RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #32 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 10/9/23)

[rk2023]

Vote: Reggie Miller
Alternate: Scottie Pippen
Nomination: Jason Kidd
Alternate Nom: Rick Barry

Kidd has a great case for being the best guard defender in league history (alongside Frazier). Even with a player who had some clear drawbacks as a scorer, his amazing position-relative rebounding, transition ability, and exploitative - yet highly-proficient - passing made him a very impactful player both in Phoenix and in Jersey (even in Dallas as he aged and became a better shooter with less of a sheer offensive responsibility).

Pippen - whom I've had on my radar for a few threads - is a similar player with somewhat similar 'meaningful longevity' (though Kidd has better surrounding years so it seems), but I view him as a better player across their two respective primes given his ability to fit into various defensive roles and have more of an interior impact as a lengthy, bigger player. Relative to position, he would be my best non-big-defender of all time. While Kidd was much better as a passer and playmaker (though I'm not high on his scoring and gravitational effect[s]), I don't think Pippen is a slouch there per-se and is a more resilient scorer on top of his defensive acumen - which was an understated factor in how damn good the 90s Bulls were as a PS team. This was coupled with his amazing chemistry with Jordan - being able to play 2nd fiddle on Offense for teams that looked very good ITO playoff ratings. I view Pippen as a very scalable and connective piece due to his ability to check off many boxes on a basketball court. Many have pointed his excellence as a second-banana whom really 'did it all' when excluding volume scoring, but he looks - at the least - solid as the main guy when Jordan was hitting dingers in 1994 and 95. I liked HCL's $.02 on the topic, so I'll link that below.

viewtopic.php?p=108445816#p108445816

Basically, I see Pippen as a very consistent, weak-fringe level MVP player from all of 1991-97 - with some other rather solid supporting years in his case.

Another 90s star (who I've been campaigning for as a nominee back to early last month) is Reggie Miller. I don't have nothing much to add on top of what I have already mentioned, so will link my prior post. With Miller, his best season(s) might be a slight hair below Pippen if not equivalent (I'm one who is high on Reggie, if one couldn't tell) - but I feel a larger and longer prime sample gives him the nod for me.

viewtopic.php?p=108445816#p108445816

[rk2023]

I personally believe Frazier to be the better offensive player than Stockton. Defense should go without saying really (WestGoat posted some cool data in that regard, which I appreciate).

I would probably rank the three other nominees in order as:
- Leonard
- Frazier
- Stockton

I've mentioned that I'm more on the generous side when it comes to Kawhi's injuries, not quite 2023 at that, under the same premise of me not dinging players like Curry, West, and Paul too much for it. I'm probably not as high on others and the face-value stats of how good he was at his peak - though I still see him as a very damn good player in various years, roles, and roster contexts.

[lessthanjake]

we are still talking about someone whose numbers had him with a below-20 PER in both regular season and playoffs, on a team that also had multiple other all-star-level players. To me that’s simply not equivalent to what Kawhi did with the Raptors.

Yeah but they also weren't recording steals for Frazier, while they did for Kawhi, and that does impact things. Blocks, same, even though neither were huge in that regard. It's true that Kawhi scored more, but in 2023, I don't think we should really be entertaining PER in direct player-to-player comparisons any longer...

What else can we use for players in 1973? We don’t have impact metrics from back then. Box score measures and some crude WOWY stuff is all we have in terms of data. We can decide that PER isn’t the best measure we have nowadays, but it’s still one of the best we have for players like Frazier. And, in the type of WOWY stuff we have, Frazier also looks more like a first among equals in Moonbeam’s regressed WOWY rather than like he’s clearly the Knicks’ best player in that era (though that’s in five-year increments, not a single year, so it’s not 1973-specific for Frazier, nor do we have anything Raptors-year-specific for Kawhi for similar reasons).

Saying Frazier was the best player on an ensemble cast isn’t saying someone on the team was better than him, but rather just that he wasn’t as far above the rest of his team as someone like Kawhi was. And I think that matters quite a lot. I know PERs were lower at the top end of the NBA at the time (so Frazier was still 9th in the league that season), but then that also gets to another issue—which is that 1973 is around the height of the ABA siphoning off talent, so I also just don’t value something from that era as highly. Same is true of Rick Barry’s title, and I’m nominating him, so it’s not dispositive to me, but it does matter in a comparison with Kawhi (and that is part of why I was nominating Kawhi ahead of Rick Barry in prior threads).

If the contention is that Kawhi was better than the next guy on the Raptors than Frazier was compared to the next guy on the Knicks, then let's look at that. Kawhi's next-best guys were Lowry and Siakam. Both of whom were good, I'd argue that was actually Siakam's best season so far, actually. Bradley and DeBusschere were below league average in efficiency and weren't ripping it up. Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas were pretty good, but also playing relatively light minutes and not shooting/scoring that much. They had a nice, distributed passing system which suppressed individual assist numbers (and thus also PER), and Frazier was the third-leading rebounder on the team after DeBusschere and Reed, just ahead of Lucas (per-game).

The separation there isn't hugely different than what we saw on the title Raps.

Understand that the Raptors were a 59-win team the year BEFORE the Kawhi trade, and were slightly worse on O in the RS after, and won 58 games with him. Marc Gasol was a mid-season acquisition, too, and changed a lot about the team.

Kawhi scored a lot of points while maintaining his RS efficiency in the PS. 30.5 ppg, which was great. If there's an argument to be made about his contribution on the Raps, it's his postseason scoring run while others kind of floundered, so that's worth discussing.

