Did hakeem get screwed out of his chance at goat status?

[No-more-rings]

Okay, and Jordan had flaws in his game which he too smoothed out with a better cast and coach. Same with Lebron. Same with Wilt. Arguably same with Shaq for the one regular season everyone adores. Yeah, he could have looked to pass more early on, but with better teammates that becomes something he would be willing to do much more quickly.

Hakeem lacked awarness and vision for quite a long time, it wasn’t just a willingness thing. Different coaching could’ve helped with that, but still only so much you can do with that.

The 1993-95 Rockets had great postseason offences.

1995 sure, doesn’t seem like a sample that leads to a ton of confidence though.

It was a near perfect build around, i’m just not sure that’s as easily achieved over the long run compared to others.

[DraymondGold]

-WOWY: he's 3rd to last in average prime WOWYR at 5.5 (barely above Wilt/Bird, with a massive gap below Jordan's 8.2, LeBron's 7.7, Magic's 9, Curry's ~10.2, Russell's 6.7, etc.). And WOWYR is a stat that tends to be high on defensive anchors. His un-regularized WOWY data is also not GOAT-tier... he looks phenomenal in the late 80s (though still below players like Walton/Bird/Shaq), but his 90s data looks far more pedestrian for a GOAT player (and again this stat should capture defensive value)

What 90's data are you referring to specifcally? 92 wowy is as impressive from anything else we have for him. Un-regularized samples are outlier-level between 86 and 93 and 94 and 95 he wins b2b titles as the sole superstar.

Appreciate the question OyahoKD!

86 is definitely great in un-regularized WOWY! For the 1991/1992 seasons, he has an un-regularized WOWY score of +2.7 with a nice 38-game off sample. That's good stuff! But my point was it's not clear GOAT-level stuff. Walton, Nash, Bird, Kobe, Duncan, Garnett, West, Shaq, Oscar, Curry all have a 10+ off-sample WOWY stretch with nearly twice that score, or better. The best argument for Hakeem using un-regularized WOWY relies on using non-peak years, which is one of the reasons I typically tend to be higher on non-peak Hakeem and lower on peak-Hakeem than the RealGM member.
** (note: this WOWY +/- score is based on how much the player's absence changed the team's margin of victory / SRS, after adjusting for opponent faced / who else missed the games).

Non-regularized impact pretty consistently favors Hakeem as more valuable than MJ in the regular season and the postseason throughout their primes.

Saying there's "no argument" is pretty absurd. Its much stronger evidence than what you've offered for hypothetical cieling raising at any rate.

Would agree with you for an overall goat argument because lebron and kareem exist, but there's really nothing to warrant that degree of confidence regarding a jordan specifc comaprison

Perhaps "no argument" is an exaggeration. Allow me to clarify! To make my point of view clearer: In truth, I tend to see each player as having some confidence interval. The ranking I give them is where I think the most likely are. But there's a possibility that they're significantly better or significantly worse than I rank them. It might be a fairly small probability (e.g. 5/10/10/20% chance), but it's at least not zero percent... it's at least not impossible.

So when I said there's "no argument," what I actually mean is that you'd have to be so much higher on Hakeem and so much lower on Jordan that I just don't see it as a reasonable take. Theoretically possible? Sure, absolutely! But is it something we should give any real weighting to? To me, no -- it would just require such a big change in how I value Hakeem / Jordan that it doesn't seem reasonable.

While Hakeem does have higher un-regularized WOWY streaks than Jordan... there's not much else to support the argument for peak Hakeem, at least as I see it. Jordan has higher regularized WOWY, and is massively ahead in basically every other stat... RAPM data, PIPM estimates, postseason PIPM estimates, BPM, postseason BPM, AuPM... and this statistical advantage remains when we look at 3-yr or 5-yr estimates. Add that to the fact that Jordan has better scalability, doesn't have clearly worse resilience, has massively better team performance (although this is biased by teammates), and looks better in my film analysis... it just becomes quite hard to mount a clearly compelling case for Hakeem over Jordan.

And more broadly, I have similar issues with trying to mount an argument for Hakeem against other peaks (e.g. LeBron) and other careers (e.g. also Kareem). To make this case, I'd have to weigh unregularized WOWY more than the mountain of other statistical evidence, my qualitative analysis, and my film analysis.... personally I just don't buy it.

[AEnigma]

Oh thanks for quoting basketball-reference at me, that settles that.

