One_and_Done wrote:The Babe Ruth analogy for these old timers doesn't work because there's actually alot of evidence he'd be even better in the modern game. When Ruth played in the deadball era the game was stacked against hitters, and he lacked the modern bats that make Ruth's bats look like clubs.
Some of this is discussed in the book 'The year Babe Ruth hit 104 Home Runs', where they recalculate how many homers he'd have had with modern stadium sizes.
Wouldn’t pitching be better though lol
As I said, it's debatable if he'd be better today, but baseball isn't the same sport as basketball. Baseball is static, athleticism and skill differences aren't going to give you as much of an edge as a dynamic sport like basketball. Pitchers today throw faster, but if you read Moneyball you'll understand why speed isn't everything with pitching. In basketball being faster and stronger is always better.
Not saying Babe Ruth would be as good, but there are at least intelligent argumentd for it unlike West or Oscar (and Mikan it is high comedy to claim).
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
Doctor MJ wrote:Yeah, this hits some of the big things for me on the pro-side of Erving.
1. I think his New York Nets years are pretty much unimpeachable and more impressive than anything Malone or KD did.
2. As damning as the on/off numbers from the 76ers years look, we're still talking about Erving being the focal point of a very successful team and apparently looking pretty good by WOWY. Lots of uncertainty here.
To dive a little bit deeper here, let me go through year by year based on what I think Moonbeam's threshold (18 minutes in a game) was:
'75-76: pre-Erving, RS 46-36 - 1-2 in playoffs '76-77: RS 50-30 when Erving plays 18+, 0-2 when he doesn't - 10-9 in playoffs 77-78: RS 48-25 when Erving plays 18+, 7-2 when he doesn't - 6-4 in playoffs '78-79: RS 44-33 when Erving plays 18+, 3-2 when he doesn't - 5-4 in playoffs '79-80: RS 56-22 when Erving plays 18+, 3-1 when he doesn't - 12-6 in playoffs '80-81: RS 62-20, Erving plays 18+ in each game - 9-7 in playoffs '81-82: RS 57-24 when Erving plays 18+, 1-0 when he doesn't - 12-9 in playoffs '82-83: RS 55-15 when Erving plays 18+, 10-2 when he doesn't - 12-1 in playoffs
Note that Erving never misses or plays less than 18 MPG in the playoffs in this time period.
Looking at that, sigh, gotta say it doesn't make me feel more confident in Erving's impact.
I'm also worried by Erving's poor(er than expected) on/off and WOWY numbers. But just to play devil's advocate...
I think a major part of Erving's case requires incorporating his dominance of the ABA, which this doesn't consider. Now the ABA wasn't a full league, and likely wasn't as talented as future leagues. I've seen previous studies that estimate the ABA was ~90% of the talent of the NBA at the time based on something like (if I remember correctly?) how ABA players ppg decline or how ABA teams points decline either when they faced the NBA in those ABA vs NBA games of the early 70s or how the players performed immediately post merger. Not a perfect unbiased measure, certainly noisy, but
However, Dr J was very dominant in the ABA. So why didn't he dominate the NBA? Perhaps it was due to poor fitting supporting cast (the spacing was poorer without the 3 point line), poor fitting stars who played similar roles to Erving, poor health, or any other variety of factors (we discussed this in the Greatest Peaks project). But after looking Top 3 in the world in 74–76, Erving's value seems to drop in the late 70s... before rising slightly in the early 80s. So just looking at Erving's WOWY in 77–83 will likely show his worse performance in the late 70s, without showing his better performance in the mid 70s.
There's one more WOWY sample in 73, when Erving played 71/84 games. So let's check there: '72–'73: RS 39–32 when Erving plays at all, 2–10 when Erving doesn't - 1–4 in the playoffs
With Erving: +0.69 MoV Without Erving: -6.75 MoV 1973 Erving's raw WOWY: +7.44
Some Qualifiers:
Spoiler:
Note that the raw WOWY does not include adjustments for home court or diminishing returns joining good teams, like the smarter WOWY data by Thinking Basketball does.
Also, this WOWY was calculated *discounting* the game here (https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/197210260VIR.html). Why? "On 11/7/72, ABA ruled a forfeit and statistics expunged. In the 2nd half Alex Hannum had his Rockets foul players in pretense of a pressure defense experiment. They committed 56 fouls, 7 players fouled out, and the Squires shot 56 FT in the 4th quarter". 56 free throws in the fourth quarter!! Wowza. Regardless, if the ABA thinks it's worth ruling a forfeit, it's probably not worth including in our WOWY calculation. Basketball Reference rules it as a victory for Erving's team, by a whopping score of 2–0. Yep, two points to zero points. The original score was 155–111.
If we add in this forfeit game to Erving's on-sample, using the original score, he now has a +1.29 MoV, and a raw WOWY of +8.04.
. It's just 1 sample with a 12 game off-sample (so still quite large error margins!). But it is supportive of Erving being a clearer positive force in the ABA for whatever reason.
...
f4p wrote:The Talent Distribution Question or "We need to talk about Jerry and Oscar."
Interesting stuff, re–expected spread of all time players! It was something I had mentioned in the last thread with Unibro, and something I was just writing about in my voting post when you posted.
I suspect there will be some pushback -- indeed there already have -- from people who prefer to do things era relative (it's easier to stand out when there is less competition at the star position). Which is to say, there is a reasonable set of criteria where it makes sense to have so many early players. But people should be clear about what their criteria are, and if they are considering something where we'd expect a more equal spread of talent per-capita across league history, this should give some pause for whether we truly want 4–5 players from the 50s and 60s this high.
Three points here: 1. You said this might be cause to lower both West and Oscar out of the Top X. I'd counter that they don't have to be tied together. They were rivals, they do have similar statistics and signals, they do have similar team performance if we take off our glasses and don't squint too much (i.e. they lost to Russell early on, joined an all-time big, then won a single championship on an all-time team). But! I'd caution that rivals do not necessarily need to be ranked right next to each other. We might, for example, rank West 2 or 3 or 4 places higher than Oscar. Or vice versa. It's possible some reasonable person could have one of those players in the top X (say top 15) but not the other. Or, alternatively, if we look at the 50s–60s as a group of years, it might be cause to lower the other player who's been getting traction (Mikan) first before Oscar or West. It's possible this is cause to lower both Oscar and West but not Mikan based on this data -- I'm just pointing out other interpretations for who to lower aren't crazy.
The next two points are about the thresholds for your study. You set some thresholds for both the Top X to calculate the odds on, and the final year to look at (first 25 / 26 years)...
2. How much do the odds change if we lower the X threshold in 'Top X players''? Let's say we're looking at the chances of 4–5 50s–60s players showing up in the Top 25, instead of the Top 20 or Top 16. How much do the odds change?
3. How much do the odds change if you increase the 'Y' threshold in "First Y years'? Let's say you look not just at the 50s and 60s, but look at the first 30ish years of the NBA until the NBA merger in 77 or until the 3 point line in 80. We'll likely have 6 players from that era: Kareem, Russell, Wilt, West, Oscar, Mikan... maybe Erving if you think he played early enough to fit pre-77 or pre-80. Does this look any more reasonably likely than if we just isolate on the 50s and 60s?
Perhaps this would still be reason for people to consider dropping one or multiple of Oscar/West/Mikan. But the odds might be slightly more favorable for giving them a high ranking if we adjust the thresholds slightly. Perhaps not. But worth checking at least!
One_and_Done wrote:The Babe Ruth analogy for these old timers doesn't work because there's actually alot of evidence he'd be even better in the modern game. When Ruth played in the deadball era the game was stacked against hitters, and he lacked the modern bats that make Ruth's bats look like clubs.
