RealGM 2025 Greatest Peaks Project #3 — 1991 Michael Jordan

[Smoothbutta]

is the OP supposed to have the existing list like #1 and #2?

Sorry I am a little confused where I'm supposed to see the list so far on this thread

[jalengreen]

is the OP supposed to have the existing list like #1 and #2?

Sorry I am a little confused where I'm supposed to see the list so far on this thread

It’s on the project main thread

viewtopic.php?t=2467474

[AEnigma]

I probably should have the current list edited into the first post of each thread so everyone is immediately aware who has already been inducted. Thank you for pointing out that potential problem.

[Smoothbutta]

Thank you AE!

my voting post:
1) Jordan '91 - Flawless season with individual performance and team success both regular season + playoffs. Ridiculous BPM while likely doing more outside of the box stats than most other players. 8.4 assists per game in the playoffs was unreal, he could simply do it all.

3) Steph '16 (otherwise '17) - plusminus/RAPM metrics contend with the best of the remaining databall players and his combined volume and efficiency was scary to witness

2) Wilt '67 - very impressive FG%, triple double rate, GOAT tier rim protector, he was at his best this season in terms of all around game

[Samurai]

1. Michael Jordan 1991. Picking MJ wasn't too hard for me - deciding on a year was tougher. Like so many of his prime years, 91 puts it all together: led the league in scoring, MVP, First Team All-Defense, Finals MVP. Complete package.

2. Bill Russell 1964. Particularly when taking era into account and the immense value a defensive big had on the overall impact on a game with no 3-point shot and the game played closer to the rim, I think this was the single greatest defensive season by any player in history. Also led the league in rebounds/game and rebounds/36 minutes despite vying with Wilt for those rebounding honors.

3. Shaq 2000. Not quite as high on Shaq overall as some others (I'd take Duncan and Hakeem over Shaq if this were a greatest player project), but since this is just for greatest peak, can't ignore what a monster year he had in the 99/00 season. Not only led the league in scoring and was MVP and Finals MVP, but he also finished second in DPOY voting.

[OhayoKD]

lazily copy and pasted from the top 100.

Bill Russell over Jordan (peak) case

I presented a case for Duncan in the last thread and somewhat alluded to one for Russell in my Kareem post. There, I focused on his average, peak, and prime "goodness" as that was a big-question mark. Here, for Russell, just like with Kareem, I will focus on what voters seem to be marking as an advantage for Jordan...

Spoiler:

Even with the high ends and what I feel to be a substantial argument for GOAT peak/prime in Jordan's favor, why I see him as career #3 all-time is due to the meaningful longevity/prime quality and overall longevity aspects. I haven't finalized intel for my pool aside from my Mt. Rushmore / GOAT candidates yet, but James & Jabbar (even Russell) both have more MVP+ level seasons - and better supporting years when factoring in the full body of work.

#1 Michael Jordan

To put it simply, I personally think Jordan is flat out better than anyone else left. There may be a run or two from Russell or Duncan or Wilt that look comparable but nothing like Jordan's stretch of combined individual and team dominance. I also don't think he has the dips or red flags the others have. I love data as much as anyone, (not saying data isn't high on Jordan) but sometimes we do use that in place of simply "proving it" and I think putting anyone else other than Jordan here would be an example of that. However, I'm quite on Russell offensively, so I can see why those who view him higher may disagree.

To go back to my stated criteria from a prior thread, I believe the per season title equity Jordan gives you outweighs the longevity advantage of Duncan, and there is no longevity concern against guys like Russell or Wilt.
Nominate: Magic Johnson

Vote: Jordan

His peak is now too hard to pass up, despite limited seasons compared to a few others.

I have him at 8 seasons being the undisputed best player, 10 as an arguable top 3 player, 11 all-nba, 14 as an all star level, and 9 all defensive years.

He edges out Bill Russell and Tim Duncan.

For now I’d have Russell 4, Duncan 5.

