RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #23 (Moses Malone)

[Doctor MJ]

Manu Ginobili - I expect to be championing Ginobili in the not too distant future. There are many good reasons to doubt him because of his limited minutes, but every more detailed look I get at Ginobili, the more convinced I am that he was an absolute top tier player who got miscategorized because Pop wasn't sure what to do with him on a team whose offense was built around Duncan.

Interesting to me that Draymond isn't on your list when Manu is. Perhaps it is a longetviity thing, but Draymond has
-> better looking raw on/off over the rs and playoffs over comparable time-frames and peaks
-> averaged significantly more minutes typically matching or coming close his more decorated teammates in minutes and sometimes exceeding him
-> looks alot stronger in rapm and lineup-adjusted metrics
-> looks vastly stronger in wowy
-> looks vastly stronger in wowy without steph
-> has won playoff series and games without his more decorated teammate
-> has outright won more in the rs and the playoffs
-> is more tied to the dynasty he's associated with than manu is(manu not a member in 1999 while draymond's primacy increasing correlates with the warriors improvement and steph's on/off spiking by the end of 2013)
-> a unique archetype that maps out to all-time peaks(russell goat era-relative, walton a rival for kareem)
-> team is more affected by his absence from games even with the more decorated player

If manu is going to be considered very soon, then where is draymond finishing?

First I'll just affirm that I had Draymond in my pre-project Top 40, and I'll say that Ginobili wasn't in my Top 30, so they aren't far apart.

Longevity is helping Ginobili here vs Green, just as it is for Duncan over Curry.
And meanwhile MPG is an advantage for Dray.

I'll tell you though that I think a critical recent juncture for me came with the identification of Dray's playoff impact to be more of an early round thing, while Ginobili's actually gets more impressive in the deeper rounds - and he led the Spurs in raw +/- in all 4 of the the Spur title runs he was a part of.

In Ginobili I think we have a guy who was an entirely different beast than we first tiered him as. I think we're looking at a guy who may well have been the best perimeter player of his era if he'd been handed the reins and been able/allowed to play big minutes. I acknowledge that it's possible he just needed to play such limited minutes, and beyond that I'll just say that in this project I'm certainly not pretending he played more than he did, but I think we tend to automatically attach "so he must not be that amazing" when a guy plays limited minutes off the bench, and I think it's really important to realize that Ginobili was absolutely amazing as a basketball player.

I also think it's at least interesting to consider what else may have been involved in Ginobili having the unusual role he had on the Spurs - unusual not just for being a celebrated 6th man, but unusual for Ginobili was playing an alpha role in Italy before coming to the US, and who became a legend the moment he led Argentina to a Gold Medal in 2004 dooming Team USA to the Bronze. It's not what people would have expected to happen, so what happened?

Well, here's a good article:

Welcome to Manu's basketball familia

A couple telling quotes:

He shot 3s early in the shot clock, something Popovich didn't tolerate back then, even if players were open. He bounced passes through the legs of defenders, threaded 50-foot bombs in transition, and gambled for steals on defense. Popovich hated it. "I was so stubborn," he said. "I had to rein him in. 'Oh, you can't turn it over. You can't shoot those shots.' All that purist bulls---." He confided one night to Budenholzer: "I don't think I can coach him," Budenholzer remembered.

Every shot flowed from Duncan's post game. In practice, the coaches stuck Ginobili in the weakside corner and told him: "You shoot from here, when Timmy passes it to you."

"I was so frustrated that first year, waiting in the corner," Ginobili said. "I wanted the ball, to make decisions. I was 25, and I wanted to take the world by storm. I thought I knew everything."

Ginobili kept taking shots out of scheme and lunging around like a fencer for steals. He couldn't help himself. He didn't know it with Popovich yelling at him, but Ginobili was winning the war. "You realized there was more positive than negative," Popovich said. "He's a freaking winner. I came to the conclusion that it had to be more his way than my way."

Even his wild gambles on defense were more calculated than they looked. Ginobili read the game faster than anyone else. He usually knew what was coming, and swiped his arms through passing lanes in a violent blur. Brett Brown and other San Antonio coaches consider Ginobili the best ever at deflecting inbounds passes, even if he lurched out of position to tip them.

"He just gave himself permission to play how he wanted," Duncan laughed. "He beat us into submission. Pop would be pulling his hair out, but eventually we all saw Manu was steps ahead of everyone else."

So my interpretation:

1. Pop had a way that was working really dang well and had already won the team a title.
2. Ginobili came in and would just insist on improvising - thus breaking Pop's best laid plans.
3. Eventually Pop realized that Ginobili's improvisations actually worked out most of the time and accepted Ginobili...
4. Enough to give him space to do more his thing while Duncan rested on the bench.

I don't think Pop ever had a thought in those early years - which led to 3 titles - that maybe he should just chuck the entire offensive scheme and let Ginobili run everything...and I think that if it had and he embraced the idea, it's quite possible we're talking about a 5-peat with Ginobili getting the bulk of those Finals MVPs.

For folks who've never heard anything like this before it's got to sound absurd, but while I don't expect people to be to be generally swayed by the statement, I hope people can chew on it and try to bite down on where exactly the absurdity lies.

[Doctor MJ]

I just don't know how true that is. Wade has six or seven all-NBA level seasons. Jokic's last three seasons are his best, but by WS/48, BPM, and even RAPM, Jokic looks really good for all but his rookie year, which means seven seasons.

So, I'd say Wade was a worthy all-star selection in 12 of his 13 appearances there. Jokic has just 5, and it's hard to argue he deserves more than 6. That's a significant longevity difference.

Interesting thing about each guy:

In retrospect, I think they both should have been handed the reins the moment they arrived on an NBA team, and both could have been all-stars as rookies. That would add one more all-star year for Wade, and 3 more for Jokic. But that's not what happened, so it's not what I'm focusing on in my vote here.

It depends what one is trying to do here ...

But eliminating only the "they're retiring" Nowizki and Wade bonus slots ... 16 Wade is "worthy" (Ref composites 20.3 PER, .105 WS/48', 1.9 BPM ... worst on-off and on among rotation or rotation-ish players on the team) ... but Jokic is "not what happened" ... minutes aren't where they should be but his box and impact indicators, even without offensive primacy are pretty great from the off (though the box-side certainly takes a further leap the next year).

