RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #12 (Larry Bird)

[DraymondGold]

Moving this discussion here since it's more topical:

I just tracked a game where Bird generated more open shots for teammates 11 times. So I'm skeptical of this.

Thinking Basketball, who's tracked Bird in great detail across far more than just one game, puts bird in the Top 10 playmakers ever (#8 in in Podcasts #23) for his combination of off ball movement and GAOT level passing. The Greatest Peaks video and his top 40 profile go into this more.

Gee, what did Thinking Basketball say about Hakeem?

Who you rank highly depends on two things:
-what criteria you set for your ranking, and
-what evidence you use to evaluate the player given your criteria

Now I can push back on how reasonable your criteria are, or how well the criteria get at what you really care about (e.g. how good the player was, how great they were, their career value, etc.), but there is inherently a range of reasonable criteria one could have.
I can also push back at how consistent your evidence is with your criteria, whether there’s other evidence you’re missing, or whether your evidence doesn’t support the conclusion you’re making.

But this is not the case with Ben.

Ben explicitly states film analysis is a central part of the evidence he'll use for his criteria. He then performs an immense volume of film analysis such that his analysis is not biased by small sample issues. He puts in systematic checks to (try to) limit the bias in his analysis. And he makes explicit quantitative tracking of habits (e.g. number of passing mistakes per 100, number of good passes per 100, number of great passes per 100; number of defensive mistakes per 100, number of good defensive actions per 100, number of great defensive actions per 100) to make sure his analysis is based on quantitative measures to enable proper comparison of players, rather than just qualitative vibes which are easier to bias.

If you perform immense film analysis in favor of Hakeem, while stating uncertainty ranges that make it reasonable to take other players over Hakeem, like Ben does, then I have no qualms with you voting for Hakeem.

But this was not the evidence used in favor of Hakeem.

-Voters for Hakeem cited box stat performance… despite the fact that they were players who performed better than Hakeem in box stats.
-Voters for Hakeem cited box stat improvement in the playoffs… despite the fact that there were players with overall better performance of box stats in the playoffs.
-Voters for Hakeem cited WOWY based data… despite the fact that there were players with overall better performance in WOWY based metrics.
-Voters for Hakeem votes team performance... despite the fact that there were other players with better team performance.
-Voters for Hakeem cited team over-performance on the playoffs… despite the fact that people made it clear this may be a flawed metric (actually favoring players for worse regular season play, ignoring teammate contributions, and being heavily subject to bias by ignoring factors like variance/luck).
-Voters for Hakeem cited longevity… despite the fact that he did not have clearly better era-relative longevity than other players, nor did he have enough of a longevity advantage compared to other player's impact advantage in their prime.s

And people voted for Hakeem over other players, despite the fact that there were players who outperformed Hakeem in at least 5/6 of these forms of evidence.

I have no disagreement with people voting for Hakeem based on film analysis. I do disagree with people making conclusions based on evidence that’s inconsistent with their conclusion.

I also said "wide-open" not "more open" but per usual you read selectively

Well, we have our first case of needless snark...

So let's be clear about what happened.

I made a 5 part post (3 benefits of off-ball value, 1 analysis of team performance, 1 film analysis).
You... only directly responded to less than 1/5th of my post and did not address full sections of my post. You then set highly specific criteria for measuring creation.
I responded to your full post, and broadened your highly specific criteria for creation.
... and now you're annoyed that I "read selectively" and didn't respond to what you said?... despite the fact that you did the exact same thing, to a greater extent, in the first place? Wow

Regardless, to address your second point:
Sure, getting a teammate wide open when just looking off-ball is great. But there is so many other forms of creation that in aggregate add immense valuable. It’s immensely valuable to be the first player to break down the defense, which leads to the best shot for the team, even when breaking down the defense does not instantly generate a fully open teammate. It’s valuable to be a good screen setter and offensive rebounder. It's valuable to be creating throughout the possession, rather than just during the pass. It’s valuable to to get teammates a more open shot, rather than only looking at when they're entirely open. It’s valuable to stretch the foot with shooting. These things have value. So no, I don't think we should just look at when teammates were exclusively wide open. The criteria you set are too specific and miss most of the game.

Furthermore, you don't contextualize this metric with any other players. How many times a game does Magic get teammates *entirely wide open*? There's no context for what a good performance in this metric is like in the 80s. You just assume the amount you tracked was a poor performance.

Furthermore, the sample you looked at was significantly smaller. You tracked *less than* 3 quarters of a game -- less than 36 minutes. I tracked 58 minutes (61% more than you did) and cited film analysis that tracked 100s upon 100s more minutes. And these larger samples were clearly more positive for Bird than your smaller sample was.

