70sFan wrote:
Frosty wrote:
capfan33 wrote:drza wrote:Spoiler:
Good summation of the effect Duncan had on defense, this is a great starting point for delving into this topic.drza wrote:Spoiler:Spoiler:
I @ all three of you here, because we're engaged in overlapping conversations and I wanted to address your general arguments more-so than the specifics. Because...hmm. How do I...ok. In a gross oversimplification (and I realize in advance this general point doesn't address everything you each wrote), my stance could kind of be summarized as: "Box score production and individual skill set are less important to me in a vacuum than how those things translate to on-court impact", and I feel like much of the rebuttal I've gotten has been "yes, but box score stats and skill set; and Kareem's in-era impact wasn't as large because of reason X" as opposed to "No, here is data supporting that Kareem's in-era impact actually was GOAT level".
(Some quick notes on the impact-approach comments I saw: )
Spoiler:
But if I'm (again, caveating that I'm generalizing) not getting the type of evidence/arguments that I'm looking for, from a group of people, then it very well could be that I'm not doing a good job communicating what it is that I'm looking for. So, let me come from a different angle.
I've mentioned this before on this board, but when we started the Retro Player of the Year project back in 2010 ( https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1004743), I went into it with a) Kareem as my GOAT, b) Russell as overrated by ringzzzzz, and c) Wilt likely underrated because he didn't have the supporting casts to win as much as Russell. But, despite feeling like I was pretty solid on my NBA history before the project, I learned SO MUCH by going through every year post shot-clock, individually, in depth. And, by the time I came out of that project, the seeds were planted for all three of those stances to change.
In the project, because we were going backward in time, we obviously got to Kareem before Wilt and Russell. There was a buzz when we got to 1978 and 1977 for Kareem vs Walton, but I wasn't excited. I'm a black man, raised by generations of black men that grew up in the south. I could not possibly have been more sure that Walton didn't belong in the same breath with Kareem. If I'd ever suggested to my dad or grandpa that Walton was on Kareem's level, at any point, they might have both physically fought me.
If you haven't already, I suggest that you go back and read those 1978 and 1977 threads from the RPoY project. They were mad enlightening, excellent discussions that really helped shape the discourse of a generation of basketball analysts. There were future professional NBA writers in that thread, taking the first steps toward a more in depth type of analysis. And it started with information from the time. ElGee posted several Sports Illustrated articles written in 1978, and a good chunk of those articles talked about Walton's "intangibles" and/or Kareem's lack thereof, and how those things contributed to the levels of success of their teams. Sedale Threatt (poster, not player), among others in the thread, pushed back that those types of intangible criticisms of Kareem were unfair, and likely racially motivated. But as the threads went along, and more information was presented, the story continued to anecdotally take shape, that despite Kareem's massive game, reputation and (box score) statistical exploits (and Walton's relative lack thereof), there was something about how Walton played that helped improve his team more than Kareem in this 1977-78 window...which, by the way, was argued to be Kareem at his absolute peak.
Then, in the 1977 thread, ElGee took a crack at quantifying what the anecdotal buzz was suggesting. Because both Kareem and Walton had missed a chunk of games during those two seasons, ElGee went through and calculated both teams' winning pace, scoring margin, opponent SRS and percentage of home games both with and without their star players: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=24579173#p24579173
If we combine the two seasons and pro-rate the records to 82-games:Code: Select all
Record PPG Opp PPG Diff Opp SRS %Road Games
With Walton 61-21 112.0 102.9 +9.1
W/O Walton 31-51 103.0 106.7 -3.7 0.07 60%
Total Difference +12.6
With Kareem 52-30 111.9 107.8 +4.1
W/O Kareem 31-51 105.6 107.2 -1.6 0.03 48%
Total Difference +5.7
This threw me for a loop. I hadn't lent a whole lot of credence to the notion that, despite Kareem posting dominant numbers both in general and in his direct match-up with Walton, that Walton's "intangibles" could really be what folks made them out to be. Again, my thought process was more like Sedale Threatt's, that there were other reasons for why Walton might be boosted in the public discourse over Kareem. But these were concrete numbers that strongly supported the discourse. At the time, it wasn't enough to change my votes...as you might note, I voted for Kareem over Walton in both 1978 and 1977. ElGee did too. But it was enough to make me start thinking.
