Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #20 - 1993-94 David Robinson

[VanWest82]

I would take 05-07 Nash over 18-20 Harden offensively pretty easily. I can't believe there are still people who claim Stoudamire was the one making Nash look good and not the other way around. How do you explain Shaq's last year in Miami or first and only with Cavs vs. his 09 stint with Suns where he posted the most efficient season of his career and made the all star team?

With that said, 18-20 Harden was a much better defender than people give him credit for. That Rockets team successfully baited a lot of people into trying to exploit the "mismatch" post switch with Harden down low. He led the league by a country mile those years defending post ups and was ~88th percentile doing it. Nash was ok defensively in 2005 but was below average by any calculation before or after that.

[AEnigma]

[Tbf, on court off rtg can’t be compared to overall team off rtg like the at, but if point out for the original post that currys on court offenses were pretty great during that 16-19 period but they just sat him down much because they didn’t need to do much in the RS anyways, and offenses fell off a cliff without hin

Fair enough, I was more making a rhetorical point that even if you partially dismiss those relative offensive ratings for being too revolutionary or whatever, Nash had them at a pretty modern level even without truly modern spacing.

And to that point, and to your Curry comparison, 2014-22 Curry’s offensive rating was only half a point higher. 2017-22 Jokic’s is a tad higher than that. If you want to focus in on absolute peaks, we can do that, but I think modern disparities become increasingly relevant.

In any case that Nash’s box score numbers for his prime are like slightly worse than magics basically right? It’s not like he averaged 5 points a game lol

Right, although the rebounds alone significantly boost those box score aggregates — as we know from Westbrook and Harden.

[Dr Positivity]

Wow, still not much support for DIRK while people are making debates like Nash vs Harden

Despite not being his most dominant boxscore regular season, he actually led the league in RAPM in 2011 and the Mavericks played at a 60 W pace with him healthy, with a chance to win his 2nd MVP if he played 80 games. His offensive value goes beyond boxscore due to the spacing. This is not a season like 19 Kawhi or 17 Durant in terms of regular season value, he is still having a huge impact.

We know what happened in the playoffs being unguardable in single coverage, and playing a part in Mavs elite level passing by spacing, drawing doubles and not holding the ball. He has always had a higher basketball IQ than a player like Durant while his scoring skillset translates much better to the playoffs than Harden-ball.

[falcolombardi]

Wow, still not much support for DIRK while people are making debates like Nash vs Harden

Despite not being his most dominant boxscore regular season, he actually led the league in RAPM in 2011 and the Mavericks played at a 60 W pace with him healthy, with a chance to win his 2nd MVP if he played 80 games. His offensive value goes beyond boxscore due to the spacing. This is not a season like 19 Kawhi or 17 Durant in terms of regular season value, he is still having a huge impact.

We know what happened in the playoffs being unguardable in single coverage, and playing a part in Mavs elite level passing by spacing, drawing doubles and not holding the ball. He has always had a higher basketball IQ than a player like Durant while his scoring game translates much better to the playoffs than Harden-ball.

I got dirk in my ballot and think another poster did too. He will probably start gaining traction in the next few rounds

[iggymcfrack]

1. 1995/96 David Robinson (1994, 1995)- Led the league in PER in both the regular season AND postseason while anchoring the 3rd best defense in the league. Early impact metrics had him neck and neck with Michael Jordan for best player in the league. When Robinson missed the vast majority of the following season, the Spurs defense went from 3rd/29 to 29th/29. They were 9 points worse per 100 possessions. The following season when he returned, the defense improved 13 points per 100 possessions. His defensive impact vastly outpaced his box score value and you can argue that at this point in his career, he was right there with anyone else in the history of the league for most valuable defensive players. I have a hard time believing that Bill Russell ever peaked higher than David Robinson for instance since Robinson had such a strong offensive game while providing at least 95% of the same value on defense.

2. 2016/2017 Kawhi Leonard (2016)- Yes he suffered a season ending injury in the playoffs, but it was on a dirty play that could have happened to anyone and prior to that, he hadn’t been injury prone at all. In the playoffs that year, Kawhi had a 31.5 PER on .672 TS%. He had .314 WS/48 and a 14.2 BPM. All of those are all-time numbers. What’s even more impressive though is he did all that WITH some of the best wing defense of all-time. He won DPOY in 2015 and 2016 and absolutely played at that same elite level in the playoffs. He had a playoff on/off of +22.3 and led the Spurs to a huge lead over the best team of all-time in Game 1 against the Warriors in a series where they would ultimately get swept after he got hurt.

