One_and_Done wrote:How would people feel about nominating Bob Kurland soon.
If we were doing all pro basketball I'd be considering Kurland probably somewhere in the 30s. Great, but not as great as Mikan and didn't play as much.
But he's not eligible for the project in the same vein as Goose Tatum and Oscar Schmidt. Didn't play in the NBA or its merged leagues.
Echoing what you and beast are saying about the rules. Kurland's ineligible, as are Tatum & Schmidt, but as long as people talk about it earnestly no reason we can't talk about them. Schmidt is much later so I'll leave that for another time if people want to discuss.
I think Tatum is someone definitely worth understanding. He's the one who essentially crystalized the Globetrotters into what they would be from that point onward, but when he played, while he was "chief clown", that was a barnstorming thing after the game was decided. The Globetrotters were one of the top pro teams of the '30s & '40s, and Tatum is probably the single Globetrotter I'd single out as having the best non-NBA/ABA career.
As a 6'3" pivot acting as center though, he really was no match for the Lakers even though the Globetrotters could win against them in a one-off environment. This was why the Globetrotters acquired the 6'8" Sweetwater Clifton, who was still not quite a match for Mikan, but was closer. Clifton was THE Black basketball player whose existence broke down the race barrier in the NBA, but it's easy to look at his NBA stats and conclude he wasn't that big of a deal. My assessment is that the NBA was ready for a Black tough guy but not yet ready for a Black star, and so they played Clifton accordingly. As with other role players of the era, his shooting efficiency was crap in a way that I don't think it would be if him shooting was what the plan of the offensive possession was, given that he'd already shown an ability to volume scorer against White pros on a level surpassed only by Mikan.
What about Kurland? When considering the degree-of-difficulty of Mikan's era he's incredibly important because it's really not clear that Mikan was a better college player than Kurland. Unlike Mikan who was his team's primary scoring option, Kurland's focus was more defensive and he was a taller, long, higher jumping shotblocker. While Mikan I think was the top offensive player basically up through the point when they widened the key in 1951, and Kurland's shotblocking was curtailed after goaltending was introducted as a rule - which makes me feel like Mikan was the better prospect with a narrow key - it's not just that there's reason to think Kurland might have been better adapted to the NBA after 1951, but that Kurland may well have synergized with Pollard & company better.
My guess is that in a league with Kurland in Mikan's place on the Lakers, the Lakers also become a dynasty.
However, from what I've read, Mikan was tougher and had a higher motor. Even in college, it was like Kurland was gritting his teeth trying to withstand Mikan. And this is also noteworthy because Mikan talks the same way about his start in the pros. Mikan describes Leroy "Cowboy" Edwards had considerably stronger and rougher than himself. When they played Mikan got the big scoring numbers, with Edwards backing off on scoring, but Mikan talks about having to toughen up over the first couple years to be able to consistently beat Edwards and the biggest, toughest teams of the era.
This then makes me think that Kurland would have had a really long way to go to get pro-tough, and since he never went pro, he never had to. As such, if I were doing of the top players of the era, I'd not hesitate to rank Mikan first. Mikan approached his self-improvement in the game with an intensity that resembles the most dedicated players of future eras, which was how he went from being not-good-enough to make Notre Dame's basketball team, to a DePaul legend, to a dominant pro. I'm really not sure if Kurland had that in him, and as stated, he may have needed it more than Mikan to adapt to the brutality of the pro game.
lessthanjake wrote: There’s some truth to that, but I’d push back a little bit:
Moses was all-NBA second team in the 1986-1987 season. And, based on all-NBA voting in those years, if all-NBA third team had existed back then, he would’ve gotten it in the 1985-1986 and 1987-1988 seasons. He then rightly was an all star selection in the 1988-1989 season (and was the 4th-voted center in all-NBA voting). I think he had another all-star level season in 1989-1990, though Parish was selected to the team over him (even though the fan vote had Moses voted above Parish). He then was a pretty good player in 1990-1991 and 1991-1992 (and I’d say a borderline all-star in the latter season, though I think he was rightly not chosen). So, overall, after that 1979-1985 time period, we’re looking at 1 all-NBA second-team season, 2 all-NBA third-team seasons, 2 all-star level seasons, 1 borderline all-star level season, and 1 solid-contributor season. If we don’t consider any of that his prime, then it’s at least a really great post-prime!
And of course there’s also the pre-prime stuff. Moses was an all-star in 1977-1978. He was an all-star level player the year before that (he didn’t make the all star game but actually was 6th in MVP voting by the end of the year!), and had also been at the very least a strong all star at age 19 as a rookie in the ABA (he was 4th and 6th in the ABA in win shares and PER) at a time when the ABA was similarly strong as the NBA.
So, ultimately, here’s how I see it: From 1978-1979 to 1984-1985, Moses was an MVP-level player. That’s 7 MVP-level seasons (maybe 6 if we demote 1983-1984 to all-NBA level). On top of that, he had 3 all-NBA second/third-team level seasons, 5 all-star level seasons, 1 borderline all-star level season, and 1 solid-contributor season (and then a few low-value bench/injury seasons beyond that).
That may be lacking in number of MVP-level seasons compared to some of the people nominated currently, but I’d say it’s a pretty good longevity profile as compared to most anyone not yet nominated (with certain exceptions, like Karl Malone). And it wouldn’t even really *have* to be as good, given that he’s fairly unique at this stage in having a 5-year peak where he was probably the best player in the world (which cannot be said by anyone else besides Mikan—who Moses definitely has longevity over).
Here is my Moses seasons evaluation to be more precise:
That gives him 22nd spot in my CORP evaluation. Now, if you are higher on his peak and more bullish on his accolades, I can see him being higher - even inside top 15. I don't think top 10 is reachable for him though.
We’ve had some good discussion about Moses in the past and his uniqueness especially after you posted some videos breaking down his game. We know that he did give Kareem fits with that non-stop motor (gave everyone fits. Do you agree with the sentiment that Prime Moses dominated Prime Kareem as posited below? You have a physical peak Moses between ages 23-27 whereas Kareem is between ages 31-35, so it seems unfair to say “Prime Kareem” and have it equivalent and compared to “Prime Moses.”
lessthanjake wrote:Prime Moses dominated prime Kareem
Another piece of info regarding Moses Malone:
In those 5 years where he was the best player in the world (1978-1979 to 1982-1983), he faced Kareem on 23 occasions. Despite having a far weaker team most of the years, Moses’s team won 12 of those 23 games—crucially including winning both playoff series between the two.
Moses Malone dominated the individual matchup too. Here’s some stats from those 23 games:
Moses Malone stats vs. Kareem: 1978-1979 to 1982-1983
PPG: 29.9 RPG: 17.5 APG: 1.8 TS%: 60.4%
Kareem stats vs. Moses Malone: 1978-1979 to 1982-1983
PPG: 23.5 RPG: 9.4 APG: 3.8 TS%: 57.6%
I think it’s fair to point out that this wasn’t *peak* Kareem. But I do think it was still Kareem in his prime. Maybe we might say the period includes a post-prime season or two at the end, but, the numbers wouldn’t look wildly better for Kareem even if you just took 1978-1979 to 1980-1981 (which I think were pretty unquestionably prime years for Kareem):
Moses vs. Kareem in 1978-1979 to 1980-1981
PPG: 29.54 RPG: 18.23 APG: 2.00 TS%: 59.7%
Kareem vs. Moses in 1978-1979 to 1980-1981
PPG: 25.23 RPG: 11.77 APG: 4.31 TS%: 58.3%
Kareem is a bit closer in these years, but Moses still has a clear edge IMO.
________
* NOTE: I realized in compiling the above that I’d made a slight data entry error in my prior data. Moses’s TS% against Kareem in the full 5-year timespan was 59.4%, not 60.4%. I’ll correct it in the original post, but just wanted to be upfront about that beyond just stealthily editing.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
I'm not comfortable calling Moses the best player over a significant time span.
Let's start with this: Moses only makes Top 5 in MVP voting 5 times, and that lines up completely with my POY analysis that has him Top 5 5 times in the same seasons. So I'm not going to say the MVP voting was totally off the mark - I think he was a Top 5 player when those votes said he was.
But: 1. 5 Top 5 finishes isn't a lot. 2. I only rank Moses at #1 once, in '82-83. While I can understand folks seeing his '81-82 as a clear #1 based on him winning the MVP and then going the next year and being the clear MVP of the best team of the era, it's not so simple to me, because I don't think the narrative of "and then he got help and he was unstoppable" is adequate.
The reality about Moses is that his game was that of a specialist in a way that most other superstars are. Moses went to the interior, and essentially bowling-balled his way to rebounds and put backs. He wasn't a playmaker for others, and while his defense was valuable, it wasn't valuable in the sense of him being a big shotblocker.
Can a player like that be the most valuable player in the world? Absolutely, and I think he was in '82-83. Is that type of a player likely to be overrated by stats heavily influenced by points and rebounds? Yup.
Something folks may not be award of is that the Houston Rockets became the top offense by ORtg in the NBA in '74-75 and repeated the following year, still without Moses. So while the Rockets would continue to be an elite offense in the years to come with Moses eventually emerging as the epicenter of it, this wasn't Moses playing with a bunch of nobodies and leading an elite offense simply based on his game. He joined an elite offense and made it a bit better...but they were held back by a defense that was awful with or without Moses.
