RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #3 (Michael Jordan)

[f4p]

one thing i never really see brought up with russell and wilt is the sheer number of possessions they got in their average game.

not in terms of their raw stats or anything, but the extra impact that allows for. if you are better than other people, you want more possessions to apply your impact.

and this isn't the same as some other era-relative boosts. we can debate if the 60's being a decade of atrocious shooting made bill russell's inside defensive impact higher in a way it never would have been again later in nba history, but the extra possessions are just a background fact of life no one else ever got to take advantage of. you can't IQ or scheme your way to changing how the entire league works.

wilt was famously an ironman, but bill russell played 48 minutes in over 2/3 of his career playoffs games. he played 40 minutes in 88% of them. averaged 45.4 mpg.

the average FGA and FTA during bill's run seems is about 102 and 36. that's about 118 possessions per game by FGA+0.44*FTA. the only thing missing is adding TOV and subtracting ORB. but at no point in history have turnovers been lower than ORB, and the first year they were tracked (1974), the differential was the largest at about 6. all video evidence i've seen suggest the 60's would have been similarly lopsided with turnovers. so there was likely on the order of more than 120 possessions. in games where bill and wilt were playing almost every minute.

compare that to someone like duncan, who if we just go with his first 10 years, played 40 mpg in the playoffs in a league with a 94.2 pace. i get russell having 45% more playoff possessions per game. so he's almost getting 1.5 games worth of impact compared to a game for a modern player. that's a huge effect on helping your team win. and not one any modern player can possibly be expected to change, as plenty of guys back then were playing huge minutes and the whole league was playing at a tremendous pace. it's basically just a 50% era boost for great players. and should be accounted for.

[lessthanjake]

one thing i never really see brought up with russell and wilt is the sheer number of possessions they got in their average game.

not in terms of their raw stats or anything, but the extra impact that allows for. if you are better than other people, you want more possessions to apply your impact.

and this isn't the same as some other era-relative boosts. we can debate if the 60's being a decade of atrocious shooting made bill russell's inside defensive impact higher in a way it never would have been again later in nba history, but the extra possessions are just a background fact of life no one else ever got to take advantage of. you can't IQ or scheme your way to changing how the entire league works.

wilt was famously an ironman, but bill russell played 48 minutes in over 2/3 of his career playoffs games. he played 40 minutes in 88% of them. averaged 45.4 mpg.

the average FGA and FTA during bill's run seems is about 102 and 36. that's about 118 possessions per game by FGA+0.44*FTA. the only thing missing is adding TOV and subtracting ORB. but at no point in history have turnovers been lower than ORB, and the first year they were tracked (1974), the differential was the largest at about 6. all video evidence i've seen suggest the 60's would have been similarly lopsided with turnovers. so there was likely on the order of more than 120 possessions. in games where bill and wilt were playing almost every minute.

compare that to someone like duncan, who if we just go with his first 10 years, played 40 mpg in the playoffs in a league with a 94.2 pace. i get russell having 45% more playoff possessions per game. so he's almost getting 1.5 games worth of impact compared to a game for a modern player. that's a huge effect on helping your team win. and not one any modern player can possibly be expected to change, as plenty of guys back then were playing huge minutes and the whole league was playing at a tremendous pace. it's basically just a 50% era boost for great players. and should be accounted for.

That’s actually a really good point, I think. The chances of the better team winning goes up the higher the pace, because it’s just a higher sample size of possessions, which makes each individual game be less statistically random in outcome. Russell played in an era with about 120-130 pace, and later eras (including Jordan’s) tended to have more like 90-100 pace. This actually genuinely would’ve made it a bit easier for the guy on the best team to consistently win in Russell’s era than in another era.

[f4p]

one thing i never really see brought up with russell and wilt is the sheer number of possessions they got in their average game.

not in terms of their raw stats or anything, but the extra impact that allows for. if you are better than other people, you want more possessions to apply your impact.

and this isn't the same as some other era-relative boosts. we can debate if the 60's being a decade of atrocious shooting made bill russell's inside defensive impact higher in a way it never would have been again later in nba history, but the extra possessions are just a background fact of life no one else ever got to take advantage of. you can't IQ or scheme your way to changing how the entire league works.

wilt was famously an ironman, but bill russell played 48 minutes in over 2/3 of his career playoffs games. he played 40 minutes in 88% of them. averaged 45.4 mpg.

the average FGA and FTA during bill's run seems is about 102 and 36. that's about 118 possessions per game by FGA+0.44*FTA. the only thing missing is adding TOV and subtracting ORB. but at no point in history have turnovers been lower than ORB, and the first year they were tracked (1974), the differential was the largest at about 6. all video evidence i've seen suggest the 60's would have been similarly lopsided with turnovers. so there was likely on the order of more than 120 possessions. in games where bill and wilt were playing almost every minute.

compare that to someone like duncan, who if we just go with his first 10 years, played 40 mpg in the playoffs in a league with a 94.2 pace. i get russell having 45% more playoff possessions per game. so he's almost getting 1.5 games worth of impact compared to a game for a modern player. that's a huge effect on helping your team win. and not one any modern player can possibly be expected to change, as plenty of guys back then were playing huge minutes and the whole league was playing at a tremendous pace. it's basically just a 50% era boost for great players. and should be accounted for.

That’s actually a really good point, I think. The chances of the better team winning goes up the higher the pace, because it’s just a higher sample size of possessions, which makes each individual game be less statistically random in outcome. Russell played in an era with about 120-130 pace, and later eras (including Jordan’s) tended to have more like 90-100 pace. This actually genuinely would’ve made it a bit easier for the guy on the best team to consistently win in Russell’s era than in another era.

i'm not entirely sure of the best way to model it. russell's team's played an average playoff series with an advantage of 3.5 SRS. if i look at the difference in a 7 game series and 5 game series (40% more possessions), they get a 2.5% absolute boost. for 50% more possessions it might be 3%. over russell's 29 playoff series, that could result in 1 more series win. so maybe not a huge boost, but the story would probably be different if russell was 10/13 and not 11/13.

now if russell himself is more like a +7 who effectively plays like a +10.5, maybe a little more effect than 1 series, but someone better at statistics would probably need to figure that out.

