OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Love the thread idea. I'm going to talk about some of the guys that I'd be most likely to consider "championing" based on my impression of where I stand compared to most.
Tiny & DJ - So, I feel like I'm higher on both these guys than most.
I mention Tiny because I think he was pretty legit. I mean, let the league in PPG & APG with the best ORtg in the league, and then played a supporting role on a champion? Why exactly would we put Iverson above him other than an assertion that Iverson's league was way stronger? If we're just talking about who was the more effective basketball player when they played, isn't Tiny the answer?
Like I said, the thing that gives me pause about Tiny is the absolute dearth of team success during his prime years, and the fact that there were so few prime years - even guys like Mullin and King had more prime/elite years.
As for him vs Iverson...do Archibald's two peak years look statistically better than any season in Iverson's career? Maybe. But Iverson's much-criticized efficiency is only -0.9 rTS for his career, so it's not terrible...league average range, and he did it for a lot longer, and he had a Finals run as the #1 guy, so...I can see the argument either way TBH.
I do understand the pause.
Re: AI rTS not terrible. Right but Tiny was up there with Kareem and way ahead of the other guard's of his time.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:And I mention DJ here because DJ was an upgrade over Tiny for the Celtics. Now, he was also 6 years younger, but given that DJ was arguably the greatest defensive guard in history, I don't think there's really much doubt that DJ is the guy you'd prefer if you aren't looking for someone to dominate the scoring. Then you recall that DJ's peak achievement came in Seattle as the Finals MVP - and arguably MVP - of the champs. Doesn't it seem like DJ has the more accomplished career?
I think you could easily argue that Gus Williams should've won that Finals MVP. But yeah, I mean, DJ played 5000+ more playoff minutes than Tiny did, so in terms of accomplishment, DJ has it. But I do think Tiny probably peaked higher. In general though, it's like you said, so much of DJ's impact comes from defense, and there's just not much data to go by for defensive impact before the 90s.
I think many on here would agree on Gus.
I agree that Tiny peaked higher, but career-wise, I think it's DJ.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:DeBusschere - I'm not sure if I'm actually higher on Dave than most, but I do respect him as someone who clearly played a bigger part in New York than Monroe or Lucas. All guys played on other teams ahead of time and I wouldn't feel strongly about DeBusschere over the other guys based on their pre-NY careers, but I also don't think these other two guys were doing anything pre-NY that really merits effusive praise up there with being one of the 3 main guys on a champion.
As do I(with regard to the underlined), but you could say the same thing about Bill Bradley.
WRT Pearl, he was a part of the 71 Bullets' Finals run(though his playoff numbers weren't great) before coming to New York, and he was a really important part of the Knicks' 73 title run(second highest WS/48 in the playoffs after Frazier).
Re: could say the same thing with Bradley. Absolutely, as well as Dick Barnett. It's clear who the 5 most import Knicks of the Golden Age were imho, and neither Monroe nor Lucas make the cut.
Re: Monroe important in '73 run with 2nd highest WS/48. He was important in that run, but when you bring up WS/48, I can't help but not that DeBusschere was playing considerably more minutes despite being 4 years older. That alone doesn't put Dave ahead, but the fact that Dave was critical to the first Knick chip too while Monroe wasn't around does place the Knick pecking order here pretty clearly. I think if you're impressed enough by his Bullet years I could see favoring Monroe, but I tend to think that his impact was outpaced by his style.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Penny - I don't necessarily have a problem with him missing the Top 100 due to longevity, but I'll say I was pretty shocked to realize that Penny really seems like the best player on the Magic during Shaq's best years there based on the +/-. I was so used to Kobe looking far worse than Shaq I assumed all such guards would be so disappointing, but no, Penny was better than that.
I assume you're referring to the Pollack data(not sure where else +/- for those years exists)? Based on that what I see is
93-94 - Shaq +7.7 and Penny +5.2
94-95 - Shaq +12.0 and Penny +12.1
95-96 - Shaq +10.2 and Penny +17.1
So Shaq leads one year and is one tenth of a point behind Penny in another. Only in one year does Penny have a significant advantage.
That's to say I'm extremely skeptical of the notion that Penny was more important to those teams than Shaq. I find it nearly impossible to believe.