PS: I won't be holding my breath.

Because you've got nothing to back up the argument the Magic was better than Jordan 1987-1988 through 1989-1990. Nothing but ephemera and conjecture/hype.

Zero. Data and facts.

Alright, I will bite, while noting that I see those box score metrics you like as little more than “ephemera and hype” themselves.

Remember that win percentage exercise we engaged in a week or two back with Wilt and Lebron and a few others?

Magic from 1988-90 — in admittedly a smaller sample because this is just a matter of one three year period — saw a win percentages change of .258. The Lakers were around .500 in the regular season without Magic and .758 with him. If we prefer to use “wins”, that is a 62-win pace, so call it around 20 wins. And we can also look at the drop-off from 1991 to 1992 and see a generally similar effect (of course there is a lot of context to analyse there, but this is a tangent to a Hakeem thread so it should suffice within these parametres).

Jordan in the same time frame won 62% of his games, or a 51-win pace. So the argument is then that the Bulls without Jordan would be “far and away” worse than around 30 wins, and that the win shares metric you cited undersells Jordan’s real value to the team in much of the way it clearly does for Magic. For my part, I would say that is feasible for 1988 — when Jordan did win MVP and had what I would consider to be his highest value regular season — but much less so for 1989 and 1990.

Okay, so then to the postseason. Now, to be clear, I would agree Jordan was more individually impressive than Magic in the postseason for this three year period. But there too your assertion is that it is a “far and away” standard, and there too I would struggle to get there for a Lakers postseason run that had them pretty consistently playing at a ~+7.5 relative rating and more specifically to Magic a ~+8.5 relative offensive rating… Interestingly, this may be more of an inverse of that regular season comment, where I could give Jordan the advantage in 1990 and also 1989 (injury tax on Magic is rough) but less so for 1988. Is that “far and away” though?

[AEnigma]

Okay, and Jordan had flaws in his game which he too smoothed out with a better cast and coach. Same with Lebron. Same with Wilt. Arguably same with Shaq for the one regular season everyone adores. Yeah, he could have looked to pass more early on, but with better teammates that becomes something he would be willing to do much more quickly.

Hakeem lacked awarness and vision for quite a long time, it wasn’t just a willingness thing. Different coaching could’ve helped with that, but still only so much you can do with that.

Well he openly talked about not trusting his teammates before Rudy T came in. I do not think he develops right away, no, but earlier is not a tough ask.

The 1993-95 Rockets had great postseason offences.

1995 sure, doesn’t seem like a sample that leads to a ton of confidence though.

It was a near perfect build around, i’m just not sure that’s as easily achieved over the long run compared to others.

They had effective offences in other years too, despite not having anyone you would consider a true offensive engine. And of course that is with him ultimately being primarily a defensive player.

[OhayoKD]

-WOWY: he's 3rd to last in average prime WOWYR at 5.5 (barely above Wilt/Bird, with a massive gap below Jordan's 8.2, LeBron's 7.7, Magic's 9, Curry's ~10.2, Russell's 6.7, etc.). And WOWYR is a stat that tends to be high on defensive anchors. His un-regularized WOWY data is also not GOAT-tier... he looks phenomenal in the late 80s (though still below players like Walton/Bird/Shaq), but his 90s data looks far more pedestrian for a GOAT player (and again this stat should capture defensive value)

What 90's data are you referring to specifcally? 92 wowy is as impressive from anything else we have for him. Un-regularized samples are outlier-level between 86 and 93 and 94 and 95 he wins b2b titles as the sole superstar.

Appreciate the question OyahoKD!

86 is definitely great in un-regularized WOWY! For the 1991/1992 seasons, he has an un-regularized WOWY score of +2.7 with a nice 38-game off sample. That's good stuff! But my point was it's not clear GOAT-level stuff. Walton, Nash, Bird, Kobe, Duncan, Garnett, West, Shaq, Oscar, Curry all have a 10+ off-sample WOWY stretch with nearly twice that score, or better. The best argument for Hakeem using un-regularized WOWY relies on using non-peak years, which is one of the reasons I typically tend to be higher on non-peak Hakeem and lower on peak-Hakeem than the RealGM member.

