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

[DraymondGold]

Ah yes, when faced with potential lack of postseason impact data outside the box score, we look at… regular season WOWY and fourteen game non-peak RAPM samples again.

You always get mad when I imply or even outright state that you are not being even-keeled when you do this type of analysis, but do you really not see the problem here?

To me, postseason Duncan should seem like the obvious analogy, but there too we encounter a player you tend to side against, so maybe the analogy is not one which comes to mind.

The argument for Hakeem has always been offensive postseason improvement more than defensive postseason improvement. That was the argument plenty of people made in the Greatest Peaks project, both this year and in previous years. If you'd like to go against that and suggest it's defensive improvement too, that's fine... but again, so far you lack much evidence at all lol

So the argument for Hakeem goes: defensive value (which again, is already captured in regular season RAPM/WOWY) + Postseason Offensive Improvement (which is relatively well captured in the BPM/PIPM, especially when much of Hakeem's offensive value comes from box-score-centric stuff vs off-ball value).

Am I saying it's perfect evidence? No. But I am saying it gives us a ballpark estimate of value...
This is pretty dang middle of the road "even keeled" analysis. I'm just saying you can use BPM/WOWY/RAPM/PIPM to get a ballpark estimate of a player, even when they're each noisy. People have been doing this on this board for years without trouble. And if this ballpark evidence suggests he's clearly sub-GOAT, then we're going to need stronger evidence suggesting that he is GOAT... which you've as of yet failed to provide.

The titular question was whether a better situation would have or could have changed that.

If Hakeem is clearly sub-GOAT in the evidence we have so far (in both value and goodness), then... it would take quite the change of situation to suggest that he's suddenly the GOAT.

In terms of value: While a change in situation might change "value" / how he performs with better fit, most people would say the 94/95 Rockets were great fits for Hakeem (even if they could have been slightly boosted in talent). I'm definitely open to a better situation improving his value in previous seasons like 89-92... but basically nobody has those seasons as GOAT anyway, so it would take quite an improvement in fit to raise those to GOAT level.

Regardless, most people don't think changes in situation greatly change goodness that much (short of learning/focusing on new skills under better coaching/development). So the "better situation improving goodness to GOAT-level" would be quite an up-hill battle against the general consensus... unless you think some sort of better situation could suddenly not make him the clear-cut worst passer of the Top 12. Personally though, I just have trouble seeing that.

To be blunt, you either need to read better, or more generously, consider in your mind why you think “film analysis” would comfortably show clear quality distinctions between all-time bigs and all-time creators.

If Hakeem has a film analysis argument for best big, then he has a film analysis argument for best player. And as I said, I would be surprised for such an avid Backpicks consumer to have no sense of any such film argument for him as the best big.

Ah, classic AEnigma needless passive aggression

Well, if we're going down that route, allow me to use a frequent strategy of yours. To straw man this, your argument goes: "there's film analysis that puts Hakeem in the general tier of top bigs" -> "the film analysis puts him as the GOAT Center" -> "that puts him as the GOAT of all positions".

That's... a pretty poor argument. There's plenty of analysis that puts Hakeem in the general tier of top bigs, so I agree with the first statement. You reference Thinking Basketball's film analysis: this puts Hakeem near the top tier.

However, there is little analysis I'm aware of that puts Hakeem as the clear-cut GOAT big (and again, you have yet to provide any examples of such analysis). Thinking Basketball puts him below Shaq in film analysis (and further below Jordan/LeBron), and with little separation above Kareem. 70sFan, another expert in historical film analysis, has used film in the past to put Kareem's peak over Hakeem's. Hakeem is not GOAT level in this film analysis.

And despite your attempts to say "nobody can accurately compare Bigs and wings/smalls on film", plenty of people both in and out of the NBA have been doing this for years. And those people, more often then not, put at least one of Jordan or LeBron's peak clearly over Hakeem. Does it take care and attention to detail? Sure. Is it impossible to accurately compare bigs and wings on film? Far from it.

You quoted my discussion with Luka, which was specifically framed around the contention that he would take 1988-93 Jordan over 1988-95 Hakeem.