Some of this is discussed in the book 'The year Babe Ruth hit 104 Home Runs', where they recalculate how many homers he'd have had with modern stadium sizes.
Wouldn’t pitching be better though lol
As I said, it's debatable if he'd be better today, but baseball isn't the same sport as basketball. Baseball is static, athleticism and skill differences aren't going to give you as much of an edge as a dynamic sport like basketball. Pitchers today throw faster, but if you read Moneyball you'll understand why speed isn't everything with pitching. In basketball being faster and stronger is always better.
Not saying Babe Ruth would be as good, but there are at least intelligent argumentd for it unlike West or Oscar (and Mikan it is high comedy to claim).
I def disagree on Ruth being better now, but yeah I agree that between basketball and baseball it pops out more for sure when comparing 60 years ago to now. Wouldn’t say it’s neccessarily the gap in athleticism that pops out the most (although it does for sure).
f4p wrote:The Talent Distribution Question or "We need to talk about Jerry and Oscar."
Spoiler:
So the horse is out of the barn for this Top 100 but perhaps this may serve as food for thought for the next Top 100. I like era-relativity. In fact, I'm about to vote for George Mikan, which makes everything I'm about to say a bit odd I guess. But as we near possibly voting for Jerry West 14th and possibly Oscar or Mikan top 16 or 18, I can't help but wonder if we're really overrepresenting the guys from the First 25. Players whose careers were complete by the time we reached the NBA 25 year anniversary (ok, really 27th anniversary going to 1974, but functional primes done by the 25th anniversary). If all 3 make it consecutively, we will have 5 "First 25" players in the top 16. That's a lot. But of course, how a lot is a lot? After all, as pointed out, these are small sample sizes and prone to lumpiness.
So first, we have to acknowledge that the NBA talent pool has grown. We can roughly just look at the league having about 10 teams for the First 25, 20 teams for the Next 25, and 30 teams for the Last 25. Just taking team-seasons as a rough estimate, we would get that the First 25 represents 1/6 of league historical talent. I say lower, and we'll look into that, but we'll go with this for now. Earlier in the thread, eminence took a crack at a distribution and came up with:
eminence wrote:Riffing on an f4p post from last thread - how would folks estimate Star+ talent distribution across the decades?
Lumping the incomplete decades in with the others, when guys entered the league, and rounding to the nearest 4% for now, my own estimations: '47-'59: 4% '60-'69: 8% '70-'79: 8% '80-'89: 16% (feels like a very talented decade that was a a leap from those prior) '90-'99: 16% '00-'09: 20% '10-'23: 28% (benefitting from the extra years a bit, if I'd stopped in '19 I might have split off 4% somewhere else)
*Noting that the '10-'23 period will be less prevalent on a top 100 careers list like we're doing due to lack of longevity vs lacking talent.
Splitting the 70's in half and going to 1974 when Oscar and West retired, we get 16%, or about 1/6. eminence was doing talent distribution but I think we can look at it as a good proxy of "For players whose career ended in year X, how much of league talent did their era represent?" Reasonable minds will disagree, but the first guess out of the box agreed with the back of the envelope. Granted, careers couldn't really "end" by 1947 so we're probably overrepresenting the First 25 again, but this is all approximation so let's do with it.
So assuming that was the distribution, how likely is it that we would see 5 out of the top 16 from the First 25? Well, doing a calculation where I just have excel generate 16 random numbers between 0 and 1, and then assign them to an era based on the cumulative historical talent to that point (i.e. 0.358 would line up with the cumulative total of 36% up to 1989 and be assigned to a career ending in 1989). So doing this 1000 times, we get an average of about 2.5 top 16 players from the First 25. We get only a 79 out of a 1000, or 7.9%, chance of seeing 5 top 16 players by random chance. Unlikely, but not necessarily statistically significant.
But what if you are like me and think we are probably at best talking about 10% of historical talent? Well, let's first take a stop by the 12.5% guess along the way (1/8 of historical talent by 1974):
That's a breakdown of:
'47-'59: 2.5% '60-'69: 5.5% '70-'79: 9.5% (4.5% by 1974) '80-'89: 13% '90-'99: 17.5% '00-'09: 21% '10-'23: 31% (trying to boost for international expansion)
Now we're already down to 1.9 Top 16 from the First 25 and only a 3.1% chance of 5 stars by random chance.
But what if we say all these guys aren't getting in at the Top 16. Maybe it's Top 20.
That's 2.35 Top 20 from the First 25 and 8.5% chance. so at least we're back to "not statistically significant" if they're only Top 20 and not Top 16.
But what about 10%?
that's a breakdown of:
'47-'59: 2.5% '60-'69: 4.5% '70-'79: 7% (3% by 1974, could probably ding the 50's harder and boost the 70's a little, but the 10% cumulative is what matters) '80-'89: 14.5% '90-'99: 18.5% '00-'09: 21.5% '10-'23: 31.5% (trying to boost for international expansion)
Now we're down to 1.5 Top 16 from the First 25 and only a 1.1% chance of 5 stars by random chance.
But what if we say all these guys aren't getting in at the Top 16. Maybe it's Top 20.
That's 1.8 Top 20 from the First 25 and 2.6% chance. so back to "statistically significant" even if they're only Top 20 and not Top 16.
I think there's a very strong chance we're overrepresenting the First 25.
But what if we're not even scratching the surface of how different the talent pool was in the past?
This is a worthwhile topic that I think people should ponder for themselves. I'm not really looking to get into it point by point, but will just say:
1. This is something that bothered me when I first started doing all-time rankings.
2. I've since further examined all of these guys, and some of them dropped like a stone on my list. It just so happens that that there are 4 guys (Russell, Wilt, West, Oscar) who don't. And so while I don't want to talk as if my view is everyone's view, I think it's important to understand that this isn't going to be a rate that continues as we go deeper in the Top 100.
3. While it seems extreme to have 4 guys born in a 5 year span back then so highly rated, I think it's important to keep in mind that there is one year that towers over all others in terms of the quantity of great players, and that year was closer to the birth year of the 4 guys in question than it is:
1963 saw Jordan, Olajuwon, Malone & Barkley, along with Mullin, Dumars, Hornacek & Porter. What are the odds that 1963 was the best year of basketball talent in history? Very, very low...but some year has to be that year, and whatever year that is, it's naturally going to beat the odds.
f4p wrote:What to do with those plumbers or "How much can we talk about race?"
So why do people make the plumber joke about the early NBA? Well, frankly, it's because they see a lot of white people. All white people in fact for the very early NBA. Heavily white well into the 60's. And well, they don't see that today. Certainly not American whites. The NBA was essentially 100% American back in the day (I'm sure there were exceptions, don't @ me) and started off all white. Based on census data for 1960 (we'll start in Jerry and Oscar's time), the population was ~180 million. Now it's 330 million. So multiply by 1.83, account for the 25% of the league that is international, throw in some increase due to money, and maybe we get a 3x-5x increase in the talent pool?
But based on an article from 2016, there were only 42 white Americans in the league in 2016. Take 450 players, lop off 120 give or take for international players, and that's 42 out of 330, or about 1 out of 8 for American players. A 100% white league is now 12.5% white from the American part of the talent pool. The census says there were ~160 million white Americans in 1960. There are 47 million black Americans today. So a population less than 1/3 of the effective talent pool population from 1960 is supplying something like 7 out of every 8 players today, in a league with almost 4 times the roster spots. The white population of America has only grown since 1960, up to over 200 million, and yet it is effectively cut off from the NBA by 47 million people. The previous leagues weren't just drawing from a smaller talent pool, they appear to have been drawing from the wrong talent pool. My 10% estimate from before is probably not even close to as severe as we should be.