So of course Bird’s creation looks worse if we ignore all of those forms of off-ball creation, don’t incorporate his on-ball passing, focus on a sample that’s less than 3 quarters of one game, and don’t contextualize how well other creators in the era were generating entirely open shots in the 80s (which was less often than the 00s or 10s).

Will also note, in a lineup where everyone was a capable ball-handler/on-ball playmakers, two of whom were strong isolation scorers, and all of whom were positive to strong defenders(who played at a 45-win pace without in years they were not winning titles(89, 87/88), Bird generated...

-> nowhere near goat-offense(resonably can be argued to be sub or on par with what we've seen from Kobe depending on the lens)

If Bird never led an all time offense in the regular season, then neither did Magic or LeBron.

Crazy how "goat" became "all-time", but sure. Magic and Lebron did not lead goat-lvl regular season offenses. They still led better 5 year rs offenses than Bird, and then went and led much better offenses in the playoffs.

For someone who has supposedly taken an 'era-relative' approach, only Magic has stronger offensive results, and he did so with more offensive help. So being the 2nd best offensive *team* for a decade is very fitting of Bird being all-time great offensively (while also noting he's better than Kobe defensively).

All-time-great =/ GOAT. Kobe's offenses were also as good so...

Offensive Rating Rank for Bird, Magic, Kobe, LeBron:

Spoiler:

Bird’s offensive rating Rank (1980–1992, 10-year prime 1980–1989/90):
2nd/22 teams
5/23
4/23
6/23
6/23
2/23
3/23
3/23
1/23
8/25 (Bird missed season)
6/27
4/27 (Bird missed 22 games)
8/27 (Bird missed 37 games)

Magic offensive rating Rank (1980–1991, 10-year prime 1982–1991):
1/22
7/23 (Magic missed 45 games)
2/23
1/23
5/23
1/23
1/23
1/23
2/23
1/25
1/27
5/27

LeBron offensive rating Rank (2008–2020, 10-year prime 2009–19/20):
20/30
4/30
6/30
3/30
2/30
5/30
3/30
3/30
3/30
5/30
24/30 (LeBron missed 27 games)
11/30

Kobe (1999–2010, 10-year prime 2000–2009):
2/29
5/29
2/29
2/29
4/29
6/29
7/30 (Shaq leaves)
8/30
7/30
3/30
3/30
11/30

So their Average 10 year prime rank in offensive rating
-Magic: 2
-Bird: 3.3 (3.1 if we replace 1989 with 1990)
-Kobe: 4.7
-LeBron: 5.8 (4.5 if we replace 2019 with 2020)

Average fractional rank (i.e. average fraction, which adjusts for number of teams in league, lower is better):
-Magic: 0.08
-Bird: 0.17 (0.16 if we replace 1989 with 1990)
-Kobe: 0.16 (0.18 if we replace 2000 with 2010)
-LeBron: 0.19 (0.15 if we replace 2019 with 2020)

Thinking Basketball is down, so I can’t check the actual relative ratings. But I really have no idea how you look at these team results and see Bird’s offensive results as so clearly below Lebron or Kobe. Especially when Bird's teams were more defense-focused than Magic's or Kobe's, and when Bird was the better defender than Magic or Kobe (so taking a wholistic look at the teams makes Bird rise up even more!).

Now you may cite playoffs, but I already noted that Bird’s offenses improved in the playoffs in a great percentage of non-injured years (which you didn’t reply to, while berating me for not addressing the points you raised...).

Now I'm not saying you can't end up favoring other players' team performance. But the idea that Bird wasn't leading good enough offenses or good enough teams to deserve a ranking now is head-scratching.

-> 3 titles(kobe had 5)

You're free to ring count. Everyone has different criteria! I'm disinterested in doing so.

When you make a case based on ceiling-raising("bird let his teammates playmake!"), the ceiling not being as high is a bit of an issue. And on that note...

What are you talking about? The 1986 Celtics were a better team than Kobe ever led.

Our two best available overall team rating stats are Sansterre's Overall SRS and Fivethirtyeight's ELO...
1986 Celtics: Overall SRS: +12.55, Standard Deviations: +2.53 [Ranked 6th ever]
2001 Lakers: Overall SRS: +12.20, Standard Deviations: +2.47 [Ranked 8th ever] (with the non-Shaq teams worse)

1986 Celtics: Composite ELO: +1784 [Ranked 4th ever in 2015]
2009 Lakers: Composite ELO: +1769 [Ranked 5th ever in 2015] (with the 2001 Lakers worse)

And the 1986 Celtics were also a better team than Magic ever led too, or LeBron for that matter. In what world was the ceiling for Bird's teams not as high as the ceiling for Kobe's?

In the postseason, the 1990 Celtics produced a top 15 rORTG ever higher than any Magic postseason offense or any Kareem team or any non-2001 Kobe team ever.