Ah, my bad -- Thanks for clarifying! Point taken.

Playing your hand here a bit by emphasising how Ben is higher on Hakeem than usual (by your own perception, too high) while also framing this as “the most anti-Jordan approach we can take”. In fact I find it very easy to take a much more “anti-Jordan approach”.

Well, it may be perfectly easy for you to take an even more pro-Hakeem / anti-Jordan approach. But that's just your personal opinion. The question is whether that's a reasonable opinion. To do this, you need to provide evidence to show that such an opinion is defensible. A person has the right to think JR-Smith is better than LeBron lol... but to take them seriously, they should have some pretty compelling evidence to support such a claim.

Saying that Hakeem has the GOAT peak and GOAT career is far from a consensus statement. This isn't that far from arguing Hakeem should have ranked 7 spots higher in the recent Greatest Peaks project or 9 spots higher in the previous Greatest peaks project. This isn't far from arguing that Hakeem should have ranked 9 spots higher in the recent Greatest Careers project, and the project before that, and the project before that.

You suggest there's film evidence to make this a clear argument.... yet there was plenty of film evidence used in all 5 of those projects. Where is this pro-Hakeem film evidence??

I disagree to various extents.

1. I think Hakeem absolutely has a peak (one year or three years) argument over Jordan.

2. I think had Hakeem been on a better team, that would also be a more common public take (even if Jordan’s scoring is ultimately too beloved for it to be a majority one).

3. I think Hakeem on a better team could have changed Jordan’s ring count, which would commonly reduce the public perception of his career while significantly spiking Hakeem’s.

4. I think there are good arguments that Jordan was not as impactful or innately valuable as the top two-way bigs, and while I personally tend to give him some amount of career legacy credit for his titles, that notion in itself could/would push him outside the top five in raw career, prime, or peak “CORP”.

5. While personally I could not put Hakeem’s career over Kareem’s or Lebron’s because of how I weigh longevity (or over Russell’s, for more abstract reasons), I think as an extended prime I would accept arguments for him at the top, and for many extended prime is more important than total career value.

So when the thread title asks if he has a chance at that status with better teammates improving his ring count, possibly decreasing Jordan’s own ring count, and potentially improving his own play and therefore “raw” value, yes, I think he absolutely would have a chance at that depending on the assessment and the person making the assessment. If he has a chance at being seen as better than Jordan, or as the #1 peak, then obviously he has a chance at being seen as the GOAT.

1. Disagree, but again would love to see any evidence to the contrary.

2-3. Would better team have made it more likely to win / improved public opinion on him? Sure thing! But there's quite the gap between Hakeem and Jordan, not just in public opinion (who we both presumably think over-value ringzzz) but also among NBA journalists, NBA players/coaches/organization-members, and NBA historical analysts including those on this board. An improvement does not necessarily mean he makes up enough ground to catch Jordan/LeBron... to do that, he would have to be sufficiently close behind. If you believe Point 1, sure than points 2-3 have merit. But again, I've yet to see you provide me any such evidence for point 1 besides your opinion.

4. Depends on how you value Jordan, but if you're significantly lower on him than the majority of this board, sure.

5. Not sure that pointing out Hakeem's substantial longevity gap beneath Kareem or LeBron makes his GOAT-case any stronger lol. But I'm glad to hear you at least agree Kareem and LeBron have better longevity

I think the argument for Hakeem's PS defense rising is potentially there.

Like from 88-94, Hakeem held opposing all-star centers 3.6 points per 36 minutes below their season averages, on efficiency with around a 3.5 rTS% drop in efficiency as well per Ben Taylor's GOAT Peaks vid. If you think PS series are won by stars, I could see an argument that Hakeem's defense is proportionally more important in the PS than the RS, because of the drop he can make stars have.

