RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #54 (Ray Allen)

[Samurai]

Vote for #54: Paul Arizin. Entering the league in 1950 when the game was based on 2-hand set shots and very slow offensive sets, Arizin emphasized a fairly new weapon that continues to be a mainstay in the NBA today: the jump shot. In addition to his shooting proficiency (led the league in FG% once and finished in the top five in TS% 5 times), he was also known as a great leaper, slick ballhandling and tough defense. And while he wasn't an elite rebounder at only 6-4, he still managed to finish in the top twenty in rebounds/game 6 times. And while he doesn't have great longevity consistent with most players of his era with the much more limited knowledge of nutrition, physical training and sports medicine compared to later eras, I do not penalize him for his 2 years of military service during his prime.

Alternate vote: Ray Allen. Solid all-around offensive game to complement his all-time great 3-point shooting skill. Excellent longevity. Two-time All NBA (one second, one third) with two rings. 7 seasons with a VORP above 4.0 (more than Dwight and Draymond combined, both of who have already been voted in).

Nomination: Dave Cowens. Terrific all-around big who could score (averaged around 20 ppg in his prime), rebound (5 years in the top ten in trb%), pass (averaged around 4.5 assists/game in his prime), and defend (three-time All Defensive Team, one on the first team). Two rings. Named MVP in 73 and while I do not at all feel this was the correct vote, being in the top 4 four times shows how highly regarded he was in his own time. While he wasn't a great pure shooter, he had 4 seasons with a TS+ over 100 so he wasn't really inefficient. While some may have had more sheer talent, no one, in any era, would ever out-hustle Big Red when he was on the court.

Alternate nomination: Bobby Jones. Part of me keeps thinking this is too early for him given his lack of longevity and durability. But I'm pretty sure that I would take Jones and his reduced minutes over Draymond if I were drafting a team, so seeing Green get selected convinced me to consider him. Gotta admit that there is bias here since Jones is one of my favorite players of all time. Despite averaging less than 30 minutes/game during his NBA career, he still has ten All Defensive First Team awards and one Second Team selection (in his second to last season averaging only 20 minutes/game). He was nicknamed The Secretary of Defense for good reason. He didn't shoot much but he was highly efficient, leading the league in FG% three times and finishing in the top 20 in TS% nine times. But as good as he was at playing basketball, how he conducted himself may have been even more admirable. He was always a gentleman with honor; he didn't drink, smoke or use profanity, always raised his hand when called for a foul - even telling a ref who mistakenly called a foul on a teammate that he was the one who actually committed the foul, even though that was his fifth foul! When teammates tried to show him ways to "cheat" by grabbing an opponent's jersey or committing a foul when the ref wasn't looking, he adamantly refused to do so. He would reply "if I have to play defense by holding on, that's when I quit." Teammate Dr J described Jones as "a player who's totally selfless, who runs like a deer, jumps like a gazelle, plays with his head and heart each night, and then walks away from the court as if nothing happened." And former teammate Charles Barkley said "if everyone in the world was like Bobby Jones, the world wouldn't have any problems."

[f4p]

Vote:
1. Joel Embiid
Not just a playoff faller, but perhaps the most devastating playoff faller ever. In my rankings where Karl Malone finished well and truly behind everyone who had finished their career, Embiid is currently sitting twice as far behind Malone as Malone was behind anybody else. in last year's boston series, he literally had a lower game score than harden, after beating him by like 10 in the regular season.

and yet, embiid is a dominant regular season player. and seems to be authoring his greatest season yet. his team sits at a +10 SRS currently and he is sitting at a 34.5 PER and 0.321 WS48. coming off an mvp season. the other players in this range are no where close. now, health and longevity issues are huge obviously, and if you always suck in the playoffs, then maybe your value just isn't that high. but i feel like he probably brings at least some playoff value greater than his diminished numbers would suggest (for example his numbers against the nets last year weren't very good but they were literally doubling him on the catch on almost every play). and maybe this vote is just a "we know he's going to move up the rankings" tiebreaker. but it seems fair.

Nomination:
1. Pau Gasol

[WintaSoldier1]

Vote: Paul Arizin, Ahead of his time and used things(Jab, Rip Through, Pull up) that were at the time not common practice. Like his game and hope at some point he garners the respect he deserves.

