Garnett vs Russell

[Texas Chuck]

Globetrotters existed in Russell's era. And those guys could dribble like Kyrie/Curry. They did so because they were in the entertainment business and thus they didn't have to worry about rules. Russell and other players did have to worry about rules so they did not dribble like this in games.

Nobody can seriously believe that nobody back then could learn to dribble differently if there was gain to be had. Bob Cousy wouldn't have loved to carry the ball when he was doing his whole keepaway bit? Of course he would have. Of course he could have learned to dribble like that.

And yes Curry can dribble like a 6 year old does now. Easy to learn that. But would he be as effective as he is now? Of course not. Nobody would.

This isn't serious discussion. Its just a fundamental misunderstanding that players will work on things that benefit them in their era and won't work on things that don't.

[One_and_Done]

It's an extremely meaningful distinction, because we have some posters on here acting like modern players would just get ejected or be unplayable because they couldn't adapt their dribble. They easily could, as most here agree. Unfortunately the reverse does not hold true, West & Oscar can't just decide they'll start dribbling like Curry or Kyrie in the modern game.

This isnt the parallel, though. It's a fallacious argument to the extreme. Dribbling like Steph/Curry isnt at all necessary to success in today's game. Why you keep repeating that comparison is beyond me.

And it certainly doesnt equate to adapting to officiating in the older eras.

Who is the guard who had the dribbling skills of a 60s player, and improved his handle enough to become a star? Has that ever happened even once? Who is the worst dribbling star guard today? Is there even a single star guard today who lacks a 3pt shot?

[tsherkin]

Who is the guard who had the dribbling skills of a 60s player, and improved his handle enough to become a star? Has that ever happened even once?

Yes. All of them. They passed through the period where they realized that what they do now was legal and began to do it.

[lessthanjake]

It's an extremely meaningful distinction, because we have some posters on here acting like modern players would just get ejected or be unplayable because they couldn't adapt their dribble. They easily could, as most here agree. Unfortunately the reverse does not hold true, West & Oscar can't just decide they'll start dribbling like Curry or Kyrie in the modern game.

This isnt the parallel, though. It's a fallacious argument to the extreme. Dribbling like Steph/Curry isnt at all necessary to success in today's game. Why you keep repeating that comparison is beyond me.

And it certainly doesnt equate to adapting to officiating in the older eras.

Who is the guard who had the dribbling skills of a 60s player, and improved his handle enough to become a star? Has that ever happened even once? Who is the worst dribbling star guard today? Is there even a single star guard today who lacks a 3pt shot?

I think this really makes clear the issue you’re having here. You are assuming that 1960s players had low dribbling ability that would need to “improve,” based simply on the fact that they dribbled in the way that was legal at the time. That’s just not a reasonable assumption. You have no idea what their ability to do modern dribbling was, because they were not actually allowed to demonstrate that in a game. So you just have no idea whether their dribbling ability would need to “improve[]” or not. This means that an argument about how players’ dribbling ability rarely improves is only tangentially relevant. It only makes sense if you’re already presupposing that these 1960s players had inferior dribbling ability, which is just begging the question. Just to put a point on this, if you’d never seen Kyrie Irving play in the modern era and he was transported to the 1960s and you saw him play in that era, your logic would end up telling you that he couldn’t dribble well in the modern era because he’d need to “improve” his dribbling, because in the 1960s Kyrie wouldn’t/couldn’t show that he has fantastic skill at the modern dribbling style. What we’d likely see if Kyrie were sent to the 1960s is that he’d be a great dribbler in the 1960s style too, and we’d be able to make a general assumption that that probably would mean he’d be great at modern dribbling too. But that’s the exact conclusion you fervently reject. I think you should really think about this, because it demonstrates the fact that your logic would require you to conclude that modern players sent back to the 1960s wouldn’t have the ability to hack it in the modern NBA. Since that’s self-evidently wrong, it should lead you to rethink your line of reasoning.

[One_and_Done]

Who is the guard who had the dribbling skills of a 60s player, and improved his handle enough to become a star? Has that ever happened even once?

Yes. All of them. They passed through the period where they realized that what they do now was legal and began to do it.

We're talking about in-career improvement, not gradual evolution of the game over time.

