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

[falcolombardi]

I feel important to mention that per gives a lot of value to thinghs like defensive rebounding

If we eliminate defensive rebounding from the equation does magic still have a big gap over nash?

[f4p]

Rapm is not supposed to be a player rank but a tool useful to evaluating players, Just like you shouldnt rank players by number of rings won or offensive players by highest ppg

Any single metric of any kind wont pass the smell test if used on its own

but that basically is what they are for. to ignore all other data and simply tell us who had the biggest impact on winning, whether they scored or rebounded or set good screens and not just because they scored a lot. their purpose is presumably to make the box score stuff irrelevant and show us who wins games. and while people might say they aren't for rankings, we are in a rankings project so presumably they are being presented with an eye towards defending a ranking. in a general sense, we know all of these players are good, so how good? when we're trying to parse the difference in who is 15th and 16th (admittedly probably a little ridiculous), these are going to be used for ranking. otherwise, why are people mentioning who is 1st or 4th or 7th in AuPM or PIPM or DARKO or what not? as it was presented to me, someone said Nash ranked 1st in offensive APM. i point out he's 11th overall, and then it's not a ranking system and someone (not you or him) said i don't understand how to use these. well, if they are being presented in a rankings project, they should be used for rankings. otherwise i can't use conventional stats for nash, can't use plus/minus data too much, and he's tied for last in rings with a lot of people, so his ranking will be tough to figure out. and if these stats produce wacky results, then as essentially derived data taking into account the actions of 9 other people on the court, they should be questioned even harder than the primary box score data that actually tracks what happens and at least gives us the chance to interpret what we saw happen and get tracked.

[falcolombardi]

Rapm is not supposed to be a player rank but a tool useful to evaluating players, Just like you shouldnt rank players by number of rings won or offensive players by highest ppg

Any single metric of any kind wont pass the smell test if used on its own

but that basically is what they are for. to ignore all other data and simply tell us who had the biggest impact on winning, whether they scored or rebounded or set good screens and not just because they scored a lot. their purpose is presumably to make the box score stuff irrelevant and show us who wins games. and while people might say they aren't for rankings, we are in a rankings project so presumably that's why they would be presented. in a general sense, we know all of these players are good, so how good? when we're trying to parse the difference in who is 15th and 16th (admittedly probably a little ridiculous), these are going to be used for ranking. otherwise why are people mentioning who is 1st or 4th or 7th in AuPM or PIPM or DARKO or what not? as it was presented to me, it said Nash ranked 1st in offensive AuPM. i point out he's 11th overall, and then it's not a ranking system and someone (not you) said i don't understand how to use these. well, if they are being presented in a rankings project, they should be used for rankings. otherwise i can't use conventional stats for nash, can't use plus/minus data, and he's tied for last in rings with a lot of people. and if they produce wacky results, then as essentially derived data taking into account the actions of 9 other people on the court, they should be questioned even harder than the primary box score data that actually tracks what happens and at least gives us the chance to interpret what we saw happen and get tracked.

What i mean is that you are not supposed to use them on their own and just rank players exclusively ok who has the higher rapm

Not that rapm is not a useful tool to include and weight when doing these evaluations, which it is

[NBA4Lyfe]

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.

That’s cap I watched Steve Nashs entire career, in no way shape or form was he ever better than James harden. He was more well liked by the media that was trying to steer away from the Kobe rape case and the malice in the palace which is why he won 3 straight mvps with stats that would barely garner 3rd team all nba in todays game.

The harden hate and disrespect has got to stop

[f4p]

Rapm is not supposed to be a player rank but a tool useful to evaluating players, Just like you shouldnt rank players by number of rings won or offensive players by highest ppg

Any single metric of any kind wont pass the smell test if used on its own

but that basically is what they are for. to ignore all other data and simply tell us who had the biggest impact on winning, whether they scored or rebounded or set good screens and not just because they scored a lot. their purpose is presumably to make the box score stuff irrelevant and show us who wins games. and while people might say they aren't for rankings, we are in a rankings project so presumably that's why they would be presented. in a general sense, we know all of these players are good, so how good? when we're trying to parse the difference in who is 15th and 16th (admittedly probably a little ridiculous), these are going to be used for ranking. otherwise why are people mentioning who is 1st or 4th or 7th in AuPM or PIPM or DARKO or what not? as it was presented to me, it said Nash ranked 1st in offensive AuPM. i point out he's 11th overall, and then it's not a ranking system and someone (not you) said i don't understand how to use these. well, if they are being presented in a rankings project, they should be used for rankings. otherwise i can't use conventional stats for nash, can't use plus/minus data, and he's tied for last in rings with a lot of people. and if they produce wacky results, then as essentially derived data taking into account the actions of 9 other people on the court, they should be questioned even harder than the primary box score data that actually tracks what happens and at least gives us the chance to interpret what we saw happen and get tracked.