Well, keeping in mind that I know your above comment downplays PER as a measure, I’ll nevertheless use it to make the point:

Frazier’s RS PER that season was 19.7. He had three teammates above 16.0. Frazier’s playoff PER was also 19.7. He had two teammates above 16.0, including one at 17.7. Meanwhile, Kawhi’s RS PER was 25.8, with the next highest player on his team with meaningful minutes having an 18.7 PER. And in the playoffs, Kawhi’s PER was 27.9, with the next highest on his team being 17.2. In terms of win shares per 48 minutes, Kawhi had a 0.049 gap to 2nd on his team in the RS and 0.098 gap in the playoffs, while Frazier’s RS gap was 0.008 in the RS and 0.012 in the playoffs. I think there’s just a significant difference in how much of an outlier on their team these two players were in terms of box score production. And it’s not like we have impact-metric data that suggests that actually Frazier was nevertheless a huge impact outlier on his team—indeed, the main such info we have is from Moonbeam and doesn’t show Frazier as an outlier on his team.

So I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to look at that would make me think Frazier was a whole lot more than the best of an ensemble cast on that Knicks team. And we can talk about what the Raptors did in the regular season before Kawhi, but we all know they were a playoff paper tiger before Kawhi and that he was unquestionably by far their most important player when they won the title. I just see there being a pretty straightforward difference here. And, even leaving that aside, I don’t value leading your team to a title in the ABA-era as highly, because the league was watered down.

As others already implied, I don't think you can create a reasonable argument that Frazier was not the best player in 1973 Knicks team. If you want to make a case for someone like DeBusschere, then we don't we start talking about Lowry and Gasol Vs Kawhi?

1970 is an open field, but Frazier improved from that point, while Reed became a roleplayer due to injuries. A lot of people equate Thomas runs to Frazier's, but I fail to see the comparison - outside of playing on good defensive minded rosters (but then you can also equate Kawhi to them).

Ultimately, while it may be true that Frazier was the best player on the team and there probably isn’t a *great* argument for any other specific player over him, we are still talking about someone whose numbers had him with a below-20 PER in both regular season and playoffs, on a team that also had multiple other all-star-level players. To me that’s simply not equivalent to what Kawhi did with the Raptors. Saying Frazier was the best player on an ensemble cast isn’t saying someone on the team was better than him, but rather just that he wasn’t as far above the rest of his team as someone like Kawhi was. And I think that matters quite a lot. I know PERs were lower at the top end of the NBA at the time (so Frazier was still 9th in the league that season), but then that also gets to another issue—which is that 1973 is around the height of the ABA siphoning off talent, so I also just don’t value something from that era as highly. Same is true of Rick Barry’s title, and I’m nominating him, so it’s not dispositive to me, but it does matter in a comparison with Kawhi (and that is part of why I was nominating Kawhi ahead of Rick Barry in prior threads).

I mean, if you think that Frazier was not clearly one of the best players in the league with outstanding postseason run simply because he didn't have 20 PER, then whatever...

That’s a straw man. The question is not whether he was “one of the best players in the league” or had an “outstanding postseason run,” but rather whether he was as good as Kawhi Leonard. Frazier can be the things you mention, while still not being as good as Kawhi. And, to me that’s the case, and I think the box score data comports with that.

[iggymcfrack]

I mean, I'm not saying there's some OBJECTIVE TRUTH behind my opinions. I realize that people can value 13 season careers way more than elite 10 season careers or very good 20 season careers. But at the same time, I kinda have a hard time understanding how an elite defender and playmaker who has more VORP than Dirk Nowitzki in less games isn't voted in as one of the top 32 players in a project that's mostly valued longevity. Is that fair?

Probably because of factors that go beyond longevity. Dirk has an MVP and a ring. Dirk was the scoring force of his team offenses with and after Nash. Dirk's a notable playoff riser. Those are variables that will trump something like VORP and longevity for some people. VORP isn't any kind of be-all, end-all, just another piece of information on the pile.

Well yeah, I'd have Dirk ahead of Stockton too. I just find the fact that Stockton can beat such a great player in any cumulative value measure with less games very impressive. Patrick Ewing doesn't have any rings. Pettit has one because he played in a weak league and an even weaker conference where he only had to beat one good team to win a title and one year the star on that one good team got hurt. He only won the equivalent of 50 games over an 82 game season twice though while Stockton did it 11 times. Harden never even made the Finals as one of the top 2 players on his team. Nash never made the Finals period. Those are the kind of players I fail to understand going ahead of Stockton.

[MyUniBroDavis]

we are still talking about someone whose numbers had him with a below-20 PER in both regular season and playoffs, on a team that also had multiple other all-star-level players. To me that’s simply not equivalent to what Kawhi did with the Raptors.

Yeah but they also weren't recording steals for Frazier, while they did for Kawhi, and that does impact things. Blocks, same, even though neither were huge in that regard. It's true that Kawhi scored more, but in 2023, I don't think we should really be entertaining PER in direct player-to-player comparisons any longer...

What else can we use for players in 1973? We don’t have impact metrics from back then. Box score measures and some crude WOWY stuff is all we have in terms of data. We can decide that PER isn’t the best measure we have nowadays, but it’s still one of the best we have for players like Frazier. And, in the type of WOWY stuff we have, Frazier also looks more like a first among equals in Moonbeam’s regressed WOWY rather than like he’s clearly the Knicks’ best player in that era (though that’s in five-year increments, not a single year, so it’s not 1973-specific for Frazier, nor do we have anything Raptors-year-specific for Kawhi for similar reasons).

Saying Frazier was the best player on an ensemble cast isn’t saying someone on the team was better than him, but rather just that he wasn’t as far above the rest of his team as someone like Kawhi was. And I think that matters quite a lot. I know PERs were lower at the top end of the NBA at the time (so Frazier was still 9th in the league that season), but then that also gets to another issue—which is that 1973 is around the height of the ABA siphoning off talent, so I also just don’t value something from that era as highly. Same is true of Rick Barry’s title, and I’m nominating him, so it’s not dispositive to me, but it does matter in a comparison with Kawhi (and that is part of why I was nominating Kawhi ahead of Rick Barry in prior threads).