For me it wouldn't (I'm assuming you're just going most recent years) be at all tricky to argue he deserves '17 more than DeAndre Jordan did (or Wade the year before). I think I might be inclined to believe he was better than bigs that made it in 2016 but Cousins was putting up his stats, Aldridge was doing so on a really good team ... the minutes gap is bigger.

So let's just keep in mind that in Jokic's rookie season he didn't average more than 24 MPG until March, and in his sophomore season he didn't break 26 MPG until January.

I think you'd agree that guys like that aren't generally considered all-star candidates.

[homecourtloss]

...
I think petit is an interesting option, but I want an impact orientated case first. I'm not that interested in ts add in a league where defense was supreme.

Since TS ADD is relative to league averages for that year, not sure why it's not relevant in a more defensive oriented era.

Hmm fair.

Do you have an idea of what petit's signals/potential impact on winning cases

We have the following:

- St. Louis Hawks
Key players: Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan, Lenny Wilkens, Clyde Lovellette, Zelmo Beaty, Lou Hudson

[tsherkin]

it's quite possible we're talking about a 5-peat with Ginobili getting the bulk of those Finals MVPs.

I have a tough time imagining that. It feels like hyperbole.

Ginobili was good. He was 30+ in 2008 and later before he really started to get going per-minute and to figure things out. Cutting his turnover rate, getting his scoring rate up, pulling his game together. The idea of a 5-peat in the context of 08 Boston, those Lakers and then eventually the Heat just doesn't sit with me at all. Manu was good, but he is afforded the luxury of projection. Playing like 27-30 mpg, there's a limit to how good he could be, especially in the context of claiming something that has happened exactly once in NBA history and never after the 60s. The more so given how much he'd have to elevate their offense to come even close to that level of play.

Would they have been better had they leaned into Manu on O earlier? Absolutely. Might they have won another title in the process? Possibly. Were they likely to beat the 04 Pistons or the 08 Celtics? Probably not. Was Manu going to be That Guy from day one? Absolutely not. Could he have maintained his production over more minutes? Probably not. Did he have a lot of health issues? Yes, he absolutely did. Did he manage 80+ GP in his career? Yes, once, in his second and final All-Star season in 2011.

High-production, low-minute players are great, but there is a tendency to overproject with them, IMHO.

[One_and_Done]

I'm guessing he means an 03 to 07 fivepeat. I think it's a stretch. The thing is Buford has even talked about how the touch rules changing in 05 led to a shift to a more Manu and Parker cetric offence in 05. That also checks out in terms of what I was seeing.

It's from a 20 minute interview Buford has with Zach Lowe prior to the 2014 playoffs. The most interesting thing about the interview is that Kawhi is not mentioned once, that's how under the radar he was.

[Doctor MJ]

it's quite possible we're talking about a 5-peat with Ginobili getting the bulk of those Finals MVPs.

I have a tough time imagining that. It feels like hyperbole.

Ginobili was good. He was 30+ in 2008 and later before he really started to get going per-minute and to figure things out. Cutting his turnover rate, getting his scoring rate up, pulling his game together. The idea of a 5-peat in the context of 08 Boston, those Lakers and then eventually the Heat just doesn't sit with me at all. Manu was good, but he is afforded the luxury of projection. Playing like 27-30 mpg, there's a limit to how good he could be, especially in the context of claiming something that has happened exactly once in NBA history and never after the 60s. The more so given how much he'd have to elevate their offense to come even close to that level of play.

Would they have been better had they leaned into Manu on O earlier? Absolutely. Might they have won another title in the process? Possibly. Were they likely to beat the 04 Pistons or the 08 Celtics? Probably not. Was Manu going to be That Guy from day one? Absolutely not. Could he have maintained his production over more minutes? Probably not. Did he have a lot of health issues? Yes, he absolutely did. Did he manage 80+ GP in his career? Yes, once, in his second and final All-Star season in 2011.

High-production, low-minute players are great, but there is a tendency to overproject with them, IMHO.

To be clear, I was referring to '02-03 to '06-07, where they won 3 titles in 5 years and had league leading SRSes in the other two seasons. I'd say if a team is at best-SRS levels, it's not hard to imagine a scenario where they win the title in those years. When you add on top of that the possibility of a significant offensive improvement, it only makes it more plausible.

So then, it's the '03-04 Pistons are relevant here, and frankly I think it's interesting you see them as so unstoppable, because that's certainly not how they were perceived at the time. Remember that this is a club that went down 3-2 to the 47-35 1.88 SRS Nets in the second round, and keep in mind that the two teams played after the Sheed acquisition the Spurs won.

As I say all of this, obviously anything can go wrong to disrupt a 5-peat, which is why we've literally only ever seen it once in NBA history. I'm not saying it was a lock, only they were actually quite close, and I do think that a significant offensive improvement was quite likely if Pop had been able to make himself see what was possible. You could say that about many coaches of course, but it's not common to be able to say about a team of this caliber that they were featuring the wrong offensive player, and yet, I don't actually think it should be seen as that out of the blue given that we literally know that the Spurs offense got considerably better once they went away from Duncan as the alpha in later years, and we also know that this is in phase with the NBA's broader trend emphasizing pace & space - which is what Ginobil brought to the offense, and Duncan did not.

As I say all of that, I'll acknowledge again concerns about Ginobili's health and durability. I do think it's clear that Pop's inability to know what to do with Ginobili was part of the equation, but I'm not going to say I know that Ginobili's body could have held up.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

So then, it's the '03-04 Pistons are relevant here, and frankly I think it's interesting you see them as so unstoppable, because that's certainly not how they were perceived at the time. Remember that this is a club that went down 3-2 to the 47-35 1.88 SRS Nets in the second round, and keep in mind that the two teams played after the Sheed acquisition the Spurs won.