What i mean is that you are not supposed to use them on their own and just rank players exclusively ok who has the higher rapm

Not that rapm is not a useful tool to include and weight when doing these evaluations, which it is

OK, but I didn't use it on its own. things like BPM, WS48, and PER are seemingly calculated pretty differently. PER loves volume, WS48 loves efficiency, based on a huge post someone made recently, BPM does all sorts of regression stuff. i feel like if you're not competing in even 1 of these 3, then i'm going to need extraordinary evidence somewhere else. the first thing someone posted was that APM number set. ok, so i can't use it on its own, but it doesn't seem to paint a much different picture than what i had already shown. unfortunately LEBRON doesn't seem to go back further than 2010, but it was a pretty good year for nash and he finished 16th.

of course, 4 yr APM from 08-11 actually has nash 2nd, so that would be a feather in his cap, but then it seems a bit weird that 08-11 nash is better than 04-09 nash.

and of course harden is not a stranger to doing well in some of the all-in-one's. 1st/2nd/2nd in LEBRON, 1st/1st/1st in RAPTOR (with very good playoff numbers). and it goes with great "conventional" box score stats and better team results.

[f4p]

I feel important to mention that per gives a lot of value to thinghs like defensive rebounding

If we eliminate defensive rebounding from the equation does magic still have a big gap over nash?

i don't have a PER spreadsheet that i know of anymore so i don't know.

[f4p]

Well RealGM refreshed the page on me so this will be brief.

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.

Woah Harden has bigger box score numbers than Nash? Damn, never realised.

well, now you do. steve nash is allowed to have his production evaluated. can't just be team offensive ratings.

yes, but this is part of why i point out that harden was on a better team

Chris Paul.

much better team

and arguably teams with the 2019 playoff rockets being at least as good as any suns team).

Based on what.

pretty easy handling of a +5.3 SRS 1st round opponent, followed by very competitive series with ridiculous team. at least slightly better than 2005 phoenix against +5.9 SRS 2nd round opponent and then pretty easy 4-1 loss to spurs. better than 2006. 2007 you have a +8.4 spurs opponent and a good 6 game fight but I'm not putting the 2007 spurs with the 2019 warriors. if the 2010 lakers were better than +4.8, the 2010 suns might have an argument. doesn't seem unfair to have 2019 rockets over any suns team. certainly seems harder to argue the converse.

with good shooters sprinkled everywhere.

What did Harden have? Lmao.

this is just a straight up myth that gets perpetuated. the rockets shot a lot of 3's because we figured out that was smart but we were never an amazing shooting team. often going with "good at D, hopefully they make 35% on 3's" type guys. the suns shot a lot of 3's, but made them waaayyyy more frequently. going by 2005-7 for nash and 2018-20 for harden. both teams were 1st in attempts all 3 years (lol, MDA has seen a lot of 3's).

Suns League Rank 3P%
1st
1st
1st

Rockets League Rank 3P%
13th
10th
24th

but f4p i can hear you say, steve nash is a great 3 point shooter and james harden is average-ish, you can't include nash in the numbers. ok i say, i will do the numbers without either player, since we're talking about their teammates/spacing:

Suns w/o Nash 3P%
1st - 38.8%
1st - 39.1%
2nd - 38.8%

Suns w/o Nash 3PM/gm
1st - 8.6
1st - 8.4 (by almost 10%)
3rd - 7.7

so basically a league leading volume and league-leading efficiency 3 point attack surrounding nash, in addition to nash's own shooting. that's an absurd amount of shooting.

Rockets w/o Harden 3P%
14th - 36.1%
20th - 35.1% (admittedly, practically a 5-way tie for 16th, still below average)
26th - 34.2%

Rockets w/o Harden 3PM/gm
2nd - 12.1
11th - 11.5
19th - 11.5

so a below average shooting squad around harden, where his own shooting slightly inflated the numbers and where his own volume of isolation, unassisted 3's boosted the teams totals. now obviously, the teams could have maybe made slightly more 3's if you replace the nash/harden possessions, but they'd obviously get a lot fewer looks if nash/harden didn't exist to set them up. the percentages though, extremely clearly show how devastating phoenix's offensive role players were as shooters.

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.

Ah yes that must be why Nash’s on-court offensive rating from 2005-11 was higher than any team playing today (117; that is real offensive rating to be clear, not that BBR individual one).

i mean that's still based on how good your teammates are with you on the court, but that's a good thing in nash's favor.

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.

Yes Durant and Kyrie and Blake Griffin at centre is the approximate equivalent to Barbosa, Marion, and Amar’e.

it's not far off amare, marion, barbosa, and a high volume, 40% 3 point shooting supporting cast in the year of our lord 2005. and let's not act like 2021 harden seemed like his absolute prime (or KD's, except for 2 playoff games). and again, the nets were at 130 in basically their only time together, so it's not like the results weren't as spectacular as can be expected.