A direct example is

Patrick Ewing vs Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1994 Finals (IA per 75):

•) 19.6 points
•) 12.9 rebounds
•) 1.7 assists
•) 1.3 steals
•) 4.5 blocks
•) -10.7 opponent-adjusted rTS%
•) Rockets were a -4.9 defense (really good)

Ewing’s scoring in the 1994 playoffs before facing Hakeem:

▪️Averaged 23.1 PPG on 54% TS

How Ewing scored in the ‘94 Finals vs Hakeem: Averaged 18.9 PPG on 39%(!) TS

Hakeem shut down an elite center; you usually don't see 1 on 1 defense lead to stars getting locked down, but I think this is one of those special cases where Hakeem's defense was that special.

Ewing-ball leading to so many lost possessions possibly hurt the Knicks more than anything.


Also, per Ben's video, Hakeem registered at least 5 blocks in 35% of his playoff games from 1986 to 1984...and in 93 and 94, he had at least 5 in nearly HALF of his PS games. This suggests that perhaps 93 and 94 Hakeem isn't quite as far away from his peak on defense as some might believe; he likely had a lower motor in the RS these years than his 89 and 90 versions, but I am not sure how great of a difference there is in the PS.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post Luka! His man defense was something to behold. Motor / athleticism loss is definitely a concern of mine by 94/95, but it's interesting to hear you can make the case the regular season decline from his younger years could be some coasting.

Re: Duncan, he's unfortunately not included on that Man Defense graph from the Hakeem Greatest Peaks video. I wonder where he/KG place on that figure! If I knew whether the data came from, I'd be interested in calculating it myself...

Personally, I tend to value team defense over man defense. I wonder how his team defense changed RS -> PS in those later years. Lots of the stars in that era were bigs (it was called the Golden Age of Bigs for a good reason!)... does his defense also change how perimeter players shoot at the rim in the PS (relative to his earlier years)?

The one nice thing about Hakeem vs earlier all-time bigs is that we actually do have quite a lot of playoff games. Looking up "1994 rockets full game" on YouTube, I see 7 full games pretty quickly... 4 vs the suns, 1 vs Jazz, 2 in finals vs Knicks. Maybe I (or someone else) can try to track some of these.

That being said, I don't really think Hakeem would be the GOAT in a different situation. But information that I just provided, along with his offensive rise, is enough for me to put him ahead of Duncan all-time and possibly Shaq in terms of peak and in terms of career value, I would also have him ahead of Duncan and maybe Shaq....this is despite the plus-minus we do have suggesting he might be a bit below those 2.

I appreciate the thought process! Despite what it seems like from this thread, I'm definitely open to taking a more positive interpretation of Hakeem personally. Like I said a few pages back, as I see it, my rankings have some uncertainty for every player, and Hakeem's upper ceiling as a player is definitely high. I'm just mostly pushing back against the idea that Hakeem has a reasonable chance at being the GOAT... I personally don't find that very reasonable, given how the evidence we have in support of other players seems even more impressive

[70sFan]

shaq was better than robinson right?

That's my opinion.

was shaq a better passer

That's actually a good question. I actually like Robinson passing a lot, he was a very willing passer. That being said, Robinson passing wasn't great when he was the main creator, he was better as a complimentary passer.

Shaq was very good at creating easy opportunities and he was smart enough to usually make good decisions.

[AEnigma]

I’ll trust the moderators in deciding which one of us sets a worse tone in discussion, since only one of us have gotten in trouble with the moderators for passive aggression and outright aggression towards the other

Hate to break it to you, but the sole actual warning I have received on this board had literally no ties to you at all. I am sure your trust is appreciated though.

Why do this when one line earlier you had my own quotation directly set for you. “If Hakeem has a film analysis argument for best big, then he has a film analysis argument for best player.” The entire continuation of your thought here works just as well without the blatant projection.

… except that a possible argument for being the best big =/= the clear cut best big =/ the clear cut best player.

When has the standard ever been clear cut. Grasping.

And remember: this uses peak-only analysis, with Hakeem performing worse in full-career film analysis

Sure, but many people are more interested in perceived primes — Jordan again being the uh prime example.

That's... a pretty poor argument. There's plenty of analysis that puts Hakeem in the general tier of top bigs, so I agree with the first statement. You reference Thinking Basketball's film analysis: this puts Hakeem near the top tier.