3. 2010/11 Dirk Nowitzki- In 2 strong RAPM samples, he ranked incredibly high finishing 1st overall in the NBAShotCharts site which spanned from 2010-2022 and he also ranked #3 in the 97-14 sample on Yahoo behind 2 LeBron years and one year from Tim Duncan. The Mavericks were approximately a -6 with him on the bench in both the regular season and postseason and yet, he led them to sweep Kobe and Pau in the first round and beat a superteam of Wade, Bosh, and LeBron that many thought was the best team ever established at the time.

[No-more-rings]

Wow, still not much support for DIRK while people are making debates like Nash vs Harden

Despite not being his most dominant boxscore regular season, he actually led the league in RAPM in 2011 and the Mavericks played at a 60 W pace with him healthy, with a chance to win his 2nd MVP if he played 80 games. His offensive value goes beyond boxscore due to the spacing. This is not a season like 19 Kawhi or 17 Durant in terms of regular season value, he is still having a huge impact.

We know what happened in the playoffs being unguardable in single coverage, and playing a part in Mavs elite level passing by spacing, drawing doubles and not holding the ball. He has always had a higher basketball IQ than a player like Durant while his scoring game translates much better to the playoffs than Harden-ball.

I got dirk in my ballot and think another poster did too. He will probably start gaining traction in the next few rounds

I’m doubtful Nash gets enough support to get in ahead of Dirk, and Harden certainly doesn’t get ahead of him.

I get 2011 is popular, but I have 2006 as Dirk’s peak. I don’t think he was better in the 2011 regular season despite the impact metrics, and if a few bounces go the other way in 2006 I doubt his playoff run is seen as better either. Hell statistically, it wasn’t even better. I get Dirk seemed more unstoppable or whatever, but the reality is Dirk brought a worse roster to comparable results in the regular and playoffs.

[Dr Positivity]

Wow, still not much support for DIRK while people are making debates like Nash vs Harden

Despite not being his most dominant boxscore regular season, he actually led the league in RAPM in 2011 and the Mavericks played at a 60 W pace with him healthy, with a chance to win his 2nd MVP if he played 80 games. His offensive value goes beyond boxscore due to the spacing. This is not a season like 19 Kawhi or 17 Durant in terms of regular season value, he is still having a huge impact.

We know what happened in the playoffs being unguardable in single coverage, and playing a part in Mavs elite level passing by spacing, drawing doubles and not holding the ball. He has always had a higher basketball IQ than a player like Durant while his scoring game translates much better to the playoffs than Harden-ball.

I got dirk in my ballot and think another poster did too. He will probably start gaining traction in the next few rounds

I’m doubtful Nash gets enough support to get in ahead of Dirk, and Harden certainly doesn’t get ahead of him.

I get 2011 is popular, but I have 2006 as Dirk’s peak. I don’t think he was better in the 2011 regular season despite the impact metrics, and if a few bounces go the other way in 2006 I doubt his playoff run is seen as better either. Hell statistically, it wasn’t even better. I get Dirk seemed more unstoppable or whatever, but the reality is Dirk brought a worse roster to comparable results in the regular and playoffs.

For me 2007 Dirk showing that he could be slowed down by a perimeter defender affects my rating of 2006. In 2011 he was completely lights out against smaller defenders.

[falcolombardi]

I will say that while i dont agree with most of f4p opinions on nash i am starting to wonder if ring bias is not making us underate harden a bit too much

After this round i think i will take a good look into garden footage

and consider him more strongly against the guys i am looking into (dirk, nash, kawhi, robinson,julius)

[No-more-rings]

I got dirk in my ballot and think another poster did too. He will probably start gaining traction in the next few rounds

I’m doubtful Nash gets enough support to get in ahead of Dirk, and Harden certainly doesn’t get ahead of him.

I get 2011 is popular, but I have 2006 as Dirk’s peak. I don’t think he was better in the 2011 regular season despite the impact metrics, and if a few bounces go the other way in 2006 I doubt his playoff run is seen as better either. Hell statistically, it wasn’t even better. I get Dirk seemed more unstoppable or whatever, but the reality is Dirk brought a worse roster to comparable results in the regular and playoffs.