As the other offensive stars (Tomjanovic, Murphy, Barry) aged out, Moses offensive rebounding was really helpful as Elvin Hayes was acquired and allowed to miss shots at will, but it wasn't enough to create a great offense, and the defense still wasn't good.
The horrible fall off after Moses left for the 76ers is a feather in Moses' cap to be sure, but we have to remember that this was also the team that created the need for the lottery as they basically invented tanking on their way to acquiring Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon as back-to-back 1's.
Again, none of this is making me conclude Moses wasn't a Top 5 player when MVP voters thought he was...but it does chip away at the value one might assume from his huge point/rebound numbers.
In terms of where Moses stacks up compared to other centers on the current list for me, I definitely put him below David Robinson. After that he might be next. I have him, Mikan & Jokic pretty close. Ewing I have a bit lower, but I could definitely see folks arguing for him as well over the other players listed.
LukaTheGOAT wrote:To me Moses Malone's peak prime impact can best be explained to me as being comparable to Dwyane Wade without the playmaking chops, however he is more portable. Considering Moses' prime didn't have an outlier length, I feel as if it is too early for him as well.
Interestingly enough, by my POY tallies, he and Wade are absolutely identical. I think they are definitely debatable.
70sFan wrote:Alright, keep in mind that I wouldn't have Moses nearly as high (closer to #20 spot), but:
One_and_Done wrote:4) His game is very era specific
One_and_Done wrote: Moses game just doesn't translate to MVP play today either. As I alluded to, his skill set is overrated in most eras, but especially today. A big without any real offensive depth, who doesn't protect the rim, and makes his living grabbing offensive rebounds in the paint. He'd probably be torched in pick and roll too. Sounds like a tough fit
iggymcfrack wrote:I don't see a case for him over someone like David Robinson who was an elite all-time defender while also being a much more complete player offensively.
These takes are just wrong.
1. Moses would be an MVP candidate in any era at very least before three point revolution (I think he'd be today as well, but let's leave that for a moment). If you mean that Moses impact is era-specific, you basically mean he'd be MVP candidate in 90% of the league history. There is nothing suggesting that he'd not have similar impact in the 1960s, 1990s or 2000s.
2. Describing Moses as a brute force who does all of his offensive work on offensive glass is painfully wrong. Are you aware that Moses scored less than 25% of his points from putbacks (data comes from 38 1979-83 Moses games tracked)? People should stop thinking about Moses in that way - Malone was a very diverse scorer. He had a reliable midrange game that wasn't limited to catch and shoot attempts. He could put the ball on the floor and beat his man off the dribble. He moved without the balk exceptionally well. He scored many points in transition. He was GOAT tier at drawing fouls. His only weakness on offensive end is that he didn't pass well, but considering that the majority of his impact came from off-ball play I don't consider it a massive problem. It's not like we haven't voted in another scorer with subpar passing skills and worse off-ball game.
3. Can I ask for the explanation what makes David Robinson a "much more complete player offensively"? I guess he was a better passer, but that alone doesn't make you more complete.
I value your thoughts here. I'd be curious to see elaboration on put-backs year-by-year. As well as anything we have that compared his put-backs to other players.
lessthanjake wrote: I think I’m definitely higher on his peak—where I think it’s genuinely super impressive that he was better than a prime Kareem over a 5-year span. Maybe there’s a bit of rating-inflation at play here, but to me “Weak MVP” isn’t a category I’d apply to someone I think was the best player in the NBA at the time.
I think we mostly agree on a lot of the rest of his career, albeit with some slight differences. The other differences are mostly minor (and actually go both ways), but one thing I’m curious to get more explanation on is the “Sub all star” rating for 1975. It was an ABA season, so it can be a bit harder to rate. But he averaged 19 PPG and 15 RPG on over 60% TS%, and was 4th in the ABA in win shares and 6th in the ABA in PER. And this was late ABA—where the ABA was probably about as strong as the NBA. Of course, the ABA era artificially decreased the talent in both leagues, so he wouldn’t have been 4th or 6th in those metrics in a combined league. But it’s hard for me to look at those numbers and conclude he wasn’t an all-star-level player that year. He had a bit of regression the next year on a different team and getting fewer minutes before the ABA blew up, but I think 1975 is an all-star season. If anything, I wonder if he was all-NBA level that season.
Anyways, I agree that top 10 is not reachable for Moses. I do have him in the back end of the top 15, though. And, at this point, between people who have already been inducted and nominated, we already have 14 players! So a new nominee naturally only needs to be a back-end-of-the-top-15 kind of guy, not a top-10 guy.
Just to be clear - I ranked Moses peak at MVP level, not weak MVP level. I understand that you may be higher on 1979-81 stretch, but to me Moses improved visibly on defensive end in 1981/82 season, which put him on another level.
About 1975 - it's not a problem with ABA production that I have here (I think I can adjust for that reasonably well mentally). The problem is that by all accounts, Moses was a horrible defender when he came into the league - which is expected from a teenager with no college experience. I guess you can still put him at all-star level, but defense is a huge thing to me. It's also the reason why I don't have 1979 Moses on MVP tier - because he didn't look good defensively in games I have watched from that season.
Back end of top 15 is a reasonable stance for Moses. I don't have anything against your nomination, just having a fun discussion about Moses (which doesn't happen too often on this board).
Perhaps your stance is that he didn’t deserve this, but I will note that Moses was all-defensive second team in 1978-1979. And that was over guys like Elvin Hayes, Dave Cowens, Artis Gilmore, etc. He probably wouldn’t have gotten it if Walton hadn’t been injured, but he had a pretty good defensive reputation by then, even without having block totals that jump off the page.
Just anecdotally, I’ll also note that I think Moses was a pretty good post defender. I’ve noticed in some of the very early 1980s matchups between the Rockets and the Lakers that Kareem seems to have a much tougher time scoring on Moses than on most people. In particular, it feels to me like there’s a night and day difference between how easy it was for Kareem to score on Moses compared to Billy Paultz. And I looked at the stats in the games they played against each other from 1978-1979 to 1982-1983, and Kareem had a 57.6% TS% in those games—which is good but well below the 61.9% Kareem averaged in that timeframe. Given my anecdotal impression, I suspect that that TS% drop was driven more by possessions with Moses guarding him than other people, since it feels like Kareem just scored at will on others in a lot of their games against each other. Of course, that data is for that entire five-year period, and you’ve noted you see Moses as having gotten better at defending the last couple years of the time period, but it’s perhaps worth noting that the Rockets defeated the Lakers in the playoffs in 1981 in part because Kareem was held to just 51.7% TS% (in a season where he’d averaged 61.6% for the year). It’s a low sample size and I’m just talking about one matchup as an example, but I do think that Moses played Kareem well defensively and that feels meaningful to me regarding his defense.
It’s also perhaps worth noting that as early as 1977-1978, the Rockets gave up 107 points a game in the games Moses played, and 110 points a game in the 23 games he missed that season. Of course, that’s not per-possession data, but it does lend some support to the idea that Moses was a positive-impact defender at the time.
Re: All-D 2nd team in '78-79. So, now that we have DRtg for the era, we can see that the team was 21st out of 22nd while playing at slow pace. To me this is a case where people were looking at Moses' box score when they were voting, rather than really grasping how weak the defense was.
And as I said in an earlier post, the team was the best offensive team in the league before Moses got there by ORtg. This wasn't a situation where Moses was creating great offense out of nothing, and he wasn't elevating the defense beyond "nothing".
Doctor MJ wrote:I think Tatum is someone definitely worth understanding. He's the one who essentially crystalized the Globetrotters into what they would be from that point onward, but when he played, while he was "chief clown", that was a barnstorming thing after the game was decided. The Globetrotters were one of the top pro teams of the '30s & '40s, and Tatum is probably the single Globetrotter I'd single out as having the best non-NBA/ABA career.
As a 6'3" pivot acting as center though, he really was no match for the Lakers even though the Globetrotters could win against them in a one-off environment. This was why the Globetrotters acquired the 6'8" Sweetwater Clifton, who was still not quite a match for Mikan, but was closer. Clifton was THE Black basketball player whose existence broke down the race barrier in the NBA, but it's easy to look at his NBA stats and conclude he wasn't that big of a deal. My assessment is that the NBA was ready for a Black tough guy but not yet ready for a Black star, and so they played Clifton accordingly. As with other role players of the era, his shooting efficiency was crap in a way that I don't think it would be if him shooting was what the plan of the offensive possession was, given that he'd already shown an ability to volume scorer against White pros on a level surpassed only by Mikan.
Agreeing on Goose being the top Trotter in terms of actual career, though I think some of that was being able to deal with Saperstein. Tatum was more suited for the barnstorming game than the pro game even of the late 40s. Haynes would be my pick for most talented (non-Wilt) of the group. Wish he'd gone to the NBA in the mid 50s after breaking up with Saperstein.
Shoutout to Pop Gates (real name Bill) for joining the NBL in '46* (and for being on the World Champ Rens fresh out of High School, even being the leading scorer in the championship game). I'm sure many others deserve mention, but he's the main one I can think of.