Key things here:
1. By 1970 the NBA was majority Black I believe. I totally get being skeptical of the guys who exited before that time, but realistically Wilt, Oscar & West were clear cut stars until almost the very end of their careers so I don't see a logic to knocking them because of who was around when they started.
2. When we talk about "white Americans" there's an elephant in the room: White Europeans are thriving in the NBA at the highest of levels, and not because we found the one-in-a-billion quick twitch guy. Realistically, we have a White American problem more than a White problem in the NBA, and that's cultural.
There was a time when if you were born and raised in Indiana, you were playing basketball in your spare time as a matter of course. There was a time when Jews were seen as the minority who were so exceptional at basketball, and those who stood out within that community at basketball took it extremely seriously. Things change.
Mostly in the US nowadays, if you're White, you don't expect that there's a future for you in basketball beyond a college scholarship.
There was a weird thread talking about this stuff over on the GB that talked about Kevin Love as the best White American in quite some time. Forgetting the silliness of his actual point, the thing that immediately stood out to me about Love was this:
Love's dad played in the NBA.
When your dad did a thing, and you have obvious talent for it, you're far more likely to devote yourself to it.
And this will sound self-aggrandizing, but it is what it is: Had my father been in the NBA, I expect that I'd have either been an NBA player, or been a near miss. I'm bigger than Kevin Love, I was a good shooter, passer, and ball-handler at least relative to the kids around me...and yet I never took it seriously as something I had a future in. Now, I had health problems during adolescence that are just as important as anything else when thinking about this stuff, but regardless of that, I saw my future in terms of my academic strengths rather than my athletic strengths. Had that not been how I saw my future - had my family not expected me to go to college despite none of my ancestors being college grads - I may well have spent my free time refining my basketball game.
f4p wrote:So where does this leave us or "Should we talk about Babe Ruth?"
The short answer is "I don't know". I probably believe the "severe" case is more true than not, but is that how we want to do an all-time ranking? Babe Ruth put up enormous numbers playing in a segregated league. Of course, black players never came to dominate MLB. In fact, they seem to often lament the lack of black talent in the majors. And the influx of Latin American talent seems to be less about integration and more akin to the NBA's international expansion. But setting aside the fact the situations aren't necessarily analogous, what if they were? Could we tell the history of baseball without Babe Ruth? I don't believe so.
Would an all-time list be fun if we just wiped away a huge chunk of league history? Probably not. But I think it's worth keeping in mind and possibly making some updates. And I think, more likely than not, that 5 Top 20 players from such a radically different league with a radically different talent pool is probably exceedingly unlikely. I have a soft spot for Mikan as the NBA's Babe Ruth to some degree and so I suppose I will vote for him in this thread. But two guys who did not dominate to even remotely the same degree, from only about a decade later, guys who aren't necessarily nearly as integral to telling the entire story of the NBA, the 3rd and 4th best players from their era? Now that I've thought about it more, I'm not sure I can really see them as all being worthy of a Top 15-20 slot. A reexamination may be in order.
A wise place to end things.
I think that the place to start here with the baseball analogy is in the recognition that baseball matured earlier than basketball. It really makes sense to ask whether Babe Ruth would be a superstar in the MLB today - in a way it doesn't make sense with a basketball contemporary like the 5'11" Nat Holman.
But that doesn't NOT make me want to talk about the Holmans of the world, and we could absolutely have a project that focused on historical significance where Holman should be a lock for being in the Top 100. It's just that if we're focused on competitive ability, there's no comparison, because of the changes that have come to the game of basketball since Holman played.
Now as I say this, you're clearly implying that Ruth would NOT be able to play today so this is a source of disagreement that we can get more into. I would say that what Ruth represents is the start of power in baseball, and we know enough based on how big parks were back in the day to know that he had plenty of power by modern standards. We also know that so much of what makes a great hitter has to do with vision and hand-eye coordination, and I think this isn't something we've seen a drastic improvement on in the last century.
By contrast in basketball what we've seen are 3 big things:
1. Taller people, and taller people getting recruited into basketball and trained to make use of their advantages. 2. Intense training to improve shooting ability particularly in the 21st century. 3. Equipment and rule changes that have allowed more reliance on dribbling, and thus encouraged the relevant training.
Of those 3, it's really only the height that puts competition between eras totally out of - literal - reach.
I think people think that the athletes of today are drastically superior compared to what came before, but I think people overestimate what's gone on here. If you had asked people whether someone who looked like Jokic could be MVP of the modern NBA before he showed up and proved he could, people would have said, "Hell no, maybe in the '50 when Mikan was doing it". Same for Steve Nash. Even the people who believe John Stockton could've been better than Nash weren't saying that Stockton was an MVP-level talent back in the '90s. Had you asked them, they'd have said, "Hell no, maybe in the '50s when Cousy was doing it."
We keep being surprised by guys today who look like guys from the '50s, and I think we need to recognize that this is happening to us, and be less certain about what we think we know. Just because things have changed, doesn't mean that the new is necessarily completely dominant over what came before.
DraymondGold wrote:Perhaps this would still be reason for people to consider dropping one or multiple of Oscar/West/Mikan.
So, the "consider dropping one" perspective concerns me.
I can't emphasize enough that when I do these lists, I try not to think at all about the actual number spot for any given player. I think when you start doing the whole "C'mon, Player A has gotta be in the Top X", you're using a top-down thought process that's just totally incompatible with serious analysis.
I do think we should all be concerned when we have contemporaries right next to each other. Not that that can't be right, but if we see this as a matter of course, it speaks to an artifact in one's process by which they're implicitly tiering players within era and not really doing all the sorting comparisons they should be doing.
And yes, as someone who has West & Oscar right next to each other, that is something I'm concerned with...but of course, I'm also someone who has flip flopped on that comparison once again during the scope of this project. When you don't have much of a gap between two guys, it makes sense that they might end up right next to each other.
As I say all of this, I don't have MIkan right next to those other guys, so you might argue that I've already "dropped one", though that's not the process I used to get where I am.
f4p wrote:The Talent Distribution Question or "We need to talk about Jerry and Oscar."
Spoiler:
So the horse is out of the barn for this Top 100 but perhaps this may serve as food for thought for the next Top 100. I like era-relativity. In fact, I'm about to vote for George Mikan, which makes everything I'm about to say a bit odd I guess. But as we near possibly voting for Jerry West 14th and possibly Oscar or Mikan top 16 or 18, I can't help but wonder if we're really overrepresenting the guys from the First 25. Players whose careers were complete by the time we reached the NBA 25 year anniversary (ok, really 27th anniversary going to 1974, but functional primes done by the 25th anniversary). If all 3 make it consecutively, we will have 5 "First 25" players in the top 16. That's a lot. But of course, how a lot is a lot? After all, as pointed out, these are small sample sizes and prone to lumpiness.
So first, we have to acknowledge that the NBA talent pool has grown. We can roughly just look at the league having about 10 teams for the First 25, 20 teams for the Next 25, and 30 teams for the Last 25. Just taking team-seasons as a rough estimate, we would get that the First 25 represents 1/6 of league historical talent. I say lower, and we'll look into that, but we'll go with this for now. Earlier in the thread, eminence took a crack at a distribution and came up with:
eminence wrote:Riffing on an f4p post from last thread - how would folks estimate Star+ talent distribution across the decades?
Lumping the incomplete decades in with the others, when guys entered the league, and rounding to the nearest 4% for now, my own estimations: '47-'59: 4% '60-'69: 8% '70-'79: 8% '80-'89: 16% (feels like a very talented decade that was a a leap from those prior) '90-'99: 16% '00-'09: 20% '10-'23: 28% (benefitting from the extra years a bit, if I'd stopped in '19 I might have split off 4% somewhere else)
*Noting that the '10-'23 period will be less prevalent on a top 100 careers list like we're doing due to lack of longevity vs lacking talent.
