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

[iggymcfrack]

You get that Shaq tried harder in the playoffs too right?

So Shaq wasn't trying in the 2000 playoffs?

What are you even talking about here? Shaq had a 30.5 postseason PER with an on/off of +22.9 in the 2000 playoffs while playing the best defense of his career and Kobe had a 19.3 postseason PER with an on/off of +0.1. That was a peak LeBron level postseason.


Kobe was basically Kyrie lite that year. Like they “needed” him because he had a big Game 7 against Portland, but for most of the year he had almost no impact and was just carried to a title by the big star. The difference is that Kyrie’s big games against the Warriors were all-timers and Kobe’s “big game” against Portland was a 25/11/7 on .500 TS%.

[One_and_Done]

You get that Shaq tried harder in the playoffs too right?

Bird was also a "supplementary weapon you add to a team that's really good". Title-winning teams generally can make the playoffs without you and Kobe would improve from that point(and win repeat titles as the best player)

It's very clear the 1980 Celtics couldn't make the playoffs without Bird, because they weren't even close to making it in 1979 and the non-Bird improvements around the edges were not really big needle movers. Yet the 1980 Celtics were a title contender, and won it the very next year.

Bird was not a supplementary weapon like Kobe, he was a floor raiser who made your team good to begin with. Then in the playoffs he could also help raise your title odds as a ceiling lifter (though both he and Kobe are overrated in this regard, as the big graphic I posted earlier in th thread about Kobe's playoff rep shows).

[iggymcfrack]

Does anyone have a vote count? I’m pretty settled on Oscar, but I want my alternate to be the non-Kobe candidate with the best chance of winning. It kinda seems like Bird’s ahead of West, right?

[ShaqAttac]

Does anyone have a vote count? I’m pretty settled on Oscar, but I want my alternate to be the non-Kobe candidate with the best chance of winning. It kinda seems like Bird’s ahead of West, right?

west might have more votes

[ShaqAttac]

I’m not comparing validity of anyone’s priors (and FWIW, the prior of yours I was alluding to was a prior that Bird isn’t that good a creator, not anything more general about the efficacy of off-ball play). Just saying that if someone (whether it’s me or you or anyone else) engages in film tracking, it’s likely to be biased by those priors, and is *extremely* likely to be biased by them if we’re engaging in the film study largely for the purpose of making a specific argument about the player we’re studying.

Sure, but that is why I have noted down specific time-stamps for people to vet, mentioned edge-cases, and am relying on peer-review. Bias is a potential issue. I do not think it neccesarily applies here though. Several people with varying biases have watched the same stuff for Bird and independently come to similar conclusions.

Ah that is an oppsie. We'd been watching 1986 tape and I guess we mapped mchale onto the shooter. The clip was from 1980 so I should proabably have paid more attention. I would still classify it as secondary creation, but fair to point out.

how does it matter if its cowens or mchale. if they're sagging off intentionally whats bird doin here?

[One_and_Done]

Does anyone have a vote count? I’m pretty settled on Oscar, but I want my alternate to be the non-Kobe candidate with the best chance of winning. It kinda seems like Bird’s ahead of West, right?

It's early days, but it's Bird 5, Kobe 5, West 2, Oscar 1, Mikan 1. I counted at least 11 Bird votes last time, so a long way to go. I know West has more votes coming, but Bird is the front runner by far. I can't imagine West getting 11+ votes until after Bird gets in.

Nominations are D.Rob 5, Dirk 3, Moses 2, Dr J 2, K.Malone 1, Jokic 1.

[OhayoKD]

Early 80s Bird was a very active defender renowned for his motor and he and DrJ were one anothers primary defenders those years (they even made a whole damn Atari game), 'weak man defender who needs to be hidden from the action', c'mon now, these 'takes' are just bull.

To Aenigma - Yeah, my pick for Bird as DPOY in 1980 is the product of a whole set of circumstances (favorable team set-up for success, good player/strong defender, weak competition), he would not have been my pick against plenty of other seasons, and isn't anywhere near a lock for that season. I'm grading Bird as a low end MVP guy in 1980. If I took that +12 at face value it'd be more like GOAT by a mile.

Are they though? Bird was renowned for his motor and defensive genius throughout

Yep, and Birds defensive motor dropping as his career progressed is not some fringe take. That's damn near unanimous. Still smart yes, high motor, absolutely not, became more skilled on offense to somewhat improve/maintain overall levels until a certain point (his mother's driveway to be precise).

But they are. Even on this board. Smart yeah, genius no. Motor higher? Sure. But there are still physical limits.

He was able to hustle into being decent early, was fine in 84, fine pre-injury in 85, hit or miss in 86, and a negative in 87 and then a big one in 88.

