rk2023 wrote:Barkley, Nash, and Harden would be the next three here ITO higher-ends/~peak seasons - being the "one-way" titans of this group. I see Nash's play as the most impressive of the trio, but reckon Barkley has the most "close to MVP level" offensive seasons - implying both of them would be over Harden - at-least from a hypothesis standpoint.
i don't really see the nash argument.
he just seems like harden with worse box score numbers and less cumulative career stats like WS and VORP. WS goes to harden 158.0 to 129.7. VOPR 76.0 to 48.2. playoff win shares 20.6 to 11.9. playoff VORP 11.9 to 5.6. even in something like mvp shares, where nash was beloved by the voters and harden hated, harden clears him 3.66 to 2.43.
nash has some nice rORtg's, but given that harden has played for 2 #1 and 3 #2 offenses (plus a few #4's) with much less offensively slanted rosters, there seems to be plenty of proof of concept that he could have gone on a huge rORtg run in the same circumstances. and to what actual effect were these rORtg's for nash? like if the problem is harden is a playoff faller, then the same resiliency stat i have showing harden at 38th out of 40 at -0.1982 has nash at 35th out of 40 at -0.1772. and that's being very generous by not counting harden's age 21 playoffs (b/c the spreadsheet went from age 22-35), where he basically went from a regular season role player to a post-season all-star for a conference finalist. if i included that, he would clear nash quite easily and jump up about 10 spots to -0.1200 (still not great, obviously).
neither one has a title, but harden would certainly have the claim of being closer to one. the 2018 rockets are better than the 2007 suns, especially when healthy (44-5, +11.0 SRS when harden and cp3 play). they had a tougher playoff opponent (2018 warriors vs 2007 spurs even if the spurs were very good), got to game 7, actually led the series, and had an even worse mitigating circumstance, with losing cp3 for the rest of the series up 3-2 beating out having amare/diaw suspended for one game when the series was tied 2-2. in fact, out of the barkley/malone/robinson/ewing/nash/harden group of guys with no alpha title, harden would clear everyone by these criteria.
actual vs expected championships? harden looks bad again at 96th out of 103 at -1.06 delta, but nash still manages to beat him at 98th with -1.15. and again, with almost half of harden's total (0.481) coming just from 2018, with their expected championships being inflated by the warriors doing their best 2001 lakers impersonation and the cp3 injury arguably derailing it, this again probably makes the real difference even more in harden's favor (the 2007 suns take a 0.281 hit if we want to remove that for the suspensions even though the suns weren't leading the series, but still a sizable delta for harden if we remove both 2007 and 2018).
also, in terms of SRS underdog/favorite playoff winning, they both come out very much in the same category of beating who they were supposed to be beat and losing to who they were supposed to lose to, with about 0.500 career series win percentages and the same number of favorite losses and underdog wins (and their biggest favorite losses (2003 mavs, 2018 rockets) being marred by injuries).
harden doesn't have a big playoff moment that wins a series is a big criticism of his. ok, fair enough, but what's nash's? like harden has very good series against good opponents and so does nash so there's no separation there. nash arguably had a chance in 2007 when the suspensions happened. his biggest series. game 5 seemed hopeless, then the spurs forgot how to shoot and only scored 88 points. all the suns had to do was score 89 points. and nash shot 6-19. they even had a 6 point lead after 3 quarters. and nash shot 1-8 in the 4th, including missing 2 game-tying 3's in the last 30 seconds, as they blew the lead. after also going 6-17 in a close game 3 when the series was tied. both harden and nash would lose to barkley on this front with barkley's huge 1993 WCF and still a very good finals.
and as one final thing, he got to play 4 prime seasons with prime dirk nowitzki and the best they had to show for it was a 1-2 deficit in the 2003 conference finals to tim duncan's weakest championship team. even when they set the all-time rORtg mark in 2004 with a gimmick lineup, they flamed out with a negative playoff rORtg and nash with a 46 TS%. when did harden get to spend a bunch of prime seasons being 2nd fiddle? he got i guess one at age 22 with the thunder, and they went to the finals, in part because he was huge in the conference finals. and then when he had a chance at it in 2021, the nets looked every bit as dominant as you would expect until the injuries happened (and given the voting in this project, 2021 durant would not appear to be as highly though of as dirk).
to me, nash has his own longevity issues and then has basically every problem that you run into when making harden's case, except usually even a little bit worse. to go back to that 2007 spurs series. do i expect nash to beat the 2007 spurs with amare suspended? no. but going 1-8 in the 4th as you blow a 3rd quarter lead is certainly not great (i'm sure it would have been repeated forever if harden had done that). to me, harden is the career leader in the clubhouse over nash and that kind of moment against the spurs (like wade in the 2006 finals) is what you use to jump over someone like harden (or you have massive longevity like malone). without it, it just feels like nash is in the same boat as harden, just a little bit less at every turn.
...longevity that I would speculate is the best out of this entire grouping (Nash *could* be an exception with how good he was through his early-mid 30s)...
well, nash didn't become a starter until he was 26, and it wasn't any sort of amazing season either. it's basically the latest start to a career of probably anybody in the top 50, maybe even the entire project. he basically HAS to be good into his mid-30's to even start to be mentioned around here. barkley actually seems to be the winner and nash or ewing would seem to be on the lower end.
Career Win Shares
Barkley 177.2
Miller 174.4
Harden 158
Nash 129.7
Ewing 126.5
Pippen 125.1
Career VORP
Barkley 80.5
Harden 76.0
Miller 66.1
Pippen 63.2
Ewing 50.1
Nash 48.2