They had (per basketball-reference’s estimates) an offensive rating 11.3 points higher than their opponent’s defensive rating across five games. The Lakers literally topped that result (with a better percentage increase) that same exact round — the difference being they won their series and consequently diluted it with additional games played.

2008 Kobe also did it in the first round by basketball-reference’s estimates, similarly with a better percentage increase. He did it again in the conference finals two years later, and that one is supported by NBA.com as well.

I would not be surprised if Bird himself has better single round results than this either way, but that is why this is a completely unserious argument to try to advocate. Were the 2003 Blazers an all-time postseason team because they outscored the 8-SRS Mavericks?

And this was at a time when the Celtics depth was completely falling apart.

??? In 1989 they were a +3 offence without Bird. And in 1992 they won five games without Bird in the playoffs (went 1-3 with him).

On that note…

For someone who has supposedly taken an 'era-relative' approach, only Magic has stronger offensive results, and he did so with more offensive help.

That 1989 Celtics result is a better result than the 1979 Lakers, the 1981 Lakers without Magic, and the 1986-1988 Lakers without Magic, as well as a much better result than any post-Magic and pre-Shaq Lakers team.

... on a team whose roster was *defensively focused* (which would limit the offensive rating you're complaining about above)
... on a team whose offenses were far more *passing oriented* than scoring oriented, which is only made possible by off ball movement like Bird's... as I note in my post

Again this is an assumption not based in much of any data. They had good defensive results in 1980-84, but in this period you are trumpeting, their only notable defensive year was the 1986 one-off with a full season of Walton.

Filtering out 5 game first round exits, the 1988 Celtics also produced an offense better than any non-Shaq-led Kobe team.

Well that is wrong, but he did seem to lead better offensive results in 1986 and 1987 than any Shaq-less Kobe team, so maybe you just made a typo.

Yeah, this all seems like a bit of a reach Mon Ami

. It sounds like you're getting a bit heated if you're resorting to passive aggressive Mon Amis.

If you’d prefer to spend your time making jabs at both Bird and your friendly colleagues, you’ll quickly find that your colleagues stop being friendly, and that you've turned this from a discussion to a monologue.

Or we can have a productive discussion instead. It’s up to you.

[lessthanjake]

Vote for #12: Larry Bird
Alternate Vote: Kobe Bryant
Nomination: Moses Malone

I have to say I don’t feel strongly between Bird and Kobe (so could even be persuaded to change my vote actually). My main reasons for going for Larry Bird are twofold:

First, I think Bird has a much cleaner case for having been the best player in the league for an extended period of time than Kobe does. Bird was pretty clearly the NBA’s best player in the mid-1980s. And, while a lot of people considered Kobe the league’s best player in the mid-2000s, I didn’t think he was at the time and I still don’t. There was always some combination of one or more of Duncan, Garnett, LeBron, Nash, and maybe even Dirk that were better than him in that time period (and of course his own teammate Shaq was better than him in his earlier years). To me, Kobe was top 5 in the vast majority of years for a long time, but was never really the best, and Larry Bird actually was. So I just think Bird peaked meaningfully higher.

Second, I think the impact signals we have from Bird are better. Kobe doesn’t do great in impact metrics in general. We don’t have nearly as much of that data for Bird, but I think the overall picture looks better. Bird does better in WOWY. He does better in the Moonbeam stuff. They’re essentially the same in WOWYR. Meanwhile, we know that Kobe doesn’t do great in RAPM, which is a strike against Kobe to at least some small degree in this comparison even though we don’t have RAPM for Bird (it’s still part of the data picture for Kobe). So, while I don’t have a high degree of certainty regarding the level of Bird’s impact, my baseline assumption using the data we have is that it was superior to Kobe’s.

My biggest concern with Bird is that he had some real playoff struggles sometimes. But Kobe did too, so I don’t find that a particularly meaningful differentiator. The other potential differentiator is that Kobe has 5 titles and Bird has 3. But it’s hard to really give Kobe too much of an edge there, since he was the #2 guy on three of those teams.

Anyways, as for the nomination, I’ve explained why Moses in prior posts in earlier threads, so I’d just refer back to those.

[HeartBreakKid]

I'm having a hard time buying Bird was better than Robertson and West at this point. They both seem like more efficient scorers, and depending on who we are talking about they have anchored better more elite offenses, kill Bird on defense, better playmakers by quite some bit.

They were bigger outliers from other perimeter players than Bird was I think as well. They did not collect the rings or the fame but they played in a less commercial era with less stacked teams (mainly an argument for Oscar).

Bird did not really play longer than them either. So even West's injury disadvantages are mitigated some bit.