However, there is little analysis I'm aware of that puts Hakeem as the clear-cut GOAT big (and again, you have yet to provide any examples of such analysis). Thinking Basketball puts him below Shaq in film analysis

Not especially, and Ben stresses that he assesses them near equally (“a coin flip”) but ultimately would give the slight edge to Shaq for portability reasons, but I recognise that honesty here would be inconvenient for this position you have set out for yourself.

… except that near equal =/= equal. Ben has never chosen peak Hakeem over peak Shaq, in any ranking or film analysis. Ever.

Like I said, he loves him some “portability”.

and with little separation above Kareem.

Ah interesting, below Shaq — “a coin flip” — but little separation from Kareem, who is described as relatively interchangeable with Bird, Curry, and Garnett 5-8. Always such fun little language games with you!

And it’s worth mentioning: this is using 77-79 for Kareem’s peak (when Ben has said that 74-77 could rank higher),

Feel free to check those CORP numbers.

this is marking both Curry and Bird down for health concerns

… Yes?

and this is not counting Wilt or Russell.

Feel free to check those CORP numbers too.

Still grasping.

Again: Thinking Basketball film analysis does not support the idea that Hakeem is GOAT level, in either peak or career.

Ben’s own interpretation of the film based on how he weighs different skillsets does not, but the film itself is just film; it is not some objective marker of the relative weight of offence versus defence or anything like that.

And again: Thinking Badketball is higher on Hakeem than just about any other standard reputable source of film analysis (e.g. other NBA analysts, other NBA journalists, this board, etc.)

Ah, another appeal to some abstract consensus of “film analysis”. Why do you feel his film analysis is markedly different?

1) If Hakeem is always 3rd/4th in film analysis, and 2) if there isn’t a consistent player who’s always above him), then you could indeed at least make an argument for Hakeem.

Except neither of those statements 1–2 are true: for the first, you only need to look at basically every past peak project on this site to see this.

For the second, I’ve already shown how other players are consistently ranked over Hakeem for peak and career.

Why the continued appeal to consensus? When has universality ever been the expectation, or even a coherent justification for stasis?

And regardless, the entire logic is also imperfect: if no normal criteria put hakeem as the GOAT (not Thinking Basketball, not 70sFan, not this board, not historical journalists like The Athletic, not coaches/players, not the public),

Please define “normal criteria”.

Well, it may be perfectly easy for you to take an even more pro-Hakeem / anti-Jordan approach. But that's just your personal opinion. The question is whether that's a reasonable opinion. To do this, you need to provide evidence to show that such an opinion is defensible. A person has the right to think JR-Smith is better than LeBron lol... but to take them seriously, they should have some pretty compelling evidence to support such a claim.

Okay, cool, Hakeem had better WOWY and a longer career than Jordan while elevating his level of play more or otherwise maintaining better in the postseason and taking teams farther with what many could assess as equivalent talent/support or similarly far with what many would assess as lesser talent/support.

Tangentially, this is quite the interesting comment for you specifically to make considering how frequently you ignore OhayoKD asking for compelling evidence from you.

Saying that Hakeem has the GOAT peak and GOAT career is far from a consensus statement. This isn't that far from arguing Hakeem should have ranked 7 spots higher in the recent Greatest Peaks project or 9 spots higher in the previous Greatest peaks project. This isn't far from arguing that Hakeem should have ranked 9 spots higher in the recent Greatest Careers project, and the project before that, and the project before that. You suggest there's film evidence to make this a clear argument.... yet there was plenty of film evidence used in all 5 of those projects.

Were you ignoring all the arguments against Curry when you voted for him 7 spots higher than he went in the recent project and 11 spots higher than he went in the previous project?

Except I provided a mountain of statistical, film, team, and contextual evidence to justify my unpopular opinion, while you have still yet to provide much evidence at all in favor of your vastly unpopular opinion

You feeling your “evidence” was substantive and meaningful does not mean it inherently was. Since you suddenly love appeals to consensus so much, tell me, what has been the consensus on Curry versus Hakeem as a top x peak? How much was all your quantity of evidence welcomed qualitatively compared to the brevity of other arguments?