Splitting the 70's in half and going to 1974 when Oscar and West retired, we get 16%, or about 1/6. eminence was doing talent distribution but I think we can look at it as a good proxy of "For players whose career ended in year X, how much of league talent did their era represent?" Reasonable minds will disagree, but the first guess out of the box agreed with the back of the envelope. Granted, careers couldn't really "end" by 1947 so we're probably overrepresenting the First 25 again, but this is all approximation so let's do with it.
So assuming that was the distribution, how likely is it that we would see 5 out of the top 16 from the First 25? Well, doing a calculation where I just have excel generate 16 random numbers between 0 and 1, and then assign them to an era based on the cumulative historical talent to that point (i.e. 0.358 would line up with the cumulative total of 36% up to 1989 and be assigned to a career ending in 1989). So doing this 1000 times, we get an average of about 2.5 top 16 players from the First 25. We get only a 79 out of a 1000, or 7.9%, chance of seeing 5 top 16 players by random chance. Unlikely, but not necessarily statistically significant.
But what if you are like me and think we are probably at best talking about 10% of historical talent? Well, let's first take a stop by the 12.5% guess along the way (1/8 of historical talent by 1974):
That's a breakdown of:
'47-'59: 2.5% '60-'69: 5.5% '70-'79: 9.5% (4.5% by 1974) '80-'89: 13% '90-'99: 17.5% '00-'09: 21% '10-'23: 31% (trying to boost for international expansion)
Now we're already down to 1.9 Top 16 from the First 25 and only a 3.1% chance of 5 stars by random chance.
But what if we say all these guys aren't getting in at the Top 16. Maybe it's Top 20.
That's 2.35 Top 20 from the First 25 and 8.5% chance. so at least we're back to "not statistically significant" if they're only Top 20 and not Top 16.
But what about 10%?
that's a breakdown of:
'47-'59: 2.5% '60-'69: 4.5% '70-'79: 7% (3% by 1974, could probably ding the 50's harder and boost the 70's a little, but the 10% cumulative is what matters) '80-'89: 14.5% '90-'99: 18.5% '00-'09: 21.5% '10-'23: 31.5% (trying to boost for international expansion)
Now we're down to 1.5 Top 16 from the First 25 and only a 1.1% chance of 5 stars by random chance.
But what if we say all these guys aren't getting in at the Top 16. Maybe it's Top 20.
That's 1.8 Top 20 from the First 25 and 2.6% chance. so back to "statistically significant" even if they're only Top 20 and not Top 16.
I think there's a very strong chance we're overrepresenting the First 25.
But what if we're not even scratching the surface of how different the talent pool was in the past?
This is a worthwhile topic that I think people should ponder for themselves. I'm not really looking to get into it point by point, but will just say:
1. This is something that bothered me when I first started doing all-time rankings.
2. I've since further examined all of these guys, and some of them dropped like a stone on my list. It just so happens that that there are 4 guys (Russell, Wilt, West, Oscar) who don't. And so while I don't want to talk as if my view is everyone's view, I think it's important to understand that this isn't going to be a rate that continues as we go deeper in the Top 100.
3. While it seems extreme to have 4 guys born in a 5 year span back then so highly rated, I think it's important to keep in mind that there is one year that towers over all others in terms of the quantity of great players, and that year was closer to the birth year of the 4 guys in question than it is:
1963 saw Jordan, Olajuwon, Malone & Barkley, along with Mullin, Dumars, Hornacek & Porter. What are the odds that 1963 was the best year of basketball talent in history? Very, very low...but some year has to be that year, and whatever year that is, it's naturally going to beat the odds.
f4p wrote:What to do with those plumbers or "How much can we talk about race?"
So why do people make the plumber joke about the early NBA? Well, frankly, it's because they see a lot of white people. All white people in fact for the very early NBA. Heavily white well into the 60's. And well, they don't see that today. Certainly not American whites. The NBA was essentially 100% American back in the day (I'm sure there were exceptions, don't @ me) and started off all white. Based on census data for 1960 (we'll start in Jerry and Oscar's time), the population was ~180 million. Now it's 330 million. So multiply by 1.83, account for the 25% of the league that is international, throw in some increase due to money, and maybe we get a 3x-5x increase in the talent pool?
But based on an article from 2016, there were only 42 white Americans in the league in 2016. Take 450 players, lop off 120 give or take for international players, and that's 42 out of 330, or about 1 out of 8 for American players. A 100% white league is now 12.5% white from the American part of the talent pool. The census says there were ~160 million white Americans in 1960. There are 47 million black Americans today. So a population less than 1/3 of the effective talent pool population from 1960 is supplying something like 7 out of every 8 players today, in a league with almost 4 times the roster spots. The white population of America has only grown since 1960, up to over 200 million, and yet it is effectively cut off from the NBA by 47 million people. The previous leagues weren't just drawing from a smaller talent pool, they appear to have been drawing from the wrong talent pool. My 10% estimate from before is probably not even close to as severe as we should be.
Key things here:
1. By 1970 the NBA was majority Black I believe. I totally get being skeptical of the guys who exited before that time, but realistically Wilt, Oscar & West were clear cut stars until almost the very end of their careers so I don't see a logic to knocking them because of who was around when they started.
2. When we talk about "white Americans" there's an elephant in the room: White Europeans are thriving in the NBA at the highest of levels, and not because we found the one-in-a-billion quick twitch guy. Realistically, we have a White American problem more than a White problem in the NBA, and that's cultural.
There was a time when if you were born and raised in Indiana, you were playing basketball in your spare time as a matter of course. There was a time when Jews were seen as the minority who were so exceptional at basketball, and those who stood out within that community at basketball took it extremely seriously. Things change.
Mostly in the US nowadays, if you're White, you don't expect that there's a future for you in basketball beyond a college scholarship.
There was a weird thread talking about this stuff over on the GB that talked about Kevin Love as the best White American in quite some time. Forgetting the silliness of his actual point, the thing that immediately stood out to me about Love was this:
Love's dad played in the NBA.
When your dad did a thing, and you have obvious talent for it, you're far more likely to devote yourself to it.
And this will sound self-aggrandizing, but it is what it is: Had my father been in the NBA, I expect that I'd have either been an NBA player, or been a near miss. I'm bigger than Kevin Love, I was a good shooter, passer, and ball-handler at least relative to the kids around me...and yet I never took it seriously as something I had a future in. Now, I had health problems during adolescence that are just as important as anything else when thinking about this stuff, but regardless of that, I saw my future in terms of my academic strengths rather than my athletic strengths. Had that not been how I saw my future - had my family not expected me to go to college despite none of my ancestors being college grads - I may well have spent my free time refining my basketball game.
f4p wrote:So where does this leave us or "Should we talk about Babe Ruth?"
The short answer is "I don't know". I probably believe the "severe" case is more true than not, but is that how we want to do an all-time ranking? Babe Ruth put up enormous numbers playing in a segregated league. Of course, black players never came to dominate MLB. In fact, they seem to often lament the lack of black talent in the majors. And the influx of Latin American talent seems to be less about integration and more akin to the NBA's international expansion. But setting aside the fact the situations aren't necessarily analogous, what if they were? Could we tell the history of baseball without Babe Ruth? I don't believe so.
Would an all-time list be fun if we just wiped away a huge chunk of league history? Probably not. But I think it's worth keeping in mind and possibly making some updates. And I think, more likely than not, that 5 Top 20 players from such a radically different league with a radically different talent pool is probably exceedingly unlikely. I have a soft spot for Mikan as the NBA's Babe Ruth to some degree and so I suppose I will vote for him in this thread. But two guys who did not dominate to even remotely the same degree, from only about a decade later, guys who aren't necessarily nearly as integral to telling the entire story of the NBA, the 3rd and 4th best players from their era? Now that I've thought about it more, I'm not sure I can really see them as all being worthy of a Top 15-20 slot. A reexamination may be in order.