Nomination: Shaq

Vote 1 - Michael Jordan
Vote 2 - Bill Russell
Nominate - Magic Johnson

As more and more seasons pass and the game evolves, it makes sense that Jordan’s assumed status as GOAT would be tested. I'm sticking with him here, but the decision between Kareem and LeBron for #2 has become tougher. While I'm generally a longevity guy, if I feel the body of work is impressive enough without elite longevity (jordan, magic, bird, now curry)

Vote #3 - Michael Jordan

Probably a lopsided vote so I won't spend too much energy here. I like players who are by far the best of their generation like Lebron, Kareem and MJ. I don't think anyone has a big enough longevity advantage over him where it's not weighed out by being worse. I value Curry's era more but I rate him as less valuable than MJ for his time period and his star longevity is slightly worse, but I could be talked into nominating him relatively soon.

Nominate: Shaq

Looking through these I see three claims:

-> Jordan peaked higher/was better on average/had a better prime
-> Jordan provided more "championship equity"
-> Jordan was the "undisputed best player" of his era in a way Bill Russell was not

I will start with the first two, as I think they go hand-in-hand. Do keep in mind, that these are going to be era-relative arguments built on a player's likelihood to lift teams to championships. I do not have any way to convince anyone Russell would have likely been better in 1990 or 2023. Perhaps someone may be persuaded or Duncan(basketball did not peak in the 90's), but for Bill, I will try and justify the following claims:
Bill Russell was probably better at his peak
Bill Russell was probably better on average
It is more likely Bill Russell was the best player of his era than Jordan was the best player of his

First, let's start with a simple assumption:
-> All else being equal, a player who wins 11 rings in 13 years probably was better("more likely to win championships") than a player who won 6 in 13
-> All else being equal, a player who wins 8-rings in 8 years probably was better("more likely to win championships") than a player who won 6-rings in 8(or 7) years
-> All else being equal, a player who goes 27-2(or 27-1) over a much longer period of time(an entire career) with dramatically different personnel in a league without lower-end expansion fodder...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KfFmPYlS0Mx00w0hri6LoGASkES3DWfBY25Q8vhHWoA/edit#gid=0
...is probably better than a player who posts a worse record of 27-3 (or 27-2) over a convenient 7 or 8-year frame while getting to dunk on weaker early round opposition
-> All else being equal, a player whose teams are a bigger regular-season outlier(7.0 expected championships vs 2.9 per fp4's calc) and then who overperforms in the playoffs by a bigger margin(11 actual championships vs 6 by basketball reference), probably was better

About now you might be thinking, "shouldn't this line of reasoning Jordan a starting advantage over Duncan?"

And you would be right, it should. Which is why I went ahead and argued the following:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107489778#p107489778

All in all, I think then, it can be reasonably argued prime Duncan
-> Won at least one(probably three) titles with less
-> Led two dominant teams(statistically better with most of the Bulls if you go by standard deviation(more relevant to winning championships than "srs")), one was probably with less
-> Led a third team not too far behind in 2005(not sure what "help" is there but there's still no Pippen equivalent) with less
-> Beat two teams better or on par with anyone Jordan beat(05 and 07 suns, great in the rs too, great in the rs missing key pieces, greatest offense ever, led by an offensive goat candidate who also led a goat offense in Dallas pre-prime)
-> Beat two tougher gauntlets better than any Jordan beat(05, 07)
-> Beat, with less, a reigning champion that had posted a top 10 all-time full-strength srs after sweeping the Shaq-Kobe-Payton-Malone Lakers
-> Won at least 50 games every season(Jordan managed that once pre-triangle)
-> Won in multiple systems(Jordan managed that never)
-> Won with completely different 2nd bananas(Jordan managed that never)

I point this out because, even if you just lift Duncan's best two years to be a match for Mike's(and keep the internal scaling), then by Ben Taylor(the guy who put not one, not two, not three, not four, but five MJ years above the season you have at #1), his srs-study-based "career over replacement player" formula outputs Duncan's career as more valuable.

Feel free to dispute any of the excerpts above or the justification offered in the post(As Doc MJ noted, I actually used the BPM wrong formula in my post), but I do think it's fair that when arguing for a player who won less is better than a player who won more, to expect that there is justification that logically arrives at the alleged conclusion.