He was never a DPOY,

I think we should probably stop going back and forth - it's not productive and I'm realizing I'll never be able to reset my opinion of you from your 'opinion' on collinearity and its effects (which basically amount to 2+2=Albuquerque).

I'm pretty sure you're the one pulling "= albuquerque" when you try and argue that "two really good players playing all their minutes together" actually "just increases the variance!"

Just like when you pulled up on+on/off for Jordan and said "Look how good he was post-prime!" before pretending you never used "post-prime" when we pointed out they would be top years by this metric.

Just like you used 94 as off for 96 with a list of data that was specifically supposed to be one year after calling me disingenuous for using two year extraps.

We can stop the back and forth after you stop trying to project your own issues with interpreting numbers onto others(before gracefully revising what happened when convenient). If you want to disagree, disagree. I am not interested in you trying to cast aspersions and then pretending you want civility.

[Doctor MJ]

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.

So I'll say up front I'm specifically scanning the pages looking for more comparisons between these 3 guys, because I find them close, and I expect they'll be my next 3 votes.

To your points, some counters:

1. Don't just brush over the fact that Bird's absolute TS% was on average better than Oscar & West. I understand that Oscar & West have the era advantage, but this is not something that we can expect to linearly adjust for. Oscar & West's scoring may be more impressive than Bird's, but they were not literally more likely to be successful with their scoring attempts than Bird.

2. Kill Bird on defense. Oh I totally disagree with this characterization of Bird's defense. I think as a young guy his defensive impact was quite high. I think he deserved those All-D teams. Not saying he's the equal of West on defense, particularly over the long run, but I have more faith in his defense than Oscar's.

3. Oscar & West bigger outliers from contemporary perimeter guys. I think you can say that about Oscar & West relative to all other guards who have come since. It's an argument in their favor, but not something that should be used against them only with respect to Bird...who isn't even really a clear cut perimeter guy.

[lessthanjake]

Sure, but that is why I have noted down specific time-stamps for people to vet, mentioned edge-cases, and am relying on peer-review. Bias is a potential issue. I do not think it neccesarily applies here though. Several people with varying biases have watched the same stuff for Bird and independently come to similar conclusions.

Ah that is an oppsie. We'd been watching 1986 tape and I guess we mapped mchale onto the shooter. The clip was from 1980 so I should proabably have paid more attention. I would still classify it as secondary creation, but fair to point out.

how does it matter if its cowens or mchale. if they're sagging off intentionally whats bird doin here?

Huh? Cowens had a pretty good jump shot. This isn’t someone sagging off of Rudy Gobert.

[OhayoKD]

You get that Shaq tried harder in the playoffs too right?

So Shaq wasn't trying in the 2000 playoffs?

What are you even talking about here? Shaq had a 30.5 postseason PER with an on/off of +22.9 in the 2000 playoffs while playing the best defense of his career and Kobe had a 19.3 postseason PER with an on/off of +0.1. That was a peak LeBron level postseason.


Kobe was basically Kyrie lite that year. Like they “needed” him because he had a big Game 7 against Portland, but for most of the year he had almost no impact and was just carried to a title by the big star. The difference is that Kyrie’s big games against the Warriors were all-timers and Kobe’s “big game” against Portland was a 25/11/7 on .500 TS%.

And that peak Lebron postseason(defense not a thing I guess), still left the Lakers posting a far worse playoff performance than they did when Kobe was a superstar. You can give Kobe his credit as someone who was extremely valuable to a dynastic team, or you can settle for Shaq as a one-hit wonder.

RS WOWY did not lead to three titles.

[iggymcfrack]

So Shaq wasn't trying in the 2000 playoffs?

What are you even talking about here? Shaq had a 30.5 postseason PER with an on/off of +22.9 in the 2000 playoffs while playing the best defense of his career and Kobe had a 19.3 postseason PER with an on/off of +0.1. That was a peak LeBron level postseason.


Kobe was basically Kyrie lite that year. Like they “needed” him because he had a big Game 7 against Portland, but for most of the year he had almost no impact and was just carried to a title by the big star. The difference is that Kyrie’s big games against the Warriors were all-timers and Kobe’s “big game” against Portland was a 25/11/7 on .500 TS%.

And that peak Lebron postseason(defense not a thing I guess), still left the Lakers posting a far worse playoff performance than they did when Kobe was a superstar. You can give Kobe his credit as someone who was extremely valuable to a dynastic team, or you can settle for Shaq as a one-hit wonder.

RS WOWY did not lead to three titles.

Shaq was fantastic on D in 2000. It was the one year he actually gave 100% effort on D with the Lakers. Like you specifically bring up the year where Shaq played like an all-time Superman and Kobe played like a D-level co-star.