Alt Vote: George Gervin, Same thing with Arizin really nice pace, great feel for the game.

I have no problems with Embiid winning here although, but I want to continue to vote for these contemporaries as of now.

Nomination: Isiah Thomas
Second Nom: Pau Gasol

[Doctor MJ]

So, Allen nominated, the next 3 guys on my pre-list, in alphabetical order, are:

Pau Gasol
Willis Reed
Isiah Thomas

Will likely be including one of them as my 2nd Nominee.

I'm inclined to say that Reed peaked the highest, but it's not just that his career was disrupted by injury, but that the bulk of what the Golden Era Knicks did, they did with Reed having major injury concerns that make it unclear whether Reed was actually the 2nd most important guy (after Frazier) of the core run, or if DeBusschere was actually the more critical piece.

I've always been low on Isiah so if I nominate him, that will probably be a first. I doubt I need to go into my skepticism among this group, but I still see him as the MVP of those Pistons. It was more about the ensemble cast than any one guy, but I'm not in serious debate that someone else from the team should be championed first.

I'm a big Gasol fan and admire greatly how well he was able to fit in with lesser primacy on teams after Memphis. Hard to find a guy who succeeded, and succeeded in different roles, on as many teams as Gasol (particularly when you note Team Spain, though that doesn't officially count here). At the same time, he's not THAT good at any one thing. If I have him on my team, I'd be hoping he wasn't my top offensive or defensive player if I were going to expect to contender for an NBA chip.

[Doctor MJ]

Also, love Bobby Jones and love that people are championing him. I'll continue to listen there, but he's still fighting an uphill battle at this stage of the project for me.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Induction Vote #1: Ray Allen

Induction Vote #2: Paul Arizin

Doing a little strategic voting here - between Embiid and Allen, I’m going with Allen. Embiid’s got the better RS numbers, but Allen has such a gap in playoff achievement and longevity that I have to go with him. I’ve typically gone for peak over longevity, but Embiid’s only got seven years and the other guys in that range who’ve gotten in - Jokic, Giannis - have simply accomplished more when it counts.

Ray impacted playoff winning in multiple contexts.

He got within one game of the Finals as the #1 option in Milwaukee(that’s a sliding doors moment - imagine how it impacts both Ray and Iverson’s legacies if Milwaukee wins that Game 7 in 2001).

He went to two Finals, three ECFs, and won a title as Boston’s #3.

He was a good role player with the Heatles in his final years, including hitting the biggest shot of his career.

And Arizin gets my #2 vote for the same reasons as before - statistically consistent, decent longevity, #1 option on a title team.

Nomination Vote #1: Pau Gasol

Nomination Vote #2: Isiah Thomas

It was between Ray and Gasol for me last time, so it only makes sense I’ll go with Gasol this time. It looks like Gasol and Cowens are getting traction here, and I just think Gasol has a significant longevity advantage and stronger numbers during his championship runs.

Isiah is the guy on the current list of nominees with votes with back to back titles to his name as a #1, so I’ll vote for him for now.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

I’d like to generate some serious Arizin and George Gervin support here!

Either one being on the list as this respective spot is fine, Gervin’s game is tantalizing by the way he just “counter-punches” the defense with amazing pace, confidence and selection. Arizin was flat out just ahead of his time and looked like a basketball player while everyone else was still just trying to get the ball in the Hoop.

Embidd is also a fine choice for me, no real complaints about him at this point even if I can refer back to some of my earlier posts about his game, but I also think he’s a victim of his environment in a negative way in some sorts.

I don’t see Thurmond or Ray Allen being competitive in respect to myself for this spot; I’m willing to go any of the 3, firstly Arizin then George then Embidd but it doesn’t truly matter.

I think I'll be deciding between Gervin & Allen for my 2nd vote here.

ftr, I don't think it's a given that Allen is "too low" given that he hasn't been voted in just yet, but I do wonder if circumstances have conspired to make people not realize how good Allen was:

1. In Milwaukee, he wasn't supposed to be the franchise player - Glenn Robinson was - so he was never really hyped like he could have been.

2. The league as a whole didn't yet realize that 3>2, and so they didn't fully appreciate what Allen was doing as they focused on taking shots worth less. Included in "the league" would be the Bucks...