[70sFan]

Plenty of current players don't have dribbling skills the best ball-handlers of the 1960s had and it doesn't stop them from handling the ball in modern way (which was illegal back then).

[tsherkin]

Yes. All of them. They passed through the period where they realized that what they do now was legal and began to do it.

We're talking about in-career improvement, not gradual evolution of the game over time.[/quote]

How many of them have been in situations where they were suddenly allowed to break a whole crapload of rules which limited them previously?

The guys in the 60s knew about weight distribution, rocking guys back and forth to work balance and so forth. How they played on an NBA hardwood and how they played off it are also not the same thing. Your fundamental mistake in this discussion, as always, is a profound error in judgement of ability based on visible capacity in a restricted environment versus conception and ability without it. And your general level of disrespect towards older players, as if they were dumber than modern guys who had the benefit of different rules.

You put Walt Frazier in today's game, and he'd be a very successful ball handler. You spend 30 seconds on YouTube, and you can see that Jerry West knew well enough about timing, hesitation moves and such, and could cross people up. Would he look specifically like Kyrie today? No, but that's an asinine baseline. Most guards don't use overly complex dribbling chains to get their job done at all, it's a non-starter as a point.

So suddenly, you let them get their hand under the ball, stall it mid-dribble and directly break every dribbling rule which defined the game for it's first like 50, 55 years, then yeah, they're going to evidence fairly significant improvement.

The guys who have trouble with handles in today's game tend to struggle more with lacking elite athleticism and the ability to shoot off the dribble than they do with the ability to advance the ball over the timeline with a defender checking them or executing the basic crossovers which are required to use a screen. You're violently overplaying the relevance of advanced handles, particularly given the breadth of different ways in which guys score, and how athleticism changes the curve even further with high-end first steps. And screen usage.

[The Explorer]

This isnt the parallel, though. It's a fallacious argument to the extreme. Dribbling like Steph/Curry isnt at all necessary to success in today's game. Why you keep repeating that comparison is beyond me.

And it certainly doesnt equate to adapting to officiating in the older eras.

Who is the guard who had the dribbling skills of a 60s player, and improved his handle enough to become a star? Has that ever happened even once? Who is the worst dribbling star guard today? Is there even a single star guard today who lacks a 3pt shot?

I think this really makes clear the issue you’re having here. You are assuming that 1960s players had low dribbling ability that would need to “improve,” based simply on the fact that they dribbled in the way that was legal at the time. That’s just not a reasonable assumption. You have no idea what their ability to do modern dribbling was, because they were not actually allowed to demonstrate that in a game. So you just have no idea whether their dribbling ability would need to “improve[]” or not. This means that an argument about how players’ dribbling ability rarely improves is only tangentially relevant. It only makes sense if you’re already presupposing that these 1960s players had inferior dribbling ability, which is just begging the question. Just to put a point on this, if you’d never seen Kyrie Irving play in the modern era and he was transported to the 1960s and you saw him play in that era, your logic would end up telling you that he couldn’t dribble well in the modern era because he’d need to “improve” his dribbling, because in the 1960s Kyrie wouldn’t/couldn’t show that he has fantastic skill at the modern dribbling style. What we’d likely see if Kyrie were sent to the 1960s is that he’d be a great dribbler in the 1960s style too, and we’d be able to make a general assumption that that probably would mean he’d be great at modern dribbling too. But that’s the exact conclusion you fervently reject. I think you should really think about this, because it demonstrates the fact that your logic would require you to conclude that modern players sent back to the 1960s wouldn’t have the ability to hack it in the modern NBA. Since that’s self-evidently wrong, it should lead you to rethink your line of reasoning.

Kenny Smith: "Kyrie's got a great handle for the NBA he's got the best but no he's not the best handle I've seen"
"That's the stuff we did when we were at home it really was the way we played when we were home but we would never do it in a game everybody had that"
"The game wasn't ready for it no it was like it it was like you get pulled out like you get chastised for doing the stuff that guys do today but everybody had that in their repertoire"

[penbeast0]

Guards from the last 10 years that won an MVP:

Harden, Westbrook, Curry

Harden's handles are good, not great. More equivalent to Jerry West (who also had both great range and great ability to drive and draw fouls though West didn't go through people as much).