A wise place to end things.
I think that the place to start here with the baseball analogy is in the recognition that baseball matured earlier than basketball. It really makes sense to ask whether Babe Ruth would be a superstar in the MLB today - in a way it doesn't make sense with a basketball contemporary like the 5'11" Nat Holman.
But that doesn't NOT make me want to talk about the Holmans of the world, and we could absolutely have a project that focused on historical significance where Holman should be a lock for being in the Top 100. It's just that if we're focused on competitive ability, there's no comparison, because of the changes that have come to the game of basketball since Holman played.
Now as I say this, you're clearly implying that Ruth would NOT be able to play today so this is a source of disagreement that we can get more into. I would say that what Ruth represents is the start of power in baseball, and we know enough based on how big parks were back in the day to know that he had plenty of power by modern standards. We also know that so much of what makes a great hitter has to do with vision and hand-eye coordination, and I think this isn't something we've seen a drastic improvement on in the last century.
By contrast in basketball what we've seen are 3 big things:
1. Taller people, and taller people getting recruited into basketball and trained to make use of their advantages. 2. Intense training to improve shooting ability particularly in the 21st century. 3. Equipment and rule changes that have allowed more reliance on dribbling, and thus encouraged the relevant training.
Of those 3, it's really only the height that puts competition between eras totally out of - literal - reach.
I think people think that the athletes of today are drastically superior compared to what came before, but I think people overestimate what's gone on here. If you had asked people whether someone who looked like Jokic could be MVP of the modern NBA before he showed up and proved he could, people would have said, "Hell no, maybe in the '50 when Mikan was doing it". Same for Steve Nash. Even the people who believe John Stockton could've been better than Nash weren't saying that Stockton was an MVP-level talent back in the '90s. Had you asked them, they'd have said, "Hell no, maybe in the '50s when Cousy was doing it."
We keep being surprised by guys today who look like guys from the '50s, and I think we need to recognize that this is happening to us, and be less certain about what we think we know. Just because things have changed, doesn't mean that the new is necessarily completely dominant over what came before.
Steve Nash absolutely does not play anything like a 1950s guard aside from the fact that he’s not very athletic. Jokic isn’t athletic but he’s also 280-300 pounds with an absurd touch and while he’s slow he is very fluid for his size. Never really watched Stockton though.
I think that’s a vast oversimplification of the improvements in skill on both ends guards and wings have made from the 50s to now, learning from the past, iron sharpens iron and increased incentive to play and all of that, and all of that but just to be clear
Are you in the side that, A. They’d still be good if they grew up today? Or B. An adjustment period with the new rules is all they would need if teleported today in their peak.
When it comes to to A, I think it’s reasonable for some great players (60s, not 50s)
Strongly disagree with B at least for the perimeter guys ive watched from that time (never seen Oscar)
Doctor MJ wrote:This is a worthwhile topic that I think people should ponder for themselves. I'm not really looking to get into it point by point, but will just say:
1. This is something that bothered me when I first started doing all-time rankings.
2. I've since further examined all of these guys, and some of them dropped like a stone on my list. It just so happens that that there are 4 guys (Russell, Wilt, West, Oscar) who don't. And so while I don't want to talk as if my view is everyone's view, I think it's important to understand that this isn't going to be a rate that continues as we go deeper in the Top 100.
3. While it seems extreme to have 4 guys born in a 5 year span back then so highly rated, I think it's important to keep in mind that there is one year that towers over all others in terms of the quantity of great players, and that year was closer to the birth year of the 4 guys in question than it is:
1963 saw Jordan, Olajuwon, Malone & Barkley, along with Mullin, Dumars, Hornacek & Porter. What are the odds that 1963 was the best year of basketball talent in history? Very, very low...but some year has to be that year, and whatever year that is, it's naturally going to beat the odds.
f4p wrote:What to do with those plumbers or "How much can we talk about race?"
So why do people make the plumber joke about the early NBA? Well, frankly, it's because they see a lot of white people. All white people in fact for the very early NBA. Heavily white well into the 60's. And well, they don't see that today. Certainly not American whites. The NBA was essentially 100% American back in the day (I'm sure there were exceptions, don't @ me) and started off all white. Based on census data for 1960 (we'll start in Jerry and Oscar's time), the population was ~180 million. Now it's 330 million. So multiply by 1.83, account for the 25% of the league that is international, throw in some increase due to money, and maybe we get a 3x-5x increase in the talent pool?
But based on an article from 2016, there were only 42 white Americans in the league in 2016. Take 450 players, lop off 120 give or take for international players, and that's 42 out of 330, or about 1 out of 8 for American players. A 100% white league is now 12.5% white from the American part of the talent pool. The census says there were ~160 million white Americans in 1960. There are 47 million black Americans today. So a population less than 1/3 of the effective talent pool population from 1960 is supplying something like 7 out of every 8 players today, in a league with almost 4 times the roster spots. The white population of America has only grown since 1960, up to over 200 million, and yet it is effectively cut off from the NBA by 47 million people. The previous leagues weren't just drawing from a smaller talent pool, they appear to have been drawing from the wrong talent pool. My 10% estimate from before is probably not even close to as severe as we should be.
Key things here:
1. By 1970 the NBA was majority Black I believe. I totally get being skeptical of the guys who exited before that time, but realistically Wilt, Oscar & West were clear cut stars until almost the very end of their careers so I don't see a logic to knocking them because of who was around when they started.
2. When we talk about "white Americans" there's an elephant in the room: White Europeans are thriving in the NBA at the highest of levels, and not because we found the one-in-a-billion quick twitch guy. Realistically, we have a White American problem more than a White problem in the NBA, and that's cultural.
There was a time when if you were born and raised in Indiana, you were playing basketball in your spare time as a matter of course. There was a time when Jews were seen as the minority who were so exceptional at basketball, and those who stood out within that community at basketball took it extremely seriously. Things change.
Mostly in the US nowadays, if you're White, you don't expect that there's a future for you in basketball beyond a college scholarship.
There was a weird thread talking about this stuff over on the GB that talked about Kevin Love as the best White American in quite some time. Forgetting the silliness of his actual point, the thing that immediately stood out to me about Love was this:
Love's dad played in the NBA.
When your dad did a thing, and you have obvious talent for it, you're far more likely to devote yourself to it.
And this will sound self-aggrandizing, but it is what it is: Had my father been in the NBA, I expect that I'd have either been an NBA player, or been a near miss. I'm bigger than Kevin Love, I was a good shooter, passer, and ball-handler at least relative to the kids around me...and yet I never took it seriously as something I had a future in. Now, I had health problems during adolescence that are just as important as anything else when thinking about this stuff, but regardless of that, I saw my future in terms of my academic strengths rather than my athletic strengths. Had that not been how I saw my future - had my family not expected me to go to college despite none of my ancestors being college grads - I may well have spent my free time refining my basketball game.
You come very close to the key point here and yet you still manage to draw the opposite conclusion. The fact is that in the ‘60s and in the ‘40s to an even greater extent, people didn’t think of basketball as a career PERIOD with precious few exceptions. The cultural factors that work against white Americans taking up basketball seriously today worked much more against ALL Americans taking up basketball seriously well into what we’d consider the “modern era”. Basketball was a niche sport that didn’t pay that well. Tons of people who enjoy basketball as a hobby today and would look at as all lottery ticket if they were born with incredible height and athleticism just weren’t interested in basketball in previous times. This was a giant factor in league talent level and was honestly just as big of a factor as the integration of the league.