I'd note that the Magic only really became significant as a contender in '94-95, so you're really just talking about '94-95 & '95-96 as the core Magic contending years, and in those years Penny had a slight edge one year and a major edge the second. Perfectly fine not to be convinced that Penny was the more valuable player on that alone, but if the question is who had the better impact profile in contending years based on the data you present, it's indisputably Penny.
I think it's also worth noting that Penny was a rookie in '93-94. So yeah, Shaq was absolutely the MVP of the team that year on there way to getting swept out of the 1st round, and it was the emergence of Penny as a superstar-level player in his 2nd year that lifted the team to contention. (Shout out to the arrival of Horace Grant and to the recognition that Dennis Scott could shoot 3's as well, but those guys were tertiary to the Big 2.)
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Chet the Jet - very tempting guy given his place on the '67 76ers and his scoring volume & efficiency. I think a conversation involving him, Greer & Cunningham is warranted.
You might think it's a crude measure, but for their careers:
Walker - .168 WS/48 RS, .133 WS/48 PO
Greer - .124 WS/48 RS, .096 WS/48 PO
Cunningham - .141 WS/48 RS, .101 WS/48 PO
Walker not only topped both of them in WS/48 and TS Add on the 67 Sixers, but also on the 69 Sixers who were a top three team that season. And neither Greer nor Cunningham ever did what Walker did as the #1 on those Bulls teams.
I'm honestly asking, what's the case for Greer over Walker? Walker's got scoring over him pretty clearly when efficiency is considered(also probably a better rebounder on the whole), so was Greer an especially impactful playmaker or defender?
Oh, the box score really makes Walker look like the best of the 3, and I'm not really looking to push back against that on principle.
In terms of the case for Greer, well, what's objectively clear is that Greer had the higher primacy role and played a lot more. Given that Greer was the more respected player at the time in general, and that this is taking place in the context of arguably the biggest strategic coaching improvement of all-time relating to Wilt, I'm cautious about drawing a conclusion that implies "Hannum was wrong here."
But I do think it's possible that Walker could have been used extremely effectively in a considerably higher primacy role at higher minutes, and if we think that is indeed the case, well, then it becomes hard not to choose Walker over Greer.
The Cunningham comparison is a bit different because Cunningham peaked later. But similarly there's a situation where Cunningham got a higher primacy role, was trusted for playmaking, and allowed to do his thing with meh efficiency.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Divac - warrants serious discussion. I absolutely have him above Webber.
I have a tremendous amount of respect not just for Vlade, for that whole foursome from the Yugoslavian national team of that era that ended up coming to the NBA - I think they were really important, along with Detlef Schrempf(is he a guy we should be talking about?), in paving the way for other European guys like Dirk, Manu, Peja, all the way to Jokic and Doncic.
I think highly of Vlade, Toni Kukoc, Petrovic, and even poor Dino Radja who had the plain bad luck of landing on a terrible, dysfunctional post-Bird/McHale Celtics team while Vlade got Magic, Toni got MJ, and Petrovic got Drexler and then #1 pick Derrick Coleman.
Anyway, WRT Vlade, I feel like everyone associates him with the Kings, but I do hope people don't forget his early career with the Lakers, particularly how well he played in his two years with Magic - his advanced playoff numbers in 90 and 91 are good, though 90 looks like an outlier.
All that said, taking him over Webber is probably a controversial statement, but I can see the argument.
I definitely respect all those Euro pioneers, but that's not why I have Divac as a candidate here.
What about Schrempf? I don't think we ever have seriously considered him, but he's reasonable to bring up. Back in the day it was pretty clear that Payton & Kemp were considered the two main stars, and they were the two guys making the 100 here until Kemp fell off.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:The Hawk - exceptional peak, hurt badly by longevity. Were I making a list that wasn't NBA-focused, given all the competitive basketball he played before the ABA, he'd be quite high on my list. Like, Top 25-ish, feel that strongly about it, but people have argued against his longevity in the past very effectively and I can't really say they're wrong. Unlike someone like Bill Walton, he wasn't someone who was valuable in all his situations health-permitting.
I think if you think Walton is Top 100, then I can see thinking the same of Hawkins, but the question is how legit was his competition in the ABA and before? I don't know enough about him to have an informed answer.
I think both guys are debatable.
