Best 1 Year Peak Amongst These Guys

[mdonnelly1989]

...

[zimpy27]

Giannis with the DPOY + MVP season

[Jaivl]

I have them

Jokic
Giannis
Dirk
Julius
Durant
Wade
Barkley
Moses

I feel like the first 6 have an argument for #1. Moses and Barkley are kinda covered by Jokic.

[70sFan]

Probably something like this, not counting this season for Jokic:

Giannis
Jokic
Julius
Wade
Moses
Durant
Dirk
Barkley

[OhayoKD]

Giannis

I have them

Jokic
Giannis
Dirk
Julius
Durant
Wade
Barkley
Moses

I feel like the first 6 have an argument for #1. Moses and Barkley are kinda covered by Jokic.

Playoff drop-off tho

[rk2023]

Giannis
Wade
Jokic (22 variant)
Erving
Durant
Nowitzki
Moses
Barkley

[eminence]

Ignoring current season. I’ll go Wade very narrowly over Giannis. Need to look into ABA DrJ more.

[OhayoKD]

era-relative(descriptive), 2019 giannis
era-relative(predictive), 2020 giannis
absolute, giannis pick the year

Jokic takes 2nd for absolute(maybe a case for first if you take the average the eras approach), 2nd place era-relative is between erving and wade me thinks

[Colbinii]

Wade
Durant
Erving
Jokic
Giannis
Moses
Dirk
Barkley

[OhayoKD]

Wade
Durant
Erving
Jokic
Giannis
Moses
Dirk
Barkley

Explain durant over Giannis tbh. The man with many letters was taking stacked teams to the brink with extremely limited help even when he allegedly "dropped off" because his box-numbers went down(2019). What from Durant are you putting on that level?

[iggymcfrack]

Giannis had an INCREDIBLE Finals when he won his ring, but if you look at his overall playoff averages in 2021, they weren't that impressive. Jokic's current dominance is unprecedented. It has a legit case as the greatest regular season of all-time. And I honestly don't think he's going to dip for even a second in the postseason. I literally feel like I'm watching the next evolution of basketball when I see him play. The only other time I've ever felt like this was watching Curry in 2016, and sadly, he choked in the playoffs, but honestly I can't even IMAGINE Jokic choking. I think as long as his teammates stay healthy, he's about to get a FMVP to really plant the case that he's a top 3 all-time peak player along with Jordan and LeBron. He's that good.

[HeartBreakKid]

I think Jokic is pretty easily the best so far. But if this year doesn't count then...maybe still him.

[70sFan]

Wade
Durant
Erving
Jokic
Giannis
Moses
Dirk
Barkley

I didn't know you are that high on Durant.

[Colbinii]

Wade
Durant
Erving
Jokic
Giannis
Moses
Dirk
Barkley

Explain durant over Giannis tbh. The man with many letters was taking stacked teams to the brink with extremely limited help even when he allegedly "dropped off" because his box-numbers went down(2019). What from Durant are you putting on that level?

My first instinct is "Durant was clearly better in 2021 against Milwaukee than Milwaukee was against Brooklyn". The Milwaukee Bucks were a significantly better defense and Durant, as a 1-man army, had performances that Giannis never came close to. Durant's Game 5 is one of the best performances ever--49/17/10/3/2 and playing all 48-minutes. Simply put, I believe Durant increases a teams championship odds in this season [and in a few other seasons] more than Giannis best.

I don't really care about how stacked a team is when assessing how good a player is.

[OhayoKD]

Explain durant over Giannis tbh. The man with many letters was taking stacked teams to the brink with extremely limited help even when he allegedly "dropped off" because his box-numbers went down(2019). What from Durant are you putting on that level?

My first instinct is "Durant was clearly better in 2021 against Milwaukee than Milwaukee was against Brooklyn". The Milwaukee Bucks were a significantly better defense and Durant, as a 1-man army

Durant was outcreated(3 oc to 5 oc iirc), scored worse than giannis in 4 out of 7 games and uh...defense. The 1-man army won exactly one game out of four. I presume you were comparably hyped when Luka actually successfully "one-man armied" for an entire series against the signficantly more talented clippers?

, had performances that Giannis never came close to.

Scoring blindness me thinks. Giannis's wins vs the raptors were significantly more impressive imo(bucks were out shot from open looks but Giannis's defense+creation overrode a much better coached team with an all-time great defense, and a big talent advantage). And off course there is the suns series where Giannis's creation, scoring and defense were on-point vs a well-balanced defense and offense despite Giannis basically playing on one leg.

I don't really care about how stacked a team is when assessing how good a player is.