The fact that you missed this and act like these factors are more relevant today than it was in the early days is how you managed to read f4p’s Babe Ruth point backwards. Yes, baseball was segregated in the ‘20s, but the natural talent level between blacks and whites was much closer than it was in basketball, and furthermore baseball was a national obsession. Kids grew up idolizing baseball stars in Babe Ruth’s day. MLB was much more popular in Ruth’s day than the NBA was in Oscar or West’s day, let alone Mikan’s.
As a result, of course Babe Ruth could “still play” today. He’d be a star, he just wouldn’t be an elite talent at the same level. Mikan, on the other hand leaves a lot more questions. Basketball was VERY, VERY niche in the postwar years. It wasn’t remotely close to the popularity of baseball in the 1920s. The player pool of elite athletes with a serious interest in baseball in the 20s was probably 5-10x larger than the pool willing to pursue an NBA career in the 40s and 50s if they had the talent. Like if Ruth would be a fringe MVP candidate in the modern era, Mikan would be lucky to be Mason Plumlee.
Now I don’t want to suggest that we should actually judge Mikan that harshly, I would have him in my top 40 for his contributions as a pioneer and his in era dominance. But I do think it’s a little ridiculous to have someone who played in such a VASTLY inferior league considered heavily when there are players with similar dominance in a league where the average 5th starter is better than anyone Mikan played against in his entire career? Is anyone really sure that Mikan’s in-era impact was better than Jokic’s after the key was widened (the first time, it wouldn’t be 15 feet until after he retired)? If not, how can he possibly be getting serious traction when Jokic hasn’t even been nominated with less games played? Mikan was literally playing in a league where just based on player pool after accounting for popularity of the game, cultural factors, race, population, and international expansion, you’d only expect 1-2 players at most from Mikan’s league to be starters in the NBA. Putting up worse numbers in the RS with worse defense but having better playoff numbers is nowhere a reasonable bar to earn a higher all-time rank against such a primitive level of competition.
If it is an issue, I do think it's largely concentrated at the top (I lean towards it being a low probability coincidence). Guys from the 2020 top 100 list and retired before the '75 season.
4. Bill Russell 6. Wilt Chamberlain 13. Jerry West 14. Oscar Robertson 19. George Mikan 25. Bob Pettit 33. Elgin Baylor 41. Dolph Schayes 45. Willis Reed (he retired a bit earlier than I'd thought) 56. Sam Jones 60. Paul Arizin 63. Bob Cousy 82. Hal Greer 94. Cliff Hagan 99. Walt Bellamy (who technically played one game in '75, but I decided to include here)
15 in the top 100, seems about on pace with expectations - if we had the same voter pool/thoughts as last time I imagine Bellamy at least would fall off, and decent chance Hagan would too. Call it 13.5 in 2023 numbers.
No Bob Davies though, tsk tsk (he, Pollard, and Sharman are the 3 other early days guys I'm considering, I'd have any of them over Hagan/Bells).
eminence wrote:If it is an issue, I do think it's largely concentrated at the top (I lean towards it being a low probability coincidence). Guys from the 2020 top 100 list and retired before the '75 season.
4. Bill Russell 6. Wilt Chamberlain 13. Jerry West 14. Oscar Robertson 19. George Mikan 25. Bob Pettit 33. Elgin Baylor 41. Dolph Schayes 45. Willis Reed (he retired a bit earlier than I'd thought) 56. Sam Jones 60. Paul Arizin 63. Bob Cousy 82. Hal Greer 94. Cliff Hagan 99. Walt Bellamy (who technically played one game in '75, but I decided to include here)
15 in the top 100, seems about on pace with expectations - if we had the same voter pool/thoughts as last time I imagine Bellamy at least would fall off, and decent chance Hagan would too. Call it 13.5 in 2023 numbers.
No Bob Davies though, tsk tsk (he, Pollard, and Sharman are the 3 other early days guys I'm considering, I'd have any of them over Hagan/Bells).
Era-relative comparisons also will naturally skew towards older players and most people here have at least somewhat of an era-relative standard.
OhayoKD wrote:Era-relative comparisons also will naturally skew towards older players and most people here have at least somewhat of an era-relative standard.
Could you elaborate a bit on why you feel it'll skew? I wouldn't call it 'naturally' exactly, though I do think there are reasons to believe it does (towards older players that is).
I'm considering Schayes as being my next 50s/60s guy, but probably wouldn't be seriously looking at him until into the mid 30s at the earliest (as someone fairly high on early eras).
DraymondGold wrote:Perhaps this would still be reason for people to consider dropping one or multiple of Oscar/West/Mikan.
So, the "consider dropping one" perspective concerns me.
I can't emphasize enough that when I do these lists, I try not to think at all about the actual number spot for any given player. I think when you start doing the whole "C'mon, Player A has gotta be in the Top X", you're using a top-down thought process that's just totally incompatible with serious analysis.
I do think we should all be concerned when we have contemporaries right next to each other. Not that that can't be right, but if we see this as a matter of course, it speaks to an artifact in one's process by which they're implicitly tiering players within era and not really doing all the sorting comparisons they should be doing.
And yes, as someone who has West & Oscar right next to each other, that is something I'm concerned with...but of course, I'm also someone who has flip flopped on that comparison once again during the scope of this project. When you don't have much of a gap between two guys, it makes sense that they might end up right next to each other.
As I say all of this, I don't have MIkan right next to those other guys, so you might argue that I've already "dropped one", though that's not the process I used to get where I am.
I’ll edit-in a response to this in more detail later when I have time, but just to clarify the header:
What I mean when I say “consider dropping one” is something like: -if our criteria is susceptible to this kind of analysis, e.g. if we have criteria that’s focused on ‘absolute goodness’ (rather than something like era relative value) or heavily incorporate quality of competition into our analysis -if we find this kind of analysis highly compelling, if we find that it’s too unlikely that there are X number of Top Y players in Z time-range
Then we should re-examine why we have those players so high. Are we valuing the quality of competition enough? Do they really look better on film? Are their metrics and team results overrated by having worse competition?
Then if we find this to be true for any these players, we should rank them lower, as is appropriate based on our re-evaluation of the evidence under the criteria.
I Definitely don’t think we should just drop players ranking ‘just cause.’ I was more saying, if we find this kind of analysis compelling, we should take it as a chance to re-examine our evidence/criteria and ensure we’re not biased or missing anything, such that we’re overrating West/Oscar/Mikan. Let me know if you still think this “perspective concerns you”!
OhayoKD wrote:Era-relative comparisons also will naturally skew towards older players and most people here have at least somewhat of an era-relative standard.
Could you elaborate a bit on why you feel it'll skew? I wouldn't call it 'naturally' exactly, though I do think there are reasons to believe it does (towards older players that is).
When people haven’t even learned all the basic skills yet (like shotblocking) the first person to do so (like Russell) can gain a much bigger advantage than later people who can only make marginal improvements on existing skills. Harden might have been the first NBA player to perfect the step back 3, but that’s nowhere near as big a deal as perfecting basic skills when other players aren’t even trying them.
In the case of Mikan he played in the days where there were still obvious exploits in the rules that gave tall players too large of an advantage which would be corrected in later years. It’s the same reason why top chess computers tend to tie so much. When everyone’s at a high level, it’s gonna be much harder to dominate. Whereas if there’s a bunch of low skill players at your local chess club, it’s much easier for someone who learns the tentpole strategies to dominate to a much higher degree.