[Colbinii]

I agree, they *shouldn't be*. But to all the people saying Kobe has a clear and large longevity advantage, I believe they're being biased by these extra seasons and total games. If we discount these seasons, Kobe played only 25% more games than Bird did in an 2000s era where players overall played 43% more games than the 1980s (which is likely an overestimate for stars, but still indicative of a large difference across eras).

I'm saying the longevity advantage for Kobe is smaller than people are saying. And if we turn to the impact metrics we have of them, Bird has an overall advantage in his prime that is greater than the advantage Kobe has for longevity.

It is much simpler than you are making it out to be.

From 2000-2011, Kobe played in 35K Minutes and 903 Games in the RS and 7.4K Minutes and 180 Games in the PS.
From 1980-1988, Bird played in 27K Minutes and 711 Games in the RS and 6.1K Minutes and 145 Games in the PS.

Kobe gets incremental value from 2012 and 2013 [off-prime, still all-star level].
Bird gets incremental value for 1990 and 1991 [off-prime, still all-star level]

Kobe also has 1998 and 1999 where he is a positive impact player [Missing a total of 4 games in these two seasons].

So Kobe played 30% more minutes and 27% more games in their meaningful years, which as I already mentioned is smaller than Bird's impact advantage.

And is Kobe a positive impact player in 1998 and 1999? I already mentioned he had negative RAPM in *both* years. His 1998 RAPM was -0.11 and his 1999 RAPM was -1.23 (Goldstein RAPM, the traditional source for RAPM). If you're going to claim something that disagrees with me, you might as well address the points I raised!

Kobe wasn't going to look good given his role [2nd option, high usage] in RAPM as he wasn't quite suited to be exceptional at that role yet in 1998 or 1999. But, what is important is Bryant grew and developed in that role [allowing him to take his large jump in 2000].

Had Bryant been in Eddie Jones role, then Bryant would likely have looked exceptional by RAPM standards [lower usage, more defensive focus, play finisher vs play initiator].

RAPM is a great tool, but it only tells us how impactful a player is in the role they played, not in a vacuum.

[DraymondGold]

It is much simpler than you are making it out to be.

From 2000-2011, Kobe played in 35K Minutes and 903 Games in the RS and 7.4K Minutes and 180 Games in the PS.
From 1980-1988, Bird played in 27K Minutes and 711 Games in the RS and 6.1K Minutes and 145 Games in the PS.

Kobe gets incremental value from 2012 and 2013 [off-prime, still all-star level].
Bird gets incremental value for 1990 and 1991 [off-prime, still all-star level]

Kobe also has 1998 and 1999 where he is a positive impact player [Missing a total of 4 games in these two seasons].

So Kobe played 30% more minutes and 27% more games in their meaningful years, which as I already mentioned is smaller than Bird's impact advantage.

And is Kobe a positive impact player in 1998 and 1999? I already mentioned he had negative RAPM in *both* years. His 1998 RAPM was -0.11 and his 1999 RAPM was -1.23 (Goldstein RAPM, the traditional source for RAPM). If you're going to claim something that disagrees with me, you might as well address the points I raised!

Kobe wasn't going to look good given his role [2nd option, high usage] in RAPM as he wasn't quite suited to be exceptional at that role yet in 1998 or 1999. But, what is important is Bryant grew and developed in that role [allowing him to take his large jump in 2000].

Had Bryant been in Eddie Jones role, then Bryant would likely have looked exceptional by RAPM standards [lower usage, more defensive focus, play finisher vs play initiator].

RAPM is a great tool, but it only tells us how impactful a player is in the role they played, not in a vacuum.

That seems much more reasonable to me. I don't disagree with any of this per-se.

But I still do see "developing for future improvement" as very different from "currently an impact player". I would not portray 1997, 1998, or 1999 Kobe as an "impact player" in the all-time sense. He was negative RAPM all 3 years, he was a non-starter in two years. His Basketball Reference VORP rank was 151st in 1997, 48th in 1998, 50th in 1999. These should not be really considered much at all in an all time ranking.

So to reiterate my larger level point: Kobe's raw longevity advantage over Bird is smaller than people are suggesting, it's even smaller if we do any sort of era-relative longevity, and Bird to my eye has a larger advantage in impact metrics than Kobe's longevity advantage. Of course you're free to vote for Kobe still if you're unconvinced or like some other part of his case! Me personally, I'll probably be voting Kobe for my alternate.

But I do think it's worth pushing back against the idea that Bird somehow wasn't massively dominant in-era, or that Kobe's longevity advantage is so clear that it settles the debate.

[therealbig3]

For what it's worth, Kobe from 08-10 anchored some really, really strong playoff offenses, stronger on average than Curry's non-KD Warriors in the playoffs actually. And I don't agree that he had better offensive support. I actually think he was more limited as an offensive player than Curry has been. Although his shot selection and leadership can be criticized at various points of his career...he was overall an extremely high BBIQ player with a lot of the "gravity" we give Curry credit for. But with Kobe, he had gravity everywhere, because he was an efficient scorer from everywhere. To me, that's why he was able to anchor a top 10 offense in 2006 despite the terrible team he had.