[HeartBreakKid]

one thing i never really see brought up with russell and wilt is the sheer number of possessions they got in their average game.

not in terms of their raw stats or anything, but the extra impact that allows for. if you are better than other people, you want more possessions to apply your impact.

and this isn't the same as some other era-relative boosts. we can debate if the 60's being a decade of atrocious shooting made bill russell's inside defensive impact higher in a way it never would have been again later in nba history, but the extra possessions are just a background fact of life no one else ever got to take advantage of. you can't IQ or scheme your way to changing how the entire league works.

wilt was famously an ironman, but bill russell played 48 minutes in over 2/3 of his career playoffs games. he played 40 minutes in 88% of them. averaged 45.4 mpg.

the average FGA and FTA during bill's run seems is about 102 and 36. that's about 118 possessions per game by FGA+0.44*FTA. the only thing missing is adding TOV and subtracting ORB. but at no point in history have turnovers been lower than ORB, and the first year they were tracked (1974), the differential was the largest at about 6. all video evidence i've seen suggest the 60's would have been similarly lopsided with turnovers. so there was likely on the order of more than 120 possessions. in games where bill and wilt were playing almost every minute.

compare that to someone like duncan, who if we just go with his first 10 years, played 40 mpg in the playoffs in a league with a 94.2 pace. i get russell having 45% more playoff possessions per game. so he's almost getting 1.5 games worth of impact compared to a game for a modern player. that's a huge effect on helping your team win. and not one any modern player can possibly be expected to change, as plenty of guys back then were playing huge minutes and the whole league was playing at a tremendous pace. it's basically just a 50% era boost for great players. and should be accounted for.

That’s actually a really good point, I think. The chances of the better team winning goes up the higher the pace, because it’s just a higher sample size of possessions, which makes each individual game be less statistically random in outcome. Russell played in an era with about 120-130 pace, and later eras (including Jordan’s) tended to have more like 90-100 pace. This actually genuinely would’ve made it a bit easier for the guy on the best team to consistently win in Russell’s era than in another era.

It wouldn't make it easier but it would give more evidence of their ability to influence games.

[One_and_Done]

I don't want to focus overly on stats, but just to compare Duncan vs Hakeem.

98-07 Duncan: 31.3 points, 17 rebounds, 4.5 assists per 100, 554. TS %, and a 94 drtg/109 ortg

Hakeem 86-95: 31.4, 16, 3.5 per 100, 557 TS%, 97 drtg/110 ortg

So it favours Duncan. But to be fair, how about playoffs?

98-07 Duncan: 32.3/17/4.8 per 100, 560 TS%, 97drtg/111 ortg

86-95 Hakeem: 35.6/14.7/4.3 575 TS% 101drtg/114 ortg

So the playoffs is much more balanced. The problem is even that is misleading, because Duncan is doing that over a much bigger sample. Most of Hakeem's games happen during the 93-95 peak period. Then there's the context. Duncan is doing all this while carrying his team to lofty heights beyond the talent he has. Most of Hakeem's seasons in this stretch are poor seasons in comparison, and include plenty of padding in 1st round losses to weak foes.

Hakeem's big advantage is supposed to be the stats, but when looking at the context and adjusting for pace they don't look so great v.s Duncan.

[iggymcfrack]

I'll save the Hakeem rebuttal for next thread, but I'd just suggest people look at his MVP results before 1993 to get a flavour for where he was rated at the time. Anyone suggesting he was better all-time than Bird or Magic in 1992 would have been told he was crazy. People didn't even think he was better than guys like Barkley. I have Hakeem at #7 all-time so I'm not down on him, but for most of his career he was not the calibre of player to be discussed quite yet.

After Hakeem gets in I'll be voting for Curry probably, along with KG and Bird. Then it gets more interesting.

It could be an evidence that Hakeem magically became an all-time great player in his 30s... or that people didn't pay attention to a small market team with no media coverage and lack of postseason success.

If anyone honestly believe that Hakeem wasn't MVP caliber player in the late 1980s, I suggest rewatching a few random Houston games from that era and pay attention to his defensive effort, because it was nothing short of incredible what he was capable of during that time.

Guys never get credit as a top, top player until they win a title. The best player of all-time had the best season of his career in 2009 and people were still arguing whether he was better than Kobe or not. It's why most people wouldn't actually admit Jokic was the best player in the league until this playoff run.

[iggymcfrack]

I don't want to focus overly on stats, but just to compare Duncan vs Hakeem.

98-07 Duncan: 31.3 points, 17 rebounds, 4.5 assists per 100, 554. TS %, and a 94 drtg/109 ortg

Hakeem 86-95: 31.4, 16, 3.5 per 100, 557 TS%, 97 drtg/110 ortg

So it favours Duncan. But to be fair, how about playoffs?

98-07 Duncan: 32.3/17/4.8 per 100, 560 TS%, 97drtg/111 ortg

86-95 Hakeem: 35.6/14.7/4.3 575 TS% 101drtg/114 ortg

So the playoffs is much more balanced. The problem is even that is misleading, because Duncan is doing that over a much bigger sample. Most of Hakeem's games happen during the 93-95 peak period. Then there's the context. Duncan is doing all this while carrying his team to lofty heights beyond the talent he has. Most of Hakeem's seasons in this stretch are poor seasons in comparison, and include plenty of padding in 1st round losses to weak foes.

Hakeem's big advantage is supposed to be the stats, but when looking at the context and adjusting for pace they don't look so great v.s Duncan.

I thought Hakeem's big advantage was supposed to be that he's a better defender. Wouldn't he probably be #2 by consensus behind Russell? I mean Duncan was an all-time defender too, but if Hakeem's #2 and Duncan's #7 or something, that can still be very significant. Like if Russell can get a big enough boost over Hakeem for his defense to be a GOAT candidate when he's a MUCH worse offensive player and only one spot higher on the ladder, why shouldn't Hakeem get a solid boost for his defensive edge over Duncan?

[One_and_Done]

Weird that in the samples I just provided Hakeem has the worse Drtg if he's a better defender.

[f4p]

Weird that in the samples I just provided Hakeem has the worse Drtg if he's a better defender.

DRtg is very heavily influenced by the overall team DRtg, with some extra points thrown in for rebounds and steals and blocks. but team rating is a big part of it. not a terrible idea with the limited box score data, but still making you somewhat beholden to your teammates. so if, say, one of hakeem or duncan had played with david robinson for half of their sample, still one of the best rim protectors in the league right up until the end, that would help them. or if, say, one of hakeem or duncan had played with, just spitballing here, the best perimeter defender in the league in bruce bowen for most of that stretch, that would also benefit them. and of course, if you had some sort of defensive guru coach who could even coach a #1 defense the year after you retire, now things would really be cooking. and of course, if one of them had played most of that sample during the most efficient era in nba history and the other had played during some of the worst offensive seasons in the 3 point era, that would also drag the absolute number lower. but i can't see one of these guys getting all of those advantages in this comparison.

[f4p]

Nomination of Steph Curry

He does not make my top 4, but I want to nominate Steph Curry—who I think needs to start being discussed soon in this project.

i'm not sure how is he beating hakeem, shaq, duncan, or magic. all guys with longevity advantage, even magic. and big time playoff performers vs the decliner that is steph. and it's hard to say he's really got an argument over wilt. and personally i think kobe is just way too far ahead on longevity while being fairly playoff resilient. and i would think this board is going to pick KG ahead.