Maybe will respond to the rest later, or someone else can, but not understanding impact metrics does not mean they are less valuable than box score totals.

so do i use them to rank people? do i just get a general idea of the world with them and then apply whatever interpretation i want? like any stat, they say who did the best in that stat. if the idea of your stat is to isolate impact, then i should treat it as a ranking of impact like i would PPG as a ranking of scoring. i can then of course factor in other things, which i have.

By the way, the 2011 Suns had a 114 offensive rating with Nash on the court — about the same as 2015-20 Harden. No Amar’e, no D’Antoni, and past his peak. How strange.

i don't remember them well, but they look like a small team that, once again, was 3rd in 3's and 4th in 3P% and would be 8th in makes and 6th in 3P% even without nash. maybe they really slanted the offensive players in the nash minutes because they only ended up 9th in offense overall even with nash playing 75 games and they were terrible on defense and were 40-42 and missed the playoffs.

[LukaTheGOAT]

but that basically is what they are for. to ignore all other data and simply tell us who had the biggest impact on winning, whether they scored or rebounded or set good screens and not just because they scored a lot. their purpose is presumably to make the box score stuff irrelevant and show us who wins games. and while people might say they aren't for rankings, we are in a rankings project so presumably that's why they would be presented. in a general sense, we know all of these players are good, so how good? when we're trying to parse the difference in who is 15th and 16th (admittedly probably a little ridiculous), these are going to be used for ranking. otherwise why are people mentioning who is 1st or 4th or 7th in AuPM or PIPM or DARKO or what not? as it was presented to me, it said Nash ranked 1st in offensive AuPM. i point out he's 11th overall, and then it's not a ranking system and someone (not you) said i don't understand how to use these. well, if they are being presented in a rankings project, they should be used for rankings. otherwise i can't use conventional stats for nash, can't use plus/minus data, and he's tied for last in rings with a lot of people. and if they produce wacky results, then as essentially derived data taking into account the actions of 9 other people on the court, they should be questioned even harder than the primary box score data that actually tracks what happens and at least gives us the chance to interpret what we saw happen and get tracked.

What i mean is that you are not supposed to use them on their own and just rank players exclusively ok who has the higher rapm

Not that rapm is not a useful tool to include and weight when doing these evaluations, which it is

OK, but I didn't use it on its own. things like BPM, WS48, and PER are seemingly calculated pretty differently. PER loves volume, WS48 loves efficiency, based on a huge post someone made recently, BPM does all sorts of regression stuff. i feel like if you're not competing in even 1 of these 3, then i'm going to need extraordinary evidence somewhere else. the first thing someone posted was that APM number set. ok, so i can't use it on its own, but it doesn't seem to paint a much different picture than what i had already shown. unfortunately LEBRON doesn't seem to go back further than 2010, but it was a pretty good year for nash and he finished 16th.

of course, 4 yr APM from 08-11 actually has nash 2nd, so that would be a feather in his cap, but then it seems a bit weird that 08-11 nash is better than 04-09 nash.

and of course harden is not a stranger to doing well in some of the all-in-one's. 1st/2nd/2nd in LEBRON, 1st/1st/1st in RAPTOR (with very good playoff numbers). and it goes with great "conventional" box score stats and better team results.

Random question, based on your evalution criteria, would you be willing to go as far as to say that Chris Paul peaked higher than Magic and Hakeem?

[f4p]

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.

well, touche then, i guess. i didn't realize you were either higher on nash than consensus or lower on curry than consensus (i brought up curry specifically because of the consensus). if you have nash right there with curry, then i would definitely assume you have him over harden. not that i agree, but i guess we can't always assume what each person will think about people we haven't heard them discuss.

[AEnigma]

Well RealGM refreshed the page on me so this will be brief.

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.

Woah Harden has bigger box score numbers than Nash? Damn, never realised.

well, now you do. steve nash is allowed to have his production evaluated. can't just be team offensive ratings.

Why do you think box scores are the sum of basketball production.

yes, but this is part of why i point out that harden was on a better team

Chris Paul.

much better team

I reiterate: Chris Paul.

and arguably teams with the 2019 playoff rockets being at least as good as any suns team).

Based on what.

pretty easy handling of a +5.3 SRS 1st round opponent, followed by very competitive series with ridiculous team. at least slightly better than 2005 phoenix against +5.9 SRS 2nd round opponent and then pretty easy 4-1 loss to spurs. better than 2006. 2007 you have a +8.4 spurs opponent and a good 6 game fight but I'm not putting the 2007 spurs with the 2019 warriors. if the 2010 lakers were better than +4.8, the 2010 suns might have an argument. doesn't seem unfair to have 2019 rockets over any suns team. certainly seems harder to argue the converse.

Yeah I was really impressed when the Warriors handled them without their second best player. Definitely better than the 2007 Spurs, definitely equivalent team contexts (who missed games for the Rockets again?).

Also, already been pointed out, but since you seem to have forgotten, extremely funny that all credit for the team’s performance in total goes to Harden. Must be because of his post defence, right. That was the glue that held the Rockets together on that end.