Anyway, not to make it a Kobe vs Curry thing since that's over with now and Curry is voted in, but with Curry off the board, the only person I can think of that had a higher offensive ceiling than Kobe would be Bird...and Bird has a lot of issues in terms of longevity/durability. And there's been a lot of good arguments discussing just how much impact Bird actually had given that a lot of his passes weren't resulting in super high percentage looks for his teammates necessarily.

I also think we're getting too focused on TS%. Yes, Kobe had series where he struggled with his shot, typically against historic level defenses like the 04 Pistons, the 08 Celtics, and the 10 Celtics. But these teams shut down everyone, and Kobe overall actually performed quite admirably against the 10 Celtics imo. And at the end of the day, he still led the charge of a dominant post season offense. And he was the 2nd option (and often times actually the best overall offensive player) on the 3peat Lakers, who also had dominant playoff offenses. Which shows his insane versatility, in being capable of leading an offense but also taking a step back and stepping up when necessary when playing next to a better player. He was Jordan-lite in Jordan's role, and better than Pippen in Pippen's role. I think when discussing portability and what kind of ceiling a player can give you, that counts for A LOT.

Given his peak, his length of prime, and his playoff results as an individual (not even going into ring-counting), he's kind of an easy choice for me here given his competition for this spot. If I were voting. Although full disclosure, I lean Kobe over Oscar/West mainly because of the lack of data for them, it's just hard to take more of an unknown over who we know was an outstanding, MVP-level player for many years, and was one of the best offensive players of all time, with excellent playoff resiliency despite playing against really strong defensive teams most of the time. So I can't say he's definitely better, it's just hard for me to assume others are better based on more hypothetical logic, because we don't have more of the nitty gritty details for them.

[f4p]

Hey f4p, I find your discussion of Robinson vs Dirk interesting. I tend to agree Robinson could have absolutely won in more of his prime if he had a better fitting cast around him.

Just to get a better idea of your perspective:
-Dirk has better longevity than Robinson
-Oscar Robertson seems to be typically taken over both Dirk / David, typically because he’s considered to have a higher peak, more consistent prime, and era relative longevity isn’t too bad.

I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on why you lean Robinson here!

honestly, i'm not strong on robinson over dirk. in fact, i think i'm changing my nomination to neither of them this round. robinson is certainly one of the bigger playoff fallers and dirk isn't. but robinson also seems to have massive regular season impact right out of the box and the ability to show huge impact in a perfect team situation in the second half of his career. as much as i am impressed with dirk's 2011 run, i'm not sure it's really in the 1994 hakeem/2003 duncan realm in the sense that dirk basically got to do exactly what he was put on earth to do and didn't have to really do much else. if he had done it in 2006 at his peak, it would mean a little more (not that it isn't a leg up on robinson in leading a team to a title). but then, dirk before the 2006 finals was unbelievable and smoked KG in a series and robinson was getting punked by karl malone (an even bigger playoff faller than robinson) even when he wasn't getting destroyed by hakeem.

as for oscar, i'm just not very high on him. yes, great TS Add, yes a bunch of #1 offenses, but his last dominant regular season seems to be at age 29 or maybe age 30 if you want to include one more 300 TS Add season. but his playoffs numbers have never blown me away and his last dominant playoffs is at age 28. so i'm not seeing a ton of longevity. also, for a guy who had the misfortune of playing on untalented teams, he didn't take advantage of the few chances he got, going 1-2 as an SRS favorite before kareem, with all 3 of them being at least +2 favorites. his only win was as a +8 favorite.

also, i tend to think we probably slightly overrate oscar and west's efficiency numbers like TS Add because they just played in such an inefficient era that they basically have a first mover advantage on being guys who first had something like modern efficiency. i'm not sure they're really standing out like this in the 80's or later.

and just finally, with russell and wilt and mikan and west, i feel like i'm reaching my limit on guys who had careers that basically ended in the first 25 years of the league. that's only 1/3 of the league history, in an era where there often only 8 or 9 teams. the talent pool was significantly shallower on an absolute basis and we're talking much less than 1/3 of the total team-seasons played during that era. so if oscar gets in in the top 15 or 17, then we're using up 1/3 of the slots on way less than 1/3 of the talent pool and team-seasons.