Steph data in spoiler

Spoiler:

What strikes me about Steph is to look at the #1 vote in this project, which was overwhelmingly for LeBron James. There were many reasons LeBron got those votes, but one major rationale consistently mentioned was LeBron’s dominance of advanced statistics in the data-ball era. And I think it’s important for us to recognize that prime Steph Curry actually outshined LeBron James in this regard. Some examples:

Steph Curry’s Five-Year RAPM ranking - NBAshotcharts

- 2011-2016: 3rd
- 2012-2017: 3rd
- 2013-2018: 1st
- 2014-2019: 1st
- 2015-2020: 1st
- 2016-2021: 1st
- 2017-2022: 1st
- 2018-2023: 5th

This is clearly dominant from Steph. In reference to #1 all time LeBron, Steph is above LeBron in this RAPM measure for every time period starting with 2013-2018 (and is barely below in the first two time periods).

Steph Curry’s Regular-Season RAPM - Basketball-Analytics.Gitlab

- 2013-2014: 7th
- 2014-2015: 3rd
- 2015-2016: 2nd
- 2016-2017: 1st
- 2017-2018: 1st
- 2018-2019: 3rd

Again, incredible performance in this measure from Steph. For reference again, he is ahead of LeBron every single one of those years (the measure doesn’t go past 2018-2019).

Steph Curry’s Playoffs RAPM - Basketball-Analytics.Gitlab

- 2013-2014: 58th
- 2014-2015: 2nd
- 2015-2016: 9th
- 2016-2017: 1st
- 2017-2018: 3rd
- 2018-2019: 7th

This is really great from Steph, and, again, he is ahead of LeBron in all but two of those playoffs (2013-2014 and 2015-2016).

Steph Curry’s Real-Plus-Minus

- 2013-2014: 2nd
- 2014-2015: 1st
- 2015-2016: 1st
- 2016-2017: 1st
- 2017-2018: 2nd
- 2018-2019: 1st
- 2019-2020: N/A
- 2020-2021: 1st
- 2021-2022: 3rd
- 2022-2023: 29th

Not my favorite stat, but Steph Curry is dominant again, and is ahead of LeBron every year but one (ironically, 2022-2023). And, even just leaving aside looking at the years of Steph’s prime, if you look at their entire careers and weight their RPM each year by the minutes they played and then take out their rookie seasons (the one year where they both had negative RPM scores), Steph has a higher career average RPM than LeBron (6.92 for Steph vs. 6.87 for LeBron).

Steph Curry’s RAPTOR (Regular Season + Playoffs)

- 2013-2014: 2nd
- 2014-2015: 1st
- 2015-2016: 1st
- 2016-2017: 2nd
- 2017-2018: 4th
- 2018-2019: 4th
- 2019-2020: N/A
- 2020-2021: 6th
- 2021-2022: 5th
- 2022-2023: 7th

This is extremely consistently high performance, and Steph was above LeBron in RAPTOR every one of those seasons (except 2019-2020, which Steph missed). And if you weight the RAPTOR score each season by minutes played, Curry’s average RAPTOR score in this time period was over 40% higher than LeBron’s average RAPTOR score (8.68 for Curry vs. 6.18 for LeBron). Indeed, LeBron did not have any year with as high a RAPTOR as Steph Curry’s *average*.

Steph Curry’s RAPTOR (just Playoffs)

- 2013-2014: 3rd
- 2014-2015: 8th
- 2015-2016: 18th
- 2016-2017: 3rd
- 2017-2018: 9th
- 2018-2019: 14th
- 2019-2020: N/A
- 2020-2021: N/A
- 2021-2022: 6th
- 2022-2023: 16th

This is really consistent performance when dealing with a low sample size of the playoffs (so a very noisy stat). Even in the playoffs, Steph is above LeBron every one of those years except 2015-2016. If you do a weighted-average by minutes played, LeBron actually comes out ahead, but they’re essentially equal (8.4 for LeBron vs. 8.3 for Steph).

Steph Curry’s LEBRON score

- 2013-2014: 3rd
- 2014-2015: 1st
- 2015-2016: 2nd
- 2016-2017: 1st
- 2017-2018: 2nd
- 2018-2019: 7th
- 2019-2020: N/A
- 2020-2021: 7th
- 2021-2022: 6th
- 2022-2023: 17th

Again, this is consistently great, and for reference he is above LeBron in 6 of the 9 seasons here where he played. His minutes-weighted average in this time period is also higher than LeBron’s, though they’re essentially equal if you narrow down LeBron’s relevant time period to end at 2020-2021.

Steph Curry’s Raw Plus-Minus

Just in raw terms, Steph Curry’s plus minus stats are off the charts. Steph’s career on-off in the regular season is +11.3 (for reference, LeBron’s is +10.8), and his playoffs on-off is +12.0 (LeBron’s is +10.2).

It is also worth noting that, even in the KD years, the Warriors only went 24-23 in regular season games Steph missed. Probably the best team of all time really wasn’t all that great when they played without Steph. And this is because Steph was the major driver of what made them so great. For instance, in those years in regular season + playoffs, the Warriors were actually +9.54 in net rating with Steph on the court and no Durant or Draymond—which is really good and also substantially higher than the Warriors’ net rating with Durant and Draymond on without Steph (+5.43).

Some Notes on Steph’s Defense

A lot of objection to Steph relates to defense. But, to begin with, defensive deficiencies would affect impact metrics, so they’re already priced into the above numbers. I also think a lot of the discourse around Steph’s defense is a bit misguided, because people mistake teams hunting Steph on defense for evidence that Steph is a weak defender—when really what’s going on is that teams want to hunt Steph so that he can’t rest on defense, in an effort to make him too tired to destroy them offensively.

I use as an example the Cavaliers in those finals—which was a team that hunted Steph a lot. They hunted Steph, but the Cavs did not actually produce efficient offense by their standards in those finals. They usually dipped (as did the Rockets—who faced the Warriors multiple times in the playoffs and tried the same tactic and typically had catastrophic drops in offensive efficiency). And there’s reason to believe this was in part because of hunting Steph being very ineffective, not in spite of hunting Steph working. Specifically, we have data that shows us that actually, in those finals, the Cavs shot a worse FG% when defended by Steph than they did when defended by any other Warriors player that got meaningful minutes. Hunting Steph was not actually successful:

For reference, though, the NBA’s website actually has data on how teams shot when defended by specific players. See this link and you can filter down to the 2015-2016 playoffs for the Warriors specifically when facing the Cavaliers: ‪https://www.nba.com/stats/players/defense-dash-overall?Season=2015-16‬. You’ll find that the Cavaliers had a 40.5% FG% when defended by Steph in the 2016 Finals. Which is the lowest for any Warriors player who played meaningful minutes, except for Bogut and Livingston. This is a bit of a noisy stat of course, but it is surely yet more evidence that I’m right on this. And this was not just limited to that 2016 finals. Overall, across all those finals against the Cavs, we can derive from that database that the Cavaliers shot just 36.0% from the field when defended by Steph. For reference, the corresponding number for Iguodala over those finals was 44.4%. The corresponding number for Klay over those finals was 43.1%. The number for Draymond in those finals was 41.7%. For Livingston, it was 39.2% overall. In the two finals Durant was in, the Cavs shot 48.7% when defended by Durant. In the two prior finals, the Cavs shot 46.4% when defended by Harrison Barnes, and 46.9% when defended by Leandro Barbosa. The Cavs shot a total of 39.1% when defended by Bogut in the finals Bogut played in. The Cavs objectively fared *particularly* badly in those finals when defended by Steph. Indeed, in those finals overall, the Cavs shot a worse FG% when defended by Steph than they did when defended by any other Warriors player that got meaningful minutes, and it’s not even close.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that prime Steph was actually the league’s data ball king. He was dominant in metric after metric, including pure impact metrics and metrics like RAPTOR that have a box score component. And that’s in an era with the guy that this board overwhelmingly voted #1 all time (and who I have as my #2 all time), including when that #1 guy was in his prime years still. I don’t see how this shouldn’t lead to Steph being ranked really highly here.