For me 2007 Dirk showing that he could be slowed down by a perimeter defender affects my rating of 2006. In 2011 he was completely lights out against smaller defenders.

I get why people feel that way, but Dirk was just non-aggressive for much of that series coupled with mostly bad shooting performances i’m not sure it’s because shorter players were guarding him that doesn’t really pass the smell test for me.

But knocking 2006 for what he did in 2007, would be like knocking 2009 Lebron for his poor finish in 2010.

[Dr Positivity]

I’m doubtful Nash gets enough support to get in ahead of Dirk, and Harden certainly doesn’t get ahead of him.

I get 2011 is popular, but I have 2006 as Dirk’s peak. I don’t think he was better in the 2011 regular season despite the impact metrics, and if a few bounces go the other way in 2006 I doubt his playoff run is seen as better either. Hell statistically, it wasn’t even better. I get Dirk seemed more unstoppable or whatever, but the reality is Dirk brought a worse roster to comparable results in the regular and playoffs.

For me 2007 Dirk showing that he could be slowed down by a perimeter defender affects my rating of 2006. In 2011 he was completely lights out against smaller defenders.

I get why people feel that way, but Dirk was just non-aggressive for much of that series coupled with mostly bad shooting performances i’m not sure it’s because shorter players were guarding him that doesn’t really pass the smell test for me.

But knocking 2006 for what he did in 2007, would be like knocking 2009 Lebron for his poor finish in 2010.

Well one of the reasons why I like Heat Lebron the most is the skill level like posting up he added compared to 2009 and 2010.

[iggymcfrack]

I’m doubtful Nash gets enough support to get in ahead of Dirk, and Harden certainly doesn’t get ahead of him.

I get 2011 is popular, but I have 2006 as Dirk’s peak. I don’t think he was better in the 2011 regular season despite the impact metrics, and if a few bounces go the other way in 2006 I doubt his playoff run is seen as better either. Hell statistically, it wasn’t even better. I get Dirk seemed more unstoppable or whatever, but the reality is Dirk brought a worse roster to comparable results in the regular and playoffs.

For me 2007 Dirk showing that he could be slowed down by a perimeter defender affects my rating of 2006. In 2011 he was completely lights out against smaller defenders.

I get why people feel that way, but Dirk was just non-aggressive for much of that series coupled with mostly bad shooting performances i’m not sure it’s because shorter players were guarding him that doesn’t really pass the smell test for me.

But knocking 2006 for what he did in 2007, would be like knocking 2009 Lebron for his poor finish in 2010.

2009, 2010, and 2011 were Dirk's top postseasons in TS% which would imply that maybe he did become a little more unguardable as he rounded out his offensive game. 2011 was his top regular season in TS%. I think there's this idea that the impact stats in the championship run were a little fluky because he hadn't improved his skills, but I really think he was a better player during the actual 2011 season at least. He really did have an incredible all around string of performances in those playoffs to overcome the team struggling whenever he was on the bench. I think Game 6 of the Finals leads to people undervaluing how dependent the Mavs were on Dirk the rest of that playoff run since that was the one game the rest of the team lifted him up when he had one bad game.

[LukaTheGOAT]

The argument for Nash over Harden might look like something like the following:

I take Nash for peak and an all-time sense. The only people who have a 8 year string of postseason offense as good as Nash are Shaq and Lebron (via backpicks).
Furthermore, per Backpicks BPM, James Harden has among the greatest dropoffs from a NBA superstar from the RS to PS, which I think pushes things favorably in Nash's favor (does not include 20-22 PS)

Watch on YouTube

except Harden is falling from much higher heights (and isn't Curry one of the big drops, too?). By regular ol' BPM, he's almost literally doubling up Nash in the postseason.

Continuing on, I suppose I should provide some more data to back my Nash>Harden opinion, because looking solely at box-score numbers, this conclusion might still come as a suprise.

