Greatest Peaks Project (2022): Review / Discussion thread

[AEnigma]

Kyrie, Bosh, and Davis all had their best seasons next to Lebron. Why did Pippen have his best season without Jordan?

[JordansBulls]

Kyrie, Bosh, and Davis all had their best seasons next to Lebron. Why did Pippen have his best season without Jordan?

No they didn't not even close. Also all of which were stars before ever playing with Lebron. AD, Bosh were top 4-5 in PER before ever playing with Lebron. Pippen came to Chicago off the bench when he joined the Bulls.


Pippen became great due to playing with Jordan, he even said so himself.

Source: GoogleBooks

Pippen, unlike other Bulls who usually kept their distance from Jordan, tried to learn all he could from Jordan in practice. In turn, Jordan worked with Pippen on his moves, jump shot, and defense and taught him mental toughness.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-krausejordan090909

“Michael was great at identifying things,” Krause said. “Would Pippen have been great someplace else? Michael absolutely killed Scottie in practice every day for his first two years. Mike just tore Pip up. He made Pip learn how to compete and forced him into playing hard. Had there not been someone to challenge Scottie like that, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to him.”

[AEnigma]

So points per game is all that matters when assessing players — ignore Bosh improving as a shooter and defender with Lebron, Davis improving as a ballhandler and passer, and Kyrie uh not having mental meltdowns — except when it contradicts a Jordan narrative. How sad.

There are better avenues for your trolling than this project, thanks.

[prolific passer]

Any of you seen that weird pyramid thing that Shaq posted about the all time greats?

[migya]

Kyrie, Bosh, and Davis all had their best seasons next to Lebron. Why did Pippen have his best season without Jordan?

No they didn't not even close. Also all of which were stars before ever playing with Lebron. AD, Bosh were top 4-5 in PER before ever playing with Lebron. Pippen came to Chicago off the bench when he joined the Bulls.


Pippen became great due to playing with Jordan, he even said so himself.

Source: GoogleBooks

Pippen, unlike other Bulls who usually kept their distance from Jordan, tried to learn all he could from Jordan in practice. In turn, Jordan worked with Pippen on his moves, jump shot, and defense and taught him mental toughness.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-krausejordan090909

“Michael was great at identifying things,” Krause said. “Would Pippen have been great someplace else? Michael absolutely killed Scottie in practice every day for his first two years. Mike just tore Pip up. He made Pip learn how to compete and forced him into playing hard. Had there not been someone to challenge Scottie like that, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to him.”

And Pippen was far wise a player after 98 and leaving the Bulls.

[mysticOscar]

...

Firstly, I want to apologize for my offensive tone. I didn't mean to attack you and you responded in a good manner. I hope you don't hold it against me.

Now, about the subject...

Players with 2nd Jobs in NBA for 1960s/70s
https://www.talkbasket.net/83764-jerry-west-on-what-it-was-like-to-play-in-the-60s-and-70s-in-the-nba

This West interview shows what I mentioned before - that players worked off-season in secondary jobs. I haven't heard anything about players working during the season though.

1972 had salary of 90k (more than double after 1970. Safe to assume 1969 is a lot less than 35k)
https://boardroom.tv/nba-player-salary-history/

It's not baseless assumption, but I would like to get a source saying that the salary increased that significantly during one season. Especially with your next quote...

Minimum rookie entry in 1969 was 10k + minimum veterans in 1969 was 12.5k + negotiations to further increase salaries in 1970
https://www.apbr.org/labor.html

If min. rookie entry was 10k and min. for veteran is 12.5k, then it's extremely unlikely that the average salary was around 15k. I would estimate it's significantly higher than that.

As i said this is beside the point. You can go off tangent and nit pick how accurate or inaccurate my estimates were. But regardless, even if we take the 1970 numbers (which is certainly higher than 1969), it's still well below the increase to today.

It is below, but not 20 times lower like you described. I think the difference between 20x and 7x is quite significant and I'm sure you'll agree with me.

Also, we dont have the median numbers, but certainly those averages are impacted by the top handful of players with big contracts than in 1991 (since we all just need to look at the number of players that was around 1969 compared to 1991 and how small the starting average salary was)

I don't think big contracts really made the difference here. Remember that there were more teams and more "max" players in 1991, so overall I think the difference between average and median wouldn't be significantly different between 1969 and 1991.

Btw, since you support the wild claim that the gap of 1991 vs 1969 (where a game was only televised once a week televised, where some of the players had to get 2nd job)s.....is less than 1991 vs today.

Players working off-season isn't equal to them being forced to have full-time second job. As I said, the TV was less common back then, different times. It's like comparing TV coverage from the 1980s vs today, when you can watch every game you wish online.

why dont you provide your evidence?

