Wembanyama, I'm concerned (Part 2)

[tsherkin]

He is not. What poll, survey or assessment have you seen that has him as the #1? And what percent is that of all the polls/surveys and assessments that have been made?

He is frequently in the dicussion.

If your definition of 'GOAT' is in the wider sense of the word - top 10 or something, then sure. I'm speaking in the literal meaning of the word - #1. He does not have a strong case for being the best ever, and that's why you rarely ever see that case made.

But that's wrong, because we routinely see cases made for him by people who actually know anything about basketball.

[UglyBugBall]

This is the biggest load of nonsense I've seen posted. Yes, they absolutely can. And Wemby is the perfect example of the type of player who can do just that.

Adding to this...

Wemby is already a mid-20s scorer hanging around +2% rTS who offers double-digit rebounding in 30 mpg. It's not like he's a BAD scorer. And he IS the wildest shot blocker we've seen in quite a long time, which is a fairly big deal in this league environment. If he puts the books on 4 bpg (where he's at right now), it'll be the first time this century that it has happened. The last time we saw 4+ bpg was Mutombo in 96. And since 1990, only Olajuwon (3x), Mutombo (2x), Ewing (1x), and D-Rob (1x) have done it. Even if you drop that to 3.7, there are still only 19 player-seasons of 3.7+ BPG since 1990.

It's wild stuff, and as he continues to figure out how to leverage his defense and plays with better teammates, he's going to be a monster. He's still only 21, in his second season.

So yeah, this idea that he can't be the GOAT if he isn't a first-option is weird, and can only come from either raw ignorance of the 60s, or a total denial of any but the present era of basketball, which isn't an intelligible position at all. Bill Russell was a 5-time MVP who 11 titles in 13 seasons while authoring the greatest defensive dynasty in league history, routinely spanking Wilt Chamberlain along the way. Dude has a highly-legitimate GOAT case.

So it is with Wemby, at least in terms of his potential.

Just to Piggy back, but we've seen other guys who's natural role wasn't to be first option who are at least close enough to the discussion to talk about. Those being KG and Robinson. Yes, but would fill those first options on really good teams. But neither were naturals for it. And both were more suited to be exceptional second options who could focus more on their defense. And that's before we even get to that Wilt who many consider in this discussion, didn't win until he was no longer a first option himself.

KG and Robinson now? You guys are giving unserious examples. Those are all-time great players. Nobody considers them better than MJ or Lebron or Kareem. Finding one in a hundred people that think considers them the GOAT does not make them the GOAT when the other 99 people largely choose the other two players. GOAT means the best ever. Not top 5, top 10 or top 20.

[UglyBugBall]

He is not. What poll, survey or assessment have you seen that has him as the #1? And what percent is that of all the polls/surveys and assessments that have been made?

He is frequently in the dicussion.

If your definition of 'GOAT' is in the wider sense of the word - top 10 or something, then sure. I'm speaking in the literal meaning of the word - #1. He does not have a strong case for being the best ever, and that's why you rarely ever see that case made.

But that's wrong, because we routinely see cases made for him by people who actually know anything about basketball.

The best way to assess this is by consensus. The consensus is between MJ and Lebron. I could find someone that considers Tim Duncan the GOAT too, but that is not consensus opinion. Bill maybe has a better case, but his case is still clearly significantly weaker than other guys, or he wouldn't typically get less than 10% of the vote share in these discussions.

[Rust_Cohle]

Wembanyama can absolutely be a #1 option on a title winning team as he matures. Fantastic game in Paris by him today. Good to have Sochan back too.

[tsherkin]

The best way to assess this is by consensus.

No, that isn't true at all. That has heavy doses of recency bias and straight-up ignorance involved.

[dhsilv2]

If a KG or Robinson, only better without changing who they are. AKA - even better defenders. Better jumpers. But not really built to be the focal point of an offense (as the case was with them), according to you isn't someone who could be a GOAT.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. "If these guys were better, they might rank higher." Sure? Great. Not an address of anything I said, though. Perhaps I misunderstood your original point. I thought you meant "because they have a top 10 argument, they could have become the GOAT," with which I fervently disagree.

No, I clearly said they didn't have an argument for GOAT. I said if you were to take their profile, one similar to Wemby, and BUFF it. AKA - make it better. They fit easily. Now if the best profile I could find was say Draymond...well then no reasonable buff would work. But if you have guys in that top 10-20 discussion, yeah you can reasonable use that as a proxy.

[tsherkin]

I said if you were to take their profile, one similar to Wemby, and BUFF it. AKA - make it better. They fit easily.

Okay, but that's entirely meaningless. "If we invent something which they were not, then they could rank higher" doesn't have any value at all.

[dhsilv2]

Adding to this...