[eminence]

as for oscar, i'm just not very high on him. yes, great TS Add, yes a bunch of #1 offenses, but his last dominant regular season seems to be at age 29 or maybe age 30 if you want to include one more 300 TS Add season. but his playoffs numbers have never blown me away and his last dominant playoffs is at age 28. so i'm not seeing a ton of longevity. also, for a guy who had the misfortune of playing on untalented teams, he didn't take advantage of the few chances he got, going 1-2 as an SRS favorite before kareem, with all 3 of them being at least +2 favorites. his only win was as a +8 favorite.

It's tough to view the '65 series as much of an upset in the Sixers favor. They clearly got it together by the playoffs after acquiring Wilt and then went toe to toe with the Celtics in the next round.

Oscars only win as a favorite was +8, also had a notable upset of the Nationals in '63.

[AEnigma]

Ben explicitly states film analysis is a central part of the evidence he'll use for his criteria. He then performs an immense volume of film analysis such that his analysis is not biased by small sample issues. He puts in systematic checks to (try to) limit the bias in his analysis. And he makes explicit quantitative tracking of habits (e.g. number of passing mistakes per 100, number of good passes per 100, number of great passes per 100; number of defensive mistakes per 100, number of good defensive actions per 100, number of great defensive actions per 100) to make sure his analysis is based on quantitative measures to enable proper comparison of players, rather than just qualitative vibes which are easier to bias.

If you perform immense film analysis in favor of Hakeem, while stating uncertainty ranges that make it reasonable to take other players over Hakeem, like Ben does, then I have no qualms with you voting for Hakeem.

But this was not the evidence used in favor of Hakeem. I have no disagreement with people voting for Hakeem based on film analysis. I do disagree with people making conclusions based on evidence that’s inconsistent with their conclusion.

Maybe you have seen fit to eschew film analysis. Would certainly explain a fair bit. My impression is that most of the rest us tend to start with our perspectives on the film (or at least as best we can — a lot shakier the farther we go back). But an eye test cannot be developed for you. I have immense respect for people like Elgee and JSpeelman and 70sFan and ZeppelinPage and so on who take the time to compile a bunch of clips for people who have not seen players before… but they cannot make someone see this is unique, this is special, or this is routine, this is expected. And even then, not all eye tests are equal or have equal values or assessments.

Numbers at least are a more innately common language, for as much as they can be twisted. People can engage, and evidently have engaged, with them with little to no familiarity with the player themselves. We accept this as relatively inevitable on varying scales for everyone (not a lot of prime Mikan footage), but do not confuse the pursuit of some common language as a replacement for the base reasoning behind everything. You want to portray Ben as some unique figure in that he uses numbers to inform his eye test; he is not.

What is more unique is this baseless implication that Hakeem’s voters not only lacked that film base, but in the absence of any film base were relying on data that did not support their conclusion. Perhaps too many of us failed to appreciate that despite two titles, and another finals run over an all-time defending champion about to win the next two titles, Hakeem simply failed in his efforts to lead any team on par with the 2020 Celtics. I personally am not shocked that type of approach failed to resonate, but that is based off my possibly naïve assumption that most people made the effort to watch the games being played.

Additionally, while this is hardly unique, I think Ohayo is right to press back against someone who claims to value Ben’s film analysis on Bird, and who strongly advocates for its validity in the face of contrasting film assessments, yet is completely willing to ignore that film analysis when it comes to a player you like less. Again, this brings us back to the question of what real value there ultimately is to sharing personal assessments of film when it can be disregarded the second it becomes narratively inconvenient. There is no film review requirement to this project; nevertheless, I would hope that most voters have made the effort to familiarise themselves with what is available, rather than using some sense of abstract spreadsheet averages as their foundation.

But that is just me.

[iggymcfrack]

Or maybe Durant needed to for once translate that “unguardable” skillset into the postseason outside of some laughably stacked offensive roster.

However, for what it is worth, I may end up taking Durant over Robinson too. He certainly has a longevity edge by now, and Robinson does not get any breaks from me for missing time because of navy commitments.

EDIT: To be clear on the last point, I am more interested in postseasons here, so Durant being a top player on twelve postseason teams now is worth more to me than Robinson being a top player on ten postseason teams, a role-player on two more, and an absent regular season driver on one more (1992). Not by a lot, but in terms of meaningful longevity, that is more what I check first.

Robinson in the 2002 and 2003 playoffs > Durant in 2010 and 2022. Both players really have 10 high level postseasons and 2 poor ones, but Robinson was at least a meaningful contributor to a champion in ‘03 with some big games while KD’s 2 bad years have little to no redeeming value. Here they are ranked by BPM:

2003 Robinson 3.6
2010 Durant 2.1
2002 Robinson 1.2
2022 Durant -2.9

[trex_8063]

Mostly copied from last thread, with slight additions.....