I base my take more on what happened on the court, which is probably a bit different take, but I quoted your first post mostly because of the inaccuraties I have found in your salary estimations.

Just to summarise my point since I feel were getting derailed.

The league in 1969 was far from a top professional league and was not mainstream. It was basically still in its infancy.

By 1991 the nba league had risen to be one of the biggest and popular sporting leagues in the country and globally.

If you ask anybody, when did the league see its biggest surge, it was in the late 70s and 80s and it's not even close.

To suggest the gap between 1969 and 1991 is less than 91 to today is a really wild claim.

Just linking Jerry West again to emphasise what the 60s and early 70s were like

Read on Twitter

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[AEnigma]

It is not a wild claim, it is understanding how development curves work. You see the 1960s starting at 0 or 1 and want to argue that elevating that to 5 is bigger than elevating 5 to 20 — as if viewership numbers are a substitute for widening player pools, comprehensive analytics, and a schematic arms race.

[falcolombardi]

Any of you seen that weird pyramid thing that Shaq posted about the all time greats?

Nope

What did he say?

[prolific passer]

[falcolombardi]

I honestly cannot discern any pattern that explains the specific tiering

[AEnigma]

The Lakers with at least two Finals MVPs plus the two guys who led the most title teams. Tier three is longevity guys who won titles outside of that frame.

The only people who care about ex-player rankings are those who cannot be bothered to think about the sport for themselves. No one who has watched Shaq for the past decade thinks he legitimately knows much about basketball anymore outside of how he himself played it.

[mysticOscar]

It is not a wild claim, it is understanding how development curves work. You see the 1960s starting at 0 or 1 and want to argue that elevating that to 5 is bigger than elevating 5 to 20 — as if viewership numbers are a substitute for widening player pools, comprehensive analytics, and a schematic arms race.

Development curve doesn't keep exponentially growing, but it does when your beginnning from infancy to maturity.

1991 NBA was already a very mature professional league.

[AEnigma]

One that had nearly no draw from international talent, most players foregoing serious investment in health and training, most organisations foregoing serious investment in analytics, severely worsened access to film, defensively prohibitive rulesets…

It was a mature league in the sense that a five-year-old is mature compared to an infant, but hey, that five-year-old got millions of views so I guess we should act like they were basically an adult.

[mysticOscar]

One that had nearly no draw from international talent, most players foregoing serious investment in health and training, most organisations foregoing serious investment in analytics, severely worsened access to film, defensively prohibitive rulesets…

It was a mature league in the sense that a five-year-old is mature compared to an infant, but hey, that five-year-old got millions of views so I guess we should act like they were basically an adult.

NBA teams in the past were not as open in taking risks for foreign players.

NBA prior to the 2000s and the big rule changes in mid 2000s, teams preferred to generally go with big strong post players which was a lot more common in the US. Even Dirk had a lot of doubters before he came to the US cause he was viewed as too soft for his position.

There hasn't been an explosion of foreign talent in the last 10 years, it's just the league playstyle is now suited to eauropean type of players talents.

Andrew Gaze in the 90s arguably the greatest Australian basketball player never really got a chance to showcase his talent because for his position he was deemed too slow and weak even tho his shooting talent and passing was exceptional. If he was playing today, he would have been snapped up by all the teams.

[HeartBreakKid]

Kyrie, Bosh, and Davis all had their best seasons next to Lebron. Why did Pippen have his best season without Jordan?

No they didn't not even close. Also all of which were stars before ever playing with Lebron. AD, Bosh were top 4-5 in PER before ever playing with Lebron. Pippen came to Chicago off the bench when he joined the Bulls.


Pippen became great due to playing with Jordan, he even said so himself.

Source: GoogleBooks

Pippen, unlike other Bulls who usually kept their distance from Jordan, tried to learn all he could from Jordan in practice. In turn, Jordan worked with Pippen on his moves, jump shot, and defense and taught him mental toughness.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-krausejordan090909

“Michael was great at identifying things,” Krause said. “Would Pippen have been great someplace else? Michael absolutely killed Scottie in practice every day for his first two years. Mike just tore Pip up. He made Pip learn how to compete and forced him into playing hard. Had there not been someone to challenge Scottie like that, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to him.”

Chris Bosh put up good numbers on a lotto team lol.

[falcolombardi]

One that had nearly no draw from international talent, most players foregoing serious investment in health and training, most organisations foregoing serious investment in analytics, severely worsened access to film, defensively prohibitive rulesets…

It was a mature league in the sense that a five-year-old is mature compared to an infant, but hey, that five-year-old got millions of views so I guess we should act like they were basically an adult.

NBA teams in the past were not as open in taking risks for foreign players.

NBA prior to the 2000s and the big rule changes in mid 2000s, teams preferred to generally go with big strong post players which was a lot more common in the US. Even Dirk had a lot of doubters before he came to the US cause he was viewed as too soft for his position.