The problem is not having an unpopular opinion; it’s complaining about the problems in the evidence for near-complete-consensus opinions (as near-consensus as we get in GOAT debates), while providing absolutely no evidence for your own extremely unpopular opinions.

Inequitable evidence has poor comparative value. You want to trumpet quarter-done outside peak RAPM samples and offensively skewed box scores, have at it, but when someone calls out the failings of those measures, the response should not be, “Well what are we supposed to do, not use them? ”

Again, telling how much that ever essential consensus turns on your “mountains”, but rather than self-reflect on that, you just chug away and keep championing them all the same. Maybe one day we will understand the proper value of partial RAPM and box metrics incapable of properly reflecting defence!

Where is this pro-Hakeem film evidence??

Watch on YouTube

Aha! Our first substantial piece of direct evidence!

… except this doesn’t support the claim you’re making. Again, this does not portray Hakeem as the GOAT.

Precisely how not. Tell me, what specifically in the film is demonstrably at odds with this apparently objective GOAT case?

1. Disagree, but again would love to see any evidence to the contrary.

2-3. Would better team have made it more likely to win / improved public opinion on him? Sure thing! But there's quite the gap between Hakeem and Jordan, not just in public opinion (who we both presumably think over-value ringzzz) but also among NBA journalists, NBA players/coaches/organization-members, and NBA historical analysts including those on this board. An improvement does not necessarily mean he makes up enough ground to catch Jordan/LeBron... to do that, he would have to be sufficiently close behind. If you believe Point 1, sure than points 2-3 have merit. But again, I've yet to see you provide me any such evidence for point 1 besides your opinion.

Unfortunately I guess we will need to wait for Squared2020 to do ten games of RAPM from 1993 to know for sure.

Well, that would still be 10 more games of research than you’ve done to support your argument

You know what, that was my mistake, I tried to be droll and deliberately absurd, but I forgot for you pretty much anything goes when needing to push a bias, no matter how cherry-picked or incomplete or misleading or disingenuous.

For the benefit of everyone else though: no, ten-game cuts from a career are in fact definitionally not holistic. It can make for an interesting exercise. But it would be the approximate equivalent of using the first ten games of the season to declare Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the clear next successor to Jordan.

Going to separate the final note here because it seems like a much more productive group discussion and as a nicer tangent allows some separation from all preceding negativity.

[AEnigma]

5. Not sure that pointing out Hakeem's substantial longevity gap beneath Kareem or LeBron makes his GOAT-case any stronger lol. But I'm glad to hear you at least agree Kareem and LeBron have better longevity

Because general public consensus has been to ignore longevity, and even in this specific board Lebron only narrowly topped Jordan for the career listing while fresh off a title.

I recognise the cases people make for Jordan even though for my own assessments I do not think those cases are reasonable by comparison with Lebron, Russell, or Kareem. Which is why I think Falco’s question about generational perception is key. Maybe Hakeem never could be the GOAT anymore than Tim Duncan could be, but if this thread were simply a matter of, “No, people are generally too biased toward scoring and offence, and those who are not would still take players with fuller careers,” then we would not be seven pages of discussion in.

I actually like this point a lot.

Agree that the public generally underrated longevity, and agree on the point of perception (even if I disagree with the specific rankings).

Question: how much do you think the public value cumulative stats? Certainly not as much as peak, but do you see them valuing this at all?

I’ve seen plenty of public debates that cite that Kareem’s the all-time leading scorer as evidence for his all time rankings. It’s basically guaranteed that casual fans will cite LBJ being the al-time scorer to argue for LeBron over Jordan/others once he passes Kareem.

Varies wildly but it is definitely never a negative; it will never hurt Lebron that he is the all-time leading scorer, or that he leads in pretty much everything in the playoffs, even if some people may ignore it or even try to twist it into something bad.