I was basically between Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, and David Robinson and its all super close for me. I am sticking with my trend of picking these two-way bigs as I find they have the most impact which I think is backed with one-number metrics and film.
trex_8063 wrote:Robinson shapes out as one of the very best of his generation in the impact metrics we have (rs AuPM ['94-'96], RAPM ['97 onward]), despite very little of that falling in his prime:
'94: 1st in league [by silly margin: +1.5 over 2nd place (K.Malone)] '95: 1st in league [by even sillier margin: +2.8 over 2nd place (S.Pippen)] '96: 1st in league [+0.2 over returned Michael Jordan] **Honestly, I think you could make an argument that David Robinson, peri-peak, was the regular season GOAT.
PI RAPM [playoffs included] after returning from injury (and well into his 30s, fwiw): '98: 23rd '99: 3rd (1st in NPI, fwiw) '00: 4th Remained top 10 in '01 [NPI], still top 20 in '02, bounces back to fringe top-10 in '03 [more limited minutes].
For my money, David Robinson arguably has the best three year scoring peak of the guys I have near this spot all while playing near-GOAT level defense. His playmaking doesn't compare, however I think he is a much better passer over the replacement player at the center position.
I really like the spacing element he provides at his position. The tracked data from after his peak does not paint him in the greatest light here (https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/robinda01.html#shooting), but his self-generation and touch in his peak seem to go against this data.
I also give him credit for turning into an all-star to sub all-star just on defense once Timmy arrived which extends his longevity.
Alternative: Oscar Robertson
I've been mainly swayed by others arguments on Big O. As an alternate, I believe I could still be swayed back to West here.
West is admittedly the better defender and volume scorer (while holding efficiency), but I like the idea that Oscar Robertson was more efficient (albeit less volume) with incredible all-time playmaking.
70sFan wrote:I think Oscar has a very interesting case for the most robust skillset in the league history and I don't think anything we've seen from him in the playoffs changes that. Oscar was a massive 6'5 220 lbs man (basically a forward body) who could handle the ball against KC Jones pressure with restricted ball-handling rules, while being the best playmaker in the league history up to that point. A lot of people rave about West shooting ability (rightfully so, he was a pull-up monster) but Oscar was arguably a better shooter and the very limited shooting data from trex suggests he's actually more accurate (though it could be useless given the sample). He was less known for that because he could force the issue inside more and he was a masterful post player as well. He was also the first player ever who mastered P&R play. I mean, you can't find any weakness in his offensive repertoire.
For people unfamiliar with prime Oscar game, here are a few montages I could find at the NBA.com... which means they have full games hidden in their archives:
The longevity is easily there and I love the scoring volume + efficiency. He fits my "two-way big" that I am infatuated with, though his defense doesn't stack up to the others I've had in this category.
If he gets in here, he may rival Robertson and West for the next spot.
Alt Nom: Kevin Durant
I think I am ready for the Durant conversation around the #20 spot.
He played seven seasons where he played at least 50 games (2011-19 excluding 2014-15) where he shot an rTS% seven points above average on large volumes. These are insane stretches offensively and it doesn't account for his gravity off the ball (shooting 38.5% for his career) and his fairly good passing.
I actually rate his defense higher than voters do. I like him as near 2nd team all-defense team in his 2013-2019 years.
His biggest problem is longevity. Yes, he has seven season with MVP level play, but before his break-out he had about two all-star seasons and then some not too impactful ones and then after the achilles injury he just hasn't played a ton to move the needle. He's played 137 games from 2019-23 with his highest count being 55 last year with Brooklyn. That season didn't have him playing as his near-MVP self. This last season may have had him in the conversation for me if he played more games.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Steve Nash absolutely does not play anything like a 1950s guard aside from the fact that he’s not very athletic. Jokic isn’t athletic but he’s also 280-300 pounds with an absurd touch and while he’s slow he is very fluid for his size. Never really watched Stockton though.
I think that’s a vast oversimplification of the improvements in skill on both ends guards and wings have made from the 50s to now, learning from the past, iron sharpens iron and increased incentive to play and all of that, and all of that but just to be clear
Are you in the side that, A. They’d still be good if they grew up today? Or B. An adjustment period with the new rules is all they would need if teleported today in their peak.
When it comes to to A, I think it’s reasonable for some great players (60s, not 50s)
Strongly disagree with B at least for the perimeter guys ive watched from that time (never seen Oscar)
So, when you talk about Nash & Jokic like this, it reads as "Yeah, but those guys are special, and so they are exceptions to the rule." To which I'd say: I don't know what gave you the impression that I was looking to champion every guy from the past.
Steve Nash is special. Nikola Jokic is special. Oscar Robertson is special. Jerry West is special. They are all of them outliers.
I have a lot of experience with folks coming in to basketball analysis and looking to write off the past. Before Nash became an MVP, they'd have told you that nobody who looked like him could be anything like an MVP level player in today's game. New legends emerge, but the songs remain the same. Some will say the new guy is overrated. Some will say that the new guy was fundamentally unlike what came before. And eventually, a new group of people will come in and use the fact that a guy who looks like Nash is proof that the era he was in must not have been very good.
I'd urge you to really think about what I said about jumping S-curves. You believe based on your video scouting you can tell glaring superiority-inferiority between the eras, and I can understand thinking this, and I'm not saying that the difference you spot aren't real. But if things are progressing at such a drastic rate, we should see it analytically. If instead things are roughly looking the same as before - same average height, same average weight, about the same FG%, superstars having decade plus where the only thing driving them out of the game are clear cut signs of aging - then things just really aren't that dramatic.
Re: A vs B. Eh, let me address both, though more B than A.
On A: I don't think it's any kind of given that any player would be as good in any different era, and I'm not trying to argue that all eras are of equal quality. Me talking about a lack of massive statistically salient trends may seem like I'm saying the quality is not improving, but I think it is, just not like it does when you're in the middle of a serious paradigm shift.
On B: I do think that things like 3-point shooting, dribbling technique, etc is something that can be picked up without growing up with it as a child. Not everybody from the past would ever be able to become a great 3-point shooter, but I certainly believe there are guys from prior eras who could pick it up pretty quickly. I don't think an overall adjustment can be done simply with an off-season - because there's no substitute for real season competition - but I think some of these guys could pick it up effectively in the span of a year.
One thing I'll say: Things like previous exposure to formal basketball is important. One of the reasons given for Connie Hawkins' struggles as a defender is that he didn't learn a lot of the standards of the time due to not playing college ball. He had physical defensive talents, but in terms of knowing about different schemes and what he should be doing within those schemes, he struggled.
But if we're talking about college stars like Oscar & West, I would not be concerned.
Doctor MJ wrote:This is a worthwhile topic that I think people should ponder for themselves. I'm not really looking to get into it point by point, but will just say:
1. This is something that bothered me when I first started doing all-time rankings.
2. I've since further examined all of these guys, and some of them dropped like a stone on my list. It just so happens that that there are 4 guys (Russell, Wilt, West, Oscar) who don't. And so while I don't want to talk as if my view is everyone's view, I think it's important to understand that this isn't going to be a rate that continues as we go deeper in the Top 100.
3. While it seems extreme to have 4 guys born in a 5 year span back then so highly rated, I think it's important to keep in mind that there is one year that towers over all others in terms of the quantity of great players, and that year was closer to the birth year of the 4 guys in question than it is:
1963 saw Jordan, Olajuwon, Malone & Barkley, along with Mullin, Dumars, Hornacek & Porter. What are the odds that 1963 was the best year of basketball talent in history? Very, very low...but some year has to be that year, and whatever year that is, it's naturally going to beat the odds.
f4p wrote:What to do with those plumbers or "How much can we talk about race?"