Westbrook is a poor 3 point shooter but, like Oscar, made up for it with great playmaking, rebounding, and aggression, much quicker attacker than Oscar who was more like a Harden style bully ball attacker. One difference is that Oscar was a better midrange shooter for his era and would have a good chance to develop a strong 3 point game; Westbrook was a very good midrange shooter, Oscar was arguably GOAT in his era.

Curry is who you seem to think all modern guards are. They aren't. The game evolved to where Curry could be developed; no one in that era would practice 30 footers with any consistency because any coach seeing a young player taking them would sit him down and yell at him.

[One_and_Done]

I think at this point it might be useful to clarify a few things.

I am generally not interested in hypotheticals (e.g. combine player X with player Y!), but I think the discussion of whether a player can improve their handles significantly throughout their career is worth discussing. I personally haven’t seen it, and can think of no examples. Even guys who have improved more than any other players, like Kawhi, never improved their handle much. I personally think you develop the muscle memory and skill a good handle requires growing up, and that once you’re an adult it’s basically too late to make meaningful improvements. Like most nature v.s nurture debates, it’s impossible to prove either side of the debate, but it would be interesting if we had some examples of it ever happening. I mean real examples, not talking head Kenny Smith with his usual outlandish claims.

That said, whether you can improve your dribble or not is actually irrelevant to how I rank players. As I have said many times; you get the skillset you had, not the one you might have developed if circumstances had been different. Whether Oscar could have developed a better handle or shot the 3 is neither here nor there for the purposes of ranking him. Personally, I think backwards compatibility is much easier than forward compatibility, but it doesn’t change my rankings either way. When it comes to ranking players, I am more interested in how your skills impact winning in an optimal league with superior talent, not how you could play in a 3 on 3 streetball game in the 30s or some such. The ability to play in a modern environment is just more impressive, and should be treated as such. Backwards compatibility in this instance is also somewhat irrelevant to me because I see 60s dribbling as basically a subset of superior handles (I.e. if you can run you can also crawl).

None of this is to say that you can’t transcend your bad league, but because of the skill sets that existed in the 60s due to the way the game was played, you’re more likely to be forwards compatible if you are a big. That said, as we discussed extensively in this thread, even bigs like Russell have some compatibility issues with their skills that frankly reduce their value substantially in today’s game.

[70sFan]

We don't need to clarify anything here, all participants of this discussion know exactly how to look at this problem and it's not our problem that you fail to understand what everyone here tried to explain you for the last few days.

[tsherkin]

Even guys who have improved more than any other players, like Kawhi, never improved their handle much. I personally think you develop the muscle memory and skill a good handle requires growing up, and that once you’re an adult it’s basically too late to make meaningful improvements.

Kawhi is a good example of why the point you're trying to make is entirely moot. You don't NEED a super advanced level of handles to be a highly effective, efficient volume scorer in today's game. It isn't something that's super necessary. And the basic crosses and handling you see today on the regular aren't difficult to learn at all. There are TONS of resources out there on how to improve handling versus defensive pressure, and some of the more basic crossovers and sequences. You don't need to be able to split a double team with a wrap-around behind the back dribble into a stepback 3 to be very effective, so this whole conversation is built on a BS premise to begin with.

As I have said many times; you get the skillset you had, not the one you might have developed if circumstances had been different.

But that's highly hypocritical with who you handle modern players moving backwards. That inconsistency largely relegates your arguments to the bias bin.

[One_and_Done]

I think you may need to go back and re-read my post, if you think it's hypocritical then I'm not sure you read it all carefully.

As for Kawhi, obviously I know he succeeds without a good handle, I would hardly have brought him up as the most improved player in NBA history without a good handle if I didn't know that. He plays small forward though. It's very different when you're a guard without a good handle.

[TheGOATRises007]

Guards from the last 10 years that won an MVP:

Harden, Westbrook, Curry

Harden's handles are good, not great. More equivalent to Jerry West (who also had both great range and great ability to drive and draw fouls though West didn't go through people as much).

Westbrook is a poor 3 point shooter but, like Oscar, made up for it with great playmaking, rebounding, and aggression, much quicker attacker than Oscar who was more like a Harden style bully ball attacker. One difference is that Oscar was a better midrange shooter for his era and would have a good chance to develop a strong 3 point game; Westbrook was a very good midrange shooter, Oscar was arguably GOAT in his era.