I recognise it is much easier to just lean hard on acontextualised narratives rather than attempt to analyse what is happening on the court or is attributable to what player, but I would have thought by now you would have picked up on why that approach is taken less seriously.

with good shooters sprinkled everywhere.

What did Harden have? Lmao.

this is just a straight up myth that gets perpetuated. the rockets shot a lot of 3's because we figured out that was smart but we were never an amazing shooting team. often going with "good at D, hopefully they make 35% on 3's" type guys. the suns shot a lot of 3's, but made them waaayyyy more frequently. going by 2005-7 for nash and 2018-20 for harden. both teams were 1st in attempts all 3 years (lol, MDA has seen a lot of 3's).

Suns League Rank 3P%
1st
1st
1st

Rockets League Rank 3P%
13th
10th
24th

but f4p i can hear you say, steve nash is a great 3 point shooter and james harden is average-ish, you can't include nash in the numbers. ok i say, i will do the numbers without either player, since we're talking about their teammates/spacing:

Suns w/o Nash 3P%
1st - 38.8%
1st - 39.1%
2nd - 38.8%

Suns w/o Nash 3PM/gm
1st - 8.6
1st - 8.4 (by almost 10%)
3rd - 7.7

so basically a league leading volume and league-leading efficiency 3 point attack surrounding nash, in addition to nash's own shooting. that's an absurd amount of shooting.

Rockets w/o Harden 3P%
14th - 36.1%
20th - 35.1% (admittedly, practically a 5-way tie for 16th, still below average)
26th - 34.2%

Rockets w/o Harden 3PM/gm
2nd - 12.1
11th - 11.5
19th - 11.5

so a below average shooting squad around harden, where his own shooting slightly inflated the numbers and where his own volume of isolation, unassisted 3's boosted the teams totals. now obviously, the teams could have maybe made slightly more 3's if you replace the nash/harden possessions, but they'd obviously get a lot fewer looks if nash/harden didn't exist to set them up. the percentages though, extremely clearly show how devastating phoenix's offensive role players were as shooters.

Alright, great, you are doing some actual analysis now.

So my counter is: are they good shooters without Nash?

I set the filters for 2004-11, heaves excluded. Nash’s entire prime in Phoenix plus the year before he arrived so we can get a better sample for how guys like Marion, Barbosa, and Joe Johnson shot without him (Marion and Barbosa shot well for their standards that season, Joe shot poorly).

Tim Thomas: 48.8% -> 25% without Nash
Boris Diaw: 35.9% -> 20.6% without Nash (big sample)
Hedo Turkoglu: 46.9% -> 33.3% without Nash (small sample)
Joe Johnson: 52.8% -> 41.7% without Nash
J-Rich: 42.4% -> 31.7% without Nash
Goran Dragic: 41.9% -> 35.1% without Nash (small sample with)
Vince Carter: 38.5% -> 32.3% without
Quentin Richardson: 38.1% -> 32.6% without
Barbosa: 42.3% -> 37.5% without
Matt Barnes: 35.7% -> 32.6% without
Eddie House: 41% -> 37.9% without (small sample with)
Channing Frye: 41.3% -> 39.6% without
Jim Jackson: 42.3% -> 41.4% without
——————————
Raja: 42.7% <- 43.5% without
Marion: 33.4% <- 34.6% without
James Jones: 35.8% <- 40.9% without
Jared Dudley: 39.2% <- 46.7% without
Grant Hill: 33.9% <- 44.5% without

I will also point out that the sole person on that list who did not attempt a higher rate of threes when on-court with Nash was Matt Barnes (.5 to .516).

Now, I am not arguing that without Nash the Suns would be a weak shooting roster. They were pretty good without him. Better than the Rockets. But Nash was also helping his team go even higher. With Nash on the court, his teammates were hitting over 40% of their threes at good volume, in addition to improving basically everywhere else on the court too. Harden is not doing that; that is something you pretty much only see from Steph.

Going to go on a quick theory tangent here. I do not think the Rockets would have been better if Nash had been directly substituted for Harden. That roster was built around Harden. It was built around the premise that he could shoulder a massive scoring (and often creation) load while his teammates provided support via spacing and/or (ideally “and”) defence. When had he Dwight, it was a bit different, but Dwight was not a great mesh — nor was he with Nash lol. Nash is not turning PJ Tucker or Robert Covington or Pat Bev into reliable scorers to any particularly meaningful degree. And I agree Brooklyn showed how Harden could scale down that scoring volume to good effect, even if I think you overstated how he specifically elevated the team (Kyrie and Durant were a better offensive duo than Harden and Durant that year).