3. who thought they would be better if they got traded away Allen for Payton. (The coach, George Karl, was a big factor here I believe. Karl and Allen didn't see eye to eye, and Payton was Karl's guy from Seattle. Karl was fired at season's end.)

4. I think there's a bit of a Kareem-thing going on where Allen's ability to remain an outstanding tertiary star for a long time caused people to think that what he did in those later years was all he could do.

So yeah, I think Allen's got a good case against any of the remaining guys, including my guy Arizin. He lacks the "best player in the world" type of peak that Arizin had, but era strength aside, Ray's longevity is quite nice.

Re Allen vs Gervin - at the risk of stating the obvious, Allen is more accomplished in the postseason and has a longevity advantage. Also, they are both primarily known as scorers, and Allen has a career RS +5.0 rTS, while Gervin’s is +3.2(though Gervin’s volume is 6.1 pp100 higher for his career).

I think you could argue that Gervin peaked higher, but it would be more difficult to argue that Gervin provided more total career value, if that’s how you like to measure things.

[Cavsfansince84]

Re Allen vs Gervin - at the risk of stating the obvious, Allen is more accomplished in the postseason and has a longevity advantage. Also, they are both primarily known as scorers, and Allen has a career RS +5.0 rTS, while Gervin’s is +3.2(though Gervin’s volume is 6.1 pp100 higher for his career).

I think you could argue that Gervin peaked higher, but it would be more difficult to argue that Gervin provided more total career value, if that’s how you like to measure things.

I think you can definitely argue that Ray is more accomplished in the post season but that comes with the caveat that he was pretty inconsistent with the Celtics(where the bulk of his accomplishment comes from) and not a real #1 option(really anywhere from 1-4 in a given series). While in George's favor he didn't accomplish much but.. he did lead the league in playoff scoring avg something like 4 times. Ray was also quite good in his Mil/Seattle years for the most part. Just throwing that out there with regard to this comparison. I'm actually quite high on both guys in the all time sense. I'd probably have Ray inside my top 50 and George inside my top 40.

[iggymcfrack]

Vote: Ray Allen
Here are his prime playoff runs before going to the Celtics:

98/99: 6.0 BPM, +65.5 on/off, 3 games played, led the postseason in TS%
99/00: 5.8 BPM, +30.4 on/off, 5 games played, team was a cumulative +31 with him on the floor
00/01: 8.3 BPM, +25.0 on/off, 18 games played, averaged 27/3/5 on .614 TS% in the ECF when they lost to Philly in 7
04/05: 7.1 BPM, +4.8 on/off, 11 games played, dominated the Kings Round 1 before losing to the champion Duncan Spurs

That's a pretty unimpeachable resume. Combine it with far and away the best career WS and VORP totals of any of the nominees and you have a tremendous combination of peak and career.

Nominate: Pau Gasol
32nd all-time in WS, 30th all-time in VORP, and a confirmed playoff riser by both box and impact stats, performing significantly better in the postseason. Was a true 1b to Kobe in 2010 to the point you can even make a case he was the most valuable player on that championship team.

[f4p]

I've always been low on Isiah so if I nominate him, that will probably be a first.

i like how nominating isiah has almost become a game of chicken between people who don't really like him, lol. i feel like if you're really high on the things he did, you could argue him as a top 30, top 35 guy (i can't justify the top 20 type ratings you sometimes see for him). and if you are really low, you could argue him out of the top 100 without much problem. hard to see someone else with a wider disparity between "team leader" accomplishments and individual statistical/stylistic concerns. i usually just end up splitting the baby and putting him somewhere around here but i wonder if "isiah thomas of the denver nuggets" is making the top 100.

I'm a big Gasol fan and admire greatly how well he was able to fit in with lesser primacy on teams after Memphis. Hard to find a guy who succeeded, and succeeded in different roles, on as many teams as Gasol (particularly when you note Team Spain, though that doesn't officially count here). At the same time, he's not THAT good at any one thing. If I have him on my team, I'd be hoping he wasn't my top offensive or defensive player if I were going to expect to contender for an NBA chip.