I'm not sure I rank Manu as highly as you do, but with regards to 2004, it is worth noting that the Spurs may well have won their Lakers series were it not for that Derek Fisher .4 second shot at the end of Game 5(in SA), which a lot of people, including yours truly, believed was BS. All the credit in the world to Fisher for hitting a difficult shot, but a lot of people were certainly skeptical that a human could catch the ball, turn around, and shoot it in four tenths of a second.

That shot enabled the Lakers to go back to Staples up 3-2.

Also, I believe the Lakers were flat-out favored over the Pistons at the time and seeing as how the Spurs beat the same Pistons team the following year, I'd say it's absolutely possible they could've won.

[One_and_Done]

The rules were in fact changed after that shot, so it would have been disallowed today.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Vote: Moses Malone

This seems to be a race between Moses and Nash. I'll be honest that I've never been super high on Moses, but examining him for this project has raised him in my eyes. I still don't feel too strongly either way, and you can probably make a good argument that Nash's actual impact was higher, but when we're talking about two guys who both won multiple MVPs and who both put up good individual numbers, I'm going to lean towards the guy who seems to have been the stronger playoff performer(not that the margin is huge, it's not) - I just don't think Nash ever had a playoff run like Moses's in 1983.

Secondary Vote: Charles Barkley

I'm honestly undecided between Barkley and Nash, but seeing as, in this particular race, my secondary vote for Nash would be cancelled out by my first vote for Moses, I'll just give Barkley some more love.

ATG scorer, ATG rebounder, had to waste most of his prime/peak years on a terrible Sixers team. IMO, the only real black mark on his career is that blown 3-1 lead over the Rockets in 1995.

Nomination: Bob Pettit

Best era-relative case of the relevant names, imo. Consistent for eleven years, two-way player, four finals, a championship, led one of only two teams to beat the Celtics from 1957-1969.

Secondary Nomination: Nikola Jokic

Still have reservations about voting in someone with so few years, but his is the highest peak of the relevant names, imo.

[OhayoKD]

I vote steve nash here

By team results he is a top 3 offensive player ever at minimum, and the eye test tracks with that kind of level of impact too. Goat tier combination of versatile hyper efficient scoring seamlessly mixed with goat tier passing in a high motor player who used agressive on ball movement and elite handles to create openings in spite of limited size

Overstated defensive issues as his presence didnt affect suns much negatively and while a weak 1vs1 defender he was solid in other areas. I see him as a slight negative at worst, neutral at best defensively whilr being Goat tier in the other end.

Kinda likr jokic but with better offensive impact data and a easier position to build around his defensive weaknesses (granted jokic made some strides on that end)

Longevity is not elite but not awful either and durability is fine

My alternate is scottie pippen among the nominated guys for now. A surprisingly decent offense lead floor raiser. A surprisingly elite 2nd offense star (somewhat surprising because of his strong offense impact for a not great scorer) who provided legitimate low end dpoy defense. Raised the bulls from playoffs team into dinasty level with his breakout, elite fit/portability due to low usage (albeit some spacing issues) and showd mvp tier impact as a lead star. Was even Able to floor raise a jordan/grant less bulls team to 45-48 wins ish (off memory) srs pace in 95. Lead a team to contender status in 94 with "only" horace grant, and "ceiling raise" the 90 bulls from low end contender into all time team in 91 with his breakout


I will think more i depth about my alternate to nash later

Nominate- dwayne wade who i probably vote above pippen if he was available to vote for

*52-win pace

[f4p]

So then, it's the '03-04 Pistons are relevant here, and frankly I think it's interesting you see them as so unstoppable, because that's certainly not how they were perceived at the time. Remember that this is a club that went down 3-2 to the 47-35 1.88 SRS Nets in the second round, and keep in mind that the two teams played after the Sheed acquisition the Spurs won.

I'm not sure I rank Manu as highly as you do, but with regards to 2004, it is worth noting that the Spurs may well have won their Lakers series were it not for that Derek Fisher .4 second shot at the end of Game 5(in SA), which a lot of people, including yours truly, believed was BS. All the credit in the world to Fisher for hitting a difficult shot, but a lot of people were certainly skeptical that a human could catch the ball, turn around, and shoot it in four tenths of a second.

so just to push back, it should be noted that the previous shot by duncan went in the basket well before the 0.4 mark. by the clock on the tv screen, it's at 0.8 (it's hard to see the ball right below the net, but you can see the net has moved). based on the rest of the play, the clock above the basket is almost exactly 0.1 seconds ahead (see the second image with 1.8 and 1.7), so it would be 0.7 on the official clock (you can sort of see the bottom of the "7" in the image below. now maybe the lakers run an entirely different play with 0.7 seconds instead of 0.4, who knows, but they really should have had more time (and would have in today's game). also, i think the nba has basically said in the past that human reaction time is part of the timing, which obviously may have made the clock start late for fisher but also made it stop late after duncan's shot (fwiw, i get about 0.45-0.55 seconds for fisher's shot when i try to hand time it at 0.25x).

[DraymondGold]

Voting Post

Vote: Steve Nash
Alternate vote: Charles Barkley
Nomination: Stockton
Alternate Nomination: Wade

I see Nash as a Tier 2 GOAT offensive player ever. The recent Thinking Basketball video goes into detail on his case. Two of the major points for him are film-based and team based.

Impact metrics are slightly more mixed on him than some of our previous players. Which in part makes sense the further down the list we go. In Goldstein RAPM, one of the two traditional sources for RAPM, Nash has
-First place ranks: 0
-Top 3 ranks: 5 times
-Top 5 ranks: 6 times
-Top 10 ranks: 8 times.
That’s pretty great stuff. For comparison, that’s better than Wade who was Top 5 three times and Top 10 six times.

Other versions of RAPM aren’t quite as high. He’s lower on box stats and in certain box/plus-minus hybrids like PIPM and EPM. F4p raised some good points about how one-sided team performance may be overrated here while box stats may be underrated. Box stats do a pretty good job fitting to our rankings, aren’t that much less accurate than impact metrics in general, etc. Still, I do think they have certain blind spots in areas like defensive rim protection / intimidation (e.g. Russell), off-ball creation (e.g. Steph), and on ball leadership (e.g. Nash!).