Now, I should note that this is not an argument that Steph Curry should be above LeBron all time. I don’t think he should, because he does not have LeBron’s freakish longevity. I simply use LeBron James as a comparison because LeBron is so great. With Steph, we are talking about someone who was good enough to usurp the data-ball crown from the #1 player of all time (or #2 by my personal estimation) while that player was still in his prime. And, in doing so of course, Steph also won 4 titles, led some of the best teams ever (both with and without Durant—indeed, LeBron managing to beat Steph’s Warriors in 2016 is a huge part of LeBron’s case for #1 all time, which surely says a huge amount about Steph too). Furthermore, for what it’s worth, this is also all in the most recent era of basketball—which is surely the most talented one, what with the game going more and more global. I don’t see how someone who has done all this shouldn’t be getting into the discussion at this point. His prime has not been *super* long (though it’s still going I think), and that’d be the biggest knock on him, but at this point we are actually a full decade into his prime. It’s not a short timespan anymore. And, in that time, what he has achieved in terms of impact is extremely difficult for anyone to match, and his team success has been incredible.

steph has always been a data ball darling. but sometimes it gets a little ridiculous. a stat like RPM thinks he was the best basically every year, no matter what was going on. like are we really supposed to take seriously him being first in 2019? or why would he be 3rd in 2022 when he had a very down regular season, maybe the worst since he was a rookie or at least since he was an all-star. if a stat becomes performance-independent, then i'm not sure how much we can trust it.

then of course there's the draymond problem, where he shares such a huge majority of his minutes with another impact god that it's hard to know who's helping who and how much is just that they are an incredible fit, and steph would never look this good in other circumstances. similar in some ways to duncan playing next to ginobili while ginobili is tearing up the impact metrics. and then finally, lots of regular season things like steph. but he falls off quite a bit in the playoffs. outside of 2017 and 2022, his numbers fall hard. and team performance is hard to reconcile with the impact numbers when you see his 67 win team almost lose the finals to an injured lebron team, even having to switch up their starting lineup to make it through the finals. or his 73-9 team lose 9 games just in the playoffs. or his 2018 team that seemed invincible almost lose to the rockets with steph's number taking a big dip. or why he can be so impactful and play with draymond but not even make the playoffs in 2021.

hopefully i get a chance to finish my playoff resiliency spreadsheet, but you have years like 2016 and 2018 where steph makes the finals (and even wins one of them) while having some of the largest drop-offs ever for top 50-ish players who make the finals. 2016 is the worst drop out of 178 playoffs i looked at. 2018 is 8th worst, even with 2 of his 3 opponents being terrible defenses (2022 boston is the only really elite defense he's ever faced in the playoffs, although he did do well). he combines large statistical drops with winning series as a huge favorite (4th easiest out of 41) and losing as a small underdog (8th easiest out of 41).

[LukaTheGOAT]

Weird that in the samples I just provided Hakeem has the worse Drtg if he's a better defender.

Hakeem also has the higher ORTG in the samples you posted, so do you consider him a better offensive player?

[f4p]

A big reason he wouldn't have been consider better than them all-time is because he wouldn't even have a decade of play under his belt by 92 unlike Bird and Magic.

Voting results for MVP are heavily influenced by team success and his defense was probably underrated some years (see 1988).

If people want to take the position that Hakeem was just flat out underrated by his contemporaries that’s fine. Sometimes players are. I think the stats, the commentary of the time, and my own observations, are aligned in suggesting that in 1993 everything clicked for Hakeem.

so what happened from 86-88? we see him pull off one of the great upsets in league history, in taking down Showtime in 1986.
this wasn't some weak version of the lakers. they were the defending champs. they won the next 2 championships. they were 62-20 and perfectly healthy (afaik) in 1986. and hakeem wasn't just along for the ride. he put up 31/11/4 in a series where he somehow had way more steals (11) than turnovers (7). with the 1st team center in kareem on the other side. he even gives the '86 celtics 2 of their 3 playoffs losses (magic and bird lost 9 playoff games in 1986, and 6 were to hakeem).

he then follows it up with even better per 100 numbers across the board the next season, in a 10 game playoffs that isn't significantly shorter than duncan's 2006 you reference later. and then of course in 1988 he basically shatters all of the playoff box score records in the 1st round. PER of 39 was the record and still is (minimum 50 minutes). WS48 of 0.385 was the record, only eclipsed by 2009 lebron. BPM of 14.5 was the record, only eclipsed by 1991 jordan and 2009 lebron. even if he had followed it up with his worst box series of the next 6 years (1990), he still would have been at 29.8 PER, 0.233 WS48, and 9.2 BPM. in other words, still great. and that's just assuming he plays poorly in the 2nd round for no reason.

all his best playoff numbers are actually from this 3 year span, not 1993-95. so the idea he was a 3 year wonder doesn't make much sense. his loss to the 7th seed as a 6th seed in 1987 will be the last time he's ever upset in the playoffs. and of course, he had already beaten the 3rd seed so his team went further than it was supposed to. the only time his team didn't at least match it's seed in performance was his rookie season. then never again for 17 more years.

Whether he became a better passer as some suggested, or a better leader, or started playing harder/more consistent, that is the opinion many people have. I am one of them, and I think the stats tend to point to that. His regular season numbers take a marked upturn, and his playoffs numbers are consistently better (not “they were always this good if we look only at this limited sample from a weird angle).

1991 and 1992 are probably the easiest things to ding hakeem for. and i think fairly. his regular season numbers take a dip.
although based on 1993, arguably because the coach thought taking the ball from hakeem was a good idea which Rudy T immediately proved devastatingly wrong when he took over. he even misses the playoffs and has a stretch of 25 missed games in 1991 where the rockets go 15-10 without him (though they did go 12-2 right when he got back). similar to kareem's missed playoffs in the 70's, it feels like these 2 years set hakeem's floor low enough that at least some questions can be asked. and keep me from really considering him with the Mount Rushmore Big 4. even the roster was somewhat similar to the championship roster at this point, so we have to ask how much of the improvement was just Rudy T implementing a much better system and why hakeem didn't do more in 1991 and 1992. of course, if hakeem had a Pop in his corner all the time, would he need to wait 9 years for a decent system?