Most extreme example is probably John Stockton, right. A lot of people place him in their top twenty-five pretty much exclusively because of those “unbreakable” assist and steal records. There are caps to its value. In the public sphere, I am unclear whether Isiah Thomas or John Stockton is valued higher, but the fact it is unclear to me seems to again speak to the heightened public emphasis on rings over any marker of longevity. Lebron would be better served with another ring than with the career points record, but sadly for him there is no option to trade that off (again, despite what a select few might argue).

To tie it back to Hakeem, I think his key longevity feather is being first in official blocks while also being top ten in steals as a centre (soon to be top eleven ). People love that bit of trivia, assuming they know it, although the blocks do often enough come with the Wilt/Russell/youngKareem stipulations. On that alone, without ever really watching a game, a lot of people would and perhaps do conclude that Hakeem is the GOAT defender. It usually is not enough to make up for him only winning two titles, but that will always be a shorthand argument for him in much the same way it is an occasionally used shorthand peak argument that he won MVP, DPoY, and Finals MVP in the same season (imo, could stand to be a little more used ).

And to truly bring this all back to the thread title, maybe with an increased ring count that would in fact make that GOAT peak argument more common, have made more people stick with the traditional rule that bigs are the ones who lead the league, and ultimately describe him as the greatest player they have ever seen, the ultimate do-it-all building block. Because people are not objective, and when given the opportunity most will have preconceptions colour what they see and find nostalgia further elevate their memory of what they saw. Happened with Bird, and Magic, and Jordan, and Shaq, and Kobe. It will eventually happen to Lebron and his rivals and successors too. But those cumulative totals can provide a sort of base to those recollections and reassessments. To use a hockey analogy, Alex Ovechkin is already the greatest goal scorer in the history of the sport, but he still needs to pass Gretzky cumulatively to make that argument impenetrable. And anyone coming in Lebron’s wake will to some extent always have that new standard looming over them until they surpass it.

[falcolombardi]

Except I provided a mountain of statistical, film, team, and contextual evidence to justify my unpopular opinion, while you have still yet to provide much evidence at all in favor of your vastly unpopular opinion

The problem is not having an unpopular opinion; it’s complaining about the problems in the evidence for near-complete-consensus opinions (as near-consensus as we get in GOAT debates), while providing absolutely no evidence for your own extremely unpopular opinions.

I am gonna single this part of your very interesting but way too long discussion with aenigma for mucho texto reasons

I think the idea that there is no plausible evidence for hakeem over jordan is wrong.even for a peak comparision

Specially if we are not relying on boxscore aggregates (which fail to value defense) and extremely noisy and small wowy/rapm sample data

For how much i love rapm as a stat, i would take it with a grain of salt when it is comparing random small game samples of pre mid 90's seasons from before +/- was tracked. (Maybe one day whem someone does hakeem playoffs on-off data we can have a more apples to apples comparision vs jordan)

Ohayokd touched on this a bit in this comment

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.

I am wary of ultra short samples for wowy/rapm/on-off of pre 97 players

[henshao]

Per the title:

Open question: what star would we (you, reader) consider to have had the most fortunate career, helpwise?
Food for thought here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/6oh7yn/oc_which_nba_superstars_have_had_the_most_help/

How does Hakeem's career look in their (eg, Kobe's) place?

[AEnigma]

Per the title:

Open question: what star would we (you, reader) consider to have had the most fortunate career, helpwise?
Food for thought here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/6oh7yn/oc_which_nba_superstars_have_had_the_most_help/

Pretty decent shorthand, although the gaps it suggests are much larger than what I would give because of course all-NBA / all-star support is distinct from overall team quality.

I think it undersells Bird a bit, in part because of that lack of third-team optionality. Probably oversells Kareem a bit because of the timing; he had little support in the middle of his prime, but when he was down to all-star level he had plenty. Duncan could be similar, but I think for him it balances out better, and he never had a stretch as rough as Kareem’s 1975-79. Even before clicking that link, I would have put Shaq, Kobe, and Magic at the top, which speaks to how well run the Lakers were throughout that period (pretty much outside of that 2005-07 stretch for Kobe).

How does Hakeem's career look in their (eg, Kobe's) place?

