Blackmill wrote:OhayoKD wrote:Blackmill wrote:
I suppose I interpret my own statement differently. I don't think Kareem will struggle outside of optimal situations, but I think he has a lot to benefit from being in the right situation. In other words, I think it's his ceiling that's impacted, more so than his floor. That's why, in the next line, I mention how I think Kareem does have the higher ceiling than MJ.
If i'm getting this right, then, you believe it takes for MJ to reach his high-end than it would take Kareem? I don't feel strongly either way on that point, but I guess my counter would be I think Kareem's "floor" is already at the level of Mike's "ceiling" with his ability to anchor elite defense giving him a higher baseline(and fwiw I think the "data" so to speak supports this).
Unless you are using ceiling differently than I think you are
I think this reply turned into more of an expansion to my previous post, and only touches on your question.
Late in Kareem's career, I think his situation allowed him to operate at nearly the ceiling of his abilities at the time, at least offensively. During his peak years, I think that was far from the case, and some his extraordinary numbers are despite that. That's what I mean by his ceiling is impacted.
I feel comfortable saying that Kareem, when in the proper situation, would produce stronger teams than MJ typically could, because the defensive gap is clearly vast, and Kareem could feasibly match or exceed MJ's scoring output with some consistency. Kareem would not be able to match Jordan's playmaking, but for simplicity, I would break down playmaking as follows. There's the playmaking that high level scorers need to be capable of, in order to keep the defense honest, or to turn help into an advantage. Then there's a degree of playmaking that needs to exist in aggregate on any team, simply for sets and reliable offense to be run. That's the starting point for how I'm thinking about the comparison.
Kareem's ability to be relatively unaffected by help is maybe the best ever, and while many other players necessarily rely on superior playmaking to reach higher levels of offensive production, Kareem is arguably an exception. In other words, stripped of their ability to pass, Kareem would easily be the better and more reliable scorer than Jordan. Where I would typical consider the playmaking gap to be potentially vast between players like MJ and Kareem, because a capable defense can often limit a lesser playmaker, for Kareem this isn't as much the case. But there still needs to be a sufficient level of surrounding playmaking talent for the benefit of the other players.
This is an interesting way to break things down though I think we can add some levels here(this is somewhat tangential to this discussion but may as well)
Also think we can add "play-calling"/"running the offense" to shift "Playmaking" to "making teammates better".
I think the bottom-level is when your play-making/ball-handling is an active detriment to your ability to generate scoring oppurtunities for yourself(at the high-end of this is Durant, low-end of this might be Davis).
I think a tier up we get players who aren't really able to create a bunch but have suffecient skill here that they are not that dependent on teammates to generate scoring oppurtunities for themselves(Kawhi)
Tier two we get players who, with the right pieces, can leverage their scoring gravity towards creating for others(Kareem as you allude to may be the best of this archtype since he really just needs "functional" help here)
Tier three guys are players who can function as primary ball-handlers and therefore automatically will generate for their teammates offensively(At the high end you have Jordan/Curry, lower end you get someone like Giannis)
And then I think Tier four are guys who not only generate oppurtunities with their gravity but effectively leaverage their teammates and their own abilities to not only generate potential oppurtunities, but then select/generate the best possible ones(low-end might be CP3, mid might be lebron/jokic, highest end might be magic/nash).
There is a bit of a fallacy I think where people look at raw assist totals, raw creation counts, or box-oc and pretend volume is everything. But it's not just about what you create. It's also about the quality of what you're creating AND how much you're leaving on the table with suboptimal decisions. Players on this tier have better discernable offensive "lift" than players the tier below, and often this is blamed entirely or pre-dominantly on "this is just because of who their teammates are", but I actually think the real source of this offensive advantage is the "quality" of what they're creating(and some of the backseat coaching stuff has an off-court effect that can't be tracked via impact stuff):
In my tracking sample, Stockton hit 3.5 “good” or “great” passes per 100 possessions — a formidable clip for his era, behind only Magic and Bird among ’80s and ’90s players on this list. However, he also missed an elite pass once per 100, leaving points on the scoreboard that the best passers would have found.2
Overall, Kobe’s rate of “good” passes in my sample was around 3 per 100. For comparison, Jordan was at 2 per 100 and an all-timer like Nash over 8 per 100.8
As a result of his increased primacy and evolved court vision, LeBron’s creation rates jumped from about 11 per 100 to a whopping 14 per 100, just short of the highest rates ever estimated. In my sampling, his quality passes leapt into the upper stratosphere, reaching Nash-like frequencies with a “good” pass on 8 percent of his possessions.
Don't have access to the numbers(paywall) rn but passer-rating also sees this. Curry and Jordan graded out as comparable or right behind creators in a pure volume metric like playval(based on ben's bpm which is using assist totals I think) or Box-OC, to guys like say Lebron, Magic, and Nash, but they had teammates telling players where to go(draymond/pippen respectively), and don't make the best possible reads as often(I think ben said it was something like 60% vs 80% of the high quality passes in his peaks video and we have the "good passes" number above).
Incidentally they don't seem to have the same level of offensive lift in the absence of a specific structure where those decisions are delegated to someone else:
In Year Two of the prime Nash-Nowitzki show, Dallas ascended to a dynastic level on offense. The Mavs finished with the sixth-best rORtg in league history (+7.7), followed by the 16th-best in ’03 (+7.1) and then in ’04 became the only offense in NBA history 9 points better than league average for a full season (+9.2).