[/quote]
"Peak" and "non-peak" should not be classified separately from the available evidence. The best argument for Hakeem is that he's posting outlier impact in what is "per season" a much larger swatch of all-inclusive data than what is offered by any other method, and he is doing it repeatedlty, in multiple contexts, in teams with varying levels of quality. The only players you can make the same case for are Lebron and Kareem. Who of the people you've listed offer that level of replication? Clear-cut best? no. But if that's the standard, then only 1 player has a compelling "goat peak" case(have a guess). Two if we give bill a pass by assuming he wasn't at his best right before retirement. If we want to take a more qualitative look, arguing that the real signals are underrating his supporting cast is a tough sell considering the fo and drug situation that was taking place even as said team was busting the best team of the 80's 4-1. Frankly I think there's good reason to defend weighing the pure data more than the adjusted data:

the basic gist of mis-attribution is that regularaiztion artifically caps superstars somwhere between 25-30 wins for impact, and hakeem has a bunch of unregularizard samples where he's breaking . So really this affects apm or any of its deritatives. Thus you have conflict in evaluating hakeem(most valuable player of his era vs sub-magic/bird) you don't have with other players. Lebron murks both regularized and non-regularized(though the non-regularized is considerably more impressive as one would expect) so he doesn't have that issue. And then with kareem and russell you don't have access to apm anyway

The most inclusive, and most substantial(per season) data says Hakeem is the outlier of his era. You're relying on a much smaller samples(per season) which we would expect to fail in properly assessing Hakeem. Frankly i don't really see partial apm in off-years(by everything we have as far as i'm aware) or the crumbs worth of minuites you're using for regularized wowyr as more useful here than pipm where hakeem scores 2nd.

Not to mention a consistent pattern of regularization consistently having a lower view of primary paint protectors than pure impact signals. A certain player starts with a big enough advantage in the latter to still come out on top in the former(guess who), but it seems like a pretty weak method of evaluation.

You say it's a mountain, but i only see a very, very fragile hill.

Add that to the fact that Jordan has better scalability, doesn't have clearly worse resilience, has massively better team performance (although this is biased by teammates), and looks better in my film analysis... it just becomes quite hard to mount a clearly compelling case for Hakeem over Jordan.

The scalabiilty bit is why i'm still not on-board with hakeem>mj fully, but let's be clear, your scalability theory only works if we assume that a true two-way player(as in can anchor a defense himself) can't just ramp up the defense to counteract diminished offensive influence. And we do have a very strong case study suggesting this assumption is false(guess who). Lebron is not as good as a defender as Hakeem, yet outright outvalued MJ via defense on a team with bad relative to era spacing in what from a theoretical standpoint should have been a downyear and happens to have the best track record, by a margin, of anyone in his era for winning with poor era relative shooting.

Do we have qualitative reasons to assume Hakeem can't replicate this? Scalablity also works the other way. I would also love to see film-analysis offering an explanation for how Jordan couldn't overcome the pistons after a massive schematic-induced srs boost granted him similar(if we consider injury and coke, maybe better) help than what 86 Hakeem needed to dance on the best team of the 80's. Jordan played like "god" and still couldn't scratch a win off the celtics. Your qualitative analysis may not hold up so well if you give defense proper focus.

You are talking about a player who joined a 27 win team and couldn't break 50 left to his own devices. I don't think playoff elevation is less integral for mj than it is for olojuwon

[falcolombardi]

Okay, and Jordan had flaws in his game which he too smoothed out with a better cast and coach. Same with Lebron. Same with Wilt. Arguably same with Shaq for the one regular season everyone adores. Yeah, he could have looked to pass more early on, but with better teammates that becomes something he would be willing to do much more quickly.

Hakeem lacked awarness and vision for quite a long time, it wasn’t just a willingness thing. Different coaching could’ve helped with that, but still only so much you can do with that.

The 1993-95 Rockets had great postseason offences.

1995 sure, doesn’t seem like a sample that leads to a ton of confidence though.

It was a near perfect build around, i’m just not sure that’s as easily achieved over the long run compared to others.

It was a ideal build but very moderate in overall talent as far as championship teams go (1994 without drexler even more so)

building a team with young robert horry and rookie sam cassel as best teammates is not the toughest ask for a team looking to win rings (1994) regardless of how good the spacing and fit was

If anythingh it shows thst hakeem can floorraise moderate talent to rings/contenders given the right team construction

[OhayoKD]

Okay, and Jordan had flaws in his game which he too smoothed out with a better cast and coach. Same with Lebron. Same with Wilt. Arguably same with Shaq for the one regular season everyone adores. Yeah, he could have looked to pass more early on, but with better teammates that becomes something he would be willing to do much more quickly.