I tend to think improved attitude/leadership/decision making and increased consistency played a part, but I’m open to other explanations. I don’t really care why it happened, only that it did. I think a lot of people forget that Hakeem was seen as a cancer with a bad attitude before 1993, and had been trying to force his way out of town. Obviously by 1995 he was seen as a mature player, who embodied humility and veteran leadership.

people tend to seem like cancers with bad attitudes when they play with less talent than any other great player ever. by expected championships, totaling up hakeem's entire career, he was expected to win.... 0.1 titles. less than carmelo anthony, before you tell me it was only because hakeem wasn't good enough to make it higher.

What I don’t think you can argue is that he was always seen as a top level player, and that he just wasn’t being recognized because of team wins and the like. Here are Hakeem’s MVP finishes from 1985 to 1992:

1985: 12th (behind players including Terry Cummings, Bernard King, Moncrief, Isiah Thomas, Calvin Natt, Alex English, and his own team mate Ralph Sampson)
1986: 4th (behind Bird, Dominique Wilkins whose Hawks only won 1 more game than Houston and Magic)
1987: 7th (behind Magic, Jordan, Bird, McHale (Bird’s sidekick), Wilkins and Barkley; Barkley’s team only won 3 more games than Houston)
1988: 7th (behind Jordan, Bird, Magic, Barkley, Clyde and Wilkins; Barkley’s Sixers won only 36 games, 10 less than Houston, and Wilkins Hawks only won 4 more games).
1989: 5th (behind Magic, Jordan, Karl Malone and Ewing; Karl and Ewing’s teams only won slightly more than Hakeem’s Rockets)
1990: 7th (behind Magic, Barkley, Jordan, Malone, Ewing and rookie David Robinson; Ewing’s Knicks won 4 more games)
1991: 18th (behind a cast of characters that included Barkley, Malone, Clyde, KJ, Wilkins, Terry Porter, Ewing, Stockton, Thomas, Parish, Dumars, and even Kenny Smith, Hakeem’s own team mate!)
1992: N/A (didn’t place; even Barkley placed this year, on 35 win team while demanding a trade and trying to eat his way out of town)

so your contention is guys like barkley and clyde and ewing were better for almost a decade, then hakeem just magically murdered them all in the playoffs when he finally got a competent team around him? doesn't it seem more likely that the guy whose best numbers actually came all the way back in 86-88 was just waiting to get another half decent team around him before resuming his playoff mastery?

I don’t even agree with all those votes`, but it tells you where the public perception of Hakeem was at the time. Being on a bad or mediocre team didn’t stop other lesser players getting votes, so it’s not about Hakeem being out of the spotlight because his team was out of the spotlight. The voters knew who Hakeem was, he’d made the finals in 1986, they had seen him perform on the highest stage. Obviously Hakeem only lost to great teams in the playoffs, except that he lost to the 53 win Aguirre Mavs, the 39 win Sonics led by Xavier McDaniel, the 41 win Dantley Jazz, and the 47 win Sonics led by Dale Ellis, and those were not great teams. He didn’t even make the playoffs in 1992. Then contrast that with what Duncan did with lamentable support casts in 2001-2003.

lamentable supporting casts don't have a top 5 rim protector and the best defensive guard in the game, in an era perfectly suited for those guys to shutdown all the isoball of the era. along with a GOAT-candidate defensive coach to put it all together. those supporting casts may be around the level of hakeem's 1994 cast (well, not 2001, robinson is still too good), and of course hakeem won 58 games and a title with that one.

From 85 to 92 Hakeem’s pp 100 hovered between 27 and 31. From 93 to 96 he scored 33 to 35 pp 100. That’s a substantial increase, and his TS% went higher than it had previously been while he upped his scoring. In the same 1985 to 1992 period he generally had about 3 assists per 100, that climbed to 4.5 assists per 100 the next 4 years. Hakeem’s playoffs are all over the map, but on the whole the per 100 numbers when compared to Duncan’s prime from 98 to 07 suggest Duncan was better.

they're all over the map as in they consistently look great? he's at 26.0 PER, 0.223 WS48, and 7.2 BPM and 58.0 TS%. that's pretty good. duncan's 99-07 is 27.0 PER, 0.227 WS48, 7.6 BPM and 56.0 TS%. so duncan's best stretch is maybe a tiny bit ahead of hakeem's stretch that you label as all over the map and a period you say shows that he wasn't that good for most of his career.

He also did it over a huge sample, whereas some of Hakeem’s crazy numbers come in 1st round losses to meh teams. Hakeem put up huge stats in a 4 game 1st round loss to the Aguirre Mavs in 1988. But it’s 4 games. Against the 1988 Mavs. And they lost.

what do you think hakeem could have done to win that series? he scored 37.5 ppg on 64 TS%. he had 16.8 rpg and 2.8 bpg. and had as many steals as turnovers. and broke a bunch of records. if that's not enough, then why even look at what players do. just check who won the series and tell us that player was the better player

His longest pre 1993 sample is the 1986 finals run, and he does post great numbers on that run. But those numbers are worse than comparable Duncan runs during his prime.

Hakeem 1986 playoffs: 34-15 per 100 on 566 TS%
Duncan 2002 -37-19 per 100 on 550 TS%
Duncan 2003 – 31-19 per 100 on 577 TS%
Duncan 2006 – 37-15 per 100 on 625 TS%

but compare favorably to duncan's 30-15 on 57.3 TS% in his 2nd season.

Duncan’s runs are just better than Hakeem, up until 1993 when Hakeem starts posting postseasons that are comparable to Duncan.

how are they better than 1986 and 1987 and 1988? how is a pretty bad 2004 where duncan blows a 2-0 lead while scoring 17.5 ppg on 38% shooting in the final 4 games better than hakeem? how is getting obliterated by the 2001 lakers, by a far worse MOV than any other lakers opponent, so much better than hakeem? and we still haven't gotten to hakeem winning a title with a 2003 duncan level supporting cast one year and then winning the least likely title against the tougher group of opponents ever the next year. and still having an age 34 playoffs that dwarfs duncan's age 34 playoffs (losing to an 8th seed).

Unfortunately for Hakeem, he only did it for about 3 years, and I think Duncan was still better. I’m particularly troubled by the Sonics beating the Rockets in 93 and 96 by pushing the boundaries of the illegal defence rules to mess up Hakeem’s offense.

while the near 100% doubling in 1996 did affect hakeem and maybe give him his worst series ever, can you say who it wouldn't affect? it's not like they just hedged at hakeem and made life a little difficult. it was just straight hard doubles on basically every possession, daring the rockets role players to have an answer. and it's not like the 1996 sonics were a mediocre team that just proved how to stop hakeem with a scheme. they were a 64 win, +7.4 SRS team with a -5.5 defense that finished 2nd. they held stockton to 33 points through the first 5 games of the WCF. they gave jordan easily his worst finals performance. part of why they could double hakeem is they were stupid quick on the perimeter to recover to everything and deep enough to not get tired with seemingly every 6'6 athletic wing in the nba who couldn't shoot on their team.

and it doesn't really seem to apply much in 1993. hakeem averaged 23 ppg on 52% shooting and was getting 4.7 apg as a result of all the doubles. maybe too many turnovers, but this certainly isn't some level of series that duncan never had offensively.

and in 1997, with barkley around to finally give him some help, he averaged 21.7 ppg on 57.5% shooting.

