why it's ridiculous to think they didn't call any fouls back in the day, watch this same game. 22 ft's for KJ. Kenny Smith and KJ each get free throws in the final minute on ridiculously ticky tack calls that would never be called at the end of a big playoff game today.

Do people here think that? We can just look at the numbers and realize that free throws per possesion have consistently gone down and are lower than ever

The answer when this is brough up is that they are only lower cause teams spam 3's but we can use stats again from the late 90's to now and realize that most of the increase in 3 point shooting came at the expense of 2 point jumpshooting while shots in the paint area have stayed mostly consistent across eras

Post ups have gone down but they have been replaced mostly by drives which may create even more free throws.

Teams dont charge the offensive boards as much anymore tho which may he a big part of why free throws went down

And yes. Illegal defense was a silly rule

i mean in the wider NBA community, not here, where it is basically considered gospel that any time before now was an uber-physical game where the refs never blew the whistle. and when i say wider, i mean basically everywhere but here. even places that might be semi-serious can be blind-sided by the fact free throws are much lower instead of much higher. it honestly is one of the more successful pieces of propaganda i've ever seen. the soviet union might still exist if they had 80's nba players running things. these 80's and early 90's guys, who played in remarkably non-physical games with sometimes up to 30 fta/gm averages, somehow have convinced everyone that the lowest free throw era is easily the highest, all because of a few flagrant foul videos mostly from one particular team (the bad boys) in a few year span. when free throw totals, as you point out, can just be looked up.

I think is actually a lot weirder than people think the 80's and early 90's were a much better defensive era than the 00's and early 00's

The big secret of the 2004 "rule change" (more like rule emphasis on an already existing rule) is that even after it the teams didnt score as much as they did in the 90's or 80's

The handcheck being universally seen as the moment nba "outlawed" the tough defense of the 80's/90's when illegal defense existed at those decades is one of the most perplexing narratives that has stuck in the mainstrean

Free throws itself dont necesarrily translate to more or less physicality.

[henshao]

Ok, by 94 and 95 we mean the years Jordan was absent, right? Here are some advanced stats:

94 RS

Spoiler:

94 Playoffs

Spoiler:

95 RS

Spoiler:

95 Playoffs

Spoiler:

maybe someone more focused than I can draw some sort of conclusion from these because they only make it muddier for me, other than supporting the general perception that David Robinson was a regular season stud and playoff dud

[tsherkin]

maybe someone more focused than I can draw some sort of conclusion from these because they only make it muddier for me, other than supporting the general perception that David Robinson was a regular season stud and playoff dud

Everyone remembers that he was rooked by Olajuwon, yeah? That's the prevailing narrative. And of course, his playoff drop-offs are known. That season was no different, though it was a bit better than his average performance ITO playoff OBPM. Defensive impact measured by playoff DWS led the league, and his playoff DBPM was higher than anyone on that list except Shawn Kemp. Solid second-tier overall playoff BPM.

Stank against Denver offensively. Looked better against the Lakers. Nothing like his RS efficiency, but he put about 30/16 on LA on around 53.5% TS, was killing the offensive glass, etc. Led the game in PTS the last four straight games, and tied or led the game in rebounding from games 3-5. Front court, of course, was Elden Campbell and Vlade Divac, so make of that what you will. This was a couple years before Shaq. Unremarkable FG% backed up by excellent FT draw, which is sort of a hallmark of Robinson in the playoffs. Came up with a big game to close out the series, though. 31/15 on 63.8% TS, 11/12 at the line, 10/19 from the field. +11 going into the 4th in a game they won by 12. Not a smooth face-up guy, looked really slow and indecisive, not aggressive. Picked up his dribble way too much.

Ball-handling and playmaking really sucked from San Antonio's guards. They let the Lakers get within 2. 4:21 remaining, they're +6. Lots of turnovers and fouls for Robinson. He really had no feel whatsoever in this game. Bob Hill had maybe the worst-looking normal suit I've seen, shy of the really aggressive, peacocking nonsense you see from Don Cherry, or used to from Craig Sager, or Russell Westbrook. It looks like someone inflated him with air like in a cartoon. Robinson's 5th foul was BS. He finally hit a couple of jumpers, squeaked in on the secondary for a play. Nothing remarkable, but some decent off-ball play. He looked like crap every time he isolated, but when he took a quick J or moved around someone else's action, he did well. SO yeah, not the most stunning performance I've ever seen, but he did put points on the board in the 4th to help put away the Lakers.

Also, watching slow-footed Elden Campbell was as funny this time as the first time, hehe.

Olajuwon was in beast mode. He'd put 35 ppg on 60.6% TS against Utah while shooting under 67% from the line. Struggled a bit with the Suns, 29.6 ppg on 52.7% TS (mainly from 61.4% FT, though, he shot almost 51% from the field). He put 32.8 ppg on Shaq, but again at 51.4% TS. Was better at the line (69.3%) but Shaq and Orlando held him to 48.3% FG on 29 FGA/g. That, of course, was more of a moral victory than anything else, of course, because he was scoring all over them and they couldn't do enough to counter. Turnovers were a huge problem for Orlando, and especially Shaq. Against Robinson in the WCFs, he posted 35.3 ppg on 59% TS. Robinson actually posted 23.8 ppg on 55.3% TS (shot just under 45% from the field, though), but he was helpless trying to stop Olajuwon.