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Clifton had significant untapped offensive potential, what led you to those thoughts?
*Sometimes reported as integrating the league, but not completely true, I know at least a couple black players played in the NBL during WWII - Al Price and Sonny Boswell off the top (Boswell led the Trotters to their only World Basketball title in '40 and played on the 1943 Toledo squad).
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
I'm not comfortable calling Moses the best player over a significant time span.
Let's start with this: Moses only makes Top 5 in MVP voting 5 times, and that lines up completely with my POY analysis that has him Top 5 5 times in the same seasons. So I'm not going to say the MVP voting was totally off the mark - I think he was a Top 5 player when those votes said he was.
But: 1. 5 Top 5 finishes isn't a lot. 2. I only rank Moses at #1 once, in '82-83. While I can understand folks seeing his '81-82 as a clear #1 based on him winning the MVP and then going the next year and being the clear MVP of the best team of the era, it's not so simple to me, because I don't think the narrative of "and then he got help and he was unstoppable" is adequate.
The reality about Moses is that his game was that of a specialist in a way that most other superstars are. Moses went to the interior, and essentially bowling-balled his way to rebounds and put backs. He wasn't a playmaker for others, and while his defense was valuable, it wasn't valuable in the sense of him being a big shotblocker.
Can a player like that be the most valuable player in the world? Absolutely, and I think he was in '82-83. Is that type of a player likely to be overrated by stats heavily influenced by points and rebounds? Yup.
Something folks may not be award of is that the Houston Rockets became the top offense by ORtg in the NBA in '74-75 and repeated the following year, still without Moses. So while the Rockets would continue to be an elite offense in the years to come with Moses eventually emerging as the epicenter of it, this wasn't Moses playing with a bunch of nobodies and leading an elite offense simply based on his game. He joined an elite offense and made it a bit better...but they were held back by a defense that was awful with or without Moses.
As the other offensive stars (Tomjanovic, Murphy, Barry) aged out, Moses offensive rebounding was really helpful as Elvin Hayes was acquired and allowed to miss shots at will, but it wasn't enough to create a great offense, and the defense still wasn't good.
The horrible fall off after Moses left for the 76ers is a feather in Moses' cap to be sure, but we have to remember that this was also the team that created the need for the lottery as they basically invented tanking on their way to acquiring Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon as back-to-back 1's.
Again, none of this is making me conclude Moses wasn't a Top 5 player when MVP voters thought he was...but it does chip away at the value one might assume from his huge point/rebound numbers.
In terms of where Moses stacks up compared to other centers on the current list for me, I definitely put him below David Robinson. After that he might be next. I have him, Mikan & Jokic pretty close. Ewing I have a bit lower, but I could definitely see folks arguing for him as well over the other players listed.
Doc—whom do you have as your #1 in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982?
lessthanjake wrote:Kyrie was extremely impactful without LeBron, and basically had zero impact whatsoever if LeBron was on the court.
lessthanjake wrote: By playing in a way that prevents Kyrie from getting much impact, LeBron ensures that controlling for Kyrie has limited effect…
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
Hey Jake! We've agreed on our interpretation of a fair number of players, but I'm not sure we see eye-to-eye on Moses. I thought it'd be fun to raise a bit of a counter argument here
~Raw WOWY and Adjusted WOWY~:
Prime WOWY rank: 85th all time. I think we both get that WOWY is particularly noisy, especially in small off-samples, or if hyper-focusing on just a single context. And like you've said, Moses has a tiny sample of mid-season WOWY.
But adjusted WOWYR metrics do increase the sample size! By adding in so many samples from so many different players, it can start to get a truer signal. There’s certainly a larger number of games where Moses’ teammates were in and out of the lineup. And this doesn’t even count all the opponents that were in and out of the lineup, which also helps boost the number of datapoints we can use to get a signal. Here's a rough sketch of teammates that missed time (20+ mpg), just to give a sense of the samples size:
Spoiler:
78 Rudy Tomjanovich (3rd man) missed a lot of games, more in 79 Moses (22 yo) missed a bunch As did 7th man
In 1980, Everyone on his team from 2nd to 9th man missed games. Rudy, 4th man, missed 20 games, and 6th man missed 45 games. Even more missed games from lower bench guys.
In 1981, Everyone from 3rd man to 9th missed game. Rudy (4th man) missed 30 games, 7th man missed 16.
82, 2nd, 4th-6th man missed a small amount of games. Not many though.
In 83, Erving missed 10 games, 3/5th-8 missed a small amount of games (7th man missed more )
In 84, Moses missed 11 games. Everyone from 2nd to 8th man all missed a few games (especially 6th man and 8th man)
In 85, Again a small amount of missed games from the stars but 12 missed games from 4th man
In 86, 8 missed games from Moses and Erving, 12 from 5th and 6th man, 53 from 7th man old Bob McAdoo
Of course, there’s still sample size limitations and uncertainty with adjusted WOWY metrics. The Adjustment doesn’t always get what we think is right… like crediting Reggie Lewis for some of the late 80s Celtics run slightly more because they improved when he joined the team and crediting Bird slightly less. But I don’t think it’s all noise that WOWYR is much lower on Moses than other competitors. And it’s not just this one regression method, but alt-WOWYR and GPM too!
Moses’ average across the three adjusted WOWY metrics is +3.3. David Robinson has +9.1, Oscar had +8.0, West has +7.3 (with a larger sample / higher peak than Oscar), Dirk has +6.1, Kobe has +5.5, Julius Erving has +4.3, Karl Malone has +3.9, and all of them except for Erving are higher in all three adjusted WOWY stats.
It’s possible Moses’ limited off sample is pulling him down. But I think it’s interesting that adjusted stats are lower on him than the raw WOWY (in terms of his all-time ranking), suggesting adjusting for teammates worsens his case, at least in this noisy impact data. [his raw WOWY is 85th all time but on tiny sample size, his adjusted WOWYR is 214th all time]
~Box stats~:
You mention that Backpicks BPM is lower on him. Which is true! Out of some of the popular next tier of players: career Backpicks BPM for sure puts Karl Malone, David Robinson, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki over Malone. It might put West, Oscar, and Erving over him too (though I haven’t checked yet).
Why? Qualitatively, Backpicks BPM is higher on defense and creation than the early all-in-one box stats like WS or PER (and it does a better job at capturing those areas than those other stats). And these are Moses’ two biggest weaknesses.
What about the other best box stats in those tests above (Raptor and PIPM)?
So Moses is pretty clearly behind in career value in these other box stats too. He only ever gets ahead of Erving, but Erving is missing his first 5 years while Moses is only missing 2 years. And it’s not like Moses’ first two years were his best or anything. Peak-wise, a lot of these stats have Moses towards back as well, so it’s hard to make a peak-based argument for him either.
What about the traditional box stats?
If we do go to Basketball Reference VORP: Robinson, Dirk, Karl Malone, Erving, and Kobe are all higher (no West/Oscar available).
In win shares: Oscar, Erving, Karl Malone, Dirk ahead of him (David Robinson is within 1 win share, Kobe is within 8, West is just over 15 WS below him with no box defensive stats to try to measure West’s value).
~Plus Minus Stats~
On/off: Like you mentioned, his on/off is great in certain years… but not as good in others. Moses 1983: +15.6 (1st on 76ers, Cheeks 2nd at +14.1, Erving +10.3) Moses 1984: +3.3 (5th on 76ers, behind Jones, Toney, Cheeks, Erving) Moses 1985: +21.7 (1st on 76ers, Cheeks 2nd at +14.1) Moses 1986: +7.2 (3rd on 76ers, Cheeks 1st at +20.3, Barkly 2nd at +10.6, Erving 4th at +4.6)
So the 1983 and 1985 years are great! But 1984 is really a down year like you say, and 86 also isn’t the best. It might be used to argue a good peak, but not exactly the kind of thing to suggest compelling consistency or longevity like the stuff we see from his competition.
On/off also doesn’t really adjust for teammates. For that we can look to AuPM or RAPM.
AuPM: This acts as a more stable and accurate approximation of RAPM in small samples. I think (?) it was was inspired by the idea of having an alternative for RAPM in short spurts, say single playoff sizes. But we can also use it to approximate RAPM in full seasons. Like you say, he has great seasons in 1983 and 1985. Ben describes it as a good typical season for a Top 20 level player. But 1983 and 1986 are much lower. And if 1983, Moses’ single best season, is only looking like a typical top 20 season in one of our only two adjusted plus minus stats… it’s not really supporting a Top 20 case.
Though, like you say, the lower BPM rating is likely driving this down. Which I suppose is true — but remember it’s our best available box stat! And the other better box stats (RAPTOR, PIPM) aren’t that high on him either.
Squared2020 RAPM: We also have some (limited sample) RAPM for him. Moses 1980: +1.63 (45th in league, but on only 1 game… so not really useful) Moses 1985: +6.34 (3rd in league! Behind Magic and Kareem, in 31 games) Moses 1988: -1.53 (261st in league, but in only 9 games, so not really useful).
So 1985 again looks great! But all three are in a limited sample, and 1980/88 are really too small to use. And it seems there isn't enough of a sample size to assuage concerns about non 83/85 years.