It suggests to me Hakeem, who struggled consistently against the Sonics, would have had a reduced impact in today’s game where there is no illegal D protection, and teams have anti-post defences that are designed to prevent the outlet pass and pressure them in ways that frankly didn’t exist in Hakeem’s day. All Hakeem had to do was hold the ball, and wait for the hard double to come. If it did, easy pass. If not, try to score. These days bigs have to make so many more adjustments and decisions, and be so much better under different types of pressure defences.

joel embiid, hardly an amazing passer, just won mvp. and one of hakeem's biggest strengths was that he didn't hold the ball to wait for the hard double. he is probably tops in nba history in terms of time from when he caught the ball to how quickly he started making a move. oftentimes starting as he landed from the catch. maybe it affects hakeem, but if he grew up around it and got to play in an era where people try to defend the post with small forwards, i'm thinking he'd do fairly well.

But looking at longer samples that adjust for pace, Duncan’s numbers are better anyhow. Take Hakeem’s best 10 year stretch, and compare it to Duncan from 98-07, and per 100 it’s probably going to come out pro-Duncan.

probably? i have hakeem winning playoff box score from age 22-31, with is 1999-2008 for duncan (basically the same as 98-07) and 1985-1994 for hakeem.

I also prefer Duncan’s defence. Hakeem was flasher, getting more blocks. Duncan stopped the blocks from happening in the first place, because the other team wouldn’t go near him a lot of the time. He’s a better man defender for mine too, as highlighted in part by his excellent defense on Shaq in 2002. Hakeem was credited with shutting down Shaq in the 95 finals, but in reality Shaq put up huge numbers, arguably better than Hakeem. Shaq's team wasn’t as good is all.

duncan also had david robinson to guard shaq and certainly wasn't guarding shaq all the time. hakeem's big man help was , uhh, 37 year old charles jones and i guess chucky brown or robert horry. hakeem did probably win a title specifically for having such elite man defense that he destroyed patrick ewing to the tune of a 39 TS% in the finals, one of the worst numbers i've ever heard of for a series.

[One_and_Done]

Weird that in the samples I just provided Hakeem has the worse Drtg if he's a better defender.

Hakeem also has the higher ORTG in the samples you posted, so do you consider him a better offensive player?

I mean I think that's generally conceded; or rather Hakeen was a better one on one scorer. I am not a fanatic with any stats, but what I will note is that in the case of Ortg we have other things we can look at. In the case of Drtg, what's the better defensive stat that existed at the time? Defense is a tough thing to stat.

One thing I'd also repeat is I think Hakeem would be a worse offensive player today, IMO, in a way Duncan would not suffer as much from. I explained this earlier, particularly because Hakeem had the protection of illegal D rules. He also put up his stats in a weaker era, with a worse quality of ball played.

[ShaqAttac]

Seems like you’ve been building up to this by citing NBA shot charts (ignoring the other ones) and gitlab RAPM over and over and over again.

What other ones? The only other one I’m aware of is the Cheema one, but I’m not aware of actual publicly available exact numbers for that (only an unlabeled chart, but maybe the numbers are somewhere), so I couldn’t list specific numbers for that. But that Cheema chart indicates Steph peaked out above LeBron for two five-year spans anyways, so it supports the same point. Am happy for you to point out other RAPM measures that I’m not aware of.

didnt shotchart say old rs bron = peak rs steph for 3 and 1 yr?

i dont think it makes the point you want it to

[lessthanjake]

Nomination of Steph Curry

He does not make my top 4, but I want to nominate Steph Curry—who I think needs to start being discussed soon in this project.

i'm not sure how is he beating hakeem, shaq, duncan, or magic. all guys with longevity advantage, even magic. and big time playoff performers vs the decliner that is steph. and it's hard to say he's really got an argument over wilt. and personally i think kobe is just way too far ahead on longevity while being fairly playoff resilient. and i would think this board is going to pick KG ahead.

The thing with all those guys is that they either don’t have the impact metrics that Steph has or they come from an era where we have a lot less impact-metric data. The data tells us that Steph has been the most impactful player during the strongest era the league has ever seen—even while playing in an era with the #1 all-time player in his prime.

And, of course, in doing so, he won a bunch of titles. He won titles leading possibly the greatest team ever, and he also won a title in 2022 where his supporting cast was relatively mediocre (as title teams go—obviously no team that wins a title *actually* is mediocre). So we have extremely strong signals for him as both an all-time ceiling raiser and an all-time floor raiser.

As for the playoff dropper thing, I think it’s a bit overblown. He’s won 4 titles and made the finals 2 other times. This is not at all a guy without immense playoff success. And his impact metrics in the playoffs are through the roof. Just in raw terms, he has a +12.0 playoff on-off—which is immense. Steph is not Michael Jordan—in the sense that he was not the best and most productive player in every playoff series he played. But these other guys you listed weren’t either. People just don’t remember or think about it much. For instance, let’s take Magic Johnson (who I think I’d personally rank the highest of the names you listed). He had an absolute disaster-class in the 1983 Finals, with 6 turnovers a game and a 51% TS%, leading the Lakers offense to a 99.7 offensive rating in the series despite Kareem actually putting in a pretty solid/efficient performance. It’s mostly forgotten, because the big picture is that Magic was a great player that was highly impactful and won a ton. And the same is true of Steph—who actually never had anything close to as bad a playoff performance as that. I also think we have to realize that teams simply sell out on Steph more in the playoffs. In the playoffs, he sees even more completely wild defensive schemes where the opposing team constantly traps him on the pick and roll miles away from the basket and double him off the ball. It’s a consequence of more intense playoff game-planning. And it does make it harder for him to put up the same numbers in the playoffs, because teams focus so hard on limiting him. But, crucially, it’s just a trade off: sell out hard to try to stop Steph from absolutely catching fire, and consequently give up easy baskets to other Warriors (often by basically allowing Steph to dump it off to Draymond for a 4-on-3—a result that teams essentially willingly take rather than risk allowing Steph any daylight to shoot). The result has been that Steph’s team has done extremely well in the playoffs, and more specifically have done extremely well with him on the court (i.e. +12.0 playoff on-off; +7.6 on court net rating in the playoffs). I find it difficult to conclude that a guy is truly a “playoff dropper” when he has that kind of playoff success and playoff impact profile, especially when the eye test tells me that the respect and fear defenses have for him in the playoffs is completely unreal and blatantly warps the defenses in almost comical ways. Or, if he is a “playoff dropper,” then the level he is dropping from is so high that I don’t think it leads to a negative conclusion about him.

steph has always been a data ball darling. but sometimes it gets a little ridiculous. a stat like RPM thinks he was the best basically every year, no matter what was going on. like are we really supposed to take seriously him being first in 2019? or why would he be 3rd in 2022 when he had a very down regular season, maybe the worst since he was a rookie or at least since he was an all-star. if a stat becomes performance-independent, then i'm not sure how much we can trust it.