For one, Steve Nash was on a #1 offense for 9 years straight in his career, playing with Dirk and then becoming the #1 guy during this timespan. This gives validity to the idea that Nash truly was a special driving force and could mesh with other high end talent.

yes, but this is part of why i point out that harden was on a better team (and arguably teams with the 2019 playoff rockets being at least as good as any suns team). his team wasn't massively offensive-slanted like Nash's so it would be hard to expect offensive performances like those teams. Nash literally had a better player on his team and the GOAT offensive PF, also had michael finley, and that team still found time to give huge minutes to guys like nick van exel and raef lafrentz and one season gave 2400 minutes to antawn jamison, which means either dirk or antawn were playing a bunch of center. for the year 2004, that's like the 2022 equivalent of the Vivek Ranadive strategy of just leaving one guy down on offense the whole game.

then he gets to go to a phoenix team that was basically breaking the mold of the current nba on pace and space, with an unbelievable PnR center like amare who could both finish and pick and pop with the very best (this would be like if capela was even more athletic and had a money mid-range jumper) and then playing amare and marion at PF/C so they could outrun any team in the league. with good shooters sprinkled everywhere. even the warriors i think only matched the suns rORtg's in 2016, and they had to be a 73 win team to do it. there's basically no way a roster in 2018-2020, especially built like the rockets, is going to match +8 rORtg's in a league where everyone else has figured out that long 2's are stupid and playing fast has benefits.

harden got to go to a great offensive team in brooklyn, arguably outside of harden's prime, and they posted the best offensive rating in history (but not rORtg), despite the fact the big 3 barely ever stepped foot together on the court. when they actually did in the playoffs? well in the last peaks thread, i said i had never seen a 130 ORtg in a series until clippers/jazz. Well, now I've seen 2, because the nets did it against the celtics, for about a +18 rORtg. then in the next series when harden got hurt, even in just the 3.5 games kyrie played (just took half the nets ORtg in game 4), they were at 108.6, which is almost a -3 rORtg against the bucks. harden with extraordinarily offensive-slanted teams seems to do great, arguably even better than the KD warriors, despite the fact no one would say 2021 KD was as good as 2017 or that even 2021 harden was his best.

Furthermore, RPM and APM figures are very kind to Nash.

https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/rapm-by-player

At this link not only does Nash have the top peak offensive peak per RAPM ahead of Peak Lebron, Peak Kobe, Peak Wade, etc., but he takes up multiple spots in the upper echelon.

and this is where i'm always going to push back, because these numbers have seemingly way too many "wtf" moments and also seem to play favorites and never let go. 2007 baron davis was the 3rd best offensive player of that stretch? 2007 tim duncan was 10th?

why is 2011 nash so high? his own numbers weren't as good that year and the suns went 40-42 and had the 9th rated offense. this seems to be the steph curry problem with impact numbers. performance-independence. great year for steve nash, league-leading offensive APM. down year for steve nash and his team, league-leading offensive APM. so it just loves him no matter what, i.e. the favorites problem. do i just take the numbers that make sense and then explain away the ones that don't?

Even if we adjust for dominance relative to year, Nash is beating out Kobe, Wade, Lebron (only goes up to 13)

Read on Twitter

so based on that tweet, 2013 james harden was better than 2006 steve nash and wash already catching up to nash's best numbers. so if we believe these numbers, then looking into future harden seasons, there only seem to be 2 options. his numbers presumably eclipsed nash's by the time 2018-2020 rolls around. or harden's numbers somehow didn't get substantially better in the future, in which case these aren't very good numbers because 2013 harden was certainly not his peak.

According to Steve Ilardi's 04-09 APM, Steve Nash also has the highest offensive peak by quite the margin as well. https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/04-09-6-year-apm

and again, which numbers do i go with here? because steve nash's offensive APM seems to just be in a sea of other numbers that may or may not make sense. first, it would seem the basketball HOF needs to add a new kevin garnett wing to appreciate his greatness. he appears to have impact (+14.1) equivalent to prime Dirk + prime Kobe (+13.1 combined). and not too far away from equaling prime Lebron + prime Duncan. manu is 3rd, ahead of duncan. is this collinearity? if it is, how do i know duncan's not the one benefiting from manu? because i just think duncan is better? in this very list, baron davis is ahead of steve nash. since i assume people have harden above baron davis, is harden above nash? it can't just be an offense specific argument for nash over harden. according to this, nash has the worst defensive number of anyone in the top 90. now maybe this is like jokic's great DBPM numbers where the overall number is right but it just can't figure out how to split it up between offense and defense. so maybe his defense isn't as terrible as the numbers say but then his offense is not as good, and then we're still back at nash being somewhat far down the list once defense is accounted for, if we're taking these numbers to mean something.

and then of course we get stuff like jamario moon being ahead of tmac, who just edged out brian cardinal. when do we accept a result and when do we say it is trash?