Here is what I believe has most often been argued for Jordan:
-> He is a great offensive player who also plays good defense
-> He looks great via conventionally defined "production"
-> When he loses his teammates don't look great via conventionally defined "production"(even if they are holding the opponent 5-points below their regular season offensive-rating)

But I have to ask, at least for those who are ascribing to era-relativity(that may not be true for all the posters voting for Jordan, but I believe it has been explicitly noted as part of their criteria for some) or something resembling Championships-over-replacement-player, where they see the logical connection between the above points and Jordan being better than BIll(or Duncan).

The Celtics did not win more 5 more rings than the Bulls on the strength of their offense. And the Bulls were a contention-level team(assuming health) when they lost the strength of Jordan's offense(and defense). By a metric called GOAT-POINTS, "production" sees Hakeem as the true greatest player ever. A couple of years ago, BPM saw Lebron as the undisputed GOAT. There was a measure of "production" which put Dennis Rodman on top at the 90's, and I'm sure some lunatic could just filter down scoring so that Pippen and Lebron came at #1 and #2.

Even if Jordan was the best offensive-player-ever(and I do not think his results or even historically mapping the ways he "produces" correlate with offense-quality supports that), it, alone, would not imply superiority to Bill as an individual force of winning.

Simply put, I think we ought to be careful conflating priors with evidence:

What phenomenon would "great offense and good defense in the 90's is more valuable than goat defense in the 60's" explain? Why couldn't Russell's defense be sufficient in a league without 3-pointers and a less horizontally spaced floor? And what about IQ, a trait that corresponds with suprising(relative to "production") results on both ends over a variety of contexts(Draymond, Magic, Lebron, Nash, Boston KG):

Spoiler:

I'd note here in Russell you have an example of someone with an incredibly active basketball imagination once it got turned on - which of course didn't happen until he had time AWAY from coaches - but it's not that I'm saying that his talent on this front was one-of-a-kind and that that was his truly greatest strength. Russell was unusual in such talent surely, but really it was him getting into certain types strategic habits with the reinforcement of a similar mind that caused something of an exponential curve. And of course, the application of that curve was on Russell's body, which was a far greater body talent than what Jones possessed.

I also think Russell elaborate on the horizontal game tellingly in this quote but unfortunately I'm not sure which book it was from:

Beginning in my freshman year, I developed the concept of horizontal and vertical games. I made a distinction between the two that others had not done. The horizontal game meant how I played side to side. The vertical game was how I played up and down. I knew that if I could integrate the two games, our team could win. I would always be in a position to determine where the ball was and where it was going.

What I saw was how much more there was to the game than that. I would lie awake at night and play with numbers. How much time was there in an NBA game? Forty-eight minutes. How many shots were taken in a game? Maybe a hundred and sixty, eighty or so on each side. I calculated the number of seconds each shot took—a second, a second and a half—and then I multiplied by a hundred. Two hundred forty seconds at most—or four minutes. Then add a single extra second for a foul shot missed and then the ball put in play; add another minute at the most. So, five minutes out of forty-eight are actually taken up in the vertical game.

What I'm hoping you're getting a picture of is a young man who started thinking for himself about how he could best help his team win at basketball.

From an innovator's perspective, this is what would put Russell at the very top of my list of all basketball players in history. This archetype of the horizontal & vertical force who intimidated shots like nobody's business but who relied on non-vertical agility to do a whole bunch of other things that were valuable, Russell basically invented it. Not saying no one before had ever done anything like it, but it wasn't what was being taught by coaches.

In Russell's words:

On defense it was considered even worse to leave your feet…The idea was for the defensive player to keep himself between his man and the basket at all times. Prevent lay-ups, keep control, stay on your feet. By jumping you were simply telegraphing to your opponent that you could be faked into the air. Defenses had not begun to adjust to the jump shot.

Russell would be the one, then, who would make that adjustment and have the world take notice, and only after he did that did the coaches begin coaching players to do Russell-type things.

Bill Russell was the best help defender and the best man defender of his time while also possibly sporting the most "ahead of the curve" basketball intelligence of anyone ever to the tune of becoming the nba's only champion-winning player-coach. He also happened to win the most on teams that gained separation almost entirely on defense. Why would we assume the "two-way force" that won half as much was as or more valuable to winning?