There hasn't been an explosion of foreign talent in the last 10 years, it's just the league playstyle is now suited to eauropean type of players talents.

Andrew Gaze in the 90s arguably the greatest Australian basketball player never really got a chance to showcase his talent because for his position he was deemed too slow and weak even tho his shooting talent and passing was exceptional. If he was playing today, he would have been snapped up by all the teams.

In other words teams at the time were dumb and underated (and stereotyped chauvinistically as being soft) foreignt talent and the value of shooting?

Another reasom why the modern game has a more developed league

[mysticOscar]

One that had nearly no draw from international talent, most players foregoing serious investment in health and training, most organisations foregoing serious investment in analytics, severely worsened access to film, defensively prohibitive rulesets…

It was a mature league in the sense that a five-year-old is mature compared to an infant, but hey, that five-year-old got millions of views so I guess we should act like they were basically an adult.

NBA teams in the past were not as open in taking risks for foreign players.

NBA prior to the 2000s and the big rule changes in mid 2000s, teams preferred to generally go with big strong post players which was a lot more common in the US. Even Dirk had a lot of doubters before he came to the US cause he was viewed as too soft for his position.

There hasn't been an explosion of foreign talent in the last 10 years, it's just the league playstyle is now suited to eauropean type of players talents.

Andrew Gaze in the 90s arguably the greatest Australian basketball player never really got a chance to showcase his talent because for his position he was deemed too slow and weak even tho his shooting talent and passing was exceptional. If he was playing today, he would have been snapped up by all the teams.

In other words teams at the time were dumb and underated (and stereotyped chauvinistically as being soft) foreignt talent and the value of shooting?

Another reasom why the modern game has a more developed league

It's because when the league enforces big changes such as enforcing defensive 3 seconds and curtailing handchecking, it changes the playstyle of the league

[falcolombardi]

NBA teams in the past were not as open in taking risks for foreign players.

NBA prior to the 2000s and the big rule changes in mid 2000s, teams preferred to generally go with big strong post players which was a lot more common in the US. Even Dirk had a lot of doubters before he came to the US cause he was viewed as too soft for his position.

There hasn't been an explosion of foreign talent in the last 10 years, it's just the league playstyle is now suited to eauropean type of players talents.

Andrew Gaze in the 90s arguably the greatest Australian basketball player never really got a chance to showcase his talent because for his position he was deemed too slow and weak even tho his shooting talent and passing was exceptional. If he was playing today, he would have been snapped up by all the teams.

In other words teams at the time were dumb and underated (and stereotyped chauvinistically as being soft) foreignt talent and the value of shooting?

Another reasom why the modern game has a more developed league

It's because when the league enforces big changes such as enforcing defensive 3 seconds and curtailing handchecking, it changes the playstyle of the league

I actually agree with this, illegal defense rules being banned after the 90's changed the game completely

Is a whole different league without ruleset forced spacing and ruleset forced 1vs1 isolation game

[migya]

Kyrie, Bosh, and Davis all had their best seasons next to Lebron. Why did Pippen have his best season without Jordan?

No they didn't not even close. Also all of which were stars before ever playing with Lebron. AD, Bosh were top 4-5 in PER before ever playing with Lebron. Pippen came to Chicago off the bench when he joined the Bulls.


Pippen became great due to playing with Jordan, he even said so himself.

Source: GoogleBooks

Pippen, unlike other Bulls who usually kept their distance from Jordan, tried to learn all he could from Jordan in practice. In turn, Jordan worked with Pippen on his moves, jump shot, and defense and taught him mental toughness.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-krausejordan090909

“Michael was great at identifying things,” Krause said. “Would Pippen have been great someplace else? Michael absolutely killed Scottie in practice every day for his first two years. Mike just tore Pip up. He made Pip learn how to compete and forced him into playing hard. Had there not been someone to challenge Scottie like that, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to him.”

Chris Bosh put up good numbers on a lotto team lol.

So did 05 and 22 Lebron.

[mysticOscar]

In other words teams at the time were dumb and underated (and stereotyped chauvinistically as being soft) foreignt talent and the value of shooting?

Another reasom why the modern game has a more developed league

It's because when the league enforces big changes such as enforcing defensive 3 seconds and curtailing handchecking, it changes the playstyle of the league

I actually agree with this, illegal defense rules being banned after the 90's changed the game completely

Is a whole different league without ruleset forced spacing and ruleset forced 1vs1 isolation game

No the rules enforced in 2000s was to increase space and pace and assist shooters and perimeter guards.

If you really are interested to know more read here. It will provide many answers including why the eplosion of foreign taken in NBA plus many more.
https://thesportjournal.org/article/strategically-driven-rule-changes-in-nba-causes-and-consequences/