gasol definitely gets into the "would you rather have a poor 1st option/best player or great 2nd option/best player" debate. i tend to highly favor #1's/team leaders as i think it is a different level of responsibility/getting blamed than the #2 guy, who can kind of fade in and out without getting criticized much. in a sense, if your team has a poor leader, you're not going anywhere, so what's the point. but having a great second option just defers the ultimate problem, which is needing a great best player to win a championship. of course, the real problem is most of the poor 1st options don't make good 2nd options if you actually do find an all-time great for your team. so that arguably puts them back behind the gasol's of the world.

at this point in the project, gasol just seems like such a good 2nd option that it's impossible to ignore. he may not be great at anything, but was good at almost everything. not an elite shotblocker but had the standing reach to affect lots of shots. not a great rebounder, but still got plenty of rebounds. not a great one on one scorer but could spread the floor and post up. and then the one thing he really was really good at, was passing. so you could have the lakers effecting shots with gasol/bynum, playing volleyball tipping shots in with gasol/bynum, and then have the lakers offense humming along with relatively poor spacing because gasol/odom could pass so well on the interior. a rare combination and almost a perfect combination for your 2nd best player. hard to think of teams where you wouldn't want him.

[Doctor MJ]

Induction Vote 1: Paul Arizin



Moving Arizin up to my top Induction Vote now that he's in. I'll include my prior post below without spoilers this time, but in a nutshell:

In a nutshell I think Paul Arizin was the best offensive player we saw in the league until Oscar & West showed up, and at his best I definitely have him above rival Schayes. His weird disjointed career hurts him on my list up to a point, but there just aren't many guys who stand out to me like this across the eras, and while he certainly played in a weaker era than what came later, I think in general the top guys from earlier eras have shown an ability to continue to look great against new generations of talent in NBA history. There are exceptions to this of course, and those exceptions tell stories of obsolescent techniques and problematic decision making. Arizin on the other hand is basically just the sort of guy we'd expect to see a gentle decay in dominance with increased competition.

Okay I'm going to just add on to what I was saying before because I want to address some of the things others brought up.

Previous post:
I'm really sold on Arizin as a player. I think at his best he was the best non-big the NBA ever saw until Oscar & West showed up, and I'd say arguably he was the most modern player the NBA saw until them also. This was a guy who was known for his one-handed jump shot at a time when this was not yet the norm, and he was also known for slashing his way to the basket.

For the early to mid stages of his career, he was also someone who seemed to correlate greatly with his team's success. Now, by moonbeam's RWOWY he comes off more mild here in favor of teammate Tom Gola, and I'm willing to have that conversation given that Gola was supposed to be a best-in-world candidate coming out of college, but my guess is that what we're seeing here is that Gola's arrival on the team coincided with Arizin really getting his sea legs back after the military service, and since that took a year, that prior year gets effectively held against him.

I will say there are considerable longevity concerns with Arizin, and frankly that's why I didn't vote for him earlier.
There are also concerns about why the later years with Wilt didn't feel like a team with overwhelming talent, and there while my answer would be the style of play the Warriors chose to play around Wilt, it doesn't change the fact that Arizin's impact didn't age as well as we'd like in practice.

Am I saying Arizin had poor impact?

Definitely not saying that. I'm acknowledging that Moonbeam's RWOWY did not show Arizin as that impressive and bringing up the teammate (Gola) who came off looking better. I'm giving brief explanation for how I take that for data. Happy to talk about it in more detail, just a question of what would be helpful to communicate.

The essence of the situation is that RWOWY is going to hold a Player A's improvement against him if Player B's arrival coincides with that improvement. Arizin improved his second year back in the NBA much like you'd hope give that he had been much better previously, and I don't think it's reasonable to say something like "That was Gola's impact on Arizin!".

Why champion Arizin when he doesn't stand out that much within his own era?

Arizin does stand out to me though. I have him as my OPOY in '51-52, '55-56 & '56-57, and he qualifies as an Offensive Player of the Decade (OPOD) for me taking over from George Mikan, preceding Bob Pettit.

I would also consider Arizin to have the best offensive peak of the '50s, and would name him my POY in his championship season.

I am curious who else people think stands out as much as Arizin from his own era, but I have seen another name mentioned here from the era that intrigues me.

Might it be that Cliff Hagan should rank higher than Arizin?

So, I like that Hagan's emerged as such a strong contender over time. I think it does make sense to ask whether Hagan could have set the world on fire with big numbers all season long if he were simply unleashed, but when it comes to achievement, I think there's a pretty basic bump you have to get over:

Based on regular season accolades, Hagan just isn't a guy getting much love. Only 6 all-star appearances to Arizin's 10 for example.