If the contention is that Kawhi was better than the next guy on the Raptors than Frazier was compared to the next guy on the Knicks, then let's look at that. Kawhi's next-best guys were Lowry and Siakam. Both of whom were good, I'd argue that was actually Siakam's best season so far, actually. Bradley and DeBusschere were below league average in efficiency and weren't ripping it up. Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas were pretty good, but also playing relatively light minutes and not shooting/scoring that much. They had a nice, distributed passing system which suppressed individual assist numbers (and thus also PER), and Frazier was the third-leading rebounder on the team after DeBusschere and Reed, just ahead of Lucas (per-game).

The separation there isn't hugely different than what we saw on the title Raps.

Understand that the Raptors were a 59-win team the year BEFORE the Kawhi trade, and were slightly worse on O in the RS after, and won 58 games with him. Marc Gasol was a mid-season acquisition, too, and changed a lot about the team.

Kawhi scored a lot of points while maintaining his RS efficiency in the PS. 30.5 ppg, which was great. If there's an argument to be made about his contribution on the Raps, it's his postseason scoring run while others kind of floundered, so that's worth discussing.

Well, keeping in mind that I know your above comment downplays PER as a measure, I’ll nevertheless use it to make the point:

Frazier’s RS PER that season was 19.7. He had three teammates above 16.0. Frazier’s playoff PER was also 19.7. He had two teammates above 16.0, including one at 17.7. Meanwhile, Kawhi’s RS PER was 25.8, with the next highest player on his team with meaningful minutes having an 18.7 PER. And in the playoffs, Kawhi’s PER was 27.9, with the next highest on his team being 17.2. In terms of win shares per 48 minutes, Kawhi had a 0.049 gap to 2nd on his team in the RS and 0.098 gap in the playoffs, while Frazier’s RS gap was 0.008 in the RS and 0.012 in the playoffs. I think there’s just a significant difference in how much of an outlier on their team these two players were in terms of box score production. And it’s not like we have impact-metric data that suggests that actually Frazier was nevertheless a huge impact outlier on his team—indeed, the main such info we have is from Moonbeam and doesn’t show Frazier as an outlier on his team.

So I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to look at that would make me think Frazier was a whole lot more than the best of an ensemble cast on that Knicks team. And we can talk about what the Raptors did in the regular season before Kawhi, but we all know they were a playoff paper tiger before Kawhi and that he was unquestionably by far their most important player when they won the title. I just see there being a pretty straightforward difference here. And, even leaving that aside, I don’t value leading your team to a title in the ABA-era as highly, because the league was watered down.

Ultimately, while it may be true that Frazier was the best player on the team and there probably isn’t a *great* argument for any other specific player over him, we are still talking about someone whose numbers had him with a below-20 PER in both regular season and playoffs, on a team that also had multiple other all-star-level players. To me that’s simply not equivalent to what Kawhi did with the Raptors. Saying Frazier was the best player on an ensemble cast isn’t saying someone on the team was better than him, but rather just that he wasn’t as far above the rest of his team as someone like Kawhi was. And I think that matters quite a lot. I know PERs were lower at the top end of the NBA at the time (so Frazier was still 9th in the league that season), but then that also gets to another issue—which is that 1973 is around the height of the ABA siphoning off talent, so I also just don’t value something from that era as highly. Same is true of Rick Barry’s title, and I’m nominating him, so it’s not dispositive to me, but it does matter in a comparison with Kawhi (and that is part of why I was nominating Kawhi ahead of Rick Barry in prior threads).

I mean, if you think that Frazier was not clearly one of the best players in the league with outstanding postseason run simply because he didn't have 20 PER, then whatever...

That’s a straw man. The question is not whether he was “one of the best players in the league” or had an “outstanding postseason run,” but rather whether he was as good as Kawhi Leonard. Frazier can be the things you mention, while still not being as good as Kawhi. And, to me that’s the case, and I think the box score data comports with that.

PER is an awful stat that shouldn’t be used lol

No horse in this race just wanted to say that

[iggymcfrack]

I personally believe Frazier to be the better offensive player than Stockton. Defense should go without saying really (WestGoat posted some cool data in that regard, which I appreciate).

I would probably rank the three other nominees in order as:
- Leonard
- Frazier
- Stockton

I've mentioned that I'm more on the generous side when it comes to Kawhi's injuries, not quite 2023 at that, under the same premise of me not dinging players like Curry, West, and Paul too much for it. I'm probably not as high on others and the face-value stats of how good he was at his peak - though I still see him as a very damn good player in various years, roles, and roster contexts.

I really don't get the argument for Frazier over Stockton at all. It's like picking Jokic ahead of Kareem. Was Frazier better over his 4 year peak? Maybe. The first year the Knicks won the title, he had a lower playoff PER than Stockton would have any of the 18 postseasons after his rookie year. The second year they won it, he had a PER below Stockton's career playoff average. And he played in a much weaker league. You say defense should go without saying, but Stockton's probably a top 5 defensive PG of all-time and was showing major impact defensively even at ages where Frazier was out of the league. If Frazier has an edge at all there, it's very small. I don't see how you can really say Frazier was ever on another level from Stockton even at his very best.

But he was only really an impactful player for 7 seasons. He didn't do much his rookie year and 74/75 was the last season he'd make the playoffs. By 75/76, the Knicks were 26-33 in the games he played and 12-11 in the games he missed through an injury riddled season. That was his last season with a BPM over 2. Stockton had at least twice that many seasons making a major impact.

It really is a very close analog to Jokic and Kareem. Jokic also has 7 seasons as a high-level impact player. His 3 year peak stands with anyone and you could make a strong argument that it's probably better than any 3 year stretch Kareem had. But no one would say that Jokic has a better career than Kareem because Kareem had 17 years that were clearly better than Jokic's rookie season. Likewise, you can debate Stockton vs. Frazier at peak and if you like Frazier's better I won't argue with you, but Stockton had 17 seasons that were clearly much better than Frazier's 8th best. The longevity gap is almost identical if you only look at the years where Frazier actually made an impact.