Wemby is already a mid-20s scorer hanging around +2% rTS who offers double-digit rebounding in 30 mpg. It's not like he's a BAD scorer. And he IS the wildest shot blocker we've seen in quite a long time, which is a fairly big deal in this league environment. If he puts the books on 4 bpg (where he's at right now), it'll be the first time this century that it has happened. The last time we saw 4+ bpg was Mutombo in 96. And since 1990, only Olajuwon (3x), Mutombo (2x), Ewing (1x), and D-Rob (1x) have done it. Even if you drop that to 3.7, there are still only 19 player-seasons of 3.7+ BPG since 1990.

It's wild stuff, and as he continues to figure out how to leverage his defense and plays with better teammates, he's going to be a monster. He's still only 21, in his second season.

So yeah, this idea that he can't be the GOAT if he isn't a first-option is weird, and can only come from either raw ignorance of the 60s, or a total denial of any but the present era of basketball, which isn't an intelligible position at all. Bill Russell was a 5-time MVP who 11 titles in 13 seasons while authoring the greatest defensive dynasty in league history, routinely spanking Wilt Chamberlain along the way. Dude has a highly-legitimate GOAT case.

So it is with Wemby, at least in terms of his potential.

Just to Piggy back, but we've seen other guys who's natural role wasn't to be first option who are at least close enough to the discussion to talk about. Those being KG and Robinson. Yes, but would fill those first options on really good teams. But neither were naturals for it. And both were more suited to be exceptional second options who could focus more on their defense. And that's before we even get to that Wilt who many consider in this discussion, didn't win until he was no longer a first option himself.

KG and Robinson now? You guys are giving unserious examples. Those are all-time great players. Nobody considers them better than MJ or Lebron or Kareem. Finding one in a hundred people that think considers them the GOAT does not make them the GOAT when the other 99 people largely choose the other two players. GOAT means the best ever. Not top 5, top 10 or top 20.

You wouldn't understand, I get it. I didn't list any points per game.

[dhsilv2]

I said if you were to take their profile, one similar to Wemby, and BUFF it. AKA - make it better. They fit easily.

Okay, but that's entirely meaningless. "If we invent something which they were not, then they could rank higher" doesn't have any value at all.

No, it's extremely important. If I said take Steve Kerr and buff it...I barely get a guy who starts consistently. His profile was more so a specialist in his era who could start if you could use that specialty. If you take a profile and it's reasonably close, then you can build from it. I'm not talking about taking a Draymond Green and making him shoot 40% from 3 on volume. That's a whole other profile of player.

[tsherkin]

No, it's extremely important. If I said take Steve Kerr and buff it...I barely get a guy who starts consistently.

Depends on how much you buff it.

Like, if the reduced element of your point is "if I take a top-20 player all-time and then add more, he could be better..." sure? Great?

But it isn't really helpful here.

Circling back to the core discussion. Wemby.

Wemby is already a comparable scorer to someone like Tatum, and an impact defender, good rebounder and a good passer. So his potential is pretty evident, and him not being a 30 ppg scorer isn't really going to get in the way of that (minding that he's basically a 27 ppg scorer projected out over 36 mpg, after all.

The original remark was that he shoots too much outside. And he does, he still takes too many dumbass threes, but he's also 21 and in his second season and the Spurs are clearly pacing him. He's also improved considerably inside the arc. He's cost himself some offensive rebounding, some volume inside the arc and draw rate, but he's now more efficient and higher-impact on offense... on average. But also noticeably less consistent. So we'll have to see what he does with all that.

He's young enough, and early on enough in his career that he's going to be very good. GOAT is a big target for anyone, and has as much do with luck/circumstance as anything else, but he's certainly got game-changing talent.

[UglyBugBall]

The best way to assess this is by consensus.

No, that isn't true at all. That has heavy doses of recency bias and straight-up ignorance involved.

In sports recency bias has a good reason. We would never consider an Olympic 100 runner to be the GOAT of the sport, when in many cases their record breaking times wouldn't even qualify them for the Olympics today. Past athletes cannot compare to modern athletes due to advancements in training, nutrition, team schemes and scouting, analytics and medical science.

[Jamaaliver]

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[tsherkin]

In sports recency bias has a good reason. We would never consider an Olympic 100 runner to be the GOAT of the sport, when in many cases their record breaking times wouldn't even qualify them for the Olympics today. Past athletes cannot compare to modern athletes due to advancements in training, nutrition, team schemes and scouting, analytics and medical science.

The idea that the only guys who can be the greatest are in the present is non-sensical.

Personally, I prefer to compare things inside adjacent eras at most, but best inside each era. It's the fairest, because then you avoid the sort of sloppy garbage you are serving at the moment, which is disrespectful to the guys who came before.