Curry is who you seem to think all modern guards are. They aren't. The game evolved to where Curry could be developed; no one in that era would practice 30 footers with any consistency because any coach seeing a young player taking them would sit him down and yell at him.

I agree with everything you said, but I'd disagree here.

I think Harden has great handles. For his height, I'm not sure there's a player with a clear better handle. Surprised you think otherwise.

[penbeast0]

I think the strength of Harden's handles is his very skilled use of his body to shield the ball effectively rather than the raw ballhandling crossovers and the like of the elite ballhandlers. He's like a rebounder that rebounds getting his opponent on his back rather than just outleaping them.

[70sFan]

I think you may need to go back and re-read my post, if you think it's hypocritical then I'm not sure you read it all carefully

We all read your posts and come with the same conclusion, so maybe you should rethink your stance?

Guards from the last 10 years that won an MVP:

Harden, Westbrook, Curry

Harden's handles are good, not great. More equivalent to Jerry West (who also had both great range and great ability to drive and draw fouls though West didn't go through people as much).

Westbrook is a poor 3 point shooter but, like Oscar, made up for it with great playmaking, rebounding, and aggression, much quicker attacker than Oscar who was more like a Harden style bully ball attacker. One difference is that Oscar was a better midrange shooter for his era and would have a good chance to develop a strong 3 point game; Westbrook was a very good midrange shooter, Oscar was arguably GOAT in his era.

Curry is who you seem to think all modern guards are. They aren't. The game evolved to where Curry could be developed; no one in that era would practice 30 footers with any consistency because any coach seeing a young player taking them would sit him down and yell at him.

I agree with everything you said, but I'd disagree here.

I think Harden has great handles. For his height, I'm not sure there's a player with a clear better handle. Surprised you think otherwise.

I also think Harden has great handles for his size, so it's not a great example. Shai has better handles than him among guys with similar height.

[One_and_Done]

I'm not trying to be popular, just right. It's also not accurate to suggest everyone here is aligned in their views. Many on here agree with me on this aspect or that aspect, just not all of them; but I wouldn't care if everyone was united against me. Alot of positions used to be consensus ones, but over time that often changes.

For the key question of this thread, whether Russell is better than KG, you are in the minority. I'm pretty sure you're not going to change your view as a result.

[Jaivl]

Again, as a KG voter myself, "Russell < KG" =/= "I'd rather take KG over Russell in 2025"

In 2025 I'd probably consider peak Dwight Howard over the far superior peak Shaquille O'Neal. Paraphrasing Ortega y Gasset, players are themselves and their circumstances.

[tsherkin]

Again, as a KG voter myself, "Russell > KG" =/= "I'd rather take KG over Russell in 2025"

In 2025 I'd probably consider peak Dwight Howard over the far superior peak Shaquille O'Neal. Paraphrasing Ortega y Gasset, players are themselves and their circumstances.

If Dwight could be convinced to play like 08, 09 Dwight the entire time where he was mostly just moving without the ball and getting garbage points or otherwise shooting when set up, then he would be an amazing player. His problem was that he had a frail ego and wanted to be Shaq, so he kept trying to score in isolation, where he was unimpressive AND a weak playmaker, so they were largely negative sets. He was an excellent defender, an excellent rebounder, killed it in transition, fantastic on the offensive glass, a strong roll man and very good at cutting around initiated action from the perimeter guys. He just got it stuck in his head that he needed to isolate far more than his limited skill set suggested was a good idea. He had some decent footwork and everything and he could face up, for sure, but his passing was weak and he Georgetown Shuffled his way all over the place. And he had nor range to speak of.

Dwight versus Shaq would be an interesting one in today's game. At these tempos, unleashing transition Shaq coupled to Diesel's ability to move without the ball and set up for a bucket before receiving the pass, I don't know, though. He'd be a very compelling weapon in today's spacing and considerably more valuable on offense than Dwight ever was.

[Texas Chuck]

I'm taking peak Shaq in a heartbeat. There aren't all the unskilled big centers employed to defend him and good luck doubling/tripling him with today's spacing. He would still absolutely wreck the league offensively still and he's plenty fine on defense. Yes, Luka is going to hunt him. I'll deal with that.