[iggymcfrack]

Yeah but they also weren't recording steals for Frazier, while they did for Kawhi, and that does impact things. Blocks, same, even though neither were huge in that regard. It's true that Kawhi scored more, but in 2023, I don't think we should really be entertaining PER in direct player-to-player comparisons any longer...

What else can we use for players in 1973? We don’t have impact metrics from back then. Box score measures and some crude WOWY stuff is all we have in terms of data. We can decide that PER isn’t the best measure we have nowadays, but it’s still one of the best we have for players like Frazier. And, in the type of WOWY stuff we have, Frazier also looks more like a first among equals in Moonbeam’s regressed WOWY rather than like he’s clearly the Knicks’ best player in that era (though that’s in five-year increments, not a single year, so it’s not 1973-specific for Frazier, nor do we have anything Raptors-year-specific for Kawhi for similar reasons).

If the contention is that Kawhi was better than the next guy on the Raptors than Frazier was compared to the next guy on the Knicks, then let's look at that. Kawhi's next-best guys were Lowry and Siakam. Both of whom were good, I'd argue that was actually Siakam's best season so far, actually. Bradley and DeBusschere were below league average in efficiency and weren't ripping it up. Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas were pretty good, but also playing relatively light minutes and not shooting/scoring that much. They had a nice, distributed passing system which suppressed individual assist numbers (and thus also PER), and Frazier was the third-leading rebounder on the team after DeBusschere and Reed, just ahead of Lucas (per-game).

The separation there isn't hugely different than what we saw on the title Raps.

Understand that the Raptors were a 59-win team the year BEFORE the Kawhi trade, and were slightly worse on O in the RS after, and won 58 games with him. Marc Gasol was a mid-season acquisition, too, and changed a lot about the team.

Kawhi scored a lot of points while maintaining his RS efficiency in the PS. 30.5 ppg, which was great. If there's an argument to be made about his contribution on the Raps, it's his postseason scoring run while others kind of floundered, so that's worth discussing.

Well, keeping in mind that I know your above comment downplays PER as a measure, I’ll nevertheless use it to make the point:

Frazier’s RS PER that season was 19.7. He had three teammates above 16.0. Frazier’s playoff PER was also 19.7. He had two teammates above 16.0, including one at 17.7. Meanwhile, Kawhi’s RS PER was 25.8, with the next highest player on his team with meaningful minutes having an 18.7 PER. And in the playoffs, Kawhi’s PER was 27.9, with the next highest on his team being 17.2. In terms of win shares per 48 minutes, Kawhi had a 0.049 gap to 2nd on his team in the RS and 0.098 gap in the playoffs, while Frazier’s RS gap was 0.008 in the RS and 0.012 in the playoffs. I think there’s just a significant difference in how much of an outlier on their team these two players were in terms of box score production. And it’s not like we have impact-metric data that suggests that actually Frazier was nevertheless a huge impact outlier on his team—indeed, the main such info we have is from Moonbeam and doesn’t show Frazier as an outlier on his team.

So I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to look at that would make me think Frazier was a whole lot more than the best of an ensemble cast on that Knicks team. And we can talk about what the Raptors did in the regular season before Kawhi, but we all know they were a playoff paper tiger before Kawhi and that he was unquestionably by far their most important player when they won the title. I just see there being a pretty straightforward difference here. And, even leaving that aside, I don’t value leading your team to a title in the ABA-era as highly, because the league was watered down.

I mean, if you think that Frazier was not clearly one of the best players in the league with outstanding postseason run simply because he didn't have 20 PER, then whatever...

That’s a straw man. The question is not whether he was “one of the best players in the league” or had an “outstanding postseason run,” but rather whether he was as good as Kawhi Leonard. Frazier can be the things you mention, while still not being as good as Kawhi. And, to me that’s the case, and I think the box score data comports with that.

PER is an awful stat that shouldn’t be used lol

No horse in this race just wanted to say that

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

[Cavsfansince84]

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

I'd say it more than underrates elite defenders. It's basically devoid of defensive value as a metric. Not that I'm totally against using it just in passing if its two guys with roughly defensive value but I don't think it should be used much as a way to make any sort of definitive arguments in threads such as this one.

[iggymcfrack]

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

I'd say it more than underrates elite defenders. It's basically devoid of defensive value as a metric. Not that I'm totally against using it just in passing if its two guys with roughly defensive value but I don't think it should be used much as a way to make any sort of definitive arguments in threads such as this one.

Right, you definitely need to adjust it for defense, but I think we can confidently say that Kawhi's a more impactful defender than Frazier which is the context it was being mentioned in. Frazier and Stockton are also very similar defenders and Stockton probably misses some value in comparison to Clyde due to his vastly superior passing.

[MyUniBroDavis]

What else can we use for players in 1973? We don’t have impact metrics from back then. Box score measures and some crude WOWY stuff is all we have in terms of data. We can decide that PER isn’t the best measure we have nowadays, but it’s still one of the best we have for players like Frazier. And, in the type of WOWY stuff we have, Frazier also looks more like a first among equals in Moonbeam’s regressed WOWY rather than like he’s clearly the Knicks’ best player in that era (though that’s in five-year increments, not a single year, so it’s not 1973-specific for Frazier, nor do we have anything Raptors-year-specific for Kawhi for similar reasons).