…
IDK. I’m not seeing the case for Moses in this tier, at least statistically speaking. Maybe with film analysis or team arguments! (though I’m not yet convinced there either). But the better box stats make it pretty clear Moses is below the other guys up for nomination, as do the WOWY as Adjusted WOWY stuff. The Plus Minus data suggests he had great years in 1983 and 1985, but they don’t really suggest he had consistent impact (e.g. the kind of consistent longevity that he’d want if we’re nominating him over other longevity legends like Kobe, Karl, Dirk, or other impact legends like Oscar, West, Robinson).
Me personally, I absolutely don't see him as the best in the world for as long as you do. You mention you thought "Moses Malone was the best player in the world in a five-year span (1978-1979 to 1982-1983)."
I do not see him being the best player in the world in 1979 or 1980. To me, Kareem absolutely had that title (see, e.g. , Thinking Basketball's Greatest Peaks series on 77–79 Kareem). Even in 1981, I'd argue that Kareem still has a case (and may have a case after Moses' 1983 peak... e.g. note that Kareem's 1985 RAPM is higher than Moses, and Kareem had a great playoffs).
Around 1980–81, Bird enters the picture, and I don't see what puts Moses clearly over Bird in those years (Bird entered the league as one of the best rookies ever). I've also seen people argue there's a case for Erving in the pre-83 years, if you think it's poor fit and situation that's dropping his raw on/off stuff, though I don't want to make the case for Erving just yet.
Anyway, let me know what you agree and disagree with!
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
I'm not comfortable calling Moses the best player over a significant time span.
Let's start with this: Moses only makes Top 5 in MVP voting 5 times, and that lines up completely with my POY analysis that has him Top 5 5 times in the same seasons. So I'm not going to say the MVP voting was totally off the mark - I think he was a Top 5 player when those votes said he was.
But: 1. 5 Top 5 finishes isn't a lot. 2. I only rank Moses at #1 once, in '82-83. While I can understand folks seeing his '81-82 as a clear #1 based on him winning the MVP and then going the next year and being the clear MVP of the best team of the era, it's not so simple to me, because I don't think the narrative of "and then he got help and he was unstoppable" is adequate.
The reality about Moses is that his game was that of a specialist in a way that most other superstars are. Moses went to the interior, and essentially bowling-balled his way to rebounds and put backs. He wasn't a playmaker for others, and while his defense was valuable, it wasn't valuable in the sense of him being a big shotblocker.
Can a player like that be the most valuable player in the world? Absolutely, and I think he was in '82-83. Is that type of a player likely to be overrated by stats heavily influenced by points and rebounds? Yup.
Something folks may not be award of is that the Houston Rockets became the top offense by ORtg in the NBA in '74-75 and repeated the following year, still without Moses. So while the Rockets would continue to be an elite offense in the years to come with Moses eventually emerging as the epicenter of it, this wasn't Moses playing with a bunch of nobodies and leading an elite offense simply based on his game. He joined an elite offense and made it a bit better...but they were held back by a defense that was awful with or without Moses.
As the other offensive stars (Tomjanovic, Murphy, Barry) aged out, Moses offensive rebounding was really helpful as Elvin Hayes was acquired and allowed to miss shots at will, but it wasn't enough to create a great offense, and the defense still wasn't good.
The horrible fall off after Moses left for the 76ers is a feather in Moses' cap to be sure, but we have to remember that this was also the team that created the need for the lottery as they basically invented tanking on their way to acquiring Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon as back-to-back 1's.
Again, none of this is making me conclude Moses wasn't a Top 5 player when MVP voters thought he was...but it does chip away at the value one might assume from his huge point/rebound numbers.
In terms of where Moses stacks up compared to other centers on the current list for me, I definitely put him below David Robinson. After that he might be next. I have him, Mikan & Jokic pretty close. Ewing I have a bit lower, but I could definitely see folks arguing for him as well over the other players listed.
On the Houston offense stuff, it’s true that they had the NBA’s #1 offense for two years before Moses got there. But that obscures a bit that they were not really much above average either and that they did actually notably improve when Moses was there. For instance, in their 1975-1976 season (i.e. the year before Moses got there), they were #1 with a 101.1 offensive rating, but 98.3 was league average. In the 1974-1975 season, they were tied for #1 with a 100.4 offensive rating, but 97.7 was league average. So offense was hard to come by in that era and everyone was clustered quite close and the Rockets weren’t really way above average despite being #1. But then, in Moses’s first year there, after ABA talent/teams were added to the league (i.e. probably harder to be #1 with more teams and more talent), the Rockets were #1 again, but this time it was by a lot. They had a 104.5 offensive rating, and 99.5 was league average. So they went from having a +2.8 and +2.7 rORTG the two years before Moses got there to having a +5.0 rORTG in Moses’s first season. I’d say this is a notable improvement—even with a pre-prime Moses! After that, we had a year where Moses missed a bunch of games and Rudy T missed almost the whole season, and so, while they still had a good offense, it wasn’t as good as prior years. But then they had a healthy year again in 1978-1979 and were the #1 offense again, this time with an impressive rORTG of +4.9. Beyond that point, the team was pretty different than pre-Moses and the players that did overlap (Murphy and Rudy T) were older and missed time, so I don’t think much of any comparison can be made. The non-Moses comparator for those years would more naturally be with the year he left, and they went from a +1.4 rORTG to a -7.7 rORTG.
So I guess I’d describe it a bit differently. Before Moses, Houston’s offense was good, but it became legitimately elite with Moses. And then by the end of his time in Houston he was lifting an awful offense to still be pretty good. And then we know that, in his four years in Philadelphia, the 76ers’ offense with Moses on the floor had an +11.6 better offensive rating than with him off the court (for reference: that’s higher than the amount the Nuggets’ offense has been better with Jokic on the floor the last four seasons). I’d say these indicators suggest that prime Moses actually had a really elite offensive impact.
And I think it’s pretty natural to see where a huge aspect of where that comes from. Moses was a legitimate historical outlier in offensive rebounding. And we see that when he joined or left teams, there was a *huge* effect on the teams’ relative offensive rebounding % (see the Backpicks profile for him on this—it has a good chart showing it). I think there’s a very strong argument that no player in history has had as big an effect on his teams’ offensive rebounding % as Moses Malone. He routinely took weak offensive rebounding teams and made them elite. Which is a big deal, since offensive rebounding is of course a huge element of offense.
When you layer on that in those peak 5 years he was also a high-volume scorer (26.8 PPG) on high efficiency (~109 TS+ in that 5-year peak), I think we are talking about someone who was, at his best, one of the best offensive players ever. Indeed, he had the aforementioned huge effect on the 76ers’ offensive rating over the course of his four years there, even though by that time period his scoring volume and efficiency was down. For a clue about what his earlier prime years might’ve been like, if we look at the two 76ers years that we have that data for where Moses’s TS+ and scoring were at or near what he was posting in his peak (i.e. 1982-83, which was of course part of his peak, and 1984-85, where he still scored 24.6 PPG on 106 TS+), we find that the 76ers’ offensive rating was +13.53 better overall with Moses on the floor!
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
Doctor MJ wrote:I think Tatum is someone definitely worth understanding. He's the one who essentially crystalized the Globetrotters into what they would be from that point onward, but when he played, while he was "chief clown", that was a barnstorming thing after the game was decided. The Globetrotters were one of the top pro teams of the '30s & '40s, and Tatum is probably the single Globetrotter I'd single out as having the best non-NBA/ABA career.
As a 6'3" pivot acting as center though, he really was no match for the Lakers even though the Globetrotters could win against them in a one-off environment. This was why the Globetrotters acquired the 6'8" Sweetwater Clifton, who was still not quite a match for Mikan, but was closer. Clifton was THE Black basketball player whose existence broke down the race barrier in the NBA, but it's easy to look at his NBA stats and conclude he wasn't that big of a deal. My assessment is that the NBA was ready for a Black tough guy but not yet ready for a Black star, and so they played Clifton accordingly. As with other role players of the era, his shooting efficiency was crap in a way that I don't think it would be if him shooting was what the plan of the offensive possession was, given that he'd already shown an ability to volume scorer against White pros on a level surpassed only by Mikan.
Agreeing on Goose being the top Trotter in terms of actual career, though I think some of that was being able to deal with Saperstein. Tatum was more suited for the barnstorming game than the pro game even of the late 40s. Haynes would be my pick for most talented (non-Wilt) of the group. Wish he'd gone to the NBA in the mid 50s after breaking up with Saperstein.
Shoutout to Pop Gates (real name Bill) for joining the NBL in '46* (and for being on the World Champ Rens fresh out of High School, even being the leading scorer in the championship game). I'm sure many others deserve mention, but he's the main one I can think of.
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Clifton had significant untapped offensive potential, what led you to those thoughts?
*Sometimes reported as integrating the league, but not completely true, I know at least a couple black players played in the NBL during WWII - Al Price and Sonny Boswell off the top (Boswell led the Trotters to their only World Basketball title in '40 and played on the 1943 Toledo squad).
Love the shout outs.
I think Tatum, Haynes & Clifton are the clear top 3 Globetrotters from this Golden Age from what I see.