Finally, I should bring up 19 year RAPM, which captured the downside of Nash's career yet still ranks him higher than Harden

Read on Twitter

i don't know exactly what 538's RAPTOR measures, but i know i see it quoted all the time and it had harden #1 in 2018, 2019, and 2020 and, even in the playoffs, #4 in 2018 (behind only first round guys like dipo, TJ mcconnell and jimmy butler), #7 in 2019 with only jokic and kawhi from this project ahead, #3 in 2020 behind AD and lillard, and #4 in 2021 despite playing almost half of his minutes on a hamstring tear against the bucks. so there's at least one acronym that loves harden and thinks he's pretty impactful in the playoffs.

While yes numbers aren't everything, the fact that Nash ends up so high in all these measures where we have a large samples size is telling. His playoff improvement and upped aggression in the second season gives more confidence in him such that if I had to pick between Harden or Nash to run my team, I would feel more certain what I am getting with Nash.

and yet he still played with tons of talent and got no closer to winning than harden, despite having easier competition that didn't win 67 or 73 games and then add kevin durant to that 73 win team. a team he got closer to beating than nash against the spurs.
imagine if harden spent his age 26-29 seasons, which are 2016-2019, playing with an even better teammate like nash did with dirk. the closest he got was 2018 chris paul and they went 44-5 together and almost beat the KD warriors. now make chris paul even better and give them 4 years and no superteam opposition. if we're talking impact, why did nash leave the mavs and they quickly regroup to a finals appearance and 67 win season in the next 3 years? truly groundbreaking impact would seem to require more of a fall-off.

harden left the rockets, and even though we clearly were trying to show him we didn't need him and went on a 6 game winning streak shortly thereafter, we then finished with one of the worst stretches to end a season in nba history, going something like 6-54. and harden's new team went from 19-17 without him to 29-7 with him, and slaughtered their first round opponent, before falling off hard on offense without him. and then this year struggled but still had a pretty good record with him this year before completely collapsing when he left to philly.

Finally, a lot of people contribute Nash and Harden's success to D'Antoni's scheme but considering they have the same coach, I think we can be more confident that we are comparing their actual abilities and not just who is more well coached (also Nash lead a top 10 offense ever in 2010 with D'Antoni...plus you we maybe could argue D'Antoni got better as a coach as time went on, as perhaps he learned from past mistakes). Also I am focusing largely on offense as I consider both Harden and Nash as slight negatives on D, but neither being laughably worse than the other.

the same numbers that would say nash is amazing on offense would apparently say he was atrocious on D so i'm very hesitant to just handwave defense and then saying nash wins because he wins offense. the rockets, in an era of hunting for mismatches, were able to survive against the KD warriors with harden in an all-switching defense. the 2018 rockets were 6th in defense and the 2019 rockets had one of the better defenses when they got healthy after the ASG. not to mention a team like the 2015 rockets finishing 8th. part of the reason the rockets can switch is because wings don't tend to give harden a ton of trouble because he's just fast enough to keep them from driving and bigs don't give him a problem because, as the numbers show, he's practically un-postup-able.




and finally, couldn't everything you said be used to argue nash over curry? curry didn't lead 9 #1 offenses in a row. in fact, outside of 2015-2019, he's never led a top 10 offense. harden has 5 top 2 offenses and 5 more top 7 offenses. i didn't get to watch it again, but the "playoff risers and fallers" video, didn't curry get listed as one of the biggest fallers just like harden? the suns relative ORtg's generally outpace the warriors rORtg's, even when they add friggin' kevin durant. and certainly i'm not going to hear that curry is some big defensive upgrade over harden and that's why he's over nash.

For one, there are offenses in the modern era, who have surpassed the +8 threshold in the PS and been in the territory for GOAT offense. It is possible. It is less likely to happen in the RS, with load-management and people not taking the RS as seriously.

Plus-minus numbers attempt to evaluate how well a player does in their role, not overall goodness. And just like box-score metrics, I would argue they have can have some players looking like outliers when it seems unjustified.

The point on Nash's defense is a quality one, although, I am not certain how significant I think the gap is between him and Harden. Perhaps if I considered Nash like a -0.65 on D, then the highest I could see Harden is maybe a net neutral there? Not certain, on this because I don't love Harden's transition defense.