Well, keeping in mind that I know your above comment downplays PER as a measure, I’ll nevertheless use it to make the point:

Frazier’s RS PER that season was 19.7. He had three teammates above 16.0. Frazier’s playoff PER was also 19.7. He had two teammates above 16.0, including one at 17.7. Meanwhile, Kawhi’s RS PER was 25.8, with the next highest player on his team with meaningful minutes having an 18.7 PER. And in the playoffs, Kawhi’s PER was 27.9, with the next highest on his team being 17.2. In terms of win shares per 48 minutes, Kawhi had a 0.049 gap to 2nd on his team in the RS and 0.098 gap in the playoffs, while Frazier’s RS gap was 0.008 in the RS and 0.012 in the playoffs. I think there’s just a significant difference in how much of an outlier on their team these two players were in terms of box score production. And it’s not like we have impact-metric data that suggests that actually Frazier was nevertheless a huge impact outlier on his team—indeed, the main such info we have is from Moonbeam and doesn’t show Frazier as an outlier on his team.

So I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to look at that would make me think Frazier was a whole lot more than the best of an ensemble cast on that Knicks team. And we can talk about what the Raptors did in the regular season before Kawhi, but we all know they were a playoff paper tiger before Kawhi and that he was unquestionably by far their most important player when they won the title. I just see there being a pretty straightforward difference here. And, even leaving that aside, I don’t value leading your team to a title in the ABA-era as highly, because the league was watered down.



That’s a straw man. The question is not whether he was “one of the best players in the league” or had an “outstanding postseason run,” but rather whether he was as good as Kawhi Leonard. Frazier can be the things you mention, while still not being as good as Kawhi. And, to me that’s the case, and I think the box score data comports with that.

PER is an awful stat that shouldn’t be used lol

No horse in this race just wanted to say that

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

As far as I know PER essentially comes down to an arbitrary box score formula that basically comes down to “eh well this looks good” so there quite literally is lol reason to use it over looking at box scores yourself and making your own conclusions

[iggymcfrack]

PER is an awful stat that shouldn’t be used lol

No horse in this race just wanted to say that

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

As far as I know PER essentially comes down to an arbitrary box score formula that basically comes down to “eh well this looks good” so there quite literally is lol reason to use it over looking at box scores yourself and making your own conclusions

It's league adjusted setting average to 15 which is an advantage in that you can quickly see how someone's playing relative to the environment they were in rather than trying to make manual adjustments for pace and offensive environment. This is especially valuable in those pre-1974 years as per 100 possession stats aren't even available.

Looking at Frazier for instance, his 20/7/7 line in 1974 might seem to compare favorably with Stockton's career averages of 13/3/11. On a per 100 basis thought, those numbers are 23/7/8 and 21/4/17. Again, this is from 1974 so it's easy to make an actual comparison about who was filling up the box score, but for the previous years where that's not available, PER can still be a useful tool to make a quick and dirty comparison of just how far above average someone was in their league.

[lessthanjake]

PER is an awful stat that shouldn’t be used lol

No horse in this race just wanted to say that

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

As far as I know PER essentially comes down to an arbitrary box score formula that basically comes down to “eh well this looks good” so there quite literally is lol reason to use it over looking at box scores yourself and making your own conclusions

I think that’s right—though I’d note that PER is at least normalized, which is helpful since I think the “look at box scores yourself” method can sometimes fall into an issue of people not properly adjusting box score stats for era (and I see iggymcfrack made a similar point above). In any event, though, I also think my point about Frazier and Kawhi stands if, instead of talking about PER, I instead said we should look at box scores ourselves and draw a conclusion from them. Mentioning PER is just a shorthand way of referring to what I’m talking about. I don’t care about PER in particular. The point was really just that Kawhi was much more of a box-score outlier on his team than Frazier was, and we can see that by looking at the box score ourselves too. And meanwhile, the main thing the box score in general doesn’t adequately account for is defense, and while Frazier was a fantastic defender, I don’t think there’s a good argument that he was a more impactful defender than Kawhi Leonard (even in 2019, where he wasn’t quite at his defensive peak), so if anything I’d say box score measures might even underestimate Kawhi in this comparison.

[ZeppelinPage]

Havlicek is the opposite. He was a super high motor hustling player that played good defense and he turned himself into a slightly above efficiency scorer in the weaker leagues of the post Russell 70s NBA. But this is a guy who shot a lot and for his career he's a -341.6 TS Add. He played on very fast paced offenses much of his career so his scoring totals seem a bit inflated but I've never been as impressed by guys who shot more while making less than the guys around them. It would seem a player credited for being highly intelligent would see that and adjust. You will see others say the same thing about Elgin Baylor but it seems Havlicek gets a pass for it.

I'm always a bit unsure what to do with all the Celtics from the '60s & '70s with poor shooting efficiency. Obviously it's not appropriate to pretend they were efficient when they weren't...but it kinda seems like it's a Red Auerbach signature of the time period to tell certain guys to look to shoot as a matter of course, and since it's generally not a situation where you have one volume scorer who is very efficient and the other very inefficient, kinda feels like there were no obvious signals to indicate "this is a bad shot" even though from our 20/20 hindsight we can see the sub-optimality of it.

This then to say that while it's tough for me to call Hondo or Cowens all-time great in the BBIQ department, I'm hesitant to be too negative on them.

In the comparison with Baylor, I think the biggest thing for me is their defense compared to his.

Auerbach was more concerned with possessions as opposed to shooting efficiency. Playing under George Washington head coach Bill Reinhart in the late 1930s gave him appreciation for a faster paced style of basketball based on speed and conditioning--allowing teams to score in the easiest ways possible: before the defense was set.

I believe that Auerbach was further inspired by legendary Rhode Island coach Frank Keaney's "Firehouse" basketball style, as the two knew one another and he writes about his brand of basketball in his book Basketball for the Player, the Fan and the Coach. This style was an even faster version of the standard fast-break, and a Boston Globe article from 1957 by Hall of Famer and Boston Celtics Public Relations Director Bill Mokray compared Auerbach's current style to that of Keaney's. Mokray, who knew Auerbach well, wrote that "Auerbach's system is Rhode Island's 100 percent and Auerbach would be the first to tell you this." Mokray, who had helped develop this "Firehouse" style with Keaney, would have known this system better than all but Keaney himself.