Hakeem lacked awarness and vision for quite a long time, it wasn’t just a willingness thing. Different coaching could’ve helped with that, but still only so much you can do with that.

Still lean MJ here, but I don't think the "weakness" approach works very well for him in this comparison. Is limited passing(a weakness that is pretty typical for big-men) really a bigger issue than Jordan's limitations as a paint protector?

Maybe that's why the try-harding every game matter bulls only got within touching distance of the coasting 2016 cavs with the implementation of the triangle.

Even passing probably warrants a knock if we take an overall view as opposed to an era-specific one considering that even Ben Taylor has jordan finding good passes at half the rate kobe bryant does.

The 1993-95 Rockets had great postseason offences.

1995 sure, doesn’t seem like a sample that leads to a ton of confidence though.

It was a near perfect build around, i’m just not sure that’s as easily achieved over the long run compared to others.

It's arguably worse for MJ if we look at the other end. Jordan only(maybe) anchored one good defense with the 88 bulls. I say "maybe" because that defense collapsed in the postseason, and then experienced a regular season collapse when their primary front court presence dipped the following year.

[falcolombardi]

Okay, and Jordan had flaws in his game which he too smoothed out with a better cast and coach. Same with Lebron. Same with Wilt. Arguably same with Shaq for the one regular season everyone adores. Yeah, he could have looked to pass more early on, but with better teammates that becomes something he would be willing to do much more quickly.

Hakeem lacked awarness and vision for quite a long time, it wasn’t just a willingness thing. Different coaching could’ve helped with that, but still only so much you can do with that.

Still lean MJ here, but I don't think the "weakness" approach works very well for him in this comparison. Is limited passing(a weakness that is pretty typical for big-men) really a bigger issue than Jordan's limitations as a paint protector?

Maybe that's why the try-harding every game matter bulls could only get within touching distance of the coasting 2016 cavs with the implementation of the triangle.

Even passing probably warrants a knock if we take an overall view as opposed to an era-specific one considering that even Ben Taylor has jordan finding good passes at half the rate kobe bryant does.

The 1993-95 Rockets had great postseason offences.

1995 sure, doesn’t seem like a sample that leads to a ton of confidence though.

It was a near perfect build around, i’m just not sure that’s as easily achieved over the long run compared to others.

It's arguably worse for MJ if we look at the other end. Jordan only(maybe) anchored one good defense with the 88 bulls. I say "maybe" because that defense collapsed in the postseason, and then experienced a regular season collapse when their primary front court presence dipped the following season.[/quote]

I want to zero on this because it often drives me mad

The whole discussion about all time greats is build with the preconceived idea that an all time great "looks" like a high volume perimeter scorer.

Is obvious when you realize how often people here look at a big who is not their team main offense player (russek) or even just not the biggest volume scorer (wilt post 66) and autonatically diminish their all time cases based on that alone

Scoring and offense is held paramount over anythingh else, not being a top player at it will always cause suspicions

People will talk about how "complete" a perimeter star is as an all time great and only focus on scoring/off ball game/ passing and never mention defense

Then look at a dominant defensive big who is great at everythingh but scoring and say "how great can he really be at goat levels if he is not their team first scoring option" (67 wilt)

If we are gonna hold bigs like hakeem to the offensive standards of all time great offensive perineter players, otherwise declaring them flawed.

Then we should also call any offensive all timer without dominant rim protector level of defense impact (like jordan in a comparision here) flawed as well.

[migya]

Olajuwon certainly didn't have talent on his teams most, almost all, his career and with a player the level of 95 past prime Drexler likely would've won two more championships, as I can't see them losing in the late 80s to the Lakers, Blazers and Pistons, and they beat Jordan's Bulls in either 91-93 once.

David Robinson has more of a case for having low talent on his teams, which thus affected his chances of being considered the GOAT. Give him Kenny Smith at PG and he might have gotten one just with that change to an average yet good shooter. Give him Otis Thorpe at PF and he likely wins one. Another allstar alongside him and some decent enough defense from most of his teammates and he wins three before Duncan. He really has nothing on his teams pre Duncan it is worse than anyone I can think of. With Olajuwon's or Ewing's teams, which weren't that good either, he wins at least three.