[UglyBugBall]

In sports recency bias has a good reason. We would never consider an Olympic 100 runner to be the GOAT of the sport, when in many cases their record breaking times wouldn't even qualify them for the Olympics today. Past athletes cannot compare to modern athletes due to advancements in training, nutrition, team schemes and scouting, analytics and medical science.

The idea that the only guys who can be the greatest are in the present is non-sensical.

Personally, I prefer to compare things inside adjacent eras at most, but best inside each era. It's the fairest, because then you avoid the sort of sloppy garbage you are serving at the moment, which is disrespectful to the guys who came before.

But if we're talking about the GOAT then we're by definition comparing across all eras. So how else do you compare them? You have to acknowledge that past players are not at the level of present players, and that's not a disrespect to them. They didn't have the opportunities of today.

[dhsilv2]

No, it's extremely important. If I said take Steve Kerr and buff it...I barely get a guy who starts consistently.

Depends on how much you buff it.

Like, if the reduced element of your point is "if I take a top-20 player all-time and then add more, he could be better..." sure? Great?

But it isn't really helpful here.

.

That wouldn't be Kerr anymore. So no, not at all. You have to take the player's profile and look from there. But much like people see Jordan's profile and look to see that again as a proxy for if someone can be a GOAT. We can take a guy a step or two below that and look to see if their profile could be buffed up. Otherwise we couldn't even compare people. Kinda defeat even having a basketball discussion forum. "how do you compare him to so and so" "no we can't do that".

[316Hornets]

Wemby is an amazing talent but I think people are starting to realize the limitations. There's just better shooters a lot of plays so Wemby isn't being used as often and the scoring isn't as consistent. Defensively is easily one of the best but if the scoring on the other end isn't there, they'll need a lot of offensive pieces around him to compete.

[dautjazz]

Wemby is an amazing talent but I think people are starting to realize the limitations. There's just better shooters a lot of plays so Wemby isn't being used as often and the scoring isn't as consistent. Defensively is easily one of the best but if the scoring on the other end isn't there, they'll need a lot of offensive pieces around him to compete.

Victor just turned 21, and he's already top 5-10 in the league. His shot will get better.

[Blame Rasho]

The best way to assess this is by consensus.

No, that isn't true at all. That has heavy doses of recency bias and straight-up ignorance involved.

Most modern consensus say that Floyd Mayweather Jr is the best boxer ever, but common he doesn’t even remotely compare to Sugar Ray Robinson.

So you are spot on with that reply tsherkin.

[Blame Rasho]

The Spurs are in a slump and it is a reflection of the players around him. I wanna see a trade but one that will give him spacing and shooting. The whole Fox thing seems like a good idea in like NBa2k but in real life doesn’t do much to fix the overall roster problems.

[tsherkin]

The best way to assess this is by consensus.

No, that isn't true at all. That has heavy doses of recency bias and straight-up ignorance involved.

Most modern consensus say that Floyd Mayweather Jr is the best boxer ever, but common he doesn’t even remotely compare to Sugar Ray Robinson.

So you are spot on with that reply tsherkin.

"Consensus" is such an odd thing. It routinely shows us that people are wrong in great numbers. It is, in fact, quite literally a logical fallacy. Argumentum ad populum, right?

The consensus involves large numbers of people, many (sometimes most) of whom don't know what they're talking about. In sport, this involves casual fans, who are startlingly ignorant. What they think isn't really relevant in the sense of objective evaluation. It can certainly point you in a direction, and it can definitely describe and speak to the players who aesthetically capture their imagination, or grip them with charisma and all that, no doubt. But we also know that those things don't really describe ability, and that the longer we go away from a player's own time, the easier it is to forget them... and that's WITH all of our video access and all. Let alone lack of broadcast/streams, Finals being on tape delay, etc, etc, etc.

More to the point, there's no real definition of what "greatness" is, and it varies from person to person. What we know is that for many, basketball started on the back of the surge in popularity which accompanied Jordan's rise, and now we're into the ESPN, 24/7 news cycle, social media overwhelming kind of period. And there have been large changes in understanding and in the tools of evaluation for the sport. So any kind of "consensus" is going to be a very poor place to begin authoring any sort of real analysis of who might count as the greatest.

==

Anyway, back to Wemby. His own efficacy is down in January. He's shooting under 66% at the line, his 3P% has tailed off (which is a large issue because he shoots such an insane number of them per game), and he's back under 56% TS in the process, which is a huge issue for them offensively. He's not without his own involvement in their recent slump. On a team level, they're getting owned from 3 and having their worst defensive month so far overall. They're giving up something like 8.5 more points per game than any of the previous months and over 39% from 3. Drawing fewer fouls, forcing fewer turnovers, it isn't great. Of course, Wemby mostly IS their defense, so I'm sure he's overloaded on that end trying to bootstrap them as with last season.