So, Hagan's almost certainly getting the nod over Arizin and a bunch of others based on his playoff performances. Makes sense, but I think we need to be very careful when looking at stats from the entire post-season to assert things like Hagan was the true MVP of the Hawks' chip. When we look at the finals, it really seems crystal clear that Pettit would have won that Finals MVP by a landslide and deservedly so.

I previously said that George Gervin has more POY Shares by my personal votes than Arizin, so why vote for Arizin over Gervin?

So, one of the things here is that the period where Gervin was racking up his shares was a really weird period. I literally have Gervin as my POY in '77-78, but it wasn't exactly the most satisfying of seasons with both Walton & Kareem's seasons disrupted, and Gervin's Spurs getting upset in their first playoff series. Getting upset in the playoffs was a thing for those Spurs and while that doesn't necessarily say anything concretely about Gervin, it leaves some doubts at the least.

I see Arizin as the guy with championship belt in his era among perimeter players for being best able to take it to opposing defenses all the way through the deep end of the playoffs...and I just can't say I see Gervin the same way.

Now, as we've talked about many times before, I'm not evaluating players for this project by considering them in other eras. I can definitely see the argument that Gervin's era was better than Arizin's so that should make up for the difference, but I'm cautious.

Does a player really "stand out" if he doesn't show up as massively on PER, WS/48/ BPM as another guy from another era?

So, I do see the logic of this thought. If we're talking about stats that are already normalized for era, and a more modern guy looks better by them, what exactly is the reasoning for picking the guy from the past?

Let's first acknowledge that this general argument stands even if we find specific reasons why a particular guy is better or worse than these simple metrics say. All other things equal though, is there a basis for which we could say that the guy with the worse-normalized numbers in the weaker league somehow might be seen as more impressive by those numbers?

Big thing here I think is that in general alphas are claiming more of the box score stats (per minute) of their team more and more as we embrace more star-optimized systems. In some cases this is happening beyond what's actually best for the team, but even if we expect that it's mostly a good thing if the team is choosing to do it, there's a question of whether we want to do cross-era lists that ended up getting dominated by guys from ultra-high-alpha-primacy eras simply because they are ultra-high-alpha-primacy eras.

Incidentally statistically, the thing worth determining are the standard deviations of these stats over the years.[/spoiler]

Induction Vote 2: Ray Allen

Debated between Allen & Gervin, may change my mind again. I'm more confident in Allen and maybe that's all there is to it. I'd like to normalize so that I'm not favoring guys optimized for the modern style of play, but just within each player's time, Allen had a weapon that allowed him to be quite valuable in a wide variety of different primacies for a very long time, and I don't think Gervin could claim this - at least as a matter of degree.

Nomination Vote 1: Dave Cowens



I'm continuing to vote for Cowens...but honestly I feel a bit aimless here when trying to present an argument. I feel like I need to think him through more.

While I think most of us would agree he got a touch overrated by accolades in his time, I don't feel much cause to doubt that he had a pretty great impact. He played a big role on a champion Celtics team that still had major ingredients from the Russell era, and which looked not that impressive in the year before they got Cowens. Cowens was heady with high-motor, and when you have that combination that's quite a bit of potential to be more valuable than the box score implies.

The shooting efficiency is a thing that I should speak to though, because I feel like I'm being more forgiving toward Cowens than I am contemporaries with the same problem in the TS%, and while there's a reason I can use to justify this, maybe I shouldn't.

In a nutshell: Red Auerbach's team offenses once they adopted a defensive-focus just seem to look really dumb by our efficiency metrics, but offense and defense influence each other in basketball is subtle ways we don't always recognize, and you can't argue with the overall effect, so it's hard to knock Auerbach here.

And if it's hard to knock Auerbach for his offensive approach here, that also makes it problematic to knock the players who did as he wanted them to do. Auerbach seemed to see value in a quick shooting attack even if that resulted in worse shots than they could have otherwise got, and in doing so he almost certainly deflated the TS% of at least some of his players.

I would not advocate for "re-inflating" the stat into some normalized adjustment of itself - negative offense remains negative offense...but if the action itself ends up having some ounce of positive defensive impact, well, the player deserves credit for that positive too.