Keaney, who often lacked height on his Rhode Island teams, utilized a smaller line-up based on speed that would shoot at the first opportunity and press with a full-court defense. Basically, if you had a good look, you were encouraged to shoot it. This was based around Bill Mokray, being a statistician and basketball historian himself, tracking the statistics of games over several seasons. Through his tracking, Mokray and Keaney found that teams did not have a significant disparity in efficiency--and that the more often a team shot, the more points it would score.

Knowing this, Keaney gave his players the green light to shoot at any open look, as not only would that often be a better shot than that of a half-court possession with the poor spacing of the era, but it also created fewer turnovers and put the opposition in transition less often.

Circling back to Auerbach here, you often hear the same kind of strategy in regards to the Celtics: A fast pace with quick shooting and pressing on defense to force turnovers and give your team more possessions while winning the conditioning battle. Half-court possessions were far more inefficient compared to that of transition possessions, and the Celtics often had a better chance at making a transition shot than that of a half-court. Auerbach viewed possessions as extremely valuable, and in Havlicek's book he writes about how Auerbach told him to shoot whenever he could. Heinsohn also mentions how he was told to shoot whenever he could as the team needed this from him (Heinsohn was actually a very talented passer.) Getting shots off in transition gives you an opportunity for points, rather than letting the defense get set for a likely worse shot and a possibility of a turnover.

The Celtics essentially wanted to fast-break as much as possible to keep themselves from being stuck in the half-court and slowing the game down. This maximized their possessions, and Cousy has mentioned in several interviews that a vast majority of their offense was based in transition. This was the strategy of the team and why the Celtics continued to win despite their inefficiency. Russell's incredible rebounding and defensive abilities allowed them to dominate the possession battle like never before. Auerbach figured that the more possessions the Celtics could gather, the less chance the opposition could out-shoot them to make up for it, especially with the defense the Celtics had.

As the team aged and their personnel changed, Auerbach focused on a more defensive playstyle that still had the rebounding ability to dominate possessions. So while they could no longer run in transition and take more shots, they could limit the opponent to shoot even worse than before while maintaining the philosophy of "shoot when open." Bailey Howell later joining allowed them to have a more functional half-court offense with better spacing.

Later, Auerbach-disciples Bill Sharman and K.C. Jones would join the Lakers in 1972 and implement a similar strategy. Gail Goodrich, on Peter Vescey's podcast Hoop du Jour, mentions how Sharman gave him a green light to shoot whenever he wanted, and K.C. Jones would hound him to shoot as much as possible, and Goodrich posited that this exact style was similar to what they had been using on the Celtics.

[MyUniBroDavis]

There's no point in using it to compare modern guys where there are better tools available, but sometimes it's the best box score measure we have for seasons prior to 1974. It's really not hard to identify the weak spots with it. It tends to underrate elite passer/playmakers and elite defenders, but other than that it mostly places people pretty well within the context of the league they played in.

As far as I know PER essentially comes down to an arbitrary box score formula that basically comes down to “eh well this looks good” so there quite literally is lol reason to use it over looking at box scores yourself and making your own conclusions

I think that’s right—though I’d note that PER is at least normalized, which is helpful since I think the “look at box scores yourself” method can sometimes fall into an issue of people not properly adjusting box score stats for era (and I see iggymcfrack made a similar point above). In any event, though, I also think my point about Frazier and Kawhi stands if, instead of talking about PER, I instead said we should look at box scores ourselves and draw a conclusion from them. Mentioning PER is just a shorthand way of referring to what I’m talking about. I don’t care about PER in particular. The point was really just that Kawhi was much more of a box-score outlier on his team than Frazier was, and we can see that by looking at the box score ourselves too. And meanwhile, the main thing the box score in general doesn’t adequately account for is defense, and while Frazier was a fantastic defender, I don’t think there’s a good argument that he was a more impactful defender than Kawhi Leonard (even in 2019, where he wasn’t quite at his defensive peak), so if anything I’d say box score measures might even underestimate Kawhi in this comparison.

I’m hating on PER I don’t even know what y’all are talking about but Kawhi clears lol.


To me, when it’s arbitrary in nature, you could just do something similar with your own box score formula that has no backing behind its weights and run that on Google collab in like 10 minutes lol

[Cavsfansince84]

Right, you definitely need to adjust it for defense, but I think we can confidently say that Kawhi's a more impactful defender than Frazier which is the context it was being mentioned in. Frazier and Stockton are also very similar defenders and Stockton probably misses some value in comparison to Clyde due to his vastly superior passing.

Honestly I'd probably only put dpoy Kawhi ahead of Frazier on defense. All in all I'd say that Walt is closer to Kawhi than to Stockton defensively because he was basically Kawhi at pg. Big strong guy with fast feet who played smart.

[penbeast0]

Stockton was not a particularly good man defender. Most of his defensive value comes from his ability to generate steals in the passing lanes, most of the rest comes from his willingness to cheap shot opponents. As a pure man defender against a scoring point, he's more at the meh level.

Frazier and Kawhi are great man defenders, when locked in and focused which I'd count on Frazier more than Kawhi for during their days of offensive dominance. They also generate turnovers which is why both are ATG defenders.

[Doctor MJ]

I really don't get the argument for Frazier over Stockton at all. It's like picking Jokic ahead of Kareem. Was Frazier better over his 4 year peak? Maybe. The first year the Knicks won the title, he had a lower playoff PER than Stockton would have any of the 18 postseasons after his rookie year. The second year they won it, he had a PER below Stockton's career playoff average. And he played in a much weaker league. You say defense should go without saying, but Stockton's probably a top 5 defensive PG of all-time and was showing major impact defensively even at ages where Frazier was out of the league. If Frazier has an edge at all there, it's very small. I don't see how you can really say Frazier was ever on another level from Stockton even at his very best.