[/quote]
Yes well that type of context avoidance will naturally juice one's evaluation of a player whose arguably played with the most help of anyone in nba-history.

[OhayoKD]

Giannis had an INCREDIBLE Finals when he won his ring, but if you look at his overall playoff averages in 2021, they weren't that impressive. Jokic's current dominance is unprecedented. It has a legit case as the greatest regular season of all-time. And I honestly don't think he's going to dip for even a second in the postseason. I literally feel like I'm watching the next evolution of basketball when I see him play. The only other time I've ever felt like this was watching Curry in 2016, and sadly, he choked in the playoffs, but honestly I can't even IMAGINE Jokic choking. I think as long as his teammates stay healthy, he's about to get a FMVP to really plant the case that he's a top 3 all-time peak player along with Jordan and LeBron. He's that good.

Honestly, I feel very good taking 2019 Giannis over everyone else here, era-relative or in a vacuum. And and that includes the postseason. 2022 Giannis also looks good to me.

Re: "his averages weren't impressive", maybe not, but again, this is a two-way big who anchors -9 postseason defenses(which remain the best when the second best defender is out), tanks the effiency of opposing teams and opposing stars when he's the court, and has functioned as his team's primary scoring threat, ball-handler, playmaker, as well as his team's defensive anchor while leading strong contenders(only other players i think can say that are Lebron, KG(when cassell went down, wasn't doing that in the regular season), Duncan(specifically in 2003), and Wilt. If there's anyone else I'm forgetting feel free to correct me, but I don't think Giannis is getting near enough respect for being good to elite at virtually every aspect of basketball.

Giannis also looks like one of the very best from a raw impact standpoint, mantains that from an adjusted impact stand point, and remains competitive with basically anyone else whose played during his prime even if we use box-stuff(which pretends guys like KD and Kawhi are his equal defensively).

Giannis does this with a team of shooters that can't shoot when it matters(feel free to focus on "open threes" if you think it's a shot-difficulty thing), and a coach who wasn't too far off dwayne casey in the post-season until maybe 2022. All due respect to Jokic, but he doesn't really match Giannis's rs peak when we use the most accurate/predictive metrics and let's not get started on the postseaosn where his nuggets team haven't really managed anything more impressive than what we've seen from Embid's sixers and he's somehow an outright negative every year in on/off as he gets exploited as defensive center who can't defend. The Bucks without Middleton were a better postseason than any team Jokic has led in the playoffs including the 2020 nuggets who had playoff Murray facing comparable defensive attention and scorching teams like the lakers(dwight, lebron, ad) from inside.

Maybe there's an rs argument(better raw on/off fwiw), but you basically have to ignore the playoffs for this comparison to hold

[rand]

Giannis had an INCREDIBLE Finals when he won his ring, but if you look at his overall playoff averages in 2021, they weren't that impressive. Jokic's current dominance is unprecedented. It has a legit case as the greatest regular season of all-time. And I honestly don't think he's going to dip for even a second in the postseason. I literally feel like I'm watching the next evolution of basketball when I see him play. The only other time I've ever felt like this was watching Curry in 2016, and sadly, he choked in the playoffs, but honestly I can't even IMAGINE Jokic choking. I think as long as his teammates stay healthy, he's about to get a FMVP to really plant the case that he's a top 3 all-time peak player along with Jordan and LeBron. He's that good.

30.2 PPG on .599 TS% with 12.8 RPG, 5.1 APG (3.0 TOs) and 1.0 SPG, 1.2 BPG is competitive against historical title run averages from top all-time players. Works out to 9.9 BPM. Among the last 40 postseasons, only ten title runs featured a player with a higher BPM: 1984 Bird, '91, '93 and '96 Jordan, 2003 Duncan, LeBron's four titles, and 2019 Kawhi.

2020 LeBron: 10.7
2019 Kawhi: 10.1
2016 LeBron: 11.0
2013 LeBron: 10.4
2012 LeBron: 10.5
2003 Duncan: 10.2
1996 Jordan: 10.7
1993 Jordan: 11.6
1991 Jordan: 14.6
1984 Bird: 10.3

[Gregoire]

Giannis for sure!

[PistolPeteJR]

Those putting Dr J over peak Wade, why? Not versed with peak Dr J tbh.

[Colbinii]

Those putting Dr J over peak Wade, why? Not versed with peak Dr J tbh.

-Not valuing growth of the NBA as highly and instead valuing in-era impact
-Attributing massive value to his phenomenal box-score composites
-Viewing them as similar defenders, if not an advantage to Erving
-Lower on Wade's portability

These are the only reasons which make sense to me [logically speaking] for having Dr J peak ahead of Wade.