Haynes is a tricky one to peg competitively because his dribbling skill is from an era where much of the value of dribbling was from stalling. You gave the ball to Haynes once you had the lead, and it was so hard to get the ball from him without overcommitting defenders that a lot of time could be wasted. Of course dribbling never stopped being valuable, but it changed. Haynes signature was going to ground and playing keep away, which is very different thing from a killer crossover while driving to the rim.
It's possible that he could have been great in the NBA, but the NBA prioritized Clifton while the Globetrotters prioritized Haynes along with Tatum-pivot-clown descendants. Haynes & Tatum were more entertaining, Clifton had the body.
Gates is certainly a big deal, and I think he too could have done more in the NBL if White basketball was ready for a Black star.
Re: Clifton untapped potential? 2 biggest things about him specifically:
1. He said that he wasn't used as a star the way he'd been on Black teams. Possible that's sour grapes, but it's a thing to keep in mind.
2. Scoring was his thing. He was good at other things, but he was the guy leading the New York Rens to the Finals of the final World Professional Basketball Tournament (WPBT) in 1948 where they lost 75-71 to the Lakers. He made the 1st team for the tournament - the only Ren to make it - while 3 Lakers made it (Mikan, Pollard, Schaeffer). In the title game Mikan scored 40 while Clifton scored 24.
Beyond this, I've just seen various anecdotes along these lines. Black players talk about being expected to be enforcers. Worth noting that the guy who was first given this opportunity was Maurice Stokes, who was born about 11 years younger than Clifton. While you can ask yourself whether Stokes just happened to be the first Black player to warrant this level of primacy, I think we know based on the WPBT that elite White basketball had nothing on elite Black basketball by the end of the '30s. There was just a fear that White fans would abandon the league if they allowed it to become a Black league.
Re: integration, Blacks in NBL. Right, but the BAA banned Blacks, so when it swallowed the NBL, Blacks were out of luck.
This lasted until the most powerful man in the BAA - Ned Irish the owner of the Knicks- decided he wanted Clifton to better compete against Mikan and strong-armed the rest of the league.
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
I'm not comfortable calling Moses the best player over a significant time span.
Let's start with this: Moses only makes Top 5 in MVP voting 5 times, and that lines up completely with my POY analysis that has him Top 5 5 times in the same seasons. So I'm not going to say the MVP voting was totally off the mark - I think he was a Top 5 player when those votes said he was.
But: 1. 5 Top 5 finishes isn't a lot. 2. I only rank Moses at #1 once, in '82-83. While I can understand folks seeing his '81-82 as a clear #1 based on him winning the MVP and then going the next year and being the clear MVP of the best team of the era, it's not so simple to me, because I don't think the narrative of "and then he got help and he was unstoppable" is adequate.
The reality about Moses is that his game was that of a specialist in a way that most other superstars are. Moses went to the interior, and essentially bowling-balled his way to rebounds and put backs. He wasn't a playmaker for others, and while his defense was valuable, it wasn't valuable in the sense of him being a big shotblocker.
Can a player like that be the most valuable player in the world? Absolutely, and I think he was in '82-83. Is that type of a player likely to be overrated by stats heavily influenced by points and rebounds? Yup.
Something folks may not be award of is that the Houston Rockets became the top offense by ORtg in the NBA in '74-75 and repeated the following year, still without Moses. So while the Rockets would continue to be an elite offense in the years to come with Moses eventually emerging as the epicenter of it, this wasn't Moses playing with a bunch of nobodies and leading an elite offense simply based on his game. He joined an elite offense and made it a bit better...but they were held back by a defense that was awful with or without Moses.
As the other offensive stars (Tomjanovic, Murphy, Barry) aged out, Moses offensive rebounding was really helpful as Elvin Hayes was acquired and allowed to miss shots at will, but it wasn't enough to create a great offense, and the defense still wasn't good.
The horrible fall off after Moses left for the 76ers is a feather in Moses' cap to be sure, but we have to remember that this was also the team that created the need for the lottery as they basically invented tanking on their way to acquiring Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon as back-to-back 1's.
Again, none of this is making me conclude Moses wasn't a Top 5 player when MVP voters thought he was...but it does chip away at the value one might assume from his huge point/rebound numbers.
In terms of where Moses stacks up compared to other centers on the current list for me, I definitely put him below David Robinson. After that he might be next. I have him, Mikan & Jokic pretty close. Ewing I have a bit lower, but I could definitely see folks arguing for him as well over the other players listed.
Doc—whom do you have as your #1 in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982?
But, having compiled these numbers, I’ll tell you that you’re not going to find it...
But we have...
And "better", Steph does not look. "average the single-year ranks" is not a thing no matter how fervently you try to make it one. A bigger outlier does not magically became a smaller outlier because you apply a random filter.
Of the candidates on the board, KG is the king of JE RAPM. Peak, prime, career, you name it. I'm also not sure why you are trying to reduce Garnett's case to longevity while acknowledging KG looks better on average for his career. KG's case is not longevity, it would be that he is better. That's "the bottom line".
I get that DARKO is a metric that is measuring something similar
You do not need to explain to me how DARKO works. I took the liberty of doing that myself when I brought it up last thread. I am aware it has biases. That was the point. And frankly, it's odd how quickly you switched from caring to not caring about methodology:
lessthanjake wrote:
iggymcfrack wrote:This really just all flows from the specifics of one particular stat: Box Plus Minus. VORP is just a non-rate-stat version of BPM, so Moses Malone not doing well in VORP is really just not doing well in BPM. Meanwhile, this AuPM for Moses Malone takes Pollack’s on-off data and regresses it with BPM. Crucially, we know that Moses Malone’s actual plus-minus data was really good.
As I'm sure you're aware, the reason why Ben put own BPM into AUPM was to make the data more accurate. So why do you suddenly care that the box-component maybe suppressing his score?
You also need to make up your mind about the value of "intent" because Cheema and JE's sets were explicitly intended for the cross-period comparison.
Your link shows you at "we can't precisely compare"/"it is not strictly valid". This then morphs into "we can't compare" (post #69) which leads to "not debatable premise!!!!!!!"
And all along, it's you using an approach which is "meaningless". Again, you can check the graph above. "Average placement" doesn't mean anything. As it happens, all the "not strictly valid" methods you acknowledge we can draw inferences from put KG firmly ahead.
I’d urge people reading this to just peruse my prior posts about this, which were obviously far more complete in their analysis of Garnett and Curry than this
"All stats flawed so let's just spam and count" is not what I'd consider "far more complete" analysis. This double-speak where you cannot be bothered to vet what you're using but also are so confident that you set "bottom lines" isn't going to cut it. Just listing metrics that lean one way or the other is not "looking at the data in totality", it is "looking at the data in a manner which is convenient".
draymondgold wrote:I'd argue here's one of the rare situations where a player was so good that their per-season value actually undersells them
Uh...how?
Is the rate he is outscoring them per possession likely to increase? Are his replacements going to look better if they less time against opposing starters?
I recall 2020 Giannis barely playing in the fourth quarter. Does not seem to have been a positive influence on his impact to not be in those circumstances anymore.
Fair enough to point out that Steph *could* maybe theoretically maintain a similar rate with more time played… but at that point it is a question of confidence.
Presenting these lower minutes as some sort of disadvantage seems like a stretch.
As far as data goes, most of the post is directed towards years where there is no direct WOWY. And this is for Kareem, a player where we have very limited alternatives in terms of assessing impact. I have maintained that WOWY has use even when we have access to data like RAPM. If you thought that meant I rank players according to regular-season WOWY averages(and we barely even have WOWY for KG's best regular-seasons), that is on you.
I think real-world stuff is especially useful to compare outliers(2016, 2004, 2009 ect), or to examine why something is happening in the artifical-stuff(Duncan staggering minutes with Drob's bad replacements, Spurs not really affected by Manu's absence, ect), but on the flip-side, lineup-adjustment makes things less noisy and is useful for establishing a baseline over longer time-frames. FWIW, I do rank RS Steph's highs pretty highly, above the best years for players like Hakeem and Jordan. But the same is true for KG. So unless you are willing to make the case years like 2016 were on another level compared to KG's 2004 or 2003, we get into how they generally look(KG carries an overwhelming advantage in both of the extended rapm sets we have), how much of their value can be tied to situation(very strongly favors Garnett), and what they and their casts do in the playoffs(2004 beats out 2016 pretty handily on that both fronts imo).
Considering all of that, I'm left thinking KG was the better player. It is then we get to the longevity, and there, a reasonably close comparison turns into a lopsided one.
And as "low" as I am on Steph, I am still likely to vote him 11th or 12th. Ahead of Bird and possibly ahead of Kobe. But he is not the best "impact" candidate currently on the board. Nor is he the most successful. And I certainly do not see why skill-set analysis would put him ahead of an all-time two-way big and an all-time helio. Two archetypes that have generally established higher floors and ceilings than the likes of MJ, Steph or Bird. Steph is probably the pinnacle of his archetype, and I imagine he would just look better and better the more you teleport him back, but in an era-relative comparison, I do not see his case for 9.
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
I'm not comfortable calling Moses the best player over a significant time span.