Well, for Kobe, the equivalent would basically be him playing with Bird.

[OhayoKD]

At this point you've offered no evidence that Hakeem has a GOAT level peak or GOAT-level career, while rejected my arguments that Hakeem isn't the GOAT.

your qualitative claims were addressed with evidence contradicting your "theoretical" assumptions:

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.

Positive evidence was provided for hakeem and then an argument was offered for why it should be given more weight than the negative evidence:

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.

[/quote]
Just because you choose not to respond to what is offered, does not mean it has not been offered.

[Owly]

Per the title:

Open question: what star would we (you, reader) consider to have had the most fortunate career, helpwise?
Food for thought here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/6oh7yn/oc_which_nba_superstars_have_had_the_most_help/

How does Hakeem's career look in their (eg, Kobe's) place?

Trex went through / sourced / aggregated a bunch of numbers for quite a few elite tier players some time ago. Can't easily find it now, but may be worth quoting/asking them to locate that, or you could try searching for yourself.

[henshao]

How does Hakeem's career look in their (eg, Kobe's) place?

Well, for Kobe, the equivalent would basically be him playing with Bird. [/quote]

For as good as McHale was, one would have to be amazingly low on Hakeem to not consider him a categorical upgrade. Bird+Hakeem together for any length of time would be beyond championship favorites. Together they would have probably gotten 5 rings in an 8 year period. As much as this kind of thing is valued I think Dream is remembered with much more esteem in the GOAT conversation under those circumstances.

[Squared2020]

.

[OhayoKD]

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

...

Unfortunately I guess we will need to wait for Squared2020 to do ten games of RAPM from 1993 to know for sure.

...

For the benefit of everyone else though: no, ten-game cuts from a career are in fact definitionally not holistic. It can make for an interesting exercise. But it would be the approximate equivalent of using the first ten games of the season to declare Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the clear next successor to Jordan.

Damn man, what did I do to you? I got cancer and sent my primary hard drive of games off to Ben Taylor because I know he'd do more with the games after the great YouTube purge. It's only about 2,000 games, but it's better than nothing.

So I guess you get your wish for me to shut up so I can't "worsen" discourse.

But your last statement I quoted is completely out of context and non-constructive to any discussion.

Take care.

I hope you're feelign better!

Just wanna sat I appreciate the samples, even if you weren't able to get a complete set

[AEnigma]

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

...

Unfortunately I guess we will need to wait for Squared2020 to do ten games of RAPM from 1993 to know for sure.

...

For the benefit of everyone else though: no, ten-game cuts from a career are in fact definitionally not holistic. It can make for an interesting exercise. But it would be the approximate equivalent of using the first ten games of the season to declare Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the clear next successor to Jordan.

Damn man, what did I do to you? I got cancer and sent my primary hard drive of games off to Ben Taylor because I know he'd do more with the games after the great YouTube purge. It's only about 2,000 games, but it's better than nothing.

So I guess you get your wish for me to shut up so I can't "worsen" discourse.

But your last statement I quoted is completely out of context and non-constructive to any discussion.

Take care.

Woah, that was not what I was saying. At all. I am glad you put all this together! I am just frustrated that people misapply your work and use it to make dishonest cases. You admirably tried to be transparent, and instead people took that as an opportunity to jump the gun without waiting on further data. None of that is any sort of personal reflection on you though, any more than it is on 70sFan when people say they watched his videos and concluded that old players sucked. Record-keepers like yourself are especially essential with how much the NBA seems to restrict and actively work against it, and me expressing frustration with how those records have been twisted by others is not the same as sincerely criticising you for keeping them.

Sorry if someone misrepresented that in order to rile you up. I honestly felt like I was pretty much speaking in line with what others said at the time, and you seemed to take that in stride in those earlier threads because you understand the problems of drawing broad conclusions based on limited scatterings of games.

Interesting idea but probably needs more games.

yea, we need a much bigger sample to really draw any conclusions from the data.