Also I don't why you brought up Curry, here when he had nothing to do with this discussion? I'll just end by saying, I don't consider Curry outright a better offensive player than Nash, so you have defeated yourself with this point.

[f4p]

If we are going by per we may as well rank harden above magic too while we are at it

Nash and magic volume scoring/efficiency/assists profiles are fairly similar

no, we may as well not. and people need to stop acting like PER is radioactive. great players put up great stats. steve nash is not above having his production looked at. magic's playoff PER compares very favorably to harden's and his best playoff PER's are basically the same. assist-heavy players can't quite get as high as volume scorers, but great ones can keep it close. magic basically keeps it even, which is why he is amazing. nash does not.

steve nash is no where close to magic on the numbers i mentioned.

magic's CAREER playoff numbers are:

23.0 PER
0.208 WS48
7.6 BPM

now compare that to nash's BEST playoff seasons.

nash has one playoff above 23, which is 2005 at 23.4. He never even got close in WS48 with 0.175 in 2010, and this is a very TS%-friendly stat. and he never even got close to getting close in BPM with 5.2 in 2007. if we want regular seasons:

regular seasons 2005-07 for nash:
23 PER
0.214 WS48
5.2 BPM

magic 1987-89

26.2 PER
0.263 WS48
9.5 BPM

people are barking up the wrong tree saying comparing harden to nash might as well be comparing him to magic (i think someone else mentioned this).

[The-Power]

I would take 05-07 Nash over 18-20 Harden offensively pretty easily. I can't believe there are still people who claim Stoudamire was the one making Nash look good and not the other way around. How do you explain Shaq's last year in Miami or first and only with Cavs vs. his 09 stint with Suns where he posted the most efficient season of his career and made the all star team.

The difference in efficiency between the last Miami years and the one Phoenix year is mostly due to a big jump in FT%. He was a bit more efficient from the field but also had a lower usage that may explain some of it. Not saying Nash did not help him but the fact that this was his second best year shooting FTs is clearly key in explaining why he was so efficient that year. (Also worth noting: his most efficient season actually was on the 2011 Celtics in a much more limited role.)

[CharityStripe34]

Rinse, lather, repeat

1. Bob Pettit (1959) : Arguably the league's best player in the first half-decade of the shot-clock era, and certainly a Top 5 player for literally 95% of his career until his last season when he got a knee-injury and decided to retire (as an All-NBA 2nd teamer) to pursue banking/finance (take that plumbers and firemen). The league's first true, prototypical PF that could shoot from distance and rebound like a MF'er who won two MVP's and a title.

Honorable mention: (1958, 1962)

2. Moses Malone (1983): The most lethal booty of one of the most competitive eras of hoops. Bodied the entire league for 5-6 years to multiple MVP's and a dominant title run with some of the most powerful hips and thighs in history, and without Shaq's girth. Ran through a very competitive East and nearly sent Kareem to AARP early in the Finals.

Honorable mention: (1982, 1979)

3. Kawhi Leonard (2017): Kawhi had achieved terminator status with lethal and efficient scoring, coupled with all-time elite defense. And then the Kraken Pachulia was summoned to throw crap in the ointment of an incredible playoff run. Since then, the Rock Auto aftermarket parts on his legs need servicing every so often but he was able to have another incredible playoff run in 2019 en route to a title.

Honorable mention: (2016, 2019)

Really close are Julius Erving, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Dirk Nowitzki, Karl Malone

[LukaTheGOAT]

If we are going by per we may as well rank harden above magic too while we are at it

Nash and magic volume scoring/efficiency/assists profiles are fairly similar

no, we may as well not. and people need to stop acting like PER is radioactive. great players put up great stats. steve nash is not above having his production looked at. magic's playoff PER compares very favorably to harden's and his best playoff PER's are basically the same. assist-heavy players can't quite get as high as volume scorers, but great ones can keep it close. magic basically keeps it even, which is why he is amazing. nash does not.

steve nash is no where close to magic on the numbers i mentioned.

magic's CAREER playoff numbers are:

23.0 PER
0.208 WS48
7.6 BPM

now compare that to nash's BEST playoff seasons.

nash has one playoff above 23, which is 2005 at 23.4. He never even got close in WS48 with 0.175 in 2010, and this is a very TS%-friendly stat. and he never even got close to getting close in BPM with 5.2 in 2007. if we want regular seasons:

regular seasons 2005-07 for nash:
23 PER
0.214 WS48
5.2 BPM

magic 1987-89

26.2 PER
0.263 WS48
9.5 BPM

people are barking up the wrong tree saying comparing harden to nash might as well be comparing him to magic (i think someone else mentioned this).