[70sFan]

Olajuwon certainly didn't have talent on his teams most, almost all, his career and with a player the level of 95 past prime Drexler likely would've won two more championships, as I can't see them losing in the late 80s to the Lakers, Blazers and Pistons, and they beat Jordan's Bulls in either 91-93 once.

David Robinson has more of a case for having low talent on his teams, which thus affected his chances of being considered the GOAT. Give him Kenny Smith at PG and he might have gotten one just with that change to an average yet good shooter. Give him Otis Thorpe at PF and he likely wins one. Another allstar alongside him and some decent enough defense from most of his teammates and he wins three before Duncan. He really has nothing on his teams pre Duncan it is worse than anyone I can think of. With Olajuwon's or Ewing's teams, which weren't that good either, he wins at least three.

If you think that Robinson was Kenny Smith away from a title in his peak years, then I am afraid you overestimate the difference between Smith and Johnson...

[migya]

Olajuwon certainly didn't have talent on his teams most, almost all, his career and with a player the level of 95 past prime Drexler likely would've won two more championships, as I can't see them losing in the late 80s to the Lakers, Blazers and Pistons, and they beat Jordan's Bulls in either 91-93 once.

David Robinson has more of a case for having low talent on his teams, which thus affected his chances of being considered the GOAT. Give him Kenny Smith at PG and he might have gotten one just with that change to an average yet good shooter. Give him Otis Thorpe at PF and he likely wins one. Another allstar alongside him and some decent enough defense from most of his teammates and he wins three before Duncan. He really has nothing on his teams pre Duncan it is worse than anyone I can think of. With Olajuwon's or Ewing's teams, which weren't that good either, he wins at least three.

If you think that Robinson was Kenny Smith away from a title in his peak years, then I am afraid you overestimate the difference between Smith and Johnson...

You have forgotten your own penchant for the outside shot. It would be as favorable for Robinson as for Olajuwon.

[tsherkin]

You have forgotten your own penchant for the outside shot. It would be as favorable for Robinson as for Olajuwon.

It surely would have helped, but his point is that the difference between Avery Johnson and Kenny Smith isn't that big, and Kenny's 3pt shooting would have done only so much for Robinson, whose problems weren't truly space-related. Support-related, to be sure, but he didn't have the juice in the playoffs for a variety of reasons. Olajuwon was scoring effectively even prior to good spacing, it was when his teammates all started connecting and contributing together at the right time during the postseason that he won rings. A PG with a 3ball alone wasn't really going to do it for the Admiral.

[LukaTheGOAT]

In my view, some people underrate the difference in playmaking value between perimeter players and bigs, which often makes up the massive gap bigs have as rim-protectors and then some. I mean 6 out of the top 8 peaks in the peaks project were bigs (7 out of the top 9, if you count Bird as a PG). The only 2 to carve out spots are MJ and LBJ, who are generally are outliers by the box-score and that greatly aids them in their arguments. I think bigs are respected plenty.

You can always point to small impact signals that perhaps suggest a player was not quite as valuable as perceived, but then there can often be more convincing evidence to the contrary. That is kind of where impact-metrics and box-score metrics are supposed to help shine some clarity; often done but regressing against plus-minus/RAPM.

Someone already mentioned this, but to have Hakeem reach GOAT status, I think you would need to view him in a tier above Duncan (and I'll add a tier above Shaq for the 97 and onwards data we have on him). If you believe you can defend him having prime impact, a tier above them, I believe things get more interesting; however, I am not sure he has the longevity to outright ahead of either. This is coming from someone who might take Hakeem's peak and 5-year prime over both....I still don't know if I see belief for the gap being enough to put him in a tier above.

[Dutchball97]

GOAT status is such a high bar though. To me with better teammates I could see Hakeem move up to my second tier of players (fringe GOAT/top 10 locks) alongside Duncan, Wilt and Shaq. Bridging Hakeem's early 86 finals appearance and his 93-95 peak would do a lot for his legacy but just how much better would his teams need to be? The 91 and 92 supporting casts with Thorpe, Smith and Maxwell weren't stacked but certainly not bad either and even with upgrades Hakeem would still have his untimely injuries. In 87 I don't think Hakeem compares favorable to Jordan. Hakeem was a year older, had almost a full extra NBA season under his belt and McCray was putting up much better numbers than anyone on the Bulls, not to even mention Sampson's impact. Oakley was literally the only starting caliber player on the Bulls that year and he had a PER below 15, WS/48 below .100 and a negative BPM and the Rockets and Bulls still had similar records. The Bulls lost to the Celtics with MJ keeping pace with Bird, while the Rockets lost to a Mavs team led by Dale Ellis. From 88-90 is where the real gain seems to be for Hakeem with better teammates as he kept unceremoniously losing quickly in the post-season despite constantly being the best player on the floor.