I don’t really think it is performance independent in a broad sense. It’s just a consequence of the immense gravity of easily the greatest shooter in the history of a game that is, in the end, about shooting. What his presence on the court (either on ball or off ball) does to defenses is completely absurd, and what these metrics are picking up is the effect of that. It’s not surprising to me that he’d look good in these metrics even in 2021-2022—a season where his shooting percentages were down a bit—because teams didn’t actually stop playing Steph in the same way as before (I assume they correctly intuited that his relative shooting slump was just random and couldn’t be counted on to continue), so his presence still opened up things immensely for his team.

then of course there's the draymond problem, where he shares such a huge majority of his minutes with another impact god that it's hard to know who's helping who and how much is just that they are an incredible fit, and steph would never look this good in other circumstances. similar in some ways to duncan playing next to ginobili while ginobili is tearing up the impact metrics. and then finally, lots of regular season things like steph. but he falls off quite a bit in the playoffs. outside of 2017 and 2022, his numbers fall hard. and team performance is hard to reconcile with the impact numbers when you see his 67 win team almost lose the finals to an injured lebron team, even having to switch up their starting lineup to make it through the finals. or his 73-9 team lose 9 games just in the playoffs. or his 2018 team that seemed invincible almost lose to the rockets with steph's number taking a big dip. or why he can be so impactful and play with draymond but not even make the playoffs in 2021.

Draymond is a great player, and I think is an incredible fit with Steph—as he is a great defender (which is always good) and he’s great at the short-roll 4-on-3 situations that Steph’s presence so often creates. But Steph is the primary driver of that team. Not only could Draymond do essentially nothing for the team the year Steph was out (only even posting a +2.8 on-off on the worst team in the league, alongside a -7.1 on-court net rating), but in general in regular season and playoffs from 2014-2015 through 2022-2023 and excluding that 2019-2020 season, the Warriors have had a +7.19 net rating with Steph on the court and Draymond off, alongside a lower +3.43 net rating with Draymond on the court and Steph off. And that’s not even getting into the fact that Steph started having his incredible impact profile before Draymond was a major player on the team: Steph had a +15.1 on-off and was at or near the very top of the league in impact metrics in 2013-2014, despite Draymond being a bench player. Draymond is certainly a very impactful player (and easily more important than Klay Thompson), but I think it should be obvious that Steph is the primary factor.

As for the stuff about the 67-win team and 73-win team, I’ll say a couple things. First, as to 2014-2015, I think if we are penalizing a guy for being taken to 6 games in the finals and winning, then the standard for the guy is so high that that standard is itself evidence that he belongs above essentially anyone else. Second, I’d say generally that I’m not necessarily a fan of using the 73-win total as a cudgel against Steph. They won that many games primarily because Steph went completely supernova all season. Would Steph be better if he played less well in that regular season and they won much fewer regular season games and then lost in the finals? Surely not. Using it as a cudgel against him is basically judging him against his own standards, not others’. No one else led their team to 73 wins.

As for 2020-2021, not making the playoffs that year obscures a bit that they went 39-33—a winning percentage that is unlucky not to make the playoffs (and would have if not for the play-in), and was enough to make the playoffs for many players we’ve spoken about in this project. And they actually went 37-26 in games Steph played (which is a 48-win pace in a normal-length season). I’d say that if winning at a 48-win pace with *that* team (or 44-win pace if we include all the games, not just the ones he played) is one of the biggest knocks on Steph, then he’s surely in a very good spot. It’s literally a year he was 3rd in MVP voting, despite his team having a mediocre record!

hopefully i get a chance to finish my playoff resiliency spreadsheet, but you have years like 2016 and 2018 where steph makes the finals (and even wins one of them) while having some of the largest drop-offs ever for top 50-ish players who make the finals. 2016 is the worst drop out of 178 playoffs i looked at. 2018 is 8th worst, even with 2 of his 3 opponents being terrible defenses (2022 boston is the only really elite defense he's ever faced in the playoffs, although he did do well). he combines large statistical drops with winning series as a huge favorite (4th easiest out of 41) and losing as a small underdog (8th easiest out of 41).

I mostly addressed this above, so I won’t just repeat what I said above, but I do want to note that I’m not entirely on-board with measuring players based on winning as favorites and losing as underdogs. I get some of your logic for measuring that (that consistently winning as a favorite is how you win titles, etc.). But the method has a pretty natural endogeneity problem. A team’s SRS isn’t some independent factor. The great players in question are a huge factor driving what their team’s regular season SRS is. So what measuring winning as a favorite and whatnot is measuring is basically just how well the team played in the playoffs compared to how well they played in the regular season. So it can help measure whether a star player on that team is a “playoff riser” or “playoff dropper.” But it doesn’t tell us the level they’re rising or dropping from, so it doesn’t give us an absolute basis upon which to compare players. A guy who leads his team to a 73-win season and then drops from that level in the playoffs really isn’t necessarily less good than a guy who leads his team to a 50-win season and doesn’t drop in the playoffs. Indeed, the 73-win player was almost certainly better in the regular season, and we can’t actually be sure about the playoffs based on that measure, because both players are being measured compared to their regular season and their regular seasons weren’t the same.

Put differently, if a guy is so good in the regular season that his team is almost always the SRS favorite, is he really worse than a guy who makes his team the SRS favorite less but has a bit of a better record when he is the favorite? The playoff results for the first guy will almost certainly be better. And, indeed, here we’re talking about a player with immense playoff success, so obviously he was able to make them the favorite so often that they won a ton.

[lessthanjake]

Seems like you’ve been building up to this by citing NBA shot charts (ignoring the other ones) and gitlab RAPM over and over and over again.

What other ones? The only other one I’m aware of is the Cheema one, but I’m not aware of actual publicly available exact numbers for that (only an unlabeled chart, but maybe the numbers are somewhere), so I couldn’t list specific numbers for that. But that Cheema chart indicates Steph peaked out above LeBron for two five-year spans anyways, so it supports the same point. Am happy for you to point out other RAPM measures that I’m not aware of.

didnt shotchart say old rs bron = peak rs steph for 3 and 1 yr?

i dont think it makes the point you want it to

It is pretty well established that RAPM is a noisy stat that is therefore probably better measured in somewhat longer time horizons. As per the data I already provided, Steph is pretty dominant in 5-year spans. We’d expect that dominance to lower as you drill down to smaller and smaller sample sizes that are inherently more statistically random. But that isn’t even really the case (which is telling). Steph is still above LeBron in every 3-year span they have, except for 2012-2015 and 2018-2021. And even in the one-year samples, Steph is ahead every season from 2013-2014 onwards, except for two (and one of those is the 2019-2020 season that Steph barely played in). He’s dominant there no matter what you look at—which is actually pretty remarkable, since consistent domination in a stat even with noisily small sample sizes is pretty unlikely unless someone is just systematically producing much higher numbers in the stat.