So this brings us back to a question of Cowens vs a guy like Thurmond - who I recognize seems primed to get in before Cowens, but just take it as a categorical thing: I tend to see Cowens as different from guys like Thurmond in the sense that he was a more capable player on the offensive side of the ball...but maybe I'm being too generous because of the Auerbach anomaly.

Nomination Vote 2: Isiah Thomas

This time around siding with Isiah. As mentioned, Reed & Gasol weighing heavily on my mind as well.

[iggymcfrack]

Vote:
1. Joel Embiid
Not just a playoff faller, but perhaps the most devastating playoff faller ever. In my rankings where Karl Malone finished well and truly behind everyone who had finished their career, Embiid is currently sitting twice as far behind Malone as Malone was behind anybody else. in last year's boston series, he literally had a lower game score than harden, after beating him by like 10 in the regular season.

and yet, embiid is a dominant regular season player. and seems to be authoring his greatest season yet. his team sits at a +10 SRS currently and he is sitting at a 34.5 PER and 0.321 WS48. coming off an mvp season. the other players in this range are no where close. now, health and longevity issues are huge obviously, and if you always suck in the playoffs, then maybe your value just isn't that high. but i feel like he probably brings at least some playoff value greater than his diminished numbers would suggest (for example his numbers against the nets last year weren't very good but they were literally doubling him on the catch on almost every play). and maybe this vote is just a "we know he's going to move up the rankings" tiebreaker. but it seems fair.

Nomination:
1. Pau Gasol

It's interesting how he and Ray Allen are pretty much exact opposites in terms of regular season and postseason.

Ray Allen (through age 29): 3.3 regular season BPM, 7.5 postseason BPM
Joel Embiid (currently age 29): 6.8 regular season BPM, 3.5 postseason BPM

I was nominating Embiid pretty early, but as I've examined more of the candidates in-depth, I've discovered that there's other guys I like better. Gasol's another one I wasn't considering when I first nominated Embiid that I think I might end up giving the edge with better prime playoff numbers and tremendous longevity.

[OhayoKD]

Vote

1. Thurmond


-> Superstar impact based on what we have
-> Impressive postseason performances with and without Rick Barry
-> Best-in-league calibre defender


Alternate

2. Paul Arizin

[trex_8063]

In '00-01, here's the leaderboard, along with with the player's team's ORtg ranking (that is ranking of the most effective offenses in the league) in parentheses:

1. Ray Allen (1st)
2. Dirk Nowitzki (4th)
3. Shaquille O'Neal (2nd)
4. Karl Malone (3rd)
5. Paul Pierce (17th)

I'd say a general rule is that if a player is on the best offense in the league and has the highest TS Add in the league, you should strongly consider whether he was the most valuable offensive player in the league that season. Hence, I don't think the issue here is that Allen was held back, but that people at the time didn't realize how much of an outlier Allen's performance was.

So, like Neil Johnston in '56?

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[Clyde Frazier]

Ah **** totally lost track of time.

Vote 1 - George Gervin
Vote 2 - Ray Allen
Nomination 1 - Willis Reed
Nomination 2 - Pau Gasol

Even though Gervin's playoff success leaves something to be desired, he was still an impressive playoff performer, putting up the following from '75-'83 (65 games):

28.8 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 3 APG, 1.2 SPG, 1.1 BPG, 56% TS, 113 ORtg 

In '79, the spurs faced the defending champion bullets in the ECF, with a heartbreaking 2 pt game 7 loss. Gervin scored 42 pts in the game, including 24 in the 2nd half. The spurs and bullets ranked 1st and 2nd in SRS respectively that season.

In '82, the spurs made a mid season trade for talented scorer Mike Mitchell. He would only appear in 57 games for the spurs, and gervin still led the spurs to the 7th best SRS in the league. For context as owly mentioned, Ron brewer was pretty productive that season before being traded for Mitchell: https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SAS/1982.html. They would fall to the eventual NBA champion lakers (4th in SRS) in the WCF.

In '83, the spurs (6th in SRS) would again fall to the lakers (3rd in SRS) in the WCF. Gervin and Mitchell both had solid performances in the post season that year, but simply weren't enough for a deep lakers roster that featured magic, kareem, nixon, wilkes, mcadoo and cooper.