However, I do not think any of those teams is an especially reasonable championship approach. 2017, Harden is just not good enough to carry that type of team to a title. Maybe Lebron could. You would need to excessively boost that team’s defence to have a chance. With players like Shane Battier and Rudy Gobert yeah then maybe you can just let Harden do his thing in the postseason and trust the defence is oppressive enough to work, but otherwise that feels like a roster designed more to maximise the star than legitimately push for a title. 2018/19 tested that by asking what happens if you can have a superstar running that roster for 48 minutes in the playoffs. It was the ultimate stagger team. It almost worked. I am not sure what to make of it. Is that team better with Harden than with someone like Durant or Dirk? Well, with Paul’s injury, obviously, but aside from that? Tough for me to say. And then 2021 was nonsense but worth noting they too faced diminishing returns on that combination of raw talent. 2022 did not produce an easy title. 2023 will be interesting but most people do not expect much.

Nash, though? Nash can significantly boost any decent scorer who does not want to do their own thing. Joe Johnson and J-Rich both saw career efficiency. Marion and Amar’e were maximised. Guys like Vince and Hedo did well. Barbosa thrived. Boris Diaw looked like a good scorer for a stretch there. These are valuable players, but they shine because Nash is not monopolising the scoring nor fitting awkwardly. It goes back to Russell/Walton/post-1966-Wilt visions of distributing a scoring load. So if Harden is a better floor raiser on a roster in desperate need of lead scoring — 2001 76ers style — he should be the choice. But on other teams? On a team like the Clippers or the Suns or the Mavericks or the Thunder or yeah the 76ers? I would rather have Nash finding the best shots for his teammates.

Maybe will respond to the rest later, or someone else can, but not understanding impact metrics does not mean they are less valuable than box score totals.

so do i use them to rank people? do i just get a general idea of the world with them and then apply whatever interpretation i want? like any stat, they say who did the best in that stat. if the idea of your stat is to isolate impact, then i should treat it as a ranking of impact like i would PPG as a ranking of scoring. i can then of course factor in other things, which i have.

Okay, so using points per game: is that a measure of scoring? Or is it a partial measure that ignores the other aspects of scoring? RAPM (or other impact metrics, but RAPM is the “pure” one) is maybe a bit more akin to TS ADD, in that it is meant to be more complete but is still not distinguishing roles too clearly (Gobert has a great TS ADD!). It improves its value with larger samples so we can remove some inherent noise, but there too it is still ultimately a measure of how a team performs with and without you and falls prey to all the problems that can come from that approach (trouble divesting impact in shared lineups, trouble assessing the types of opposing lineups encountered, lack of interest in role, lack of interest in fit, lack of interest in total minutes played, continued reliance on your inherent irreplaceability to a roster, etc.). So for guys like Nash and Paul and Lebron and Stockton and Garnett and Steph and Draymond and Westbrook and Manu and yes Baron Davis, we can point out they did not have anyone to adequately replace them. But in this case… is there really anyone who should be truly replacing Harden?

I am not saying Harden has weak RAPM values or anything, but it does make it look odd that his values are not higher and kind-of force us to ask whether his lineups are actually being maximised by this style of play. You keep talking about the healthy SRS of that 2018 team, but a large chunk of that was the team playing better with Paul than it did with Harden, and unlike a secondary player like Manu we know Paul has been doing that as a leader for years. If I filter in 2019 that continues to hold true, and then their combined value drops down to just barely above what 2005-08 Nash was doing without Amar’e. Like, the Paul/Harden combination was not uniquely devastating as a pair, it just guaranteed a perpetually high floor through that staggering.

There are other thoughts on this (Chris Paul is a fascinating topic), but will leave it at that for now.

[f4p]

I probably pick harden as a player but it’s hard to get a peak season for him, he took the KD Warriors to 7 sounds great until you think about the series and remember why the harden got clowned for it instead of being praised after, their defense was incredible that series but their offense let them down and harden was a big part of that, whereas 2019 wasn’t as impressive in general

and thus the insanity of the james harden narrative. he can't even get credit for stuff like this. when kevin durant joined the warriors, everyone said it ruined the NBA and they were an unbeatable juggernaut. and then in 2017 and 2018, they seemed to prove it, going 28-3 in the playoffs in the 7 series that weren't against the rockets. 8-1 against this fairly good lebron fellow. 28-3! their record against the healthy rockets? 2-3. a team that loses less than 10% of its playoff games being down 2-3. with the other teams best player putting up 28/6/6 against the warriors #1 playoff defense. with a +15 on/off in the series. take the name harden off that accomplishment and people are raving about it. the response for harden? awful. atrocious. typical james harden choke job. like seriously. something no one could have even imagined 18 months prior, then it damn near happened and harden was a loser for not pulling it off, with his best teammate hurt!