[ShaqAttac]

What other ones? The only other one I’m aware of is the Cheema one, but I’m not aware of actual publicly available exact numbers for that (only an unlabeled chart, but maybe the numbers are somewhere), so I couldn’t list specific numbers for that. But that Cheema chart indicates Steph peaked out above LeBron for two five-year spans anyways, so it supports the same point. Am happy for you to point out other RAPM measures that I’m not aware of.

didnt shotchart say old rs bron = peak rs steph for 3 and 1 yr?

i dont think it makes the point you want it to

It is pretty well established that RAPM is a noisy stat that is therefore probably better measured in somewhat longer time horizons. As per the data I already provided, Steph is pretty dominant in 5-year spans. We’d expect that dominance to lower as you drill down to smaller and smaller sample sizes that are inherently more statistically random. But that isn’t even really the case (which is telling). Steph is still above LeBron in every 3-year span they have, except for 2012-2015 and 2018-2021. And even in the one-year samples, Steph is ahead every season from 2013-2014 onwards, except for two (and one of those is the 2019-2020 season that Steph barely played in). He’s dominant there no matter what you look at—which is actually pretty remarkable, since consistent domination in a stat even with noisily small sample sizes is pretty unlikely unless someone is just systematically producing much higher numbers in the stat.

so is it noisy when it makes jordan or curry look bad and not noisy when it makes them look ok?

also if i got this right, shotchart says late-peak bron>steph, old bron close to steph and really old bron>steph?

if anything i think that just looks terrible for steph.

[ShaqAttac]

I don't want to focus overly on stats, but just to compare Duncan vs Hakeem.

98-07 Duncan: 31.3 points, 17 rebounds, 4.5 assists per 100, 554. TS %, and a 94 drtg/109 ortg

Hakeem 86-95: 31.4, 16, 3.5 per 100, 557 TS%, 97 drtg/110 ortg

So it favours Duncan. But to be fair, how about playoffs?

98-07 Duncan: 32.3/17/4.8 per 100, 560 TS%, 97drtg/111 ortg

86-95 Hakeem: 35.6/14.7/4.3 575 TS% 101drtg/114 ortg

So the playoffs is much more balanced. The problem is even that is misleading, because Duncan is doing that over a much bigger sample. Most of Hakeem's games happen during the 93-95 peak period. Then there's the context. Duncan is doing all this while carrying his team to lofty heights beyond the talent he has. Most of Hakeem's seasons in this stretch are poor seasons in comparison, and include plenty of padding in 1st round losses to weak foes.

Hakeem's big advantage is supposed to be the stats, but when looking at the context and adjusting for pace they don't look so great v.s Duncan.

hmmm. i was planning to vote hakeem but this is a p good point. how does duncan and hakeem longetvity comp?

[OhayoKD]

didnt shotchart say old rs bron = peak rs steph for 3 and 1 yr?

i dont think it makes the point you want it to

It is pretty well established that RAPM is a noisy stat that is therefore probably better measured in somewhat longer time horizons. As per the data I already provided, Steph is pretty dominant in 5-year spans. We’d expect that dominance to lower as you drill down to smaller and smaller sample sizes that are inherently more statistically random. But that isn’t even really the case (which is telling). Steph is still above LeBron in every 3-year span they have, except for 2012-2015 and 2018-2021. And even in the one-year samples, Steph is ahead every season from 2013-2014 onwards, except for two (and one of those is the 2019-2020 season that Steph barely played in). He’s dominant there no matter what you look at—which is actually pretty remarkable, since consistent domination in a stat even with noisily small sample sizes is pretty unlikely unless someone is just systematically producing much higher numbers in the stat.

so is it noisy when it makes jordan or curry look bad and not noisy when it makes them look ok?

also if i got this right, shotchart says late-peak bron>steph, old bron close to steph and really old bron>steph?

if anything i think that just looks terrible for steph.

Yeah, don't think calling Steph the data-ball king is really defensible. May as well link a breakdown of how second-stint cleveland and Steph stack up by impact signals:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=106319069#p106319069
Worth noting Lebron's sample here is sunk by 2018 where he played every game while Steph missed half the season.

Of course that by itself doesn't necessarily mean Steph can't be voted 5, but Curry doesn't look comparable to Duncan or KG je or cheema's 25-year set despite playing half as many possessions and looks just as poor in the 5-year stuff. Interesting that in 5-years shotcharts specific Lebron does poorly, but 3-year and 1-year would indicate Lebron as the Impact king I think, especially if we follow how 2009/2010 usually grade out relative to Lebron's later years. Perhaps 2014 and 2018 are sinking things as rs nadirs(which "real" impact would support)

[lessthanjake]

didnt shotchart say old rs bron = peak rs steph for 3 and 1 yr?

i dont think it makes the point you want it to

It is pretty well established that RAPM is a noisy stat that is therefore probably better measured in somewhat longer time horizons. As per the data I already provided, Steph is pretty dominant in 5-year spans. We’d expect that dominance to lower as you drill down to smaller and smaller sample sizes that are inherently more statistically random. But that isn’t even really the case (which is telling). Steph is still above LeBron in every 3-year span they have, except for 2012-2015 and 2018-2021. And even in the one-year samples, Steph is ahead every season from 2013-2014 onwards, except for two (and one of those is the 2019-2020 season that Steph barely played in). He’s dominant there no matter what you look at—which is actually pretty remarkable, since consistent domination in a stat even with noisily small sample sizes is pretty unlikely unless someone is just systematically producing much higher numbers in the stat.

so is it noisy when it makes jordan or curry look bad and not noisy when it makes them look ok?

also if i got this right, shotchart says late-peak bron>steph, old bron close to steph and really old bron>steph?

if anything i think that just looks terrible for steph.

You’re obviously reaching. There’s two three-year windows there where LeBron is ahead of Steph. One of them is the earliest three-year span they have and includes a pre-prime year for Steph. The other is a three-year span that’s basically just a two-year span for Steph since he missed virtually all of one of the seasons in the timeframe. There’s 7 other three-year spans with Steph ahead, including spans that were smack in the middle of LeBron’s prime. Steph is plainly dominant here. And, in the longer 5-year time horizons, LeBron loses the crown to Steph in the middle of LeBron’s prime and never passes Steph again in any 5-year sample again.

And, to be clear, I’ve never said RAPM data is noisy when it looks bad for Steph or MJ. There’s not actually any RAPM data I’m aware of that makes Steph or Jordan look bad, and you’ll actually find that I’ve *repeatedly* caveated *good* RAPM data for Jordan by saying it’s low sample sizes of data and therefore we cannot draw a concrete conclusion from it. You’re not catching me out being hypocritical, but rather are actually highlighting that I’ve been quite consistent on the objective fact of noisy stats even when acknowledging that expressly weakens my overall argument.