Re: how legit was competition ABA & before? Well, that's a complicated thing to answer, but let's start from his first year in the NBA and work backwards.
Consider that when Hawk arrives in Phoenix, they have existed for only one year and were god awful. The team sees a nearly 7 point SRS jump in Hawk's first year in the league including moving the ORtg from 11th to 3rd in the league. Hawk would get named All-NBA 1st team, and would have a TS Add among the league leaders. This happened despite the fact that there were struggles with coaching and the previously established alpha Gail Goodrich. Eventually Jerry Colangelo would fire the coach (Red Kerr), take his job, and specifically make clear that the offense would run through Hawkins.
I feel like this sets a baseline for understanding how good Hawk must have been based on what we could see most clearly in the NBA. He was without question a Top 10 player, and I'd argue for him as a Top 5 player.
With this in mind, regardless of the level of the ABA, what is pretty universally agreed upon is that he was at his best before his big injury the previous year in the ABA. As in, while he was still great in the NBA, he would never be the same player again after that injury, and the big thing here is that prime Hawk was an incredible physical outlier in terms agility/hops/etc. Was he more of an outlier than, say, Elgin Baylor? It's at least debatable, and that's what he lost before he got to the NBA. The Hawk who played in the NBA was not the Hawk that flew, and yet was still at the very least a Top 10 player.
On to the ABA details. Let's start by noting that it was pretty clear cut that Hawk was the best player the ABA saw until the Erving era in their estimation, and that included Rick Barry and Zelmo Beaty, so that once again puts a baseline on how low Hawk could be.
That said there's no real doubt that the early ABA was weak and I'm not sure if there's much else to say there. Had Hawk not impressed as much as he did upon his arrival in the NBA, I think there'd be more of a question of whether he could do his thing against NBA competition, but as is, I'd say his technique worked quite well.
What really made my eyes bug out when I started analyzing Hawk's ABA performance was the fact that he was actually playing something of a pass-first role from the center position, and yet still leading the league in scoring by virtue of his extreme efficiency. He led his team in APG but not FGA/g despite playing way more minutes than anyone else. This blew my mind because I was under the impression that Hawk was a link in the chain from Baylor to Erving, but neither of those guys showed the kind of tendency toward great playmaking and great shooting efficiency, so what was up?
This is where we get into the phenomenon I call "Big Hand Basketball" that was a part of Harlem Globetrotter culture. Big hands allow you to do all sorts of fake and trick passes that drove audiences around the world wild, and that's where Hawk learned the techniques, with Sweetwater Clifton as the specific mentor he credits, and with Meadowlark Lemon looming large in the background. Connie had a contentious relationship with Meadowlark and what he represented. Connie did not like using moves in Globetrotter games that wouldn't work in a real competitive game, and he felt Meadowlark represented a loss of actual competitive basketball ability.
Hawkins solution for this was to continue to play in the schoolyards of NYC whenever he had the opportunity, because that's where he cut his teeth as a player, and it was arguably the most competitive basketball played in the world at that time outside of the NBA due to it being the go-to place for NBA stars to play when they weren't playing Association basketball.
It has to be noted that playing in those schoolyards against NBA players was something Hawkins was doing in high school, and that from Hawkins' perspective, the reason why white players mostly couldn't compete, was that kids like him were basically playing ball in that competitive space constantly. When the school day ended, that's where you'd fine them into the night every night.
And in this time period where NYC was the absolutely epicenter of top prospect development, I would say that Hawk was the most celebrated young star the City produced until he got supplanted by Lew Alcindor who has held that title belt ever since.
Let's fast forward a bit to the brief run of the ABL, the first pro league to try to compete with the NBA, and also the first to have the 3. The ABL stole some impressive talent from the NBA, but I think the bigger thing to understand is that the NBA through most of the '60s was not expanding the size of their league to scale with the growing talent pool, and disproportionately the talent they were missing out on was Black. For the most part the NBA got the superstar talents, but they kept their role players mostly white for a time out of fear of alienating their fanbase. That meant that a league looking to take the basketball talent the NBA left had plenty of talent to pick from, and that talent was more likely to be Black than what you might guess looking at the NBA at the time.
Hawk of course would come right in as a rookie - just a year out of high school, having not been able to play college ball the prior year - and win the MVP, and from there his absence in the NBA made him not just an NYC legend, but something bigger.