VOTE: Kobe Bryant

Kobe is very likely NOT a top 20 peak for me. He might barely be a fringe top-25 peak, actually (I'm pretty comfortable saying he's at least in my top 30 peaks). However, he's got MULTIPLE seasons which could [not always for the same reasons] be argued as his "peak season".......which means he's got multiple years playing at that fringe top-25(ish) [all-time] level. And he's got an "extended prime" that lasts 13 durable seasons. Compared to Curry, for example, Kobe's PRIME is like 90 or so additional games and >7k more minutes, iirc, than Curry's entire career (and not all of that is prime for Steph). His prime has similar advantage in length/availability compared to Bird's career, too.
And there are about 3 other seasons that are [imo] value-adding for Kobe.

That's adds up to a substantial amount of on-court career value (and recall: I'm a career value above RP type of guy).
Obviously his resume in terms of team success and media accolades [for whatever it's worth] speaks for itself. And he was [like Bird and Curry, among other current candidates] one of those players that drove global popularity of the game (and the NBA product); which, in turn, drives salaries, player pools, and general competitiveness of the league. He was, in fact, a global icon that transcended just basketball [fwiw].

I hope that will suffice for now as argumentation.

Re-iterating some of these same points, I'll quote myself from another recent thread:

Well, personally I don't anymore.
I used to rank Bird ahead, but I hit a point where I began to feel I put him higher simply because I wanted to, for nostalgia's sake (because I "liked" Bird more, appreciated his career more).
However, it wasn't so clear or easily justified if being honest about my criteria.

Did Bird have greater impact? I suspect he may have, but not by a substantial margin. For more information, I believe there is some data pertaining to both players presented within the bowels of the #9 thread of the current top 100 project.

For my part, I do think Bird peaked a little higher. If I'm comparing "average prime years", I think Bird's are a little better, even though Kobe is a touch more playoff-resilient, fwiw.

However, as I've established for years and years, I'm a total career value [above replacement] kind of guy when it comes to player evaluations (beginning to incorporate a touch of CORP principle, too). And Kobe sort of destroys Bird on the longevity/durability spectrum, which becomes awfully relevant to such an approach.

Take what I might call Kobe's "extended prime" (a slightly liberal view of what might be called "prime" years), what I'd gauge to be '01-'13....

That's 13 seasons (the length of Bird's ENTIRE career). I've just got through saying I think Bird's average prime year is better than Kobe's average prime year; but those 13 years include some of Bird's NON-prime, too. In his full-career avg season, is he better than an average PRIME season of Kobe? Maybe, maybe not. If it is, we're certainly not talking about a notable margin, imo.

And that's before giving recognition to the fact that from '01-'13 Kobe played 76 more games and nearly 3400 more minutes than Bird did [in his whole career]. In short: in terms of availability, Kobe's got ~1 full season more PRIME games/minutes played than Bird played in his whole career.

And Kobe's got some additional value added from '98-'00, too ('97 and '14-'16 are of no consequence to me).


In light of all that, I hit a point where I had a great deal of difficulty putting Bird's 13 years [really it's only 12] ahead of all that [16 years] of relevant Kobe seasons. For awhile [even after recognizing that], I justified keeping Bird ahead by telling myself that Bird was "bigger/more important for the game", "more iconic" than Kobe.

The thing that dispelled that notion was Kobe's death, watching the world react. Realistically, I should have known after the summer of '08 [the Redeem Team]. That spectacle made it clear that Kobe's persona transcended just the sport; he was a cultural touchstone, in a global sense. But somehow I missed it (or simply denied it) until his death.


So, no longer having that "excuse", I made the switch. In a way it was liberating. I stopped playing favourites, stopped bowing to a long-established hierarchy I'd established in my mind [e.g. "Bird cannot go lower than X place..."], and the world didn't end.

Alternate: Larry Bird
Nomination: Karl Malone

I hope to make a longer post about the Mailman at some point, but I never know if I'll get the chance at this point.
One thing I can't help thinking about when it comes to ranking Karl Malone is that if the refs don't blow two shotclock calls in game 6 ['98] (or if they DID blow them in real-time, but were allowed video review--->as would be mandated protocol today), the Jazz almost assuredly win game 6. Then game 7 is played in SLC, with Scottie Pippen playing injured.
In short: two crucial calls made correctly likely results in the Jazz winning the '98 title [and Malone winning FMVP]==>both of these things likely occurring even without any improvement in Malone's performance in said Finals.

If that had taken place, I don't think anyone would blink at someone ranking Karl Malone in the top 10-11 all-time. Because honestly: we'd be looking at the 3rd-leading scorer of all-time (with a couple of the higher/highest rs TS Added on record, iirc), who's also top 10 [I think] in rebounds, high(ish) ranked in steals and assists, who was also awarded All-Defensive honours, twice MVP of the league, a gigantic smattering of All-Star and All-NBA nods, and then a proven leader of a championship team. Almost no one would vehemently argue against such placement of that broad-strokes resume.

