Ol Roy wrote:One_and_Done wrote:Ol Roy wrote:A presumption of adaptability across eras (with an understanding that we are engaging in probabilities and in search of as much player-specific context possible) should be the ground rule for the PC board.
If you don't want to engage in reasoned projection, simply because older players didn't play more recently, fine...nobody is forcing you to, you don't have to comment. But that's a personal problem: a psychological need for absolute certainty and an attention-seeking need for every discussion to revolve around it. Rehashing absurdities doesn't contribute to these threads; it just derails them. Discounting older players with an axe instead of a scalpel (like insisting West can't shoot three pointers because the line didn't exist when he played, and a player who can't shoot threes at all therefore has little value) doesn't lead to accuracy in grading players, it just satisfies an artificial construct that goes against the spirit of actually comparing players in any meaningful way.
'Impartiality is always partial', because it ultimately favours someone.
The idea that people who disagree with you should just concede the premise of your argument makes little logical sense.
You can talk about 'the spirit' of comparison, whatever that means, but really you're just favouring past players. I would argue my approach is both fairer as well as better, because it looks at the skills players actually had and judges them off that. Once you start giving players imaginary skills you open up a Pandora's box where everything is even more subjective and driven by biases. Instead of asking who had the more valuable skillset, it becomes a question of who we can imagine having the best skillset in our minds. In which case, I'll start ranking Shaq if he'd been born later and developed a 3pt shot, or Demarcus Cousins and Sheed if they had been born in a situation where they had better role models, or Bill Walton if modern medical tech had made him healthy, or Len Bias if he lived. The problem is none of those things happened, and we can only rank guys on what they actually did occur. That is both fairer and more accurate.
Just like Len Bias never lived, and Shaq never actually learned to hit 3s, it is also true that West never showed an elite modern handle, or demonstrated he could hit 3s reliably. Some players who are great midrange shooters develop a 3, and others like Demar don't, so it's impossible to infer one from the other. It's also notable that nobody ever argues old star X would have become Demar, they always argue they'd have succeeded, and that is another way the 'imaginary player' approach unfairly favours stars from a bygone era. It also favours them because it ignores the fact they played in a barely professional league who would be spanked by 2nd rate Euroleague teams if we teleported them into today's game.
You can have your approach, but I'm going to stick with mine. It's both more accurate and frankly fairer.
Your approach is not accurate or fair. It's black and white. It is fundamentally incompatible with actually comparing players across eras. What you are actually doing is refusing to make comparisons because your standard of evidence for sports athletes is stricter than that of criminal law. Your exclusionary rule is so broad that it renders all evidence meaningless.
You equate any cross-era projection with Len Bias living or Shaq shooting threes, which is a fallacious comparison. And then there is the Demar DeRozan trump card, as if the career of one player can be considered dispositive. Imaginary players and time machines. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
Your modus operandi for every thread is provocatively declaring "it's not even close," dumping the same talking points into every thread until the actual subjects become irrelevant, and then the thread dies because people are tired of debating epistemology with you. In other words, people start threads implicitly or explicitly asking for cross era comparisons and you show up to say, "sorry we can't do that!"
I liked the threads of years past much better, which I read as a lurker. Members used their imaginations and had spirited debates about the players, which would usually turn into film study and statistical analysis, and there would be brainstorming about portability in different situations and eras. But hey, at least we have you here to gatekeep, evangelize, and derail.
My approach gives players plenty of flexibility. It let's them get a training camp to figure out a more optimal way to deploy their skills, and assumes they are intelligent enough to do this. It let's them wear modern shoes and get modern conditioning in the pre-season.
What it doesn't let you do is possess skills you never possessed, because that road leads to everything becoming too speculative, as some of the examples I gave above demonstrate.
You describe my approach as 'provocative', but that's just because of your priors. People like me find your approach unfair and provocative.