One approach has been to say Jordan was the Ultimate Winner:

Spoiler:

It's been mentioned a lot of times how the Bulls had the exact same record in playoff series from '91-'98 as the Celtics did from their first title of the Russell dynasty in 1957 to the last in 1969. Well, let's look at that a little more in-depth, but since Jordan wasn't playing in 1994, I'll use 1990 instead and just look at the years Jordan played with Phil Jackson. (Remember, Russell also had a legendary genius coach.)

The Celtics had an average SRS of +6.0 from '57-'69. The Bulls had an average SRS of +7.7 from 1990-1998 excluding 1994. During the Celtics' dynasty run, there were an average of 9.3 teams in the league and during the Bulls' run there were an average of 27.8 teams in the league. This means that during Boston's run, each team's SRS was artificially depressed by 0.7 points per game due to have to facing the Celtics (SRS/(# of teams-1)) while the Bulls opposition was only depressed by 0.3 points per game due to having to face the Bulls. So let's adjust every team the Celtics played in the playoffs up by 0.4 points during that run to give them a higher SRS. Here's how those series went:

Boston Celtics playoff series during Russell years
1957 Def. -0.6 adjusted SRS Syracuse 3-0
1957 Def. +0.1 ASRS St. Louis 4-3
1958 Def. +0.6 ASRS Philly 4-1
1958 Lose to +1.2 ASRS St. Louis 2-4
1959 Def. +4.1 ASRS Syracuse 4-3
1959 Def. -1.0 ASRS Minneapolis 4-0
1960 Def. +3.2 ASRS Philly 4-2
1960 Def. +2.2 ASRS St. Louis 4-3
1961 Def. +2.3 ASRS Syracuse 4-1
1961 Def. +3.4 ASRS St. Louis 4-1
1962 Def. +3.0 Philly 4-3
1962 Def. +2.3 LA Lakers 4-3
1963 Def. +1.6 Cincinnati 4-3
1963 Def. +3.1 LA Lakers 4-2
1964 Def. +4.8 Cincinnati 4-1
1964 Def. +4.8 San Francisco 4-1
1965 Def. +0.3 Philly 4-3
1965 Def. +2.1 LA Lakers 4-1
1966 Def. +1.4 Cincinnati 3-2
1966 Def. +4.5 Philly 4-1
1966 Def. +3.3 LA Lakers 4-3
1967 Def. -2.3 New York 3-1
1967 Lose to +8.9 Philly 1-4
1968 Def. -1.3 Detroit 4-2
1968 Def. +8.4 Philly 4-3
1968 Def. +5.4 LA Lakers 4-2
1969 Def. +5.2 Philly 4-1
1969 Def. +5.9 New York 4-2
1969 Def. +4.2 LA Lakers 4-3

Chicago Bulls playoff series during Jordan/Jackson years
1990 Def. -1.1 SRS Milwaukee 3-1
1990 Def. +4.2 SRS Philly 4-1
1990 Lose to +5.4 SRS Detroit 3-4
1991 Def. -0.4 SRS New York 3-0
1991 Def. -0.4 SRS Philly 4-1
1991 Def. +3.1 SRS Detroit 4-0
1991 Def. +6.7 SRS LA Lakers 4-1
1992 Def. -3.9 Miami 3-0
1992 Def. +3.7 New York 4-3
1992 Def. +5.3 Cleveland 4-2
1992 Def. +6.9 Portland 4-2
1993 Def. -0.7 Atlanta 3-0
1993 Def. +6.3 Cleveland 4-0
1993 Def. +5.9 New York 4-2
1993 Def. +6.3 Phoenix 4-2
1995 Def. +2.9 Charlotte 3-1
1995 Lose to +6.4 Orlando 2-4
1996 Def. +1.5 Miami 3-0
1996 Def. +2.2 New York 4-1
1996 Def. +5.4 Orlando 4-0
1996 Def. +7.4 Seattle 4-2
1997 Def. +1.8 Washington 3-0
1997 Def. +5.5 Atlanta 4-1
1997 Def. +5.6 Miami 4-1
1997 Def. +8.0 Utah 4-2
1998 Def. +1.9 New Jersey 3-0
1998 Def. +2.5 Charlotte 4-1
1998 Def. +6.3 Indiana 4-3
1998 Def. +5.7 Utah 4-2

Overall results

Russell vs. teams with 5+ ASRS: 4-1 series record (.800), 17-12 game record (.586)
Jordan vs. teams with 5+ SRS: 13-2 series record (.867), 57-28 game record (.671)