And WOWY stats ranks him quite highly! He’s 8th all time in raw prime WOWY, and 3rd all time in Thinking Basketball’s adjusted prime WOWY metrics. Our best adjusted WOWY metric, Moonbeam’s RWOWY, doesn’t have exact rankings. But I’ve been collecting players into approximate rankings based on their in-era percentiles, and Nash looks top 15, above the other players in contention here. I do think WOWY is the kind of metric that would overrate Nash here. It tends to rate players who are the system very highly, and the entire offensive system was built around Nash. That’s credit to Nash’s on ball ability, but it does overstate the overall two-way goodness slightly. I see his defense as a clear negative, and I don’t think guard defense is negligible enough to just hand wave away. I also see it as having poor scalability: his value on other teams would not be as high. Still, he probably has the 2nd best peak here after Giannis, and has much stronger longevity. I see Nash as slightly better than Barkley at his best, and the longevity doesn’t flip the order for me.

Ultimately, we’re getting to a point where players are starting to have larger and larger flaws in their case. Nash lacks defense and box impact. Barkley lacks a standout peak, from a weaker defense or playmaking. Moses has the team results, but he has weaker playmaking and inconsistent defense, which shows up in box metrics and WOWY. Giannis lacks longevity and postseason offensive resilience (perhaps from health). The lower we go on the list, the closer together the players get and the wider we should expect the uncertainty bands to be. Lots of players have legitimate cases. With my criteria and interpretation of these players, I just happen to side with Nash and Barkley first.

[f4p]

If anything, Nash looks more 'Magic Johnson lite'.

to start with your last point first, yes i've said in other threads that nash is very much the modern magic stylistically. the harden-lite comment is about his argument for this placement, as in harden basically beats him by at least a little in basically anything you want to go by, unless the argument is just a straight up team ORtg argument.

i meant harden-lite in all of the things i mentioned (impact, box, winning, etc), in the sense that he's basically slightly worse than harden from almost every direction, not that they play the same.

Okay, can you elaborate on how you're evaluating impact/winning to reach this conclusion?

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=108158218#p108158218

For reference, this was what was cited in response to my vote / choice for Nash and Wade (whom probably would be my runner-up, were he to be a nominee already) against Harden. Been a bit busy throughout the week with some work and NFL kick-off week / CFB gameday looming. With the time I have, the biggest counter-arguments for my $.02 are that:

(1) The BBR portfolio of "advanced" stats has a tendency to undersell some players, and I feel pretty confident alluding to Nash (Russell included here too) as a prominent textbook example of this notion. I've cited the 02-11 samples of JE's RAPM where Nash looks incredible in O-RAPM and looks pretty much in the same range across different time spans as other players whom have already been voted in. I'm pretty sure Doc's Chronology Sheet and Ben Taylor's scaled APM sheet - ending at 2012 and 2016 respectively, however - paint a similar picture. It is worth noting how there is such a disparity between how impact and box scores grade Nash, but I think understanding how both play would be a great connector in this context (more on this to come).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h20JYcZJu2tGNIyOwVbNfez0-zXXy5ItLyXC4qTE5D8/edit#gid=0
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ukBETcjKmDbABCnlfz8LoHeQFmu7nq4pOAqns9KkfBk/edit#gid=1551635931

so this is why i didn't really talk all that much about the box score. and didn't only focus on offense. nash's teams's seem unique in their offensive slant. showing some absolutely monumental offensive results coupled with some catastrophic defensive performances. maybe the defense somehow isn't nash's fault, but it seems likely either nash's teams slant so hard to offense that it makes him look good on offense (and terrible at defense) or his opponents lean in hard on offense, knowing they can just outscore nash no matter how good his offense is. either way, nash tends to get graded on offense only but offense only doesn't really seem to paint the full picture. and it boosts him compared to guys like harden (or even moses, who he is somehow close to).

no team with his offenses should have failed to win a title, especially 2005 and 2010, where an already #1 offense jumped 7 to 8 points in its biggest playoff round (the WCF) but lost due to the defense collapsing by 10+ points. or even 2004 with a record-setting +9.4 regular season offense. but they did fail. and nash's full RAPM (not just ORAPM) paints the picture of a player who didn't show that impact in the playoffs.

(2) What I'm not a fan of when comparing players using full career RAPM (I've seen JE's 97-14 and 97-22 models be cited in this context) is that the sample includes years that very well could deflate the sample - making it "apples vs oranges" to declare Player X over Y with *these* data points driving the analysis. Haven't looked year over year, but I would reckon that this is the case for Nash pre-2001 and post 2012. If those filler years that aren't really adding much title equity aren't weighted much in this project and are more or less moot points (this criterion seems more or less the case across the voter pool), I'm not seeing why career RAPM serves as an ideal proxy here.

do we have the year by year breakdown? i can only post what i can find and i don't appear to be good at finding it (is it behind a paywall?). JE 97-14 doesn't seem all that kind to nash before 2005 (116th, 76th, 150th in 2002/3/4) or 2012 (47th) and only 26th in 2005 and those would all be prime years. so the 2006-11 stretch is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a time that includes 2 missed playoffs, though he does do well enough by 2002-2011 (8th), but obviously that's just pure peak years for nash. 97-22 i only know of the full set, but then it includes years like 2010 and 2022 for harden so certainly not his best years, though i suppose nash racked up more weak years. but even there, harden wins overall and actually win the offensive component by more than the overall (although nash beating harden defensively doesn't really make sense so maybe these things divided offensive/defensive credit up wrong).

the Cheema set for the playoffs encompasses basically all of nash's prime (very few weak year possessions to drag the playoff data down) and he falls well short of harden (also with basically all prime data). like half of harden's value. regular ol' plus/minus, when not just focused on offense, has him falling far behind harden in the playoffs (+4.6 to +11.0), with harden actually doing better than guys like giannis, jokic, kawhi, and wade and being right up there with steph. nash seems to be a guy who produces spectacular offensive results but, one way or another, seems to give a lot of it back defensively. and not just in a "harden and nash aren't good at defense so they're probably the same at defense" kind of way. in an actual, "nash gives it back, harden doesn't" kind of way. either nash just got extraordinarily unlucky to be paired with the least resilient defensive teammates ever, or the offensive brilliance is blinding us to an unhealthy ignoring of defense by either him or his teams. but most nash arguments find their way back to being offense only when the overall story doesn't show that his lack of defense was just ancillary.