But because the refs did blow those calls and the Jazz lost, I'm perpetually among the contingent that vociferously argues [usually without success] to even garner him serious top 15 consideration. Alas....

[trelos6]

Ignoring the typo for KD for now,
I have Bird as the clear best player on the board.

12. Larry Bird
13. Jerry West

Nomination: D Rob

Nomination: KD

[penbeast0]

Again, engage with the posts, do not call out the poster. Doctor MJ is mellower than I am, I have banned one poster from the PC Board since this project started and all of you who are starting to snipe at each other have had warnings already.

[70sFan]

Ignoring the typo for KD for now,
I have Bird as the clear best player on the board.

12. Larry Bird
13. Jerry West

Nomination: D Rob

Nomination: KD

What Bird seasons do you see as MVP level?

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote: Kobe Bryant
Alt: TBD (West/Bird)
Nominate: Dirk Nowitzki

FYI for your vote to count you need to put in reasoning even if it's from a prior thread.

[iggymcfrack]

I'm having a hard time buying Bird was better than Robertson and West at this point. They both seem like more efficient scorers, and depending on who we are talking about they have anchored better more elite offenses, kill Bird on defense, better playmakers by quite some bit.

They were bigger outliers from other perimeter players than Bird was I think as well. They did not collect the rings or the fame but they played in a less commercial era with less stacked teams (mainly an argument for Oscar).

Bird did not really play longer than them either. So even West's injury disadvantages are mitigated some bit.

Were West and Oscar clearly better playmakers than Bird? I thought the whole strength of Bird was supposed to be that he made elite difficult passes that other guys couldn’t match that led to easy buckets.

We only have AST% for part of Robertson and West’s regular season careers, but we have them for their entire playoff careers so let’s look at that. We come up with Robertson at 29.5, West at 24.5, and Bird at 23.8. Considering that Bird was supposed to be an all-time passer for his position and that West and Oscar spent a lot of time at PG where they were going to get easy assists, I think the only thing we can be confident on is that West was probably the weakest passer/playmaker of the three.

I’m still kinda leaning toward picking West or Oscar here, largely because of their much better ability at getting to the free throw line and their WOWY numbers, but I think all three have very good cases and I’m still a long ways from being decided.

[AEnigma]

Or maybe Durant needed to for once translate that “unguardable” skillset into the postseason outside of some laughably stacked offensive roster.

However, for what it is worth, I may end up taking Durant over Robinson too. He certainly has a longevity edge by now, and Robinson does not get any breaks from me for missing time because of navy commitments.

EDIT: To be clear on the last point, I am more interested in postseasons here, so Durant being a top player on twelve postseason teams now is worth more to me than Robinson being a top player on ten postseason teams, a role-player on two more, and an absent regular season driver on one more (1992). Not by a lot, but in terms of meaningful longevity, that is more what I check first.

Robinson in the 2002 and 2003 playoffs > Durant in 2010 and 2022. Both players really have 10 high level postseasons and 2 poor ones, but Robinson was at least a meaningful contributor to a champion in ‘03 with some big games while KD’s 2 bad years have little to no redeeming value. Here they are ranked by BPM:

2003 Robinson 3.6
2010 Durant 2.1
2002 Robinson 1.2
2022 Durant -2.9

Robinson was on the court for half the game in that period. He missed almost the entire first round in 2002. To be blunt, no, I do not care that there is some formula that thinks he was really awesome in those 24 minutes a game and that Durant would have been better staying on the bench in 2022.

It is not nothing. I would call that a bigger contribution than 1998 Kobe. Being in the postseason is worth more than not being in the postseason, and 24 minutes of Robinson is worth more historically than a lot of roleplayer starters, just as it was for 1986 Walton. But we are talking about a guy who played as much for his team as Malik Rose did. Parse that for what it is.

[eminence]

First noting I don't do an MVP/weak MVP distinction (a rougher ATG/MVP/All-NBA/Allstar set of groupings for me), but I would probably have all of '80-'88 (9 seasons) as MVP level.

[rk2023]

Vote: Kobe Bryant
Alt: TBD (West/Bird)
Nominate: Dirk Nowitzki

FYI for your vote to count you need to put in reasoning even if it's from a prior thread.

Am aware, I’ll be able to get to it later - and just have it as a placeholder for now.

[70sFan]

First noting I don't do an MVP/weak MVP distinction (a rougher ATG/MVP/All-NBA/Allstar set of groupings for me), but I would probably have all of '80-'88 (9 seasons) as MVP level.

That's very interesting. To me putting rookie Bird on MVP level is a level too much. Although he certainly showed a lot of impact, let's not forget that he was still relatively inefficient scorer, low volume creator who regressed in the playoffs and I don't think he was in his defensive prime yet either.