But he was only really an impactful player for 7 seasons. He didn't do much his rookie year and 74/75 was the last season he'd make the playoffs. By 75/76, the Knicks were 26-33 in the games he played and 12-11 in the games he missed through an injury riddled season. That was his last season with a BPM over 2. Stockton had at least twice that many seasons making a major impact.

It really is a very close analog to Jokic and Kareem. Jokic also has 7 seasons as a high-level impact player. His 3 year peak stands with anyone and you could make a strong argument that it's probably better than any 3 year stretch Kareem had. But no one would say that Jokic has a better career than Kareem because Kareem had 17 years that were clearly better than Jokic's rookie season. Likewise, you can debate Stockton vs. Frazier at peak and if you like Frazier's better I won't argue with you, but Stockton had 17 seasons that were clearly much better than Frazier's 8th best. The longevity gap is almost identical if you only look at the years where Frazier actually made an impact.

So I think I've already said but I'll emphasize: I think your reasoning for Stockton makes a lot of sense and I can understand you feeling perplexed at how others could side with Frazier.

With your nod to Jokic vs Kareem, I think the clear break in the analogy comes from the fact very few would argue that Jokic was considerably stronger as a player than Kareem, whereas that's generally what's being said by anyone siding with Frazier over Stockton.

I think the starting point for understanding that I can illustrate with my, most definitely over-simplistic POY shares - just my personal version not the one from RealGM:

Frazier 2.7
Stockton 0.3

This is just a massive difference, and we can certainly debate some of the details there, but I think there's a general riposte that your sense of things matches with:

The nth best player in one year isn't necessarily the nth best player in another year. If we look at statistics, and they show comparable relative production with two players with very different POY placements from different eras, it may be that the relative production is the better comparison between the two in terms of how good/accomplished/impressive they are.

Further, if you're arguing for a guy you think is better by production, with considerably better longevity, and very impressive impact numbers, easy to see why you'd favor that evidence over year-biased POY share type thinking.

But let me throw a couple things out here.

Frazier's prime playoff run came from 1969 to 1975. Here are the league leaders in Playoff Win Shares during that duration:

1. Walt Frazier 15.8
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 12.6
3. Wilt Chamberlain 12.1
4. Jerry West 10.9
5. John Havlicek 10.7

Note that team success means you get to play more and the Knicks obviously had a lot of success. Frazier's the only Knick in the above list, so let me just do a Knicks search:

1. Walt Frazier 15.8
2. Willis Reed 6.2
3. Bill Bradley 4.6
4. Dave DeBusschere 4.6
5. Dick Barnett 3.5

So then, note that Frazier's Win Share total is bigger than the next 3 Knicks combined.

I might suggest that the idea that the playoff Knicks were a drastically more ensemble cast than other top basketball teams is something of an illusion.

Okay, let me stick with same 2 sets of 5, and just point out something else you probably don't realize.
Here are the playoff TS% of these players in that time frame:

Frazier 55.9
Kareem 54.0
Wilt 52.6
West 51.5
Havlicek 52.8

Frazier 55.9
Reed 49.7
Bradley 47.9
DeBusschere 45.0
Barnett 49.5

This to say, that while 55.9% TS may not look that impressive, back then, it really was. And Frazier's doing this while scoring considerably more than any teammate over the run, being the team's primary playmaker - thus having a clear case for being the top offensive player of that 7 year time period - while also being arguably even more respected on defense than offense.

Just to present the obvious analogous window, if I take the Jazz best 7 year playoff run - 1994 to 2000, here's what the leaderboard looks like:

1. Michael Jordan 14.7
2. Karl Malone 14.2
3. Shaquille O'Neal 14.1
4. Reggie Miller 13.3
5. Scottie Pippen 12.7

And if I do it just for the Jazz:

1. Karl Malone 14.2
2. John Stockton 11.5
3. Jeff Hornacek 10.2
4. Bryon Russell 8.0
5. Greg Ostertag 3.6

Not making an argument from that, and feel free to present some other variation if you think it presents Stockton's summit more accurately.

[Doctor MJ]

Havlicek is the opposite. He was a super high motor hustling player that played good defense and he turned himself into a slightly above efficiency scorer in the weaker leagues of the post Russell 70s NBA. But this is a guy who shot a lot and for his career he's a -341.6 TS Add. He played on very fast paced offenses much of his career so his scoring totals seem a bit inflated but I've never been as impressed by guys who shot more while making less than the guys around them. It would seem a player credited for being highly intelligent would see that and adjust. You will see others say the same thing about Elgin Baylor but it seems Havlicek gets a pass for it.

I'm always a bit unsure what to do with all the Celtics from the '60s & '70s with poor shooting efficiency. Obviously it's not appropriate to pretend they were efficient when they weren't...but it kinda seems like it's a Red Auerbach signature of the time period to tell certain guys to look to shoot as a matter of course, and since it's generally not a situation where you have one volume scorer who is very efficient and the other very inefficient, kinda feels like there were no obvious signals to indicate "this is a bad shot" even though from our 20/20 hindsight we can see the sub-optimality of it.

This then to say that while it's tough for me to call Hondo or Cowens all-time great in the BBIQ department, I'm hesitant to be too negative on them.

In the comparison with Baylor, I think the biggest thing for me is their defense compared to his.

Auerbach was more concerned with possessions as opposed to shooting efficiency. Playing under George Washington head coach Bill Reinhart in the late 1930s gave him appreciation for a faster paced style of basketball based on speed and conditioning--allowing teams to score in the easiest ways possible: before the defense was set.