However, in some essence - players having seasons outside of their best [say] 5-10 ones that end up being impactful is something worth noting. At that, I still weight more for All-NBA+ level play and see it as more of an advantage on a per-season / per-prime basis when players perform substantially better than All-NBA caliber - such as top-20 peak level, just for a reasonable anchor.

(3) When looking more at granular tracking, Nash comes out as a more productive player than Harden - which makes the BBR Box Score "conclusion" that Nash ~= Harden-lite questionable.

to be clear, in terms of BBR Box Score, nash is not harden-lite. he's not even really harden-adjacent. they are entirely different levels of players, with things like harden doubling nash up in BPM. i was entertaining the harden-lite argument in terms of things outside of the box score entirely as a response to the expected objection that we can't measure nash by the box score. by the box score, nash wouldn't be relevant for the next 20 threads. the fact nash doesn't really seem to outdo harden in anything that isn't offense-only to make up the box score gap seems telling to me.

Here are their shot-charts for example -
Harden: https://imgur.com/a/2RxCg5f
Nash: https://imgur.com/a/s4sY0nq

As shown, there is much more red and orange in Nash's chart -> leading to (perceived) a much better ability to attack and score efficiently from both sides of the floor (especially from the midrange). A 5.5% gap in eFG is significant for me regardless of volume - keep in mind we're considering similar role(d) players here as Harden and Nash are both heliocentric volume creators/engines.

Even with TS%, which would favor someone whom draws a ton of defensive fouls like Harden - 2005-10 Nash comes out averaging 21.6 adjusted points / 75 on +8.2% opponent adjusted rTS with 2013-20 Harden only being at 4.1%, albeit at 28.6 aPts/75.

not sure we can include 2013/14 for harden and not 03/04 for nash. nash would lose about 1.4 pp75 and 1.4 TS% (didn't figure the rTS% part) with those years added. harden gets slightly lower boosts if you want to go the other direction and remove 2013/14. but either way, the volume difference is pretty massive. the most "nash-like" harden ever played, which was 2021, showed him with absolutely massive playoff efficiency before he got hurt. and that was certainly at least a little past his peak also with his first major injuries in the regular season. what does he look like his whole career if he has the offensively-slanted rosters of nash and is leading 130 ORtg playoff offenses where he can reduce scoring and up efficiency like nash got to? he basically shifted into nash mode for a season and won over 80% of his regular season games with his 2 best teammates only both playing in less than 25% of those games and, while it was only for one round, started putting up phoenix-like playoff rORTG's (+17.6) and effortless efficiency. could nash go the opposite direction and be what the 2019 rockets needed like harden? where you have to floor-raise an injured cp3 and replacement-level bench to the #2 offense? maybe, but i would be pretty skeptical.

Where Nash blows Harden away is creation and passing potency. In TB's scoreval model, both come up with values of 1.0 come playoff time (up from Nash's .7 RS value and down from Harden's 1.5)

RS -> PS, their box creation, passer rating, and play-val is as follows.
Harden: 13.7, 7.1, 1.6 -> 11.9, 6.9, 1.3
Nash: 14.2, 9.3, 2.5 -> 14.3, 8.5, 2.4

So by the box approach, Harden looks a tier and then-some below Nash ITO playmaking.

i don't doubt he's worse than nash at playmaking.

I don't have their Regular Season values, but Nash's OBPM on TB/Backpicks through this playoff span was 5.7 compared to that of 4.2 for Harden. Same story for Nash having an AuPM/G edge of 3.9 to 3.3 (this is more on the impact proxy side rather than a box derivation, however).

So in summary, we have a player in Nash whom when compared to Harden:
(1) Has a more diverse scoring arsenal
(2) Comes off as more methodical picking spots and blending that approach into creating shots for teammates / making their lives easier
(3) Objectively adds more for a given team through volume passing and proficiency in such
(4) leads better team offenses, and provides more of a lift at face value [eg. using all of 2005-12 for Nash: 116.36 Offense on, 105.06 Offense off | using all of 2013-20 for Harden: 113.51 Offense on, 108.58 Offense off]

where are the offensive plus/minus numbers coming from (not that i don't believe them, just so i can use the database). if i'm correct in assuming that total plus/minus has to be equal to the sum of "offense plus/minus" and "defense plus/minus", what do those numbers look like for defense. also, are those regular season numbers? what are the offense/defense numbers (or what is the database) for the playoffs?

[Doctor MJ]

1st Induction Vote: Moses Malone



2nd Induction Vote: Steve Nash

Moses moves up a slot, Nash grabs the other spot. My debate here wasn't who would be in my top 2, but whether Nash would leap Moses. Believe me I'm torn, and I'll kinda feel weird if Nash ends up getting voted in without my help. Thing is, I'm torn with these two to the point that it's hard to make a definitive stance one way or the other. Two extremely different players, but I have always had Moses ahead in the past with the fact that after years of raising teams from the floor, he became the MVP of one of the most dominant champions in history.

To speak to other guys briefly:

Barkley - the talent is there but I'd say the impact was a bit erratic, as was the attitude. I really can't look at Barkley as accomplished more in his time than Moses. I think Barkley vs Nash on the court is more debatable, but Nash was the guy more reliably having huge on-court impact, and off-court he was a dream.

Giannis - so as mentioned, I think Jokic has accomplished more than Giannis, and concluded this before the project began. But what I'll also say that as we got closer to them being serious candidates, the lack of longevity concerned me more relative to this tier. I think both guys are getting lifted up because they broke through and won a championship, but that really could have not happened for Giannis - remember they won the Atlanta series largely without him, and that was certainly no given - and it easily could have happened for Nash & Barkley. I like Giannis' attitude considerably better than Barkley and would have more faith building around him, but it's iffy whether that really allows him to surpass the other man's longer career.

