Who your Top 10 All-time played with the least talent?

[Matt15]

Which player in your top 10 all-time played with the least amount of talent throughout their careers?

[Dutchball97]

On a per season basis I don't really see an argument against Hakeem here.

[Heej]

Wilt. Or if you have him in your top 10, Hakeem is the easiest answer

[Jaivl]

In his prime Garnett.

Career... eh, Garnett as well.

[eminence]

I have Wilt a step up on Hakeem/KG, so those two are my contenders. Oscar if he’s in your top 10 should be in the discussion.

[70sFan]

Hakeem or Garnett to me.

[rk2023]

Garnett
Olajuwon

Bar None

[rim213221]

My top 10 is

1. Jordan
2. Russell
3. Wilt
4. LeBron
5. Kareem
6. Magic
7. Duncan
8. Shaq
9. Bird
10. Kobe


Jordan probably played with the least talent out of all of them with his only regular all-star being Pippen, who as great as he was was not an elite #1 scoring option. I have guys like Durant and Garnett well well outside the top 10 due to lack of playoffs dominance. Curry and Hakeem are definitely debatably in the top 10 but Curry would not count as he played on unbeatable teams with Durant. Durant also has had more help than anyone. Hakeem is definitely up there with least amount of help.

[No-more-rings]

Hakeem definitely.

[Doctor MJ]

This makes me want to look at our Off numbers over a guy's career. Obviously we can't do that for most of NBA history, but looking it up for stars we can look it up for.

Caveat: Obviously simplistic measure, and looking to only include guys who spent more of their career as the team's recognized star.

bkref has this data going back to '96-97, so beginning from the 1996 draft class:

Bryant -0.4
Nash -0.7
Iverson -2.6
Duncan +1.7
McGrady -3.2
Nowitzki -3.4
Pierce -3.0
Carter -6.1
Brand -4.7
Baron -5.6
LeBron -4.2
Wade -1.1
Bosh -2.4
Anthony -0.2
Howard -0.3
Paul -2.8
Durant +0.2
Westbrook +0.0
Curry -3.1
Harden +1.0
George -1.7
Kawhi +3.8
Butler -2.2
AD -3.4
Lillard -4.2
Beal -3.5
Giannis -2.3
Gobert -0.9
Jokic -4.3
Embiid -1.9
Booker +3.8
KAT -4.8
Tatum -0.9
Doncic +1.3

We also have data going back to '93-94 from Pollack, so from that I'll work out a couple more:

Garnett -6.1
Kidd -2.4

Alright, now just because it's an obvious thing to look at, not because it tells the whole story, if I order these from worst career Off to best, here are the Top 10:

1. Carter -6.1
(tie) Garnett -6.1
3. Baron -5.6
4. KAT -4.8
5. Brand -4.7
6. Jokic -4.3
7. LeBron -4.2
(tie) Lillard -4.2
9. Beal -3.5
10. Nowitzki -3.4

Feel free to mention others if I didn't think to include them.

[Narigo]

Robertson

[Doctor MJ]

Okay so answering the question in a roundabout fashion:

I'm currently not updating my Top 10 list from before, but I am going to have an analysis I did based on a POY-style process going back into history I recently re-did as a starting point. Here are that metric's Top 10 POY Share guys:

1. Bill Russell
2. LeBron James
3. Michael Jordan
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
5. George Mikan
6. Magic Johnson
7. Steph Curry
8. Wilt Chamberlain
9. Larry Bird
10. Tim Duncan

While it would be wrong to look at this list as being unaffected by supporting cast talent, we might be able to look at the Off data and assume that the worse the Off, the more they might have been hindered by my approach - it wouldn't be any regular linear correlation, but it's possible there's a pattern we can observe. If I add average career Off into the mix for the guys in the Top 25 who played within this era, here's what I'd see:

2. LeBron -4.2
7. Curry -3.1
10. Duncan +1.7
11. Durant +0.2
15. Nowitzki -3.4
17. Bryant -0.4
20. Garnett -6.1
24. Wade -1.1

So, if we did assume that a form of winning bias was at play in my POY Shares metric, there's one guy not in the Top 10 with a worse Off than LeBron in KG that might make my Top 10.

Okay, now who else in that Top 25 seems like he might be able to take the top spot from Garnett:

Oscar & Hakeem are the guys I would think of.

In Oscar we have a guy who seems to have clear cut strong on/off impact on disappointing teams for most of his career. If we go simply by the putative Off (which we don't have the data for) he might well have the edge here over Garnett, and I think that perhaps the big question might be whether the SRS-variance (general lack of parity by points on the board) back then might handicap him.

In Hakeem I think we have a guy who wouldn't fair extraordinarily well by regular season On/Off all throughout his career, so my guess is that he wouldn't challenge Garnett with a metric such as this, though I could be wrong. However, it's possible that Olajuwon will end up in my Top 10 and that Garnett & Oscar wouldn't, so he might come out on top among whoever makes my list.

[dygaction]

Michael Jordan
He also did not face the most fierce competition though
Next would be Giannis

[No-more-rings]

Michael Jordan
He also did not face the most fierce competition though
Next would be Giannis

Giannis isn’t top 10, but just discussing his supporting cast anyhow, I think you may be underrating it for the fact that he didn’t play with any other superstars. I mean his teams have been pretty deep and balanced since he won his first mvp.

[dygaction]

Michael Jordan
He also did not face the most fierce competition though
Next would be Giannis

Giannis isn’t top 10, but just discussing his supporting cast anyhow, I think you may be underrating it for the fact that he didn’t play with any other superstars. I mean his teams have been pretty deep and balanced since he won his first mvp.

He is not there yet I agree but not too far, I think he is in the trajectory with reasonable longevity.
His cast is balanced but nowhere as talented as Bird/Magic/Russell/Curry/Kobe/Shaq/Duncan/LeBron level.