Russell vs. teams with 2-5 ASRS: 14-0 series record (1.000), 56-28 game record (.667)
Jordan vs. teams with 2-5 SRS: 6-0 series record (1.000), 23-7 game record (.767)

Russell vs. teams under 2 SRS: 9-1 series record (.900), 35-19 game record (.648)
Jordan vs. teams under 2 SRS: 7-0 series record (1.000), 25-2 game record (.926)

Note that Jordan has a better record in individual games against playoff teams with a SRS under 2 than Russell has in series. Also, Jordan has a better game record against the teams with 5+ SRS than Russell does against the teams with SRS under 2. Even if you go back to Jordan's rookie season, he never lost to a team with an SRS under 5 whereas Russell lost to the pitiful 34-38 Hawks in 1957 in a year where no team had a winning record in the Western Division. Obviously, there are other factors at play. Russell dominated more consistently over a variety of ages, but also he did it against much weaker competition with regard to the league as a whole and where the talent level was at, and with Oscar stuck on extremely poor teams all through his prime, he pretty much just had to beat Wilt most years to win those rings. That's why I'm voting for the ultimate winner:

Vote: Michael Jordan

Nominate: Shaquille O' Neal

A few notes
-> As noted earlier, the "identical record' bit is a bit disingenuous. Russell is 27-1 in series he was available for. If missed games are a detriment, then Jordan is 27-3. Actually there are alot of issues with this framing(mostly noted at the top). Will add that because of the length(beyond natural aging) Russell had to play alot more regular season games to get to those 11 championships.

-> Raw SRS comparisons are not always relevant to era/league-relative comparisons. At some points srs tresholds are similar. In the 60's they are much lower. I think standard deviation might represent things better, but they're still extrapolated from SRS so it probably only mitigates that discrepancy. (Have also been using psrs to rate playoff opposition but FP4 has reservations about the calculation process)

-> SRS thresholds being lower also do not necessarily mean the league was weaker(see: post-merger 70's, early 2000's where Duncan led 3 Chicago-tier outliers)

-> SRS tresholds being higher also do not necessarily mean the league is stronger(90's)

-> The 1969 Celtics probably beat a better opponent than anyone Jordan has toppled with the Wilt-West Lakers, where what was, when healthy, one of the greatest era-relative teams ever had the best player from the team that pushed the Celtics to 7 in 1968(more on that later). You might note that Wilt is the only star who has ever properly beaten Russell and it required a Sixers team that was excellent without him and Russell to find himself the new coach of his team while carrying an injury. (And yes, I would say that is better evidence for Russell being the clear "best player of his era" than anything present for Jordan)

-> The Celtics also beat the 1969 Knicks who posted a +8 srs(virtually unheard of for any non-boston team up until that point) en route to a championship the following year

-> Subjectively speaking I think losing to a 4x mvp plus a really good cast on what was a big outlier for that era in his first year as a player-coach(injured by the way) is less of a wasted "chance" than Jordan losing to detroit in 90 or orlando in 1995.

A more...uh natural approach is to argue Jordan was disadvantaged in terms of support(which itself would not justify seeing Micheal as better), but even here, I do not think the arguments are strong:

Spoiler:

Do you think Russell had waay more help than MJ then? Because MJ only won with a superteam and 11>6.

certainly on average he had more help. his first season in the league, he missed the first 24 games for the olympics. his team went 16-8. if they had kept up that pace, they would have finished 48-24, 10 wins more than the next best team. that was the team russell got added to. i said duncan had a good start, but it pales in comparison to a runaway best record team. he actually had a negative WOWY that first year because his team went 28-20 (42 win pace) with him, so -6. little wonder that the celtics posted easily the best record for the next 5 or 6 years. and the rest of the league was shockingly mediocre, so russell's megateams were facing <1 and <2 SRS teams constantly.

russell's average SRS differential to his opponent in his 2 losses is actually +1.47. meaning he was a favorite on average in his 2 losses. that's the highest "average loss" differential of anyone i tracked. yes, he was injured in the finals, but the team did go 1-3 in his games and 1-2 if you take out game 6 where he came back and only played 20 minutes. on the flip side, jordan's differential of -5.04 is easily the lowest of anyone i tracked, meaning he was a massive underdog when he lost. besting the 2nd lowest of -3.49 for garnett.