Harden - Not really sure what to say here. Harden's track record of making demands and then resorting to sabotage if they don't get met is now incredibly extreme. It doesn't erase everything he's accomplished by any means, but I literally see Harden as having negative achievement in the past 3 years, and so rate him lower than in the 2020 project.

1st Nomination Vote: Dwyane Wade



2nd Nomination Vote: Bob Pettit

Repeat vote.

Spoiler:

Continuing to vote for Wade as my nomination. It's an odd situation because I feel solid in my voting for Wade, but having recently switched from a criteria where I ranking him lower, it's hard for me to really muster arguments against those ranking him lower - I definitely get it, there are limitations to his game.

But man of man, was it effective when he was young, and extremely resilient against playoff defense. And while I'll acknowledge that he's at a longevity disadvantage compared to many in conversation here, the way that he was still turning on alpha mode as needed when LeBron got there, and gracefully took a back seat to build LeBron up for the good of the team was inspiring.

For the second spot, I'm torn between Jokic and Bob Pettit. Jokic better, Pettit better longevity. Right now I'm going to side with the old legend.

[f4p]

[b][color=#FF0040]Harden - Not really sure what to say here. Harden's track record of making demands and then resorting to sabotage if they don't get met is now incredibly extreme. It doesn't erase everything he's accomplished by any means, but I literally see Harden as having negative achievement in the past 3 years, and so rate him lower than in the 2020 project.

this just seems so completely unfounded that i really don't get it. i know you don't like harden, but what exactly did he do to engender this level of hate that it would affect his ranking? one of these years is 2021. an mvp-level season on the court where basically the only reason his team didn't win a title is because they got hurt. we've watched all manner of players without rings ask out of their teams over the last 12 years since "the decision", but harden can't ask for his first trade after year 11 and then play like an mvp for his new team without it being negative value? is 1993 barkley a bad year for asking out? 2020 AD (in a much more calculated and forced move)? seems like we're just blaming people for the initial condition of not having a ring on their original team, which pretty much always results in a trade request. at the time, i think he was literally the longest-tenured player in the league other than steph and haslem and he didn't even ask to be traded from his original team. other than lillard, who has stuck it out longer in recent years without a ring (with a ring pretty much being the only reason any of the "loyalty" guys are loyal)?

and even if you for some reason want to believe that it was harden and not the perpetually crazy kyrie irving sitting out the season that ruined things in brooklyn, i don't see how that would be negative value a whole year later for 2023 philly, where harden had another fringe all-star level season, which is hardly negative. it's not like the demand this offseason somehow retroactively ruined the 2023 season since it was based on a contract negotiation from this offseason (i.e. not some lingering issue that affected the actual 2023 season).

[f4p]

Vote: Moses Malone
Alternate: Charles Barkley

Nomination: Dwyane Wade


Fo' Fo' Fo'. In 1983, Moses led the league in regular season PER and WS48 while putting up 24.5 ppg and 15.3 rpg and winning MVP. Then led the playoffs in PER (25.7) and WS48 (0.260) while putting up 26 ppg and 15.8 rpg on 58.7 TS%. In the Finals, he demolished (35 year old) Kareem with 25.8 ppg and 18.0 rpg in a sweep.

This isn't Shaq with Kobe or KD/Steph all having each other's backs in dominant 1-loss runs. Here are 6 dominant title runs I could think of off the top of my head and the separation between the #1 and #2 player on those teams, sorted by WS48 differential:



We can see that for the 2001 Lakers, 2017 Warriors, and 1999 Spurs, the #1 and #2 were practically identical. Except for BPM, Moses ends up there with MJ as being easily the best player on his team. This may have been a guy who joined a stacked team, but it ended up a one man wrecking crew.

Throw in a carry-job finals appearance in 1981 and 3 mvp's and moses dominating the kareem to magic/bird interregnum seems like he should be above non-title guys in this range pretty clearly.


Barkley
Dominated as far back as the 1986 playoffs. had dominant games in the 1993 WCF in basically his first contention scenario. still had a very good playoff series as far out as 1999. enough longevity and high level play in the playoffs to be up here.

[OhayoKD]

-> looks alot stronger in rapm and lineup-adjusted metrics

Granting that I'm very much not a RAPM expert
looking at ones I've got saved
97-14 looks awesome (4th rate behind LeBron, Duncan, O'Neal; 8th RAPM points above average ... add KG, Dirk, Bryant, Wade)
97-17 Manu's 5th (Curry's 6th, Draymond is 24th incomplete on Draymond but with a curve much more pro-Curry whilst still enough sample for Warriors to look strong ... in contrast to)
97-22 with Green 10th 6.6; Curry 11th 6.5; Manu 15th 6.0
Can't speak to other sources.

Here are the sourced databall-spanning sets I have numbers for both from

JE
Draymond -> 8.5
Manu -> 7.5

JE playoffs 1998-2019
Draymond -> 7.65, 4322 minutes
Manu -> 7.13, 6075 minutes


Cryptbeam(scaled single-year)
-> Draymond has the highest mark(+7 over nearly 6000 posessions) and 2 years in the top 250 with 5000+ possessions in both
-> Manu doesn't have a mark similar to dray's 2016, but shows up 6 times. Caveat, he does not cross 4500 possessions once and only crosses 4000 possesions thrice

Cheema 97-22
-> Manu, 131k poss, 4.3
-> Draymond, 110k poss, 4.25

Cheema 5-year
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmed.cheema8618/viz/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021
Draymond's best 5-year mark clears and he has another 5-year mark similatly positioned to manu's best

Not sure how it looks in Ben's

Would say Draymond is advantaged over "prime/peak", but perhaps "strongly" was strong.

On the Green side ... RAPM is looking for the best solution in terms of credit/distribution/cause of impact. Warriors are really good ... this number has him ahead of Curry. I think the consensus here and everywhere is that he isn't as good as Curry. They play a lot together. This isn't to make the Draymond isn't very good, he's less important than Thompson etc case. But I think most will be curving down or just mentally regarding that number on Draymond with at least some amount of pessimism.