in a lot of ways, it reminded me a lot of the 2015 finals and lebron. the cavs because their best offensive players were hurt and the rockets because some of their better offensive role players (ryan anderson, nene and gerald green) were atrocious defenders who could never be on the court with the warriors, knew they weren't going to beat an overwhelming warriors team 130-128. they would have to win ugly and try to win 98-96. pile as many hard-nosed defenders on the court as possible and have your best players just iso iso iso, run clock, try to slow the game down and win ugly. it's why nene played 6 minutes, ryan anderson played 29 garbage minutes, and green got 18 mpg but still a decent amount of garbage time. if you think the rockets could have tried ryan anderson, well he played 8 minutes in game 7 and more than provided the margin of victory for the warriors with a -12.

and in both cases for the cavs/rockets, it worked as much as could possibly be expected. it tanked the best players' offense, and their own team's offense, but it worked. lebron supercharged it compared to harden, because, well, he's lebron, but he was actually less efficient than harden (48 TS% vs 54 TS%) and just went crazy on the volume (36/13/9 vs 28/6/6), but it was the same principle. chris paul put up only 20/6 on 52 TS% while also iso'ing as much as possible. and both teams ground out some ugly close games and damn near won series no one expected them to win. lebron gets praised to the end of the earth for taking a lesser warriors team to 6 and harden gets clowned for taking a better team to 7 and maybe winning if cp3 is actually healthy. and it's not like anyone is saying you have to say harden is as good as lebron, just people have to stop being ridiculous that the best player on a team almost beat an unbeatable team while putting up very respectable numbers with good on/off numbers was somehow terrible.


also, it would be funny if someone described 2019 with the name taken off. yeah, this guy had arguably the greatest scoring season ever, scored the most points per 100 in league history, went on a historic scoring streak while his team started winning a bunch, then in the playoffs he played an absolutely stacked all-time great team and took them to 6 super-close games while averaging 35 ppg.

oh man, is that like 1987 jordan? i'm telling you, he's the GOAT for a reason.
nah, it was 2019 james harden.
trash.

[No-more-rings]

KD and Curry were nothing special offensively in that series with Houston either, don’t know why Harden gets singled out while Curry always escapes criticism. Also people may want to rewatch a few of those games especially games 4 and 5, Harden was playing pretty good defense and had a legit contribution to their defense. To act like Harden should take all the blame for their offense and 0 credit for the defense seems like a pretty lazy take. Harden seems to be more harshly judged than a lot of others on this board.

In comparison to someone like Nash, yeah Nash looks better in impact stuff but Harden has enjoyed a lot of success and basically as much as Nash has as the main guy. He’s not a guy without flaws of course, but when we start talking about guys who’s peak is like 25th or 30th instead of 10th you sort of get what you get. Fwiw, i’m not sure who i’d take between the two, at some point we need to start to ask why why despite having goat level offensive impact metrics, Nash falls down a good bit on these sort of lists. Part of it is because he’s a legit lousy defender, and the other is players can’t be ranked by who’s team ortg was higher.

[f4p]

What i mean is that you are not supposed to use them on their own and just rank players exclusively ok who has the higher rapm

Not that rapm is not a useful tool to include and weight when doing these evaluations, which it is

OK, but I didn't use it on its own. things like BPM, WS48, and PER are seemingly calculated pretty differently. PER loves volume, WS48 loves efficiency, based on a huge post someone made recently, BPM does all sorts of regression stuff. i feel like if you're not competing in even 1 of these 3, then i'm going to need extraordinary evidence somewhere else. the first thing someone posted was that APM number set. ok, so i can't use it on its own, but it doesn't seem to paint a much different picture than what i had already shown. unfortunately LEBRON doesn't seem to go back further than 2010, but it was a pretty good year for nash and he finished 16th.

of course, 4 yr APM from 08-11 actually has nash 2nd, so that would be a feather in his cap, but then it seems a bit weird that 08-11 nash is better than 04-09 nash.

and of course harden is not a stranger to doing well in some of the all-in-one's. 1st/2nd/2nd in LEBRON, 1st/1st/1st in RAPTOR (with very good playoff numbers). and it goes with great "conventional" box score stats and better team results.

Random question, based on your evalution criteria, would you be willing to go as far as to say that Chris Paul peaked higher than Magic and Hakeem?

i'm not sure i understand the question. i have already voted for hakeem and magic in the top 10 and i have yet to vote for chris paul, so clearly the answer is no. though i don't think the time is far away. yes, i am aware he has very good numbers. i'm not sure what about my voting history makes people think i just printed out a PER table and started voting, although it would be kind of hard not to vote for someone with a great PER because pretty much everyone up to this point would qualify (except the unclassifiable bill russell). yes, i do think production at the highest levels means more than the plus/minus numbers, especially as they are very noisy and even their supporters say they shouldn't be used for ranking, but that doesn't mean i ignore it or, you know, the fact i've been watching the nba for a long time and have opinions of certain players just from watching them that may not be supported by the numbers (chris paul would probably be one of the bigger deviations).