Alright, I think that's enough rambling, and I'll cut myself off.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Dandridge - yeah, I think he's really, really solid. I'm almost ready to argue him against Unseld & Hayes...but not quite.
Nothing against Dandridge, and I'm sorry to keep coming back to him, but again, what is the case for Dandridge over Walker? They seem like similar-ish players to me, but Walker looks better, except that Dandridge got to play for two notable teams while Walker played for one and then had to go to a Bulls team that is, for most people, forgotten to history. I guess it's possible that Dandridge may have been an exceptional defender or something else that doesn't show up in the box.
I don't really have a problem with Walker over Dandridge, but Dandridge had a monstrous defensive reputation I wouldn't brush past lightly.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Bill Sharman: There's a part of me that wants to rank Sharman ahead of teammate Cousy and many others. We see the shooting efficiency as an off-guard and we know how valuable that can be, and how overrated a ball dominant point guard can be in comparison when he chucks badly.
But all of that is narrative. When it comes to what's objective Cousy played the bigger role, played for longer, and the WOWY sides with him too. I'm left feeling that Sharman may have been able to be more valuable than Cousy if used in a particular way, but that as used, Cousy had the greater career.
Now, Sharman being below Cousy doesn't mean he absolutely should not be Top 100...but I am more impressed with Cliff Hagan, Bob Davies & Al Cervi than Cousy, and I'm not sure I'm going to try to champion Davies or Cousy in this project.
I would just say that Sharman often - not always, but often - had higher WS/48 than Cousy, both in RS and PO. And Cousy only played two more years than Sharman. Not that I think it's an either/or thing. I'd let them both in the Top 100.
I expected you to be in Sharman's corner, because the other day people were posting depth charts of the best players not yet inducted at each position, and I'm pretty sure you had Sharman on yours at SG.
Also...not sure what makes Davies or Cervi better than Cousy.
Yeah this is what I mean when I say that the narrative of Sharman being more valuable than Cousy makes sense to me, but I'm not seeing what I need to see to actually say I think it was so. Having a higher WS/48 is nice, but Cousy played the higher primacy role. Wouldn't matter to me if I saw Sharman having the clearly better WOWY with better longevity, but that's not what we see.
Re: Cousy vs Davies vs Cervi. So first off let me reiterate, I'm very leery of championing Davies or Cervi here. I expect Cousy will be on the list, and the other two won't be, and I'm really fine with that. I mean, Davies & Cervi had their peaks in the 1940s, and had their careers severely disrupted by the War.
But I do think it's worth understanding what I like about them in comparison to Cousy.
Cousy vs Davies is the most apples-to-apples comparison. Cousy really was "the next Davies". All of that floor generalship and flamboyance, those were the two guys in the NBA who did that. Cousy would have a tendency to call his own number more, and I think this along with him being "the next" let folks to think of him as an improved version of Davies in those early years.
But Cousy's efficiency really went to hell beyond a certain point (past age 28), while Davies was always efficient with his shooting his entire career (through age 35). To me this speaks to Davies having a better intuition for what the right play was than Cousy, including a more realistic sense of his own diminishing capacity.
Cousy does deserve it mentioned that the Celtics adopted a defensive style along with Russell that probably hurt ever Celtics' efficiency, but Cousy was considerably less efficient than teammates Ed Macauley and Bill Sharman even in the best of times, while calling his number quite a lot. I can forgive some of the poor efficiency for any of Red's guys, but I do think a point guard could have played in a way where Macauley & Sharman shot more and the point guard shot less, and if the point guard shot like Cousy, that probably would have been for the best.
Al Cervi is a bit of a different animal because there you're talking about a guy who at his best was a great scorer, a good playmaker, and a best-in-world defender. From what I can tell, the story of the first NBL season after WWII was Al Cervi of the Rochester Royals completely messing up the gameplan of the player who had been the dominant pro player of the 1940s prior to that point, Bobby McDermott of the Zollner Pistons. Cervi was just an absolute lock down defender who never let the best shooter in the world (McDermott) get the space he needed to get comfortable.
But Cervi was also the oldest of the bunch - making his pro debut in the 1930s, so we're talking about a guy who was already nearing 30 by the time he joined the Royals, and thus major longevity issues in terms of number of pro seasons.
