tsherkin wrote:One_and_Done wrote:I can infer Bias would have been an-timer if he'd played based on his skills, which I don't think anyone compares to 'Harold Miner', or that Walton would be top 10 all-time if he'd been healthy but because it never happened you can't rank them like it did. West might have been a better 3pt shooter than Draymond if he'd been given the chance to do it, but it never happened. There's no in-principle reason to grant that assumption to only West and not Walton and Bias.
If by "rank" you're referring in an all-time sense, sure. But that's not really the goal ITT. The actual OP was about who you'd rather build around in today's environment.Similarly, when you talk about 'adapting', why do we need to rank West on the basis that he would adapt and play differently in a different situation, but we won't give that assumption to Sheed or D.Cousins, and rate them based on being born into a situation where they were asked to play more seriously with a better attitude.
But this isn't really the same thing. If you take guys who were dominant in their time and clearly evidenced their work ethic, then there's basically a 0% chance that they wouldn't work towards adapting into the modern environment (that environment being a concession of this particular discussion space). You have to concede that they weren't blithering idiots, after all.
So for the sake of honest discourse with any real integrity, you have to acknowledge that there would be some level of adaptation. We've seen it from players who crossed boundaries of the sort in their actual careers. Witness Sheed and Al Horford, for example, or Brook Lopez. Even Kobe started to shoot more from 3. Now, there are contextual differences between bigs developing a spot-up jumper from 3 and a guard developing it ATB, for sure, but it isn't hard to look at guys who've shot well from the FT line and were known as jumpshooters and infer that they could develop a semi-reasonable threat from 3pt range.One_and_Done wrote:We've discussed at length why I don't agree with that. I also give more weight to how they play in the superior modern league. Even if you didn't, dribbling through the majority of league history was closer to modern dribbling than 60s dribbling, so it'd be more valuable through a larger portion of league history even if you didn't buy backwards compatibility.
But again, you're failing to consider the ramifications of going backward. There's an inherent assumption that Curry would do better moving backward than these other guys would do moving forward, and there's no guarantee of that because they never did it.
Anyway, the reversal is less relevant to this thread, because it's about operating in the current environment.
So what becomes relevant is a discussion of how Oscar would translate into today's game. A tall, powerfully-built guard with high-end playmaking skills, good shooting and scoring and a strong all-around game. His efficiency in the 60s would be lightly efficient even in today's game, which ignores the ease with which guys score in the more spaced-out environment of the modern league and the developments in screen usage and such. He'd be a nightmare offensive matchup in today's game, likely even WITHOUT the development of a 3pt shot.
The level of adaption we need to grant players is that they would be able to adapt the existing skillset they had to different circumstances, to fit the play style of the times. That is reasonable and appropriate. Once you start assuming they will develop new skillsets, it’s gone too far, and invariably rewards players for things that never happened. Some guys develop a 3pt shot, others do not. It's unfair to assume a player will do so.
My comments about all-time rank are tangents that came up for this thread. I agree they’re not relevant to this particular thread. Coming back to this particular thread, you continue to assert Oscar would be “a nightmare match up” even without a 3pt shot. Who are these elite offensive guards today who have no 3pt shot? They don’t exist.