It's not that box-score metrics can't be utilized (I enjoy them more than most), but rather the belief that what some star players do is perhaps less captured in the basic box-score compared to other stars. The box-score is informative but not all encompassing which is where viewing plus-minus can help shed some light on players who might be underrated by more traditional measures.

For instance, Russell Westbrook's 5-year Peak PS. BPM is better than Kobe Bryant's 5-year Peak PS BPM.

I also don't think CP3 had a better 5-year PS peak than Hakeem, but if we look at the box-score metrics, he would be more than well clear of him.

However, I don't think Westbrook necessarily had a more productive 5 year peak than Kobe. I think the box-score misses on Kobe's off-ball movement, and his gravity as a scorer. It also doesn't recognize him getting a lot of hockey assists.

[Ron Swanson]

1975-76 Julius Erving:(HM: 1980-81) Really torn over whether this was too high to put Dr. J, and this will likely be the only ABA season I vote for. But he's one of the few ABA players that didn't suffer any drop-off transitioning to the NBA, so I feel comfortable saying '76 is his peak and would have looked just as good in any league setting. Before Magic, Jordan, and Giannis he was basically the GOAT transition player. All-time postseason run (34/12/5/2/2 on 61% TS) capped off with a legendary Finals stat line (37/14/5) against a Denver team with 3 future hall-of-famers (Issel, Thompson, Jones) makes it hard to scrutinize the competition angle too much.

2016-17 Kawhi: (HM: 2018-19) Really tough between Kawhi, Kobe, and Chris Paul for the 3rd vote. To be fair, I don't believe the Spurs would have beat the Warriors even with a healthy Kawhi, but it's hard to ignore the numbers he had put up leading up to him exiting Game 1 of the WCF (27/8/4 on 67% TS, 31.5 PER, .314 WS/48). Much like Julius, it helps that we know he was capable of similar postseason runs beyond that (2014, 2019-21), so 2017 gets the nod considering how much better his defense was pre-injury, as well as it being his most complete RS (74 games, 3rd in MVP voting).

1992-93 Charles Barkley (HM: 1989-90) Ultimately went with Barkley because I like his playoff "resilience" (I'm honestly starting to hate this term though) much more than the next group of guys I have on my ballot outside of maybe Dirk (Malone, D-Rob, CP3). If not for Jordan going supernova in the Finals, I think the perception of Barkley and his peak would be closer to Top-10 than Top-20. I'm particularly impressed by the fact that the Suns offense didn't have any drop-off (113.3 vs. 113.0 RS/PS) against a very good defensive Bulls team and unfavorable forward matchup (Scottie & Horace). It's also good to get some lineup data of old Barkley post-1996 that shows us he was still anchoring good offenses (+12.0 on/off his age-34 and 35 seasons). My alternate season (1990) ironically also ended due to an insane postseason performance by Jordan (41/7/6/4 on 61.6% TS) which is kind of a microcosm of his career, and why I think his is one of the very few exceptions where I think the lack of championship success is forgiving.

[NBA4Lyfe]

I will say that while i dont agree with most of f4p opinions on nash i am starting to wonder if ring bias is not making us underate harden a bit too much

After this round i think i will take a good look into garden footage

and consider him more strongly against the guys i am looking into (dirk, nash, kawhi, robinson,julius)

to get a fair ranking of players all-time you would have to ask basketball reference.com to make their own list. harden is too hated for a reasonable ranking on websites outside of basketball reference

[f4p]

also, i'm not sure how nash is getting votes over someone like harden. 2005-2007 nash doesn't seem very comparable to 2018-2020 harden.
harden's got a 2018 no doubt about it mvp where he practically led in every stat.

Yet again I must ask: how do you think this responds to any arguments at play? When has a Nash backer ever cared about PER and BPM and WinShares and points per game?

well, nobody's perfect, but i try to help them. why shouldn't they look at those things? is nash the chosen one? he alone can stand against the forces of conventional stats? i should think he should be in the ballpark on some of these things, not way below.

the 2018 rockets are significantly better than any of the suns teams. when actually healthy, 44-5 with a +11.0 SRS with harden and cp3 playing. and while very well constructed, i wouldn't exactly call harden plus 33 year old chris paul plus clint capela some absurd collection of talent to dominate as much as they did.