Hakeem was a monster in the play-offs and consistently dominated all-time great contemporaries like Malone, Barkley, Robinson, Ewing, Shaq, Drexler, while keeping pace with but not outplaying Bird and Magic.

If you think boxscore metrics hold negative value (which some people here seem to be implying) then you could maybe make a case for Hakeem but as it stands I'm not seeing enough evidence that he could've had a career on par with the likes of Jordan, LeBron, Kareem and Russell if only he had some slightly better teammates.

[70sFan]

Olajuwon certainly didn't have talent on his teams most, almost all, his career and with a player the level of 95 past prime Drexler likely would've won two more championships, as I can't see them losing in the late 80s to the Lakers, Blazers and Pistons, and they beat Jordan's Bulls in either 91-93 once.

David Robinson has more of a case for having low talent on his teams, which thus affected his chances of being considered the GOAT. Give him Kenny Smith at PG and he might have gotten one just with that change to an average yet good shooter. Give him Otis Thorpe at PF and he likely wins one. Another allstar alongside him and some decent enough defense from most of his teammates and he wins three before Duncan. He really has nothing on his teams pre Duncan it is worse than anyone I can think of. With Olajuwon's or Ewing's teams, which weren't that good either, he wins at least three.

If you think that Robinson was Kenny Smith away from a title in his peak years, then I am afraid you overestimate the difference between Smith and Johnson...

You have forgotten your own penchant for the outside shot. It would be as favorable for Robinson as for Olajuwon.

Do I have "penchant" for the outside shot? That's a new thing to me...

Yes, Kenny would definitely help Robinson with his shooting. That's not enough to erase the gap between the mid-90s Spurs and title winners. Kenny wouldn't make Spurs beating Jazz in 1994 or 1996.

[70sFan]

In 87 I don't think Hakeem compares favorable to Jordan. Hakeem was a year older, had almost a full extra NBA season under his belt and McCray was putting up much better numbers than anyone on the Bulls, not to even mention Sampson's impact. Oakley was literally the only starting caliber player on the Bulls that year and he had a PER below 15, WS/48 below .100 and a negative BPM and the Rockets and Bulls still had similar records. The Bulls lost to the Celtics with MJ keeping pace with Bird, while the Rockets lost to a Mavs team led by Dale Ellis.

That's a strange argumentation to me. Yes, Hakeem had probably better team in 1987, but he also led them to better results. Bulls won 40 games vs 42 for Rockets and Houston went further in the playoffs. I get that Bulls faced top Celtics team in the first round, but they got crushed. I don't know how losing in 3 games by the average margin of victory of -8 is "keeping the pace with Bird". Bulls got crushed in that series and Jordan wasn't particularily impressive individually either relatively speaking.

Meanwhile, Rockets beat solid Blazers team as the underdog and they lost a close series vs Seattle which were around Bulls level. Hakeem played extremely well in that playoffs as well, you can't blame him on the results.

From 88-90 is where the real gain seems to be for Hakeem with better teammates as he kept unceremoniously losing quickly in the post-season despite constantly being the best player on the floor.

I strongly disagree that Hakeem had better teammates than Jordan in 1988-90 period.

[Dutchball97]

In 87 I don't think Hakeem compares favorable to Jordan. Hakeem was a year older, had almost a full extra NBA season under his belt and McCray was putting up much better numbers than anyone on the Bulls, not to even mention Sampson's impact. Oakley was literally the only starting caliber player on the Bulls that year and he had a PER below 15, WS/48 below .100 and a negative BPM and the Rockets and Bulls still had similar records. The Bulls lost to the Celtics with MJ keeping pace with Bird, while the Rockets lost to a Mavs team led by Dale Ellis.

That's a strange argumentation to me. Yes, Hakeem had probably better team in 1987, but he also led them to better results. Bulls won 40 games vs 42 for Rockets and Houston went further in the playoffs. I get that Bulls faced top Celtics team in the first round, but they got crushed. I don't know how losing in 3 games by the average margin of victory of -8 is "keeping the pace with Bird". Bulls got crushed in that series and Jordan wasn't particularily impressive individually either relatively speaking.