[falcolombardi]

I probably pick harden as a player but it’s hard to get a peak season for him, he took the KD Warriors to 7 sounds great until you think about the series and remember why the harden got clowned for it instead of being praised after, their defense was incredible that series but their offense let them down and harden was a big part of that, whereas 2019 wasn’t as impressive in general

and thus the insanity of the james harden narrative. he can't even get credit for stuff like this. when kevin durant joined the warriors, everyone said it ruined the NBA and they were an unbeatable juggernaut. and then in 2017 and 2018, they seemed to prove it, going 28-3 in the playoffs in the 7 series that weren't against the rockets. 8-1 against this fairly good lebron fellow. 28-3! their record against the healthy rockets? 2-3. a team that loses less than 10% of its playoff games being down 2-3. with the other teams best player putting up 28/6/6 against the warriors #1 playoff defense. with a +15 on/off in the series. take the name harden off that accomplishment and people are raving about it. the response for harden? awful. atrocious. typical james harden choke job. like seriously. something no one could have even imagined 18 months prior, then it damn near happened and harden was a loser for not pulling it off, with his best teammate hurt!

in a lot of ways, it reminded me a lot of the 2015 finals and lebron. the cavs because their best offensive players were hurt and the rockets because some of their better offensive role players (ryan anderson, nene and gerald green) were atrocious defenders who could never be on the court with the warriors, knew they weren't going to beat an overwhelming warriors team 130-128. they would have to win ugly and try to win 98-96. pile as many hard-nosed defenders on the court as possible and have your best players just iso iso iso, run clock, try to slow the game down and win ugly. it's why nene played 6 minutes, ryan anderson played 29 garbage minutes, and green got 18 mpg but still a decent amount of garbage time. if you think the rockets could have tried ryan anderson, well he played 8 minutes in game 7 and more than provided the margin of victory for the warriors with a -12.

and in both cases for the cavs/rockets, it worked as much as could possibly be expected. it tanked the best players' offense, and their own team's offense, but it worked. lebron supercharged it compared to harden, because, well, he's lebron, but he was actually less efficient than harden (48 TS% vs 54 TS%) and just went crazy on the volume (36/13/9 vs 28/6/6), but it was the same principle. chris paul put up only 20/6 on 52 TS% while also iso'ing as much as possible. and both teams ground out some ugly close games and damn near won series no one expected them to win. lebron gets praised to the end of the earth for taking a lesser warriors team to 6 and harden gets clowned for taking a better team to 7 and maybe winning if cp3 is actually healthy. and it's not like anyone is saying you have to say harden is as good as lebron, just people have to stop being ridiculous that the best player on a team almost beat an unbeatable team while putting up very respectable numbers with good on/off numbers was somehow terrible.


also, it would be funny if someone described 2019 with the name taken off. yeah, this guy had arguably the greatest scoring season ever, scored the most points per 100 in league history, went on a historic scoring streak while his team started winning a bunch, then in the playoffs he played an absolutely stacked all-time great team and took them to 6 super-close games while averaging 35 ppg.

oh man, is that like 1987 jordan? i'm telling you, he's the GOAT for a reason.
nah, it was 2019 james harden.
trash.

Good points. You have got me thinking a bit on how we may be overly harsh on harden playoffs too compared to other players and is hard not to consider ring bias may play a part

[f4p]

KD and Curry were nothing special offensively in that series with Houston either, don’t know why Harden gets singled out while Curry always escapes criticism. Also people may want to rewatch a few of those games especially games 4 and 5, Harden was playing pretty good defense and had a legit contribution to their defense. To act like Harden should take all the blame for their offense and 0 credit for the defense seems like a pretty lazy take. Harden seems to be more harshly judged than a lot of others on this board.

In comparison to someone like Nash, yeah Nash looks better in impact stuff but Harden has enjoyed a lot of success and basically as much as Nash has as the main guy. He’s not a guy without flaws of course, but when we start talking about guys who’s peak is like 25th or 30th instead of 10th you sort of get what you get. Fwiw, i’m not sure who i’d take between the two, at some point we need to start to ask why why despite having goat level offensive impact metrics, Nash falls down a good bit on these sort of lists. Part of it is because he’s a legit lousy defender, and the other is players can’t be ranked by who’s team ortg was higher.

and to the point of harden's offense dragging the rockets down when they could have won games. again, i'm not saying i'm chiseling it into the mount rushmore of offensive series, but through the first 5 games, there were only 3 close games. the rockets won two of them (one with harden shooting terribly), and the one they lost was the one harden scored 40. other than harden getting a time machine to ask his teammates to match up their shooting ups and downs with him so he can win while scoring 40 and lose while playing badly, not a game result was switched due to harden on offense. game 6 has a bad 9 TO's but still 32/9/7 on 57 TS% in a game where his team scored a whopping 85 points. and game 7 was a typical game 7 at the end of a brutally competitive defensive series where one team has been playing 6 guys while covering more space on defense than maybe any playoff defense ever. 32/6/6 on 49.2 TS% would look surprising good against some of the shooting in say 2016 Game 7 or 2010 Game 7 in the finals.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Bernard King 1984 playoffs 12 games. Took the Champion cetics to 7 games with below average teamates.
34 pointsper game at TS% 62 over 12 games.
Up their with Jordan and LeBron but below Wilt for a playoff season.