Well they basically added Chris Paul directly to that 2017 team, so yeah I would say it looks like he mattered a lot. Which team was better, the 2006 Suns or the 2017 Rockets? And how much better is Chris Paul than Amar’e Stoudemire?

not sure about your question, but the two teams seemed fairly similar. 55 to 54 wins, 5.8 to 5.5 SRS, both in houston's favor, suns needed 7 to beat +1 and +2 SRS opponents while rockets easily handled a +1 opponent, both teams went 6 with +6/+7 opponents. seems within the margin of error but maybe advantage rockets?

i would say chris paul is better than amare. i would also say +11 SRS is quite a bit better than +7.3 SRS where the suns maxed out.

harden was #31 in the last top 100, and i don't think that included 2020, and obviously as an active player, he is theoretically getting more value from his peak than a retired player, so it will be weird if his peak doesn't beat his ranking.

Harden went too low in that project — almost no way he slots in below Westbrook this time — but a large number of people think 2019 was his peak anyway. If you are confused about how Nash could be argued higher, maybe that project would be a good place to start.[/quote]

ok, so he was low on the last project, which would put him the 28-29 range in your opinion? considering he wouldn't have longevity on many people, this doesn't seem like a crazy time for him to start being on this list.

[AEnigma]

also, i'm not sure how nash is getting votes over someone like harden. 2005-2007 nash doesn't seem very comparable to 2018-2020 harden.
harden's got a 2018 no doubt about it mvp where he practically led in every stat.

Yet again I must ask: how do you think this responds to any arguments at play? When has a Nash backer ever cared about PER and BPM and WinShares and points per game?

well, nobody's perfect, but i try to help them.

Yes thank you for trying to help people look at a player’s box scores more! Tbh not really sure why we are even bothering to do this project when BBR already provides a PER leaderboard for us.

why shouldn't they look at those things?

Why should they? Do you think basketball is nothing more than what you see on a box score?

is nash the chosen one?

No, that is Kevin Garnett.

he alone can stand against the forces of conventional stats? i should think he should be in the ballpark on some of these things, not way below.

What makes PER and BPM conventional? They are semi-arbitrary (semi- in the sense that they to some extent were designed to conform to expected rankings — “make sure Jordan and Lebron fare well”) formulas that just want to feed an easily digestible number to people. So Nash does not rebound like Magic; end of debate, even though he is a comparable scorer and passer who similarly captained all-time offences across several roster evolutions, he cannot possibly be close.

the 2018 rockets are significantly better than any of the suns teams. when actually healthy, 44-5 with a +11.0 SRS with harden and cp3 playing. and while very well constructed, i wouldn't exactly call harden plus 33 year old chris paul plus clint capela some absurd collection of talent to dominate as much as they did.

Well they basically added Chris Paul directly to that 2017 team, so yeah I would say it looks like he mattered a lot. Which team was better, the 2006 Suns or the 2017 Rockets? And how much better is Chris Paul than Amar’e Stoudemire?

i would say chris paul is better than amare. i would also say +11 SRS is quite a bit better than +7.3 SRS where the suns maxed out.

Okay, so are we attributing that change to the guy who was there or the guy who entered? To whom are we attributing the subsequent decline in 2019 and 2020?

harden was #31 in the last top 100, and i don't think that included 2020, and obviously as an active player, he is theoretically getting more value from his peak than a retired player, so it will be weird if his peak doesn't beat his ranking.

Harden went too low in that project — almost no way he slots in below Westbrook this time — but a large number of people think 2019 was his peak anyway. If you are confused about how Nash could be argued higher, maybe that project would be a good place to start.

ok, so he was low on the last project, which would put him the 28-29 range in your opinion? considering he wouldn't have longevity on many people, this doesn't seem like a crazy time for him to start being on this list.

I am fine with him being discussed, but I am not really seeing where he separates himself from a lot of other guys. I think you could somewhat convincingly argue him above Durant and similarly convincingly argue him below Karl Malone. Is he demonstrably better than Penny or Chris Paul? Do his accomplishments outweigh someone like Walt Frazier’s?