I believe that Auerbach was further inspired by legendary Rhode Island coach Frank Keaney's "Firehouse" basketball style, as the two knew one another and he writes about his brand of basketball in his book Basketball for the Player, the Fan and the Coach. This style was an even faster version of the standard fast-break, and a Boston Globe article from 1957 by Hall of Famer and Boston Celtics Public Relations Director Bill Mokray compared Auerbach's current style to that of Keaney's. Mokray, who knew Auernach well, wrote that "Auerbach's system is Rhode Island's 100 percent and Auerbach would be the first to tell you this." Mokray, who had helped develop this "Firehouse" style with Keaney, would have known this system better than all but Keaney himself.

Keaney, who often lacked height on his Rhode Island teams, utilized a smaller line-up based on speed that would shoot at the first opportunity and press with a full-court defense. Basically, if you had a good look, you were encouraged to shoot it. This was based around Bill Mokray, being a statistician and basketball historian himself, tracking the statistics of games over several seasons. Through his tracking, Mokray and Keaney found that teams did not have a significant disparity in efficiency--and that the more often a team shot, the more points it would score.

Knowing this, Keaney gave his players the green light to shoot at any open look, as not only would that often be a better shot than that of a half-court possession with the poor spacing of the era, but it also created fewer turnovers and put the opposition in transition less often.

Circling back to Auerbach here, you often hear the same kind of strategy in regards to the Celtics: A fast pace with quick shooting and pressing on defense to force turnovers and give your team more possessions while winning the conditioning battle. Half-court possessions were far more inefficient compared to that of transition possessions, and the Celtics often had a better chance at making a transition shot than that of a half-court. Auerbach viewed possessions as extremely valuable, and in Havlicek's book he writes about how Auerbach told him to shoot whenever he could. Heinsohn also mentions how he was told to shoot whenever he could as the team needed this from him (Heinsohn was actually a very talented passer.) Getting shots off in transition gives you an opportunity for points, rather than letting the defense get set for a likely worse shot and a possibility of a turnover.

The Celtics essentially wanted to fast-break as much as possible to keep themselves from being stuck in the half-court and slowing the game down. This maximized their possessions, and Cousy has mentioned in several interviews that a vast majority of their offense was based in transition. This was the strategy of the team and why the Celtics continued to win despite their inefficiency. Russell's incredible rebounding and defensive abilities allowed them to dominate the possession battle like never before. Auerbach figured that the more possessions the Celtics could gather, the less chance the opposition could out-shoot them to make up for it, especially with the defense the Celtics had.

As the team aged and their personnel changed, Auerbach focused on a more defensive playstyle that still had the rebounding ability to dominate possessions. So while they could no longer run in transition and take more shots, they could limit the opponent to shoot even worse than before while maintaining the philosophy of "shoot when open." Bailey Howell later joining allowed them to have a more functional half-court offense with better spacing.

Later, Auerbach-disciples Bill Sharman and K.C. Jones would join the Lakers in 1972 and implement a similar strategy. Gail Goodrich, on Peter Vescey's podcast Hoop du Jour, mentions how Sharman gave him a green light to shoot whenever he wanted, and K.C. Jones would hound him to shoot as much as possible, and Goodrich posited that this exact style was similar to what they had been using on the Celtics.

Man, what a fantastic post! Thank you for that Z!

Yeah I think it's clear that the Celtics relied upon a specific, flawed plan that definitely would not be the right approach for most rosters...but it's hard to argue with the results.

One note: I can't help but chuckle hearing Goodrich say "I was told to shoot there!", having read the stories of how frustrated Connie Hawkins got with his chucking tendencies over in Phoenix, and knowing Goodrich's own quote about John Wooden telling him he better get useful when he doesn't have the ball or he won't play.

[tsherkin]

Well yeah, I'd have Dirk ahead of Stockton too. I just find the fact that Stockton can beat such a great player in any cumulative value measure with less games very impressive.

Yup, and that's your prerogative, as these are subjective valuations. You'll just find that non-contending seasons and what-not are valued less, impressive longevity or not, among more people. That's where you're running into this disconnect. It means a lot to you, and many others are like "that's nice, but it doesn't help contention, so why care?" to one degree or another.

Ewing doesn't have any rings. Pettit has one because he played in a weak league and an even weaker conference where he only had to beat one good team to win a title and one year the star on that one good team got hurt. He only won the equivalent of 50 games over an 82 game season twice though while Stockton did it 11 times. Harden never even made the Finals as one of the top 2 players on his team. Nash never made the Finals period. Those are the kind of players I fail to understand going ahead of Stockton.

Ewing anchored ATG defenses and was a focal offensive player. He maybe shouldn't have been, but they were able to build around him as the primary guy and made it to the Finals. Stockton will always be remembered as a Robin to Malone's Batman, and as someone who couldn't step up in the manner which Utah needed when they finally started to get close. Is that different? No, they're fairly similar in that respect, to be honest, but if you don't think Ewing has an argument vs Stockton, that's a little more puzzling to me. The specific order in which guys land on a list like this varies from year to year and person to person, but folks usually land in roughly the right range. Same same Harden. Some better luck here or there and he might have a ring. He DOES have some staggering offensive numbers and achievements, as well as an MVP. It's no surprise he was able to land ahead of Stockton, nor is it an especially contentious proposition. Again, you can argue either way, but his case is fairly clear. Nash authoring some ATG offenses, and particularly without Amare in 2006, and being a better scorer and postseason player than Stockton while having a pair of MVPs and being a more dynamic player is his case. Again, agree or disagree, it isn't challenging to see the 'why' behind his case.

[tsherkin]

What else can we use for players in 1973? We don’t have impact metrics from back then. Box score measures and some crude WOWY stuff is all we have in terms of data. We can decide that PER isn’t the best measure we have nowadays, but it’s still one of the best we have for players like Frazier.

Not really? We can use what we have been using. PER is a limited stat. PER without several of its input values is even worse. It's better to just discuss his box score contributions and other traits individually than bother with a summary stat missing pieces, in a system which suppressed individual assists, etc. It just isn't that useful.