So why do people make the plumber joke about the early NBA? Well, frankly, it's because they see a lot of white people. All white people in fact for the very early NBA. Heavily white well into the 60's. And well, they don't see that today. Certainly not American whites. The NBA was essentially 100% American back in the day (I'm sure there were exceptions, don't @ me) and started off all white. Based on census data for 1960 (we'll start in Jerry and Oscar's time), the population was ~180 million. Now it's 330 million. So multiply by 1.83, account for the 25% of the league that is international, throw in some increase due to money, and maybe we get a 3x-5x increase in the talent pool?
But based on an article from 2016, there were only 42 white Americans in the league in 2016. Take 450 players, lop off 120 give or take for international players, and that's 42 out of 330, or about 1 out of 8 for American players. A 100% white league is now 12.5% white from the American part of the talent pool. The census says there were ~160 million white Americans in 1960. There are 47 million black Americans today. So a population less than 1/3 of the effective talent pool population from 1960 is supplying something like 7 out of every 8 players today, in a league with almost 4 times the roster spots. The white population of America has only grown since 1960, up to over 200 million, and yet it is effectively cut off from the NBA by 47 million people. The previous leagues weren't just drawing from a smaller talent pool, they appear to have been drawing from the wrong talent pool. My 10% estimate from before is probably not even close to as severe as we should be.
Key things here:
1. By 1970 the NBA was majority Black I believe. I totally get being skeptical of the guys who exited before that time, but realistically Wilt, Oscar & West were clear cut stars until almost the very end of their careers so I don't see a logic to knocking them because of who was around when they started.
2. When we talk about "white Americans" there's an elephant in the room: White Europeans are thriving in the NBA at the highest of levels, and not because we found the one-in-a-billion quick twitch guy. Realistically, we have a White American problem more than a White problem in the NBA, and that's cultural.
There was a time when if you were born and raised in Indiana, you were playing basketball in your spare time as a matter of course. There was a time when Jews were seen as the minority who were so exceptional at basketball, and those who stood out within that community at basketball took it extremely seriously. Things change.
Mostly in the US nowadays, if you're White, you don't expect that there's a future for you in basketball beyond a college scholarship.
There was a weird thread talking about this stuff over on the GB that talked about Kevin Love as the best White American in quite some time. Forgetting the silliness of his actual point, the thing that immediately stood out to me about Love was this:
Love's dad played in the NBA.
When your dad did a thing, and you have obvious talent for it, you're far more likely to devote yourself to it.
And this will sound self-aggrandizing, but it is what it is: Had my father been in the NBA, I expect that I'd have either been an NBA player, or been a near miss. I'm bigger than Kevin Love, I was a good shooter, passer, and ball-handler at least relative to the kids around me...and yet I never took it seriously as something I had a future in. Now, I had health problems during adolescence that are just as important as anything else when thinking about this stuff, but regardless of that, I saw my future in terms of my academic strengths rather than my athletic strengths. Had that not been how I saw my future - had my family not expected me to go to college despite none of my ancestors being college grads - I may well have spent my free time refining my basketball game.
You come very close to the key point here and yet you still manage to draw the opposite conclusion. The fact is that in the ‘60s and in the ‘40s to an even greater extent, people didn’t think of basketball as a career PERIOD with precious few exceptions. The cultural factors that work against white Americans taking up basketball seriously today worked much more against ALL Americans taking up basketball seriously well into what we’d consider the “modern era”. Basketball was a niche sport that didn’t pay that well. Tons of people who enjoy basketball as a hobby today and would look at as all lottery ticket if they were born with incredible height and athleticism just weren’t interested in basketball in previous times. This was a giant factor in league talent level and was honestly just as big of a factor as the integration of the league.
The fact that you missed this and act like these factors are more relevant today than it was in the early days is how you managed to read f4p’s Babe Ruth point backwards. Yes, baseball was segregated in the ‘20s, but the natural talent level between blacks and whites was much closer than it was in basketball, and furthermore baseball was a national obsession. Kids grew up idolizing baseball stars in Babe Ruth’s day. MLB was much more popular in Ruth’s day than the NBA was in Oscar or West’s day, let alone Mikan’s.
As a result, of course Babe Ruth could “still play” today. He’d be a star, he just wouldn’t be an elite talent at the same level. Mikan, on the other hand leaves a lot more questions. Basketball was VERY, VERY niche in the postwar years. It wasn’t remotely close to the popularity of baseball in the 1920s. The player pool of elite athletes with a serious interest in baseball in the 20s was probably 5-10x larger than the pool willing to pursue an NBA career in the 40s and 50s if they had the talent. Like if Ruth would be a fringe MVP candidate in the modern era, Mikan would be lucky to be Mason Plumlee.
Now I don’t want to suggest that we should actually judge Mikan that harshly, I would have him in my top 40 for his contributions as a pioneer and his in era dominance. But I do think it’s a little ridiculous to have someone who played in such a VASTLY inferior league considered heavily when there are players with similar dominance in a league where the average 5th starter is better than anyone Mikan played against in his entire career? Is anyone really sure that Mikan’s in-era impact was better than Jokic’s after the key was widened (the first time, it wouldn’t be 15 feet until after he retired)? If not, how can he possibly be getting serious traction when Jokic hasn’t even been nominated with less games played? Mikan was literally playing in a league where just based on player pool after accounting for popularity of the game, cultural factors, race, population, and international expansion, you’d only expect 1-2 players at most from Mikan’s league to be starters in the NBA. Putting up worse numbers in the RS with worse defense but having better playoff numbers is nowhere a reasonable bar to earn a higher all-time rank against such a primitive level of competition.
Hmm.
I talked about white Americans because f4p talked about "white Americans", and the trend of the best white players coming from other countries today is a phenomenon that is about more than just the globalization of the sport. I understand why someone would interpret my words as a rejection of the growth of the talent pool over time, but that was not my intention.
Re: Babe Ruth. So you're jumping in response to something I said to someone, you're not providing the quotes, and your tone is condescending. I don't think I want to talk to you about this further.
I just feel like this conversation is unnecessarily complicating the concept of era-relativism. If you're evaluating players in an era-relative context, you're looking at what they did with the teammates they had against the competition that was in front of them in the league the played in under the rules set by that league. If they dominated that league, or if their individual performance was an exceptional outlier in that league, then under era-relativism they should rank highly. I don't really think it's more complicated than that.
If you're asking the question of how would those guys perform in today's league, or could they still be good in today's league if they had grown up in the modern era, or how long would it take them to adjust to today's rules, etc, then era-relativism has already gone out the window, imo.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:I just feel like this conversation is unnecessarily complicating the concept of era-relativism. If you're evaluating players in an era-relative context, you're looking at what they did with the teammates they had against the competition that was in front of them in the league the played in under the rules set by that league. If they dominated that league, or if their individual performance was an exceptional outlier in that league, then under era-relativism they should rank highly. I don't really think it's more complicated than that.
If you're asking the question of how would those guys perform in today's league, or could they still be good in today's league if they had grown up in the modern era, or how long would it take them to adjust to today's rules, etc, then era-relativism has already gone out the window, imo.
I view the question "Who would I prefer today" and "Who ranks higher on my Top 100 list" as completely different questions. I also view "Better" and "Rated Higher" as differently.
penbeast0 wrote: Paul is a good comp for Oscar in terms of playstyle and apparently personality (if Paul were 6'6, rarely injured, looked for his own shot more, was less aggressive on defense, and didn't have that GOAT ability to avoid turnovers). West is more Curry without a 3 point line (and better finishing).
I'm not fully confident West is better at finishing than Curry. Curry ain't just a shooter, he's a scorer. I've come to be pretty impressed with his finishing, even if he doesn't play above the rim. I mean, Curry from '15 thru present has finished at the rim at a really respectable 67.0% (comprising 16.9% of his attempts). That's pretty respectable for a guard.
West is much more relevant defensively, too.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