[iggymcfrack]

Vote: Oscar Robertson
First off, he's a WOWY god. Has arguably the most impressive numbers of all-time in that regard. And while he was a workhorse who played a ton of minutes and games overall, never falling below 64 games in a season, there are plenty of samples of him missing 10-15 games or so for us to extrapolate from from all different parts of his career except the actual heart of his prime.

A lot of times with older guys, I ding them for era, but Oscar was such an incredible shooter and scorer of the basketball from all different areas that I feel confident he'd be even better in the modern game with a 3-point line. He led the league in TS% as a rookie perimeter player in a league with no 3-point line which is just absolutely mind-boggling to me. He led the league in FT% twice and did a lot of his damage with the jumper so I don't think it's any stretch at all to expect him to make at least three 3-pointers a game if he was playing today.

The one thing I saw in the thread that really swung me to Oscar over West is how his stats were so much better when they played against each other as in that case, West's defense should be baked into the equation and it was a huge sample of games they played against each other with their career's exactly matching so I thought that was compelling. Ultimately, I just feel much more confident in his ability to show serious impact on the basketball court than any of the other candidates.

Alternate: Larry Bird
Honestly, would have been my second choice over West even without voting strategically although the margin is so razor thin, it's hard to say why other than that I guess I hold the lack of postseason success against West more than Oscar since he had more to work with, and when he finally got it done, it was one of his worst statistical postseasons where it was really the rest of the team performing well.

Nominate: David Robinson
Have gone over the case pretty in-depth in other threads, but basically he's an all-time defender with all-time box and impact stats.

[ShaqAttac]

Does anyone have a vote count? I’m pretty settled on Oscar, but I want my alternate to be the non-Kobe candidate with the best chance of winning. It kinda seems like Bird’s ahead of West, right?

It's early days, but it's Bird 5, Kobe 5, West 2, Oscar 1, Mikan 1. I counted at least 11 Bird votes last time, so a long way to go. I know West has more votes coming, but Bird is the front runner by far. I can't imagine West getting 11+ votes until after Bird gets in.

Nominations are D.Rob 5, Dirk 3, Moses 2, Dr J 2, K.Malone 1, Jokic 1.

well im gonna make it 6-5 for kobe

VOTE
MIKAN

I wanna vote MIKAN for 2 but imma keep my vote in case i need to use it for bron.

This is also p simple. He was waay better than everyone else in a waay no one else was, was the best on o and d, and won 7 rings.

George Mikan (1924) "Mr. Basketball", 6'10" center, the first true big man, 7 total pro titles with Chicago Gears & Lakers

Image
Origin: Illinois
College: DePaul
Series Wins: 23
All-League 1st Team: 8 times
Star-Prime: 8 seasons
POY wins: 8, POY shares: 8.0
OPOY wins: 3, OPOY shares: 3.8
DPOY wins: 6, DPOY shares: 6.2


The obvious top player from the era so maybe not a ton to be gleaned from going into further detail, but some observations:

- Mikan appears to have been the best offensive player in pro basketball basically from the time he turned pro. Eventually others arrive in the league to top him, but he remains elite until the rule change of 1951 that widened the key from 6 to 12 feet specifically to stop him. From that point onward, while Mikan likely remained the best rebounder in the world, it seems that the rule change did have the desired effect.

- Mikan almost certainly would have been an even more impactful defender from the jump if not for the banning of goaltending. As it was, it seems like it took Mikan some time to re-optimize his defensive play. He had a recurring issue of foul trouble that was often the Achilles heel for his teams win the lost.

- So far as I can tell, Mikan's defensive dominance in the NBA was less about shotblocking and more about rebounding. Certainly the shotblocking threat was there to a degree, but in a league with such weak shooting percentage, rebounding was arguably king.

ik we dont got data, but he won the 2nd most and he was way better than every1 else. Seems like a simple 2 to me.

Hope that was good!

2. KOBE/b]

Won 5 chips, two or three as best player was amazing for 4. Got great longetvity, higher corp and tbh I think its kinda clear bird really wasn't good enough to be talked about here.

I'm gonna nom

[b]Dirk
He has cool longetvity and impact even though he only won once. Robinson was kind of a playof choker until duncan carried

[Doctor MJ]

.

Maybe you have seen fit to eschew film analysis. Would certainly explain a fair bit.

Stepping in seeing this. The tone here is condescending. Let's avoid that.

I also want to remind folks that if someone is irritating them for reasons that are not mod-worthy, you can just ignore them. There's even functionality built into RealGM so you don't have to see their posts at all.

Please do so if it's a choice between that and propagating negativity.

Doc

[Doctor MJ]

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.

He did utterly transform his team though in one of the great rookie arrivals in history.