Meanwhile, Rockets beat solid Blazers team as the underdog and they lost a close series vs Seattle which were around Bulls level. Hakeem played extremely well in that playoffs as well, you can't blame him on the results.

Those 2 regular season wins aren't enough to no longer be a similar record. I'll admit the Blazers win looks good but I'm not that high on the Sonics there as they barely had a positive SRS and got swept by the Lakers the round after. The Bulls losing 3-0 to the Celtics meaning MJ can't individually keep pace with Bird sounds like a very faulty argument when you are constantly saying how you can't just take team results and atttribute that 1-1 to a star player. Sure Jordan didn't have the most efficient scoring series but he still had a slightly higher TS% than the Bulls had on average, while putting up 36/7/6/2/2. While not the most reliable stat, it's still telling MJ and Bird only had a 0.2 difference in gamescore (in favor of MJ). I'm not saying 87 is a sweeping statement in favor of Jordan but I'm not seeing this "Hakeem did more with less" narrative that is being thrown around here at all.

From 88-90 is where the real gain seems to be for Hakeem with better teammates as he kept unceremoniously losing quickly in the post-season despite constantly being the best player on the floor.

I strongly disagree that Hakeem had better teammates than Jordan in 1988-90 period.

Nothing to disagree on because that's literally not what I said. It's getting a bit annoying how often this is happening now but I can kinda get how this one was confusing. Hakeem would gain the most from having better teammates in 88-90 because that period was the clearest time to me when Hakeem could've gotten significantly better results with even slightly better teammates, I didn't say he had better teammates and underperformed despite it.

[migya]

If you think that Robinson was Kenny Smith away from a title in his peak years, then I am afraid you overestimate the difference between Smith and Johnson...

You have forgotten your own penchant for the outside shot. It would be as favorable for Robinson as for Olajuwon.

Do I have "penchant" for the outside shot? That's a new thing to me...

Yes, Kenny would definitely help Robinson with his shooting. That's not enough to erase the gap between the mid-90s Spurs and title winners. Kenny wouldn't make Spurs beating Jazz in 1994 or 1996.

You have stated many times before how Olajuwon had such a good team around him because of their outside shooting, not that I agree.

Spurs lost in overtime to Portland in overtime game 7 in 1990 and Portland went to the finals. A little more help and they win against them and likely go to the finals. Barkley hit the game winner in game 6 in 93, with bit more help they probably beat the Suns and go to the finals themselves, maybe beat the Bulls who couldn't stop Robinson. They probably beat Houston in 95, it was so close, and they win it all.

Point is ofcourse that Robinson would have had much more success with just a bit better players. Definitely a potential top 5 player.

[penbeast0]

It was a ideal build but very moderate in overall talent as far as championship teams go (1994 without drexler even more so)

building a team with young robert horry and rookie sam cassel as best teammates is not the toughest ask for a team looking to win rings (1994) regardless of how good the spacing and fit was

If anythingh it shows thst hakeem can floorraise moderate talent to rings/contenders given the right team construction

Best teammates? That's just a silly statement. In 1994, the best teammates were probably Otis Thorpe and Kenny Smith who were among the most efficient players in the league (in part thanks to the attention Hakeem got in the post). Horry at least was a starter but Cassell was 9th in minutes that season and while he played more in the playoffs, he was still just a 6th man.

[Dutchball97]

It was a ideal build but very moderate in overall talent as far as championship teams go (1994 without drexler even more so)

building a team with young robert horry and rookie sam cassel as best teammates is not the toughest ask for a team looking to win rings (1994) regardless of how good the spacing and fit was

If anythingh it shows thst hakeem can floorraise moderate talent to rings/contenders given the right team construction

Best teammates? That's just a silly statement. In 1994, the best teammates were probably Otis Thorpe and Kenny Smith who were among the most efficient players in the league (in part thanks to the attention Hakeem got in the post). Horry at least was a starter but Cassell was 9th in minutes that season and while he played more in the playoffs, he was still just a 6th man.

In terms of boxscore metrics Horry does look like the clear 2nd best on the team in 94, especially in the post-season. One thing that needs to be taken into account is Thorpe and Maxwell playing significantly more than Horry, although Smith played about as much as Horry so I don't see the case for him here tbh. I think Hakeem's best teammate in 94 comes down to Thorpe or Horry. Cassell isn't really anywhere close to that conversation.