And then, when we got to the Russell vs Wilt threads of the 1960s, this phenomenon played out again, over and over, for a decade. Wilt was always putting up massive numbers that fit with his massive reputation...but Russell kept winning. No matter what, Russell kept winning. And it turned out, in many of those years, Wilt actually had very talented teams around him, but it didn't matter...Russell's Celtics kept winning. And in the discussions and analysis of the project, I found that Russell wasn't considered so great because the Celtics won...but the Celtics won because Russell was so great. Huge difference. And we fleshed out more of what had been treated as "intangibles" for Walton, that were also hallmarks of Russell. And it turned out they actually were tangible phenomena, that produced results that could be quantified to at least a rough degree, even with non-ideal datasets from generations past.
Some of those now-tangibles?
Monstrous individual defense that combined both vertical (e.g. rim protection) and horizontal (e.g. floor coverage, help defense) components.
Big men that could maximize their contribution output while simultaneously maximizing what their teammates could contribute.
Impact of an individual on his team's level of play, correlating their presence with the team's outcomes under varying circumstances to help apportion credit more accurately.
What I'm looking for in this discussion? A way to quantify Kareem's impact at the level of the GOATs
Starting with the RPoY project, and moving forward in the decade-plus since, I've honed in on this impact-style approach of evaluating players through NBA history. That analysis is best helped with more data, and the databall era (which now extends from at least the mid-late 90s to present) allows for more granular impact analysis than from previous generations. But, as I said above, there's still enough information about previous generations to make some rough estimates that help tell a story. Particularly on a comparison front.
With Kareem, when I try to estimate his impact, it seems (as you'd expect) to be a large one. As a couple of you pointed out to me in your last responses (and I wrote about in that Russell vs Kareem article), when Kareem joined the Bucks the team made a clear step up on both offense and defense; when Kareem would miss time injured (like in the chart above), it clearly made a sizable difference to his team's level; when he joined the Lakers, they tangibly improved. His talent and boxscore production are second-to-none; his skillset (a high volume, high efficiency scorer with an unstoppable move, with solid shooting range, good passing ability and strong defense that could ramp up to elite (particularly as a rim protector) when he locked in) is outstanding. No argument at all, from me, on that front. This is a man that I once would have argued for as the GOAT.
BUT. There's levels to this. And in every era, there seems to be a separation at the top...a GOAT impact tier, if you will.
Russell resided on that GOAT impact tier. Wilt, for much of his career, didn't.
MJ resided on that tier. Karl Malone didn't.
In the databall era, Shaq had a long stretch at the top of the NBA in measured impact...Kobe didn't.
LeBron did. Kevin Durant didn't.
Where does Kareem's impact suggest he should be?
Well, in-era, we saw (briefly) Walton demonstrate a GOATish level of impact, with a higher magnitude than Kareem's.
When I compared Kareem with Russell, again, Russell's impact profile appeared to be larger and more robust https://hoopslab.rotowire.com/post/162660433401/abdul-jabbar-vs-russell-observations-and-rough
I made an attempt to add Duncan into a WOWY-style comp with Kareem (and Walton). WOWY has known limitations, but again, Walton and Duncan showed up a bit better in that limited dataset: https://hoopslab.rotowire.com/post/162535870741/kareem-vs-duncan-peak-impact-and-functional
And that leads to the other elephant in the room for me, in this particular thread...Duncan is in the databall era. So, I have a much higher level of confidence in my ability to quantify his individual impact than I have for Kareem. That's partially why the posts questioning whether Duncan's defense is really all that don't phase me that much. There is reams of evidence out there that yes, his defensive impact WAS that strong.
What's hampered me in my previous posts in this thread was my attempt to get Kareem and Duncan on the same scale, which meant using only methods of impact evaluation on Duncan that were available in Kareem's era. Which has opened up my posts to some of the dissection that I described above. But, while that level of dissection can win rhetorical points, it's not much meat for me as I really try to parse out whether Kareem's impact is GOATish (e.g. Russell, MJ, Shaq, LeBron level) or "merely" All history-ish (Wilt, Mailman, Kobe, Durant).
All of these players are among the inner circle of the inner circle of the best of all time...that's not in question. All of them have wondrous statistical achievements and accolades. All of them have monster talent and skillsets that can be described and broken down to our amazement. Kareem absolutely has all of those things, in spades.
For me, what I'm looking for, is arguments and evidence that Kareem's on-court impact is more Russell/LeBron than Wilt/Kobe. That, despite the overwhelming historic tendency that the GOAT bigs are GOAT defenders while the GOAT smalls are GOAT offensive players, that Kareem's impact as an offense-first big man was still GOAT level. And, if it was, then some sort of quantitative evidence to support that stance. Because I've looked...a lot...and I haven't yet found that convincing argument to support my once-held stance that Kareem is arguably the GOAT. And frankly, I'd love if anyone could push me back to that square, because I'm more than happy to return to that mindset if given a reason to.