Don't get me wrong, I think Kareem is the clear cut MVP of that season, but I see Bird as a clear cut MVP candidate as someone I'd expect to be easily on my ballot.

[OhayoKD]

What are you even talking about here? Shaq had a 30.5 postseason PER with an on/off of +22.9 in the 2000 playoffs while playing the best defense of his career and Kobe had a 19.3 postseason PER with an on/off of +0.1. That was a peak LeBron level postseason.


Kobe was basically Kyrie lite that year. Like they “needed” him because he had a big Game 7 against Portland, but for most of the year he had almost no impact and was just carried to a title by the big star. The difference is that Kyrie’s big games against the Warriors were all-timers and Kobe’s “big game” against Portland was a 25/11/7 on .500 TS%.

And that peak Lebron postseason(defense not a thing I guess), still left the Lakers posting a far worse playoff performance than they did when Kobe was a superstar. You can give Kobe his credit as someone who was extremely valuable to a dynastic team, or you can settle for Shaq as a one-hit wonder.

RS WOWY did not lead to three titles.

Shaq was fantastic on D in 2000. It was the one year he actually gave 100% effort on D with the Lakers. Like you specifically bring up the year where Shaq played like an all-time Superman and Kobe played like a D-level co-star.

Not...in...the playoffs:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107771571#p107771571

And this is besides the point. All-time Superman Shaq and D-level co-star Kobe were...+7.8 in the playoffs. Shaq and arguable superman Kobe were +18 with Kobe averaging more minutes. Not so superman Shaq and not superman but superstar Kobe were +10.

Kobe was not kyrie. Kobe was a superstar for 2 championships and that is why Shaq has the three-peat you were bringing up in his favor two threads ago.

[Doctor MJ]

One thing I’m noticing while trying to pick nits between Oscar, Bird, and West is that Oscar seemed to have a large edge in health. While Oscar and West both spent 14 seasons in the league and Bird was there for 13, these are the numbers of minutes they played:

Oscar 43,886
West 36,571
Bird 34,443

Oscar played at least 64 games in every season while West played less than that in 4 seasons and Bird played less than that 3 times. West was unavailable for the playoffs twice while Bird missed an entire season. If everything else is close to equal, that could be another edge for Oscar.

I agree with you that this is an important point, and Oscar does have the edge, but just from a total-minutes wear & tear perspective, we should include the playoffs:

Bird 6,886
West 6,321
Oscar 3,673

So that puts the totals at about:

Oscar 47K
West 42K
Bird 41K

[One_and_Done]

If you replace Kobe with Ray Allen or Paul Pierce, the Lakers probably still win 3 titles.

[OhayoKD]

You get that Shaq tried harder in the playoffs too right?

Bird was also a "supplementary weapon you add to a team that's really good". Title-winning teams generally can make the playoffs without you and Kobe would improve from that point(and win repeat titles as the best player)

It's very clear the 1980 Celtics couldn't make the playoffs without Bird, because they weren't even close to making it in 1979 and the non-Bird improvements around the edges were not really big needle movers. Yet the 1980 Celtics were a title contender, and won it the very next year.

[/quote]
They were about as much of a title contender those playoffs as the 2006 Lakers were. In case you forgot those teams were also bad without Bryant(even adjusting for health)/

Bird never won a title without a good team. For someone who has chided the overreliance on WOWY, i'm not sure why your case for Larry is so centered on it

Bird was not a supplementary weapon like Kobe, he was a floor raiser who made your team good to begin with..

Nope. He never won without good teams and he lost plenty with them too. I do not know what ceiling you are talking about. Kobe won 5, Bird won 3.

[ShaqAttac]

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.

So I'll say up front I'm specifically scanning the pages looking for more comparisons between these 3 guys, because I find them close, and I expect they'll be my next 3 votes.

To your points, some counters:

1. Don't just brush over the fact that Bird's absolute TS% was on average better than Oscar & West. I understand that Oscar & West have the era advantage, but this is not something that we can expect to linearly adjust for. Oscar & West's scoring may be more impressive than Bird's, but they were not literally more likely to be successful with their scoring attempts than Bird.

2. Kill Bird on defense. Oh I totally disagree with this characterization of Bird's defense. I think as a young guy his defensive impact was quite high. I think he deserved those All-D teams. Not saying he's the equal of West on defense, particularly over the long run, but I have more faith in his defense than Oscar's.

3. Oscar & West bigger outliers from contemporary perimeter guys. I think you can say that about Oscar & West relative to all other guards who have come since. It's an argument in their favor, but not something that should be used against them only with respect to Bird...who isn't even really a clear cut perimeter guy.

wouldnt disreagding era advantage mean daron fox led a better playoff offense than steph did with kd, klay and draymond?