Watch on YouTube

He became the first player to average at least 27 PPG/75 possessions on 62% TS in a season, and until 2008, only Adrian Dantley and Karl Malone could join him.

From an all-time perspective, King ranks 18th for most PPG in a postseason, and 3rd among players with at least 62% TS

[Proxy]

.

not sure if you're interested in voting this round(can't see anything), but as someone that's had AD at the top of their ballot for several rounds i'll say your vote is appreciated(as you've had him somewhere on yours for a while now).

[f4p]

oh yeah, i forgot to vote.

can't vote for kawhi in the 20's

1. 1983 Moses Malone (alternate 1982)
Fo Fo Fo, blah blah blah.

Dominated the regular season, dominated the playoffs for one of the best teams ever. Dr J didn't even play well in the playoffs, so if there was ever going to be a test of the "Moses is just joining a great team, he's not really that good", then this would be it. And well, the 12-1 record doesn't lie.

2. 2011 Dirk Nowitzki

In some ways doesn't feel as good as 2006, with the epic Spurs series and being great against the Suns. But in one finals he crumbled, while in 2011 he was great. He might have had the GOAT clutch playoffs. I wanna say he had a 90+ TS% in the clutch through the WCF. Maybe it was a few games into the WCF, I don't know, but it felt like he never missed a shot in the clutch in those playoffs. Faced down the Heatles and came out on top. Though it wasn't actually a particularly great series compared to the rest of the playoffs, he still seemed amazing in the clutch. Weight of the world and his legacy on the line with this being the last realistic shot and he came through.

3. 2019 James Harden (alternate 2018, then 2020)

Greatest scoring season in history per 100. Took an 11-14 team that cratered at the beginning of the season because the owner got cheap and thought Michael Carter Williams and Carmelo Anthony could replace Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah-a-moute (narrator: they couldn't). I was at opening night when we lost by a million. I knew we would do nothing until we got rid of them. Well, it took a few extra games after we got rid of them, but then The Unguardable Tour started. 32 consecutive games of 30+ points, just mind-boggling. A total of a 46 game stretch averaging 39.7/7.0/7.3 where the rockets went 33-13 after looking out of it and with guys in and out of the lineup.

On January 14th and 16th, Harden I believe became the first person since Wilt to score 57+ in back to back games. On March 20th and 22nd, James Harden became the first person since James Harden to score 57+ in back to back games. Insane how easy he made scoring look. You'd just look up and he'd have 31 with 4 minutes to go in the 3rd and you'd barely remember him being hot because it was just a normal night. Eventually made the playoffs and put up 35/7/5.5 against the Warriors in arguably his best series ever (why I choose it over 2018). Played toe to toe with KD, who was on fire, and easily outplayed Steph. Did everything he could with Chris Paul not looking great. An amazing season.

2018 summary: Led league in PER, WS, WS48, BPM, team easily won the most games, won MVP. When healthy, Rockets went an incredible 44-5 with a +11.0 SRS when Harden and Paul played (42-3 and +12.0 when Harden/CP3/Capela played). Dominated first 2 rounds and then got up 3-2 on a seemingly unbeatable team that went 28-3 in the playoffs in 2017 and 2018 when not facing the Rockets, including easy trouncings of prime Lebron. And arguably only lost because Chris Paul got hurt and the Rockets were down to a 5.5 man rotation for the last 2 games, where Harden still averaged 32/7.5/6.5 in games where his team averaged 88.5 ppg. Anybody else is beloved for this amazing season and heroic challenge of Goliath.

[falcolombardi]

There are some short prime/great peak guys that may go unnoticed since they didnt have stand out careers that we may need to consider

-Penny hardaway
-Bernard king
-ralph sampson? (Unfamiliar with him)
-connie hawkins (already considered by one poster)
-kevin jonhson? (How high to be on his peak?)
-McGrady? (How do we evaluate 2003?)

Any others?

[Proxy]

There are some short prime/great peak guys that may go unnoticed since they didnt have stand out careers that we may need to consider

-Penny hardaway
-Bernard king
-ralph sampson? (Unfamiliar with him)
-connie hawkins (already considered by one poster)
-kevin jonhson? (How high to be on his peak?)
-McGrady? (How do we evaluate 2003?)

Any others?

Some players that came to mind when I was thinking a few weeks ago were(some that seem somewhat overlooked generally ig)

Nate Thurmond
Bob Lanier
Dave Cowens
Mark Price
Grant Hill
Alonzo Mourning
Paul George
Luka Doncič
But not all of them are necessarily short and I do think it's early for most of them(tho i'm pretty high on Zo and Luka)

Not sure if Ralph Sampson rly deserves to be in this convo but I think the others are somewhat interesting