Let's start with this: Moses only makes Top 5 in MVP voting 5 times, and that lines up completely with my POY analysis that has him Top 5 5 times in the same seasons. So I'm not going to say the MVP voting was totally off the mark - I think he was a Top 5 player when those votes said he was.
But: 1. 5 Top 5 finishes isn't a lot. 2. I only rank Moses at #1 once, in '82-83. While I can understand folks seeing his '81-82 as a clear #1 based on him winning the MVP and then going the next year and being the clear MVP of the best team of the era, it's not so simple to me, because I don't think the narrative of "and then he got help and he was unstoppable" is adequate.
The reality about Moses is that his game was that of a specialist in a way that most other superstars are. Moses went to the interior, and essentially bowling-balled his way to rebounds and put backs. He wasn't a playmaker for others, and while his defense was valuable, it wasn't valuable in the sense of him being a big shotblocker.
Can a player like that be the most valuable player in the world? Absolutely, and I think he was in '82-83. Is that type of a player likely to be overrated by stats heavily influenced by points and rebounds? Yup.
Something folks may not be award of is that the Houston Rockets became the top offense by ORtg in the NBA in '74-75 and repeated the following year, still without Moses. So while the Rockets would continue to be an elite offense in the years to come with Moses eventually emerging as the epicenter of it, this wasn't Moses playing with a bunch of nobodies and leading an elite offense simply based on his game. He joined an elite offense and made it a bit better...but they were held back by a defense that was awful with or without Moses.
As the other offensive stars (Tomjanovic, Murphy, Barry) aged out, Moses offensive rebounding was really helpful as Elvin Hayes was acquired and allowed to miss shots at will, but it wasn't enough to create a great offense, and the defense still wasn't good.
The horrible fall off after Moses left for the 76ers is a feather in Moses' cap to be sure, but we have to remember that this was also the team that created the need for the lottery as they basically invented tanking on their way to acquiring Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon as back-to-back 1's.
Again, none of this is making me conclude Moses wasn't a Top 5 player when MVP voters thought he was...but it does chip away at the value one might assume from his huge point/rebound numbers.
In terms of where Moses stacks up compared to other centers on the current list for me, I definitely put him below David Robinson. After that he might be next. I have him, Mikan & Jokic pretty close. Ewing I have a bit lower, but I could definitely see folks arguing for him as well over the other players listed.
On the Houston offense stuff, it’s true that they had the NBA’s #1 offense for two years before Moses got there. But that obscures a bit that they were not really much above average either and that they did actually notably improve when Moses was there. For instance, in their 1975-1976 season (i.e. the year before Moses got there), they were #1 with a 101.1 offensive rating, but 98.3 was league average. In the 1974-1975 season, they were tied for #1 with a 100.4 offensive rating, but 97.7 was league average. So offense was hard to come by in that era and everyone was clustered quite close and the Rockets weren’t really way above average despite being #1. But then, in Moses’s first year there, after ABA talent/teams were added to the league (i.e. probably harder to be #1 with more teams and more talent), the Rockets were #1 again, but this time it was by a lot. They had a 104.5 offensive rating, and 99.5 was league average. So they went from having a +2.8 and +2.7 rORTG the two years before Moses got there to having a +5.0 rORTG in Moses’s first season. I’d say this is a notable improvement—even with a pre-prime Moses! After that, we had a year where Moses missed a bunch of games and Rudy T missed almost the whole season, and so, while they still had a good offense, it wasn’t as good as prior years. But then they had a healthy year again in 1978-1979 and were the #1 offense again, this time with an impressive rORTG of +4.9. Beyond that point, the team was pretty different than pre-Moses and the players that did overlap (Murphy and Rudy T) were older and missed time, so I don’t think much of any comparison can be made. The non-Moses comparator for those years would more naturally be with the year he left, and they went from a +1.4 rORTG to a -7.7 rORTG.
So I guess I’d describe it a bit differently. Before Moses, Houston’s offense was good, but it became legitimately elite with Moses. And then by the end of his time in Houston he was lifting an awful offense to still be pretty good. And then we know that, in his four years in Philadelphia, the 76ers’ offense with Moses on the floor had an +11.6 better offensive rating than with him off the court (for reference: that’s higher than the amount the Nuggets’ offense has been better with Jokic on the floor the last four seasons). I’d say these indicators suggest that prime Moses actually had a really elite offensive impact.
And I think it’s pretty natural to see where a huge aspect of where that comes from. Moses was a legitimate historical outlier in offensive rebounding. And we see that when he joined or left teams, there was a *huge* effect on the teams’ relative offensive rebounding % (see the Backpicks profile for him on this—it has a good chart showing it). I think there’s a very strong argument that no player in history has had as big an effect on his teams’ offensive rebounding % as Moses Malone. He routinely took weak offensive rebounding teams and made them elite. Which is a big deal, since offensive rebounding is of course a huge element of offense.
When you layer on that in those peak 5 years he was also a high-volume scorer (26.8 PPG) on high efficiency (~109 TS+ in that 5-year peak), I think we are talking about someone who was, at his best, one of the best offensive players ever. Indeed, he had the aforementioned huge effect on the 76ers’ offensive rating over the course of his four years there, even though by that time period his scoring volume and efficiency was down. For a clue about what his earlier prime years might’ve been like, if we look at the two 76ers years that we have that data for where Moses’s TS+ and scoring were at or near what he was posting in his peak (i.e. 1982-83, which was of course part of his peak, and 1984-85, where he still scored 24.6 PPG on 106 TS+), we find that the 76ers’ offensive rating was +13.53 better overall with Moses on the floor!
Re: Became elite with Moses. Ah, but what does "becoming elite" mean? They got worse at eFG and FT/FGA. The big thing Moses did was really help the offensive rebounding. That's absolutely legit offensive impact, but it wasn't about them making Moses the first scoring option. Tomjanovich & Murphy were still scoring more, scoring more efficiently, and assisting more. Moses' impact then wasn't really about demoting those guys as it was him taking the place of others.
In terms of rORtg, that's the apex of the Rockets. Later they would give Moses more an more primacy, but even with the addition of Ricky Barry, they'd never separate from the field as much as they did in '76-77.
Of course, it would be unfair to Moses not to note that by the time of the playoffs, Moses was the big minute guy, on his way to everything being built around him. I'm not looking to elevate his teammates above him overall, only to say that this wasn't a situation where having Moses eventually become the high primacy guy is what elevated the team to elite offense.
Re: after he left. No doubt this is huge impact, but it's also a team that's:
a) Unwisely using Hayes as a volume scorer. Always a very bad idea, but really, really bad by this point.
b) Letting itself fall apart on its way to back-to-back #1 picks.
Re: 76ers. As I've said, I'm not looking to knock '82-83. He's the clear cut #1 guy in the league then, and I get how folks look at the previous year's impact and think Moses was reliably going to have that impact again and again...but of course the 76ers were a bit of a bumble bee with Moses. They had one of the most dominant playoff runs in history...and then the next year - with Moses a mere 28 years old - they lose in an upset to the Nets where they lose the rebounding battle as a team and Buck Williams outrebounds Moses.
What I see in general from Moses is a guy who could have tremendous impact with the right context, but I'm uncomfortable acting as if it was always there. He needed other guys to take up some shooting volume as the primary attack, and he needed to be able to bully the opposing bigs...which he wasn't actually able to do against all other players all through the age one might assume the way we talk about guys like Wilt & Russell.
lessthanjake wrote:Perhaps your stance is that he didn’t deserve this, but I will note that Moses was all-defensive second team in 1978-1979. And that was over guys like Elvin Hayes, Dave Cowens, Artis Gilmore, etc. He probably wouldn’t have gotten it if Walton hadn’t been injured, but he had a pretty good defensive reputation by then, even without having block totals that jump off the page.
I am afraid his pre-1980s reputation on defense was mostly based on rebounding averages, which are far from a good indicator of defensive impact.
Just anecdotally, I’ll also note that I think Moses was a pretty good post defender. I’ve noticed in some of the very early 1980s matchups between the Rockets and the Lakers that Kareem seems to have a much tougher time scoring on Moses than on most people. In particular, it feels to me like there’s a night and day difference between how easy it was for Kareem to score on Moses compared to Billy Paultz.
Yes, Moses was quite tricky to score on, despite lack of size or length. He was a crafty post defender that used his body really well and could read opponent's intentions quite often. He gave Kareem problems with his very specific stategy against skyhook - he gambled a lot and positioned himself on the side of Kareem's body when Jabbar performed skyhook motion. Sometimes it worked miracles, sometimes he got countered silly. Overall, very solid post defender indeed.
it’s perhaps worth noting that the Rockets defeated the Lakers in the playoffs in 1981 in part because Kareem was held to just 51.7% TS% (in a season where he’d averaged 61.6% for the year). It’s a low sample size and I’m just talking about one matchup as an example, but I do think that Moses played Kareem well defensively and that feels meaningful to me regarding his defense.
It's also worth mentioning that Moses wasn't Kareem's main defender in these games.
It’s also perhaps worth noting that as early as 1977-1978, the Rockets gave up 107 points a game in the games Moses played, and 110 points a game in the 23 games he missed that season. Of course, that’s not per-possession data, but it does lend some support to the idea that Moses was a positive-impact defender at the time.