In an evenly distributed sample you'll start to see real stabilization around the 20-30 game mark in a season in my experience, so some of the larger team samples in the 3 main years might have some real value, but I'm not certain what somewhat randomly removing teams from the sample does to it...
I would try to avoid much of anything on players not from those teams, as it winds up being very much just a small sample measure of their matchups specifically against the Celtics/Bulls/Lakers.

According to squared2020 here https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2123285&p=93982301#p93982301,

The '91 RAPM total estimates have an error of 5.2 to 7.9 - "about triple compared to a full season."

And even for a full season as we know, error is quite high so too much stock can't be put into them. For these small samples, that's even more true

Goes without saying that it's very awesome work from squared2020 though of course. I just don't think we can draw many conclusions from the data yet

First up really appreciate anyone doing this kind of work. Seems like an awful lot of work if this is indeed a one person project. So huge respect first up.

In terms of value ... at this point ... I would guess probably very little.

Yeah, I'm reluctant to use this much at this point, but look forward to it getting to a point where I feel I can.

But again, some people have unfortunately preferred to ignore all of that because they would rather use whatever they can find to service personal grudges.

[70sFan]

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

...

Unfortunately I guess we will need to wait for Squared2020 to do ten games of RAPM from 1993 to know for sure.

...

For the benefit of everyone else though: no, ten-game cuts from a career are in fact definitionally not holistic. It can make for an interesting exercise. But it would be the approximate equivalent of using the first ten games of the season to declare Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the clear next successor to Jordan.

Damn man, what did I do to you? I got cancer and sent my primary hard drive of games off to Ben Taylor because I know he'd do more with the games after the great YouTube purge. It's only about 2,000 games, but it's better than nothing.

So I guess you get your wish for me to shut up so I can't "worsen" discourse.

But your last statement I quoted is completely out of context and non-constructive to any discussion.

Take care.

I hope you're feeling well now. As someone who also works with the tape (on much smaller scale and lower level), it can't be appreciated enough how much work you put into your project. You should know that for most people here, it's incredibly helpful and I can't even imagine how much time you had to spend to track all of these games.

I wish you the best health and hope that it's not the end of your work (if you decide to come back of course)!

[ShaqAttac]

That's my opinion.

was shaq a better passer

That's actually a good question. I actually like Robinson passing a lot, he was a very willing passer. That being said, Robinson passing wasn't great when he was the main creator, he was better as a complimentary passer.

Shaq was very good at creating easy opportunities and he was smart enough to usually make good decisions.

how do you decide who passes better? and is creator the same as passer?

[70sFan]

was shaq a better passer

That's actually a good question. I actually like Robinson passing a lot, he was a very willing passer. That being said, Robinson passing wasn't great when he was the main creator, he was better as a complimentary passer.

Shaq was very good at creating easy opportunities and he was smart enough to usually make good decisions.

how do you decide who passes better? and is creator the same as passer?

You have to look very closely at a lot of possessions to get the idea what kind of passes a player usually finds and what reads he misses.

Creator isn't always the same as passer. Shaq was a great creator because he drew a lot of defensive attention. He was a good passer, but I wouldn't call him great.

[frica]

That's actually a good question. I actually like Robinson passing a lot, he was a very willing passer. That being said, Robinson passing wasn't great when he was the main creator, he was better as a complimentary passer.

Shaq was very good at creating easy opportunities and he was smart enough to usually make good decisions.

how do you decide who passes better? and is creator the same as passer?

You have to look very closely at a lot of possessions to get the idea what kind of passes a player usually finds and what reads he misses.

Creator isn't always the same as passer. Shaq was a great creator because he drew a lot of defensive attention. He was a good passer, but I wouldn't call him great.

Or Dirk who was a great creator and ball handler but a very mediocre passer despite being very willing.

[ShaqAttac]

how do you decide who passes better? and is creator the same as passer?

You have to look very closely at a lot of possessions to get the idea what kind of passes a player usually finds and what reads he misses.

Creator isn't always the same as passer. Shaq was a great creator because he drew a lot of defensive attention. He was a good passer, but I wouldn't call him great.

Or Dirk who was a great creator and ball handler but a very mediocre passer despite being very willing.

dirk was a great ball handler?