Yeah, I don't think this helps manu at all. I alluded to why in the stuff you snipped out but

-> Duncan clears Curry in JE, Cheema, Ben's scaled set, JE, and Cryptbeam over nearly any time frame, especially if we factor in possession-count
-> Duncan-Manu minute distribution in general and without the other is way more lopsided
-> Manu doesn't look very good when we take out rotations as a factor with wowy
-> Draymond looks very good when we take out rotations as a factor with wowy
-> Curry's numbers go up as draymond ascends, Duncan's do not seem to benefit from Manu

Being pessimistic on Manu is alot easier to empirically justify then Draymond. Most people should be favoring draymond if "is it really --them--" is the question.

Green's also still a bit behind Manu for career RS minutes and I would guess his later years are going to be weaker than thus far and so likely to pull big sample RAPMs down.

Sure, but Draymond looks better over similar time frames with more possessions played. Not looking to argue career value.

For those looking at that (this has been impact facing) Manu's box-side stuff might give him a boost (or greater certainty in impact, or greater confidence that an efficient creator for self and others has value everywhere) - which not to say Draymond's box is "bad".

Yeah, but 'box" isn't really real and can't hurt you. I can easily swing "box" to draymond just by counting different things:

-> progressive passes -> Draymond
-> progressive carries -> Draymond
-> chances created -> Draymond
-> touches -> draymond
-> shots deterred -> draymond
-> shots blocked -> draymond
-> pressures completed -> draymond
-> points scored -> manu

Shouldn't be too hard to compute something there that favors draymond and generally correlates with winning.

Comparing a defensive anchor who runs his team's offense and defense as a floor-general to a guy who scores more is going to naturally result in conventional box-aggregations favoring the latter. It's not a meaningful point.

I'll tell you though that I think a critical recent juncture for me came with the identification of Dray's playoff impact to be more of an early round thing, while Ginobili's actually gets more impressive in the deeper rounds - and he led the Spurs in raw +/- in all 4 of the the Spur title runs he was a part of.

Very noisy stuff here. Not that you have to, but the first step to persuading me(and probably others) is explaining in basketball terms what manu ginobli was doing that turned him from seemingly not very impactful in the regular-season to potentially best perimiter player of the era if used right in the playoffs.

[Owly]

So, I'd say Wade was a worthy all-star selection in 12 of his 13 appearances there. Jokic has just 5, and it's hard to argue he deserves more than 6. That's a significant longevity difference.

Interesting thing about each guy:

In retrospect, I think they both should have been handed the reins the moment they arrived on an NBA team, and both could have been all-stars as rookies. That would add one more all-star year for Wade, and 3 more for Jokic. But that's not what happened, so it's not what I'm focusing on in my vote here.

It depends what one is trying to do here ...

But eliminating only the "they're retiring" Nowizki and Wade bonus slots ... 16 Wade is "worthy" (Ref composites 20.3 PER, .105 WS/48', 1.9 BPM ... worst on-off and on among rotation or rotation-ish players on the team) ... but Jokic is "not what happened" ... minutes aren't where they should be but his box and impact indicators, even without offensive primacy are pretty great from the off (though the box-side certainly takes a further leap the next year).

For me it wouldn't (I'm assuming you're just going most recent years) be at all tricky to argue he deserves '17 more than DeAndre Jordan did (or Wade the year before). I think I might be inclined to believe he was better than bigs that made it in 2016 but Cousins was putting up his stats, Aldridge was doing so on a really good team ... the minutes gap is bigger.

So let's just keep in mind that in Jokic's rookie season he didn't average more than 24 MPG until March, and in his sophomore season he didn't break 26 MPG until January.

I think you'd agree that guys like that aren't generally considered all-star candidates.

Well year one I was kind of ceding "all star candidacy" but threw in a comment on goodness.

But more towards year two (though perhaps it kind of applies for both): sure but guys like that aren't usually circa +10 on/off plus very strong box composites. If the case is "well all-star skews towards ppg, strong team "representation" etc rather than accurately representing player goodness or value added, which it is not a good measure of ... sure". Ditto for all-star only has half the year or less to decide ... that one's more ... "justified" ... I suppose as an explanation but after the fact we have all the info and I think few really care about it as to how accurate it was at that time as generally and I think here used as a proxy for overall goodness. '04 Brand was 3rd in the league in PER at the time of selection (25.71. Hollinger, 2004) but probably got shafted but people care less because he didn't sustain it (and/or other surpassed him ... with him 23.2 overall, so significantly lower later). But of a tangent there, sorry.
And "worthy" all-stars aren't usually posting the worst on-off among those in their rotation or semi-rotation, with a non-exceptional box profile. Not an absolute bar but ...

This does thought raise the philosophical issue re: very good player "limited" minutes. If we become confident they could be good for longer (some may disagree for the specific case so am going conceptual though for myself, I think I'm pretty convinced) how much does one penalize them for coaches not choosing to play them.

[Owly]

-> looks alot stronger in rapm and lineup-adjusted metrics

Granting that I'm very much not a RAPM expert
looking at ones I've got saved
97-14 looks awesome (4th rate behind LeBron, Duncan, O'Neal; 8th RAPM points above average ... add KG, Dirk, Bryant, Wade)
97-17 Manu's 5th (Curry's 6th, Draymond is 24th incomplete on Draymond but with a curve much more pro-Curry whilst still enough sample for Warriors to look strong ... in contrast to)
97-22 with Green 10th 6.6; Curry 11th 6.5; Manu 15th 6.0
Can't speak to other sources.

Here are the sourced databall-spanning sets I have numbers for both from

JE
Draymond -> 8.5
Manu -> 7.5

JE playoffs 1998-2019
Draymond -> 7.65, 4322 minutes
Manu -> 7.13, 6075 minutes


Cryptbeam(scaled single-year)
-> Draymond has the highest mark(+7 over nearly 6000 posessions) and 2 years in the top 250 with 5000+ possessions in both
-> Manu doesn't have a mark similar to dray's 2016, but shows up 6 times. Caveat, he does not cross 4500 possessions once and only crosses 4000 possesions thrice

Cheema 97-22
-> Manu, 131k poss, 4.3
-> Draymond, 110k poss, 4.25

Cheema 5-year
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmed.cheema8618/viz/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021
Draymond's best 5-year mark clears and he has another 5-year mark similatly positioned to manu's best

Not sure how it looks in Ben's

Would say Draymond is advantaged over "prime/peak", but perhaps "strongly" was strong.