Ohayo wrote:Regardless, using your "full-strength" derivation, I'm not sure, it, as you say, "has a meaning", considering that still puts 21/22 and 23/24 year-old MJ led-offense significantly behind what Lebron led at 20/21(2006, 35 game sample, Bron has a birthday, Ben decides to say Lebron is 19 in 05, BBR says he's 20). And here, I'll admit, I did lie. Checking Ben's write-up, that full-strength offense wasn't +5, it was +6.6, coming off a +2.3 offense(2005, 70 game sample) with 19/20 year old Lebron, and a +4.9 jump(+6 overall!) with Lebron at 18/19. Was that all Lebron? No. But even with a generous adjustment(take Boozer's 31-game without sample from the season after and pretend he wasn't on the 03 Cavs), we're around +2(+4 overall) with teenage Bron.Worth considering this all happened in the absence of 3-point specialists
By comparison, the best pre-triangle Jordan stretch(with Jordan arguably at his peak) sees a 52(Ben) or 53-win(E-balla) team over a 30-game sample going at +4.4 offensively(you can reach a +4.6 if you swap minuite distributions for the 5th and 7th mpg guys for 20 games and ignore the team didn't actually improve), Curry wasn't close to leading all-time offenses(and had worse metrics than both westbrook and durant) with Draymond on the bench.
The only example of a non-controlling delegator making all the decisions I can think of rn is Bird(Jokic may be the highest form of this but I'm going to wait till he has a strong playoff sample) but his offenses didn't even outpace Reggie's pacers in the postseason, never mind Magic's lakers:
Eballa wrote:So in his whole prime his team underperformed offensively just twice despite 14 of his 22 series being against top 5 defenses. On average in the regular season his teams' offenses played at a +2.5 level. In the playoffs they played at a +6.4 level. Remove series against teams that weren't top 5 defenses and they performed at a +6.3 level (he averaged 23.0/3.1/2.6 on 60.2 TS% with a 120 ORTG). Reggie Miller's offensive postseason results are insane and paint him as being extremely impactful.
FWIW, against the Pistons, the best defense of the 80's, Magic's Lakers dropped off the least, the Bulls in the triangle held up the second best, and it was bird's celtics, by far, that struggled the most.
Taking it back to Kareem, I think this kind of sorting can probably be applied defensively.
At the very bottom you have players whose defense limits their ability to be utilized offensively(Harden needing to be benched vs the Clippers comes to mind, Kyrie falls here at certain points).
You then have people who are negatives but can be compensated for and stay on the floor(luka, prime harden, nash).
A tier up you have players who can be additive situationally(at the low end you have curry/magic who have positive value at points in certain contexts, at the high end you have the likes of wade, jordan, cp3 who will add something in nearly any game even if they can't affect every possession or lift a team's overall d-rating by several points)
A tier up from there you have players who can move the needle situationally(at the top players like Kiki, Pippen and Lebron seem to consistently influence the quality of their defenses they play on, while I think someone like Kawhi shifts between needle mover to "additive situationally" because he lacks both the coaching/paint-protection that can effect nearly every possesion in a given game).
And then I think Kareem slots into the bottom of "will always move the needle alot"(4 point shift year after year after year) where his ability to protect the paint pretty much garuntees the type of influence Pippen can only manage for stretches, and Lebron only generates facing small-ball opponents), At the top of all this is Russell who "basically garuntees goat defense regardless of help"
I can expound on this if asked, but to keep things short, I think this grouping tracks with what we can observe when
I think Jordan and Kareem both are really the "best version" of the offensive archetypes they embody(low turnover economy and decent vision help Jordan and Kareem respectively), but those archetypes have specific deficits that limit what they can do offensively(running the offense/top tier passing and decision making for Jordan. Since Jordan is a much better ball-handler who can at least function as the primary guy, I think Jordan rightly should be considered a notch higher on the offensive spectrum, but I feel the offensive gap is probably smaller than the defensive gap with the offensive difference being more of "how much do I need to influence things this way" while defense is more like "I fundementally can effect the game on a level you can't".
If i reference all this with my interpretation of "discernible influece of winning"(I know you don't weigh that too highly but humor me), Russell really looks on a tier on his own(at least in terms of "prime") while monopolizing everything on the side of the court that mattered for the 60's(thereby basically acheiving "I will always win no matter what"), you have Lebron scoring near the top on one and high on the other(best impact profile post russell imo) and then Kareem scoring near the top at maybe the less volatile side(which to your point makes him maybe "least dependent on help") and high on the other(2nd best impact profile post-russell imo and an outside argument for best)
Jordan's "impact" profile is more in-line with the likes of Duncan, Hakeem, KG, Magic, ect. and I think that reflects him being potentially game-changing as opposed to season-determining on one end while not quite being able to do everything on the other.
It's hard for me to ascertain who needs more to achieve a ceiling, so I'd rather root my assessment by trying to derive a baseline with the assumption players can fluctuate up and down and that both Kareem and Jordan have a proclivity to fluctuate up(Jordan's teams operated like contenders in the postseason when they didn't really play like that in the regular season(box-production scaled up), and Kareem has achieved a similar effect by just going crazy in 74 and 77(Kareem also holds up the best of any scorer against elite defenses))