DraymondGold wrote:Some Statistical Analysis of Moses
lessthanjake wrote:I’m curious if anyone can articulate to me an argument in favor of nominating someone else over Moses Malone. Only one other guy on the table was the best player in the league over significant timespan (Mikan), and Moses Malone had way better longevity than Mikan and faced much stiffer competition for being best in the world (i.e. prime Kareem). And no one else being considered on the table at this point actually won more than Moses. He led one of the greatest teams of all time and also took a team to the finals (past the 1980s Lakers) that would proceed to win 14 games on -11.12 SRS when he left a couple years later.
Hey Jake! We've agreed on our interpretation of a fair number of players, but I'm not sure we see eye-to-eye on Moses. I thought it'd be fun to raise a bit of a counter argument here
~Raw WOWY and Adjusted WOWY~:
Prime WOWY rank: 85th all time. I think we both get that WOWY is particularly noisy, especially in small off-samples, or if hyper-focusing on just a single context. And like you've said, Moses has a tiny sample of mid-season WOWY.
Thanks for the in-depth post about Moses! To address this first point, I don’t put much credit in WOWY for Moses, because he missed so few games. As far as I can tell, Backpicks is defining Moses’s prime as starting in 1977, which means that the inquiry is being swamped by Moses missing 23 games in 1977-78. There’s a few issues with that IMO:
1. Most importantly, this was not Moses at his best yet (I have him down as merely as all-star level player that year, before he took a big jump the next year), so I’m skeptical that it can really form the basis of much of a conclusion about how good he was later, especially when we have actual on-off data from stronger years for him that show him having a large on-off impact (an average of +12.3 on-off in his four years with the 76ers). In his best years, Moses barely missed games, so there’s really just no WOWY sample that can tell us much about what effect he had in those years.
2. Secondly, the Backpicks WOWY analysis of 1977-78 relies on the idea that the Rockets’s SRS was only 3.2 better in games Moses played than games Moses didn’t play, after you throw out the games that Moses played with Rudy Tomjanovich (who got injured relatively early in the season and was not there for any of Moses’s off sample). In a sense that’s perhaps a fair adjustment, but it lowers the sample of data even further, making it even more dubious to draw much of a conclusion about WOWY that is disproportionately drawn from it
3. Relatedly, it’s worth noting that, while the Backpicks analysis relies on what the SRS was, looking at the actual wins and losses doesn’t exactly tell the same story. The Rockets were 5-18 without Moses Malone that year. They were 23-36 with Moses Malone. And even if you take out Rudy T’s missed games, they were 13-23 with Moses. It’s bad either way, but that’s a pretty significant difference in record. And so I just am not really convinced that there’s much of any negative conclusion to draw from a team going 23-36 (or 13-23 without Rudy T) with Moses and 5-18 without Moses in a pre-prime year for Moses.
And the only other year that WOWY can get almost any data from is Moses missing 11 games in the 1983-1984 season. But we also know that that was a negative outlier for Moses in terms of impact, since we have actual on-off data for Moses in his 76ers seasons and his on-off in those years was: +15.6, +3.3, +21.7, and +7.2. That +3.3 year is that 1983-84 season. So basically, the two remotely significant WOWY samples come from a pre-prime year and a season that we know was a negative outlier in terms of Moses’s impact. Which seems to me like a textbook example of a biased data set. Maybe Moses’s WOWY would look incredible if he’d missed lots of games in those seasons where his on-off was +15.6 and +21.7!
But adjusted WOWYR metrics do increase the sample size! By adding in so many samples from so many different players, it can start to get a truer signal. There’s certainly a larger number of games where Moses’ teammates were in and out of the lineup. And this doesn’t even count all the opponents that were in and out of the lineup, which also helps boost the number of datapoints we can use to get a signal. Here's a rough sketch of teammates that missed time (20+ mpg), just to give a sense of the samples size:
Spoiler:
78 Rudy Tomjanovich (3rd man) missed a lot of games, more in 79 Moses (22 yo) missed a bunch As did 7th man
In 1980, Everyone on his team from 2nd to 9th man missed games. Rudy, 4th man, missed 20 games, and 6th man missed 45 games. Even more missed games from lower bench guys.
In 1981, Everyone from 3rd man to 9th missed game. Rudy (4th man) missed 30 games, 7th man missed 16.
82, 2nd, 4th-6th man missed a small amount of games. Not many though.
In 83, Erving missed 10 games, 3/5th-8 missed a small amount of games (7th man missed more )
In 84, Moses missed 11 games. Everyone from 2nd to 8th man all missed a few games (especially 6th man and 8th man)
In 85, Again a small amount of missed games from the stars but 12 missed games from 4th man
In 86, 8 missed games from Moses and Erving, 12 from 5th and 6th man, 53 from 7th man old Bob McAdoo
Of course, there’s still sample size limitations and uncertainty with adjusted WOWY metrics. The Adjustment doesn’t always get what we think is right… like crediting Reggie Lewis for some of the late 80s Celtics run slightly more because they improved when he joined the team and crediting Bird slightly less. But I don’t think it’s all noise that WOWYR is much lower on Moses than other competitors. And it’s not just this one regression method, but alt-WOWYR and GPM too!
I like WOWYR, but ultimately isn’t that WOWYR still in large part keying itself off of what happened in Moses’s missed games in 1977-78 and 1983-84, just with adjustments for teammate effects? As per the above, I don’t really think that can tell us much, since it’s really a pre-prime year and a known low-impact outlier.
~Box stats~:
You mention that Backpicks BPM is lower on him. Which is true! Out of some of the popular next tier of players: career Backpicks BPM for sure puts Karl Malone, David Robinson, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki over Malone. It might put West, Oscar, and Erving over him too (though I haven’t checked yet).
Why? Qualitatively, Backpicks BPM is higher on defense and creation than the early all-in-one box stats like WS or PER (and it does a better job at capturing those areas than those other stats). And these are Moses’ two biggest weaknesses.
I agree we shouldn’t mindlessly throw out something that is typically accurate. But ultimately, we should also realize that accuracy here is essentially measured by general fit with RAPM in periods where we have both. And a box-composite can in general be a good fit overall (and therefore be very “accurate”) while at the same time not accurately assessing the value of a *specific* player. And we’d expect that to more likely be the case with a pretty idiosyncratic player, who may get idiosyncratic levels of value from things in a way that a well-fitting model won’t necessarily assess correctly.
Moses Malone is exactly that type of player IMO. He is a pretty extreme outlier in offensive rebounding. And a lot of box-score models don’t value offensive rebounding that highly, particularly when it comes from a center. This might actually make good sense when trying to increase the overall fit of a model. In general, I don’t think that individual offensive rebounding correlates that highly with team offensive rebounding rate (and therefore, ultimately, team offensive rating), and it may correlate even less when it’s from a center. This is probably in large part because a lot of individual offensive rebounds may not be additive (i.e. if the center didn’t get it, someone else on his team would’ve). So, on average, we might look at offensive rebounding and determine that it’s not usually all *that* valuable, and construct a box-score composite that doesn’t value it highly and is more accurate as a result. But that can break down if you get to someone who is a complete outlier in offensive rebounding. Moses Malone was getting so many offensive rebounds that it’s perfectly reasonable to think that they were much more additive than the typical offensive rebounds—i.e. a much higher percent of his rebounds would not otherwise have been gotten by his team. We do actually see evidence of this in Backpicks’ own analysis of Moses, with there being huge increases in Moses’s teams’ league-relative offensive rebounding rate when Moses joins the team and huge decreases when Moses leaves the team. Moses Malone seems to have had a uniquely huge effect on his team’s offensive rebounding rate. A model that generally downplays offensive rebounding value from centers can therefore simultaneously be a generally very accurate model while also unduly underestimating the value of an idiosyncratic player like Moses Malone.
And the same goes for other box stats. I’m just not convinced that box stats value Moses’s rebounding as much as they should, when he seems to have had a massive effect on his team’s offensive rebounding that actually isn’t at all common with the best rebounders and therefore that weightings of sophisticated models are very likely to underrate. I think perhaps the people around the league at the time that voted him MVP three times may have actually had an instinctively better handle on his idiosyncratic value in this regard.
What about the traditional box stats?
If we do go to Basketball Reference VORP: Robinson, Dirk, Karl Malone, Erving, and Kobe are all higher (no West/Oscar available).
In win shares: Oscar, Erving, Karl Malone, Dirk ahead of him (David Robinson is within 1 win share, Kobe is within 8, West is just over 15 WS below him with no box defensive stats to try to measure West’s value).
I’d say Moses looks good in Win Shares, though. Like, obviously a guy like Karl Malone will have more win shares overall than Moses, since Karl Malone simply had superior longevity. But Moses is ranked pretty highly and is also above guys like Hakeem, Kobe, Russell, West, Magic, Bird, Steph, etc. I think there’s people still left that could make a longevity case over Moses. A guy like Karl Malone definitely could. Dirk probably could as well. But they were never the NBA’s best player for a substantial timeframe, like Moses was. Thus, in my mind Moses peaked higher than they did. And, to me, that weighs higher than their longevity advantage—especially when Moses is no slouch in that regard either.