On the Green side ... RAPM is looking for the best solution in terms of credit/distribution/cause of impact. Warriors are really good ... this number has him ahead of Curry. I think the consensus here and everywhere is that he isn't as good as Curry. They play a lot together. This isn't to make the Draymond isn't very good, he's less important than Thompson etc case. But I think most will be curving down or just mentally regarding that number on Draymond with at least some amount of pessimism.

Yeah, I don't think this helps manu at all. I alluded to why in the stuff you snipped out but

-> Duncan clears Curry in JE, Cheema, Ben's scaled set, JE, and Cryptbeam over nearly any time frame, especially if we factor in possession-count
-> Duncan-Manu minute distribution in general and without the other is way more lopsided
-> Manu doesn't look very good when we take out rotations as a factor with wowy
-> Draymond looks very good when we take out rotations as a factor with wowy
-> Curry's numbers go up as draymond ascends, Duncan's do not seem to benefit from Manu

Being pessimistic on Manu is alot easier to empirically justify then Draymond. Most people should be favoring draymond if "is it really --them--" is the question.

Green's also still a bit behind Manu for career RS minutes and I would guess his later years are going to be weaker than thus far and so likely to pull big sample RAPMs down.

Sure, but Draymond looks better over similar time frames with more possessions played. Not looking to argue career value.

For those looking at that (this has been impact facing) Manu's box-side stuff might give him a boost (or greater certainty in impact, or greater confidence that an efficient creator for self and others has value everywhere) - which not to say Draymond's box is "bad".

Yeah, but 'box" isn't really real and can't hurt you. I can easily swing "box" to draymond just by counting different things:

-> progressive passes -> Draymond
-> progressive carries -> Draymond
-> chances created -> Draymond
-> touches -> draymond
-> shots deterred -> draymond
-> shots blocked -> draymond
-> pressures completed -> draymond
-> points scored -> manu

Shouldn't be too hard to compute something there that favors draymond and generally correlates with winning.

Comparing a defensive anchor who runs his team's offense and defense as a floor-general to a guy who scores more is going to naturally result in conventional box-aggregations favoring the latter. It's not a meaningful point.

Not sure what '"box" isn't really real" means ... "isn't directly tied to scoreboard influence"? "isn't something I value?" "is made of fuzzy components"? "Is missing a lot?" I think there are valid criticisms ... "isn't really real" ... isn't precise and so I'm not sure of its usefulness or meaning.

Regardless ... I would stick to "a lot stronger" is, as I think you seem to allow, not really justified.
You mention sources... I think what I have is 97-14 is googlesites (JE), 97-17 (got from here via Blackmills I think),97-22 (JE). From big picture sources (mine and yours) I'd say it's unclear. I was primarily looking career though you seem now to be going prime which might be a point of disconnect.

Re: snipping ... I may be wrong I don't see the virtue of WoWY when we have a decent RAPM. Ditto ad hoc "on-arrival"/"on primacy" (which some could argue as needing Kerr ... if that's just read as "Jackson bad" ... okay), "won more" which as far as is meaningful is factored into the RAPM (depending on meaning ... some RAPM might exclude playoffs) etc.

Re: non-quoted stuff as better backup for long term RAPM and ad hoc mental curving: I'd have to look into it closer. By first glance pro-Manu thoughts would be
- more minutes (again my picture is career, you've now said more prime focused)
- non-starter may mean less minutes with star
- impact signal with very different versions of Duncan and Spurs, diminished versions of Duncan.
- box as offensive impact backup

My understanding is Draymond looks very good without Curry; hence being "up there" with him in some impact side stuff. If one is primarily on RAPM and On-Off he's really good. Probably in already?

I don't know what the samples are on Draymond without Curry.

On box aggregates generally: Yes they'll miss on Draymond because they miss on much he brings. Box does mostly correlate with the ballpark rankings and offense and might give us confidence that unless the coach runs him into the ground he could do what he did in terms of production and probably be of reasonably similar impact. Now say we grant that box is bad on D, often missing wildly and Draymond is a great defender. Elite. And grant that other teams are willing to use him a 5 (perhaps not quite a given). I think he's also coming out as a significantly positive offensive player and I think people would question "is this sustainable in another context". If he's not on a team with Curry as a known revolutionary offensive centerpiece ... if he was on his own team or a different team (not saying his own as in offensive centerpiece) for 2 years ... does his connective tissue stuff like passing, playmaking ... but without a credible shot and now without the 4 on 3s have the same value, when the gameplan is definitely for a non-Curry team and there's no question Curry isn't inside the defenses heads. And as you've noted, I understand there's some without Curry stuff (and RAPM itself) that would indicate the net impact is still there. I think if people felt confident he remains at or close to his RAPM values in other context he'd be rated significantly higher even here. I think that applies to Manu too but maybe (and probably for myself) to a lesser degree.

Are you confident that Draymond is creating more (and/or more value from) chances that Manu btw? I would think Manu is creating a lot more (and of better quality outcomes) for himself and his playmaking was on average towards the high leverage, high value end. And some of Draymond's assists would come with an advantage already created, which is not to diminish his own passing ability or the value in securing that advantage. I don't know, I suppose it depends what one means but suspect there isn't an actual number accurately representing this sort of thing.

[homecourtloss]

This isn't Shaq with Kobe or KD/Steph all having each other's backs in dominant 1-loss runs. Here are 6 dominant title runs I could think of off the top of my head and the separation between the #1 and #2 player on those teams, sorted by WS48 differential:



We can see that for the 2001 Lakers, 2017 Warriors, and 1999 Spurs, the #1 and #2 were practically identical. Except for BPM, Moses ends up there with MJ as being easily the best player on his team. This may have been a guy who joined a stacked team, but it ended up a one man wrecking crew.

Do you have minutes restriction for who the “#2” player is? Or is the #2 player the perceived second best player?