Had gervin and gilmore had more time together during each other's primes, i'm sure both would have helped each other to further playoff success.

[LA Bird]

Vote 1: Nate Thurmond
Vote 2: Ray Allen
Nom 1: Alonzo Mourning
Nom 2: Dave Cowens

Thurmond (from last thread)

Spoiler:

• MVP of the Warriors over Barry and, when healthy, was arguably the more impactful player over their overlapped primes. Barry had some weak prime WOWY numbers in 70/71 (55-56 with, 29-28 without) that get overlooked because it was in the ABA. In contrast, Thurmond had 10+ SRS WOWY impact in 67/68 similar to peak Walton.
• GOAT man defender in the low post and shut down Wilt, Kareem in their peak regular seasons (67 Wilt: 24 ppg on 64% TS -> 18 ppg on 50% TS. 72 Kareem: 35 ppg on 60% TS -> 23 ppg on 43% TS).
• Locked up Kareem for a second consecutive playoffs in 73 (23 ppg on 45% TS) en route to a upset which was Kareem's only loss to a non-title team in a 7 game series until 86.
• Not too worried about the rings narrative for 1975 considering Thurmond's consistent impact on team wins and that they were a one off title team that wasn't that dominant anyway. Besides, if we are going to be ring counting, this list would be very different (ahem, Isiah).

Allen

Spoiler:

• Great career longevity as an All NBA / All Star level player. For some voters who value peak more, Allen is not the pick here but there has been other players with similar career arcs voted in already (notably Reggie and Pierce).
• Strong impact signals especially on the offensive end but the defensive issues drop him a clear tier behind someone like Pierce.
• Underrated peak in 01 where the other members of his Bucks big 3 failed to show up in the playoffs (25.1 ppg on 61.3% TS from Allen vs 19.4 ppg on 50.5% TS from Robinson, 17.4 ppg on 49.0% TS from Cassell)
• Somewhat underwhelming on the Celtics and part of the reason why they never approached the offensive heights they could have theoretically reached considering the nice fit of their big 3 and their individual successes when they were on their own teams.
• People only remember the clutch 3 in the 2013 Finals but Allen was actually the second highest 4th quarter scorer in the entire championship playoff run behind LeBron. Though that's probably less of a plus for him than a huge negative for the other members of the Heat big 3. (96 points on 64.4% TS from Allen vs 103 points on 50.5% TS from Wade and Bosh combined)

Shining a spotlight on Mourning for nomination because I've seen a few other centers (Walton, Mutombo, Wallace, Reed) getting nomination votes despite weaker arguments overall. Of these players,
• Zo had a better peak than anyone except Walton (Reed is arguable)
• Zo, despite health problems, still had a longer prime than anyone except Mutombo
• Zo had better RAPM numbers than Mutombo/Wallace, better RWOWY than Reed/Mutombo/Wallace, better WOWY than Reed/Wallace. Walton is the only one who beats him in impact metrics but Walton is the WOWY GOAT anyway.
• Zo scored more points than anyone and has almost double the career TS Add of Reed, who is the only other major scorer here
• Zo blocked more shots than anyone except Mutombo
There are individual criteria where you can pick some of the other centers over him but overall, Mourning has the strongest argument across the board of the remaining centers.

[Doctor MJ]

Induction Vote 1:

Embiid - 4 (beast, trelos, HBK, f4p)
Allen - 4 (AEnigma, trex, OSNB, iggy)
Thurmond - 3 (hcl, Ohayo, LA Bird)
Arizin - 3 (Samurai, Winta, Doc)
Gervin - 1 (Clyde)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Embiid & Allen:

Embiid - 1 (hcl)
Allen - 4 (Samurai, Doc, Clyde, LA Bird)
neither - 2 (Winta, Ohayo)

Allen 8, Embiid 5

Ray Allen is Inducted at #54.



Nomination Vote 1:

Bobby - 1 (beast)
Cowens - 4 (AEnigma, hcl, Samurai, Doc)
Mutombo - 1 (trelos)
Reed - 2 (HBK, Clyde)
Gasol - 4 (trex, f4p, OSNB, iggy)
Isiah - 1 (Winta)
Zo - 1 (LA Bird)
none - 1 (Ohayo)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Cowens & Gasol:

Cowens - 1 (LA Bird)
Gasol - 3 (beast, Winta, Clyde)
neither - 3 (trelos, HBK, Ohayo)

Gasol 7, Cowens 5

Pau Gasol is added to Nominee list.