~Plus Minus Stats~
On/off: Like you mentioned, his on/off is great in certain years… but not as good in others. Moses 1983: +15.6 (1st on 76ers, Cheeks 2nd at +14.1, Erving +10.3) Moses 1984: +3.3 (5th on 76ers, behind Jones, Toney, Cheeks, Erving) Moses 1985: +21.7 (1st on 76ers, Cheeks 2nd at +14.1) Moses 1986: +7.2 (3rd on 76ers, Cheeks 1st at +20.3, Barkly 2nd at +10.6, Erving 4th at +4.6)
So the 1983 and 1985 years are great! But 1984 is really a down year like you say, and 86 also isn’t the best. It might be used to argue a good peak, but not exactly the kind of thing to suggest compelling consistency or longevity like the stuff we see from his competition.
On-off in individual years can be pretty noisy. Even LeBron has a prime year with a +1.9 on-off. Garnett has a year smack in the middle of his peak years with a +0.7 on-off. But if we take a weighted average for those 4 years for Moses, Moses comes out with a +12.3 on-off in his years with the 76ers. That is really good! And there’s only really one peak year in there, with the rest of the years being a late-prime time period, so if anything it was probably higher in the prior years. (And the Rockets SRS decreasing by an enormous 10.73 when he left is at least suggestive of Moses having huge impact on the Rockets).
Squared2020 RAPM: We also have some (limited sample) RAPM for him. Moses 1980: +1.63 (45th in league, but on only 1 game… so not really useful) Moses 1985: +6.34 (3rd in league! Behind Magic and Kareem, in 31 games) Moses 1988: -1.53 (261st in league, but in only 9 games, so not really useful).
So 1985 again looks great! But all three are in a limited sample, and 1980/88 are really too small to use. And it seems there isn't enough of a sample size to assuage concerns about non 83/85 years.
I forgot about the Squared data! Unfortunately, here, I don’t think it really tells us anything, as you note. The samples for 1980 and 1988 are too small to have any meaning. And the 1985 data is really great, but we actually already know Moses’s on-off for the whole season that year was extremely high, so that’s no surprise.
Me personally, I absolutely don't see him as the best in the world for as long as you do. You mention you thought "Moses Malone was the best player in the world in a five-year span (1978-1979 to 1982-1983)."
I do not see him being the best player in the world in 1979 or 1980. To me, Kareem absolutely had that title (see, e.g. , Thinking Basketball's Greatest Peaks series on 77–79 Kareem). Even in 1981, I'd argue that Kareem still has a case (and may have a case after Moses' 1983 peak... e.g. note that Kareem's 1985 RAPM is higher than Moses, and Kareem had a great playoffs).
Around 1980–81, Bird enters the picture, and I don't see what puts Moses clearly over Bird in those years (Bird entered the league as one of the best rookies ever). I've also seen people argue there's a case for Erving in the pre-83 years, if you think it's poor fit and situation that's dropping his raw on/off stuff, though I don't want to make the case for Erving just yet.
Anyway, let me know what you agree and disagree with!
I think Kareem has a case for that five-year period, but overall I see Moses as superior. His PER was higher than Kareem’s. His Win Shares were higher than Kareem’s (despite his team having fewer wins, and therefore fewer win shares to go around). He did substantially better than Kareem when they faced each other, including in their two playoff series’s in that timeframe. He won 3 MVPs. He did better in all-NBA voting. So I guess the way I see it is that viewers and people around the league clearly saw Moses as having been superior at the time, and analysis of box score stats doesn’t make that conclusion look silly at all, nor does it look at all silly if we look at how they did against each other. Meanwhile, putting Moses above Kareem in this time period also makes sense if we look at team results IMO. The Lakers did win two titles in this time period, while Moses got only one, but the one year in this time period that Moses had a comparably talented team, Moses’s team dominated in a way that those Lakers did not (i.e. 65 wins, only 1 playoff loss). And with a weak team, he managed to drag them to the finals once in a way that Kareem didn’t get even close to doing early in the period (or in the few years prior to this period) when he was on fairly weak teams. It’s just hard for me to get to a place where I’d actually put Kareem over Moses in this time period, even if I don’t think the gap was huge.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
homecourtloss wrote:Do you agree with the sentiment that Prime Moses dominated Prime Kareem as posited below? You have a physical peak Moses between ages 23-27 whereas Kareem is between ages 31-35, so it seems unfair to say “Prime Kareem” and have it equivalent and compared to “Prime Moses.”
No, I definitely wouldn't go that far. As you mentioned, this sample is hardly Kareem's "prime". I guess you can use 1979-81 sample only, but even then it's a fairly young Moses vs past peak Jabbar.
Besides, Moses and Kareem often didn't guard each other before 1982, because Moses often played next to another big. He really started playing center full time around 1981/82 season.
Doctor MJ wrote: I'm not comfortable calling Moses the best player over a significant time span.
Let's start with this: Moses only makes Top 5 in MVP voting 5 times, and that lines up completely with my POY analysis that has him Top 5 5 times in the same seasons. So I'm not going to say the MVP voting was totally off the mark - I think he was a Top 5 player when those votes said he was.
But: 1. 5 Top 5 finishes isn't a lot. 2. I only rank Moses at #1 once, in '82-83. While I can understand folks seeing his '81-82 as a clear #1 based on him winning the MVP and then going the next year and being the clear MVP of the best team of the era, it's not so simple to me, because I don't think the narrative of "and then he got help and he was unstoppable" is adequate.
The reality about Moses is that his game was that of a specialist in a way that most other superstars are. Moses went to the interior, and essentially bowling-balled his way to rebounds and put backs. He wasn't a playmaker for others, and while his defense was valuable, it wasn't valuable in the sense of him being a big shotblocker.
Can a player like that be the most valuable player in the world? Absolutely, and I think he was in '82-83. Is that type of a player likely to be overrated by stats heavily influenced by points and rebounds? Yup.
Something folks may not be award of is that the Houston Rockets became the top offense by ORtg in the NBA in '74-75 and repeated the following year, still without Moses. So while the Rockets would continue to be an elite offense in the years to come with Moses eventually emerging as the epicenter of it, this wasn't Moses playing with a bunch of nobodies and leading an elite offense simply based on his game. He joined an elite offense and made it a bit better...but they were held back by a defense that was awful with or without Moses.
As the other offensive stars (Tomjanovic, Murphy, Barry) aged out, Moses offensive rebounding was really helpful as Elvin Hayes was acquired and allowed to miss shots at will, but it wasn't enough to create a great offense, and the defense still wasn't good.
The horrible fall off after Moses left for the 76ers is a feather in Moses' cap to be sure, but we have to remember that this was also the team that created the need for the lottery as they basically invented tanking on their way to acquiring Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon as back-to-back 1's.
Again, none of this is making me conclude Moses wasn't a Top 5 player when MVP voters thought he was...but it does chip away at the value one might assume from his huge point/rebound numbers.
In terms of where Moses stacks up compared to other centers on the current list for me, I definitely put him below David Robinson. After that he might be next. I have him, Mikan & Jokic pretty close. Ewing I have a bit lower, but I could definitely see folks arguing for him as well over the other players listed.
Doc—whom do you have as your #1 in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982?
I will say, I consider Gervin to be a pretty weak #1 so that opens the door to others, but I also have Kareem over Moses for that year.
Are you not overly impressed with Kareem’s defense in 1979? Gervin in those 3-4 years was such a great scorer (and fun to watch), but Kareem was a highly efficient scorer himself even if the volume was less, a much better defender, and Gervin didn’t really have the advantage in playmaking as he wasn’t a great playmaker.
lessthanjake wrote:Kyrie was extremely impactful without LeBron, and basically had zero impact whatsoever if LeBron was on the court.
lessthanjake wrote: By playing in a way that prevents Kyrie from getting much impact, LeBron ensures that controlling for Kyrie has limited effect…
Doctor MJ wrote:I value your thoughts here. I'd be curious to see elaboration on put-backs year-by-year. As well as anything we have that compared his put-backs to other players.
I will keep that in mind and come back with some data tomorrow
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: Became elite with Moses. Ah, but what does "becoming elite" mean? They got worse at eFG and FT/FGA. The big thing Moses did was really help the offensive rebounding. That's absolutely legit offensive impact, but it wasn't about them making Moses the first scoring option. Tomjanovich & Murphy were still scoring more, scoring more efficiently, and assisting more. Moses' impact then wasn't really about demoting those guys as it was him taking the place of others.
Don't you think that's actually his strength, not something we should criticize him for? I mean, he's one of the very few bigs in the league history who as volume scorers doesn't lose any value on offense next to quality perimeter creators. He just does his things without taking away anything from your other players. That's the definition of ceilling raiser and high level scalability.
70sFan wrote:Don't you think that's actually his strength, not something we should criticize him for? I mean, he's one of the very few bigs in the league history who as volume scorers doesn't lose any value on offense next to quality perimeter creators. He just does his things without taking away anything from your other players. That's the definition of ceilling raiser and high level scalability.
Sort of similar to KD imo except you get the added benefit of his off rebounding and I'd say his intangibles are a bit better. Worth noting that he was a mentor to Barkley in their years together and was very durable.