[trex_8063]

Pau Gasol is added to Nominee list.

Watch on YouTube

[Primedeion]

Vote: Ray Allen
Here are his prime playoff runs before going to the Celtics:

98/99: 6.0 BPM, +65.5 on/off, 3 games played, led the postseason in TS%
99/00: 5.8 BPM, +30.4 on/off, 5 games played, team was a cumulative +31 with him on the floor
00/01: 8.3 BPM, +25.0 on/off, 18 games played, averaged 27/3/5 on .614 TS% in the ECF when they lost to Philly in 7
04/05: 7.1 BPM, +4.8 on/off, 11 games played, dominated the Kings Round 1 before losing to the champion Duncan Spurs

That's a pretty unimpeachable resume. Combine it with far and away the best career WS and VORP totals of any of the nominees and you have a tremendous combination of peak and career.

Nominate: Pau Gasol
32nd all-time in WS, 30th all-time in VORP, and a confirmed playoff riser by both box and impact stats, performing significantly better in the postseason. Was a true 1b to Kobe in 2010 to the point you can even make a case he was the most valuable player on that championship team.

Yeah, you can make case. Only you need to do is ignore Kobe being a much better offensive player, a better defender, and being way more impactful despite playing a much bigger/much more difficult/much more important role. Oh, and you'll have to ignore him carrying a much bigger load and commanding far more defensive attention.

They weren't close at all. One was a top three player and the other was maybe in the top ten (I have him top ten in both years, but it's arguable). You have two guys whose impact comes almost entirely because of their offense and one of them is a much better scorer, a better passer, and a much better play-maker with a level of gravity that Pau isn't touching. PER, WS, and BPM are 100% box-score derived and aren't measures of impact. The impact metrics we DO have have Bryant crushing Pau across the board.



NPI 2010 (post-season included)

Bryant: 4.15

Gasol: 1.66

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/11181n4avq5wefk/AAAZ4muMkVh3aNDYIzq_NNHEa?dl=0&preview=2010.txt



PI 2010 (post-season included)

Bryant: 5.17

Gasol: 3.21

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/teutg7zvxudqnlw/AAAUkNkDUG0KWeewPZbnwS2ja?dl=0&preview=2010.txt

2010 DPM:
Kobe: +4.9
Pau: +2.4

NPI Playoff RAPM (post-season only)

Bryant: #2 in the league

Gasol: #16 in the league

https://basketball-analytics.gitlab.io/rapm-data/season/2009-10/playoffs/


Total +/-:
Kobe: +467 (#5 in the league)
Pau: +310 (outside the top 25)

RS only:

Bryant: 5.6

Gasol: 1.4

https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/2010-rapm



CORP (Championship Odds Over Replacement Player)

2010 Kobe: +5.1

2010 Pau: +1.6

http://www.backpicks.com



In 2125 possesions with Kobe on and Pau off the Lakers were a +7.8 team

In 1277 possesions with Kobe off and Pau on the Lakers were a +0.7 team



RS on/off:

Kobe: +12.4

Pau: +3.5



PS on/off:

Kobe: +7.6

Gasol: +5.3



RS on/off (NBA.com)

Kobe: +11.0

Pau: +2.8



PS on/off (NBA.com)

Kobe: +7.8

Pau: +5.1

Bayesian Box APM
Kobe: +6.1
Pau : +4.4

Pure APM
Kobe: +4.4
Pau : +2.2 (#33 in the league)

Intraocular season APM points:
Kobe: 444 (#4 in the league)
Pau.: 222 (#11 )

Raptor +/-
Kobe : #6 in the league
Pau. : outside the top 15

RAPTOR WAR

Kobe: +15.7 (#3 in the league)

Pau: Outside the top 15

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/

2010 SP1
Kobe :+3.6 (#4 in the league)
Pau. :+2.6 (outside the top ten)

2010 SP1 wins :
Kobe: +12.5 (#3 in the league)
Pau: +9.4

Let's hear the case. Wait. Let me guess. WS and WS48 with maybe a dash of regular season PERz.