russell also started his career as generally a playoff faller. this partly explains why his teams got taken to 7 games so many times, despite huge win differentials. he also wasn't an underdog in a series until 1967, and he lost.

by mid career though, russell started becoming a playoff riser, his teams do not appear to have the lopsided talent advantage by that point, and he started playing higher SRS teams (though often still not great) and beating them, including a +8 wilt team and 4 teams around +5 to finish it out. so in a way, you could say he validated the early career concerns by showing he could win without a huge supporting cast advantage and could beat good teams and even 1 great one. the counterargument would be that he got lucky he was a playoff underperformer (modestly) on his most talented teams and then overperformed on his less talented teams. in fact, it's probably axiomatic that someone that wins 11 of 13 in a team setting got lucky/fortunate in a lot of ways. if the talent advantage on his teams was flipped from early career to late career, we might see the late 60's celtics go on a 5 or 6 year run of 65-70 win seasons with dominant 0 and 1 loss playoffs sprinkled in. but possibly 3 or 4 missed titles early in russell's career, which might remove some of the veneer of invincibility.

the biggest concern with jordan's case is that he kind of went from huge underdog to huge favorite very quickly. when he lost, it was unreasonable to think he wouldn't lose. when he won, it was often unreasonable to think he wouldn't win. so he didn't necessarily pile up the close series we might like to see. however, i do give big credit to 1993 and 1998. the 1993 bulls were a +6.2 teams that had to basically beat 3 other +6 teams, and went 12-4 against them. the 1998 bulls were a +7.2 team, but the pacers and jazz were +6.3 and +5.7, and with pippen's last 2 finals games being a 2-16 disaster class and a game 6 where he only played 26 minutes, that was the time to get jordan. instead, in game 7 against indiana, he guarded reggie in the 4th and held him to 0 points on 0-1 shooting (wouldn't even let him get the ball), and in game 6 against utah he score 45 points in a glacially slow 76 pace game to drag a tired bulls team to title number 6. basically his "bill russell 1969" moment as far as i'm concerned, to show he could also win when things were not at their best.

A few more:
-> Expected SRS only works if you assume Jordan was as or more valuable in the regular-season(what we have mostly suggests the opposite)
-> Curiously a 28 game-sample without from Russell's rookie-year is included, but an 82-game sample after he leaves with a similar roster is not. Nor is the career-wide "off"

Another angle is to insist the Bulls were actually not that good with a selective consideration of health:

Spoiler:

The arguments against him in the prior threads focus a lot on the Bulls doing pretty well without him in 1994, but even there we’re still ultimately talking about a 2.87 SRS team that beat a completely injury-ravaged team in the first round of the playoffs and then lost a close series against a very good team. Even if we ignore the lingering value of that team having learned how to win from their prior years with Jordan, and leave aside the fact that missing a star player for a whole season is entirely different from missing a player for random periods due to injury (the latter will be a situation where the team is not as able to adapt to the player’s absence), the reality is that the 1993-1994 season in no way backs the idea that the Bulls were a contender without Jordan. They were 11th in SRS (maybe a bit higher just while healthy, but we’re comparing to the rest of the league’s numbers and other teams weren’t always healthy either). And the only playoff series they won was against a team that was completely ravaged by injury (the Cavs missing Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance, and Hot Rod Williams). They also managed to play the Knicks very close—which was pretty good, because the Knicks were a genuinely good team—but being 11th in SRS, winning a gimme-putt playoff series, and then losing a 7-game series is not the picture of a real contender

More than a few notes:
-> As has been pointed out(and ignored), the Cavs playoff-rotation posted a net-rating of +5.8 without the mentioned pieces. A caveat is that they played below average competition, and to my knowledge no one's calced the SRS. They do about as expected vs playoff-teams going by record(3-5).
-> Pippen and Grant, after barely missing any games in 1993 missed a bunch in 1994. Even if the other teams are not always healthy, the Bulls themselves were healthy in 93 when Jordan played with them making the non-health adjusted numbers misleading
-> If we account for health and are "consistent" with our approach we find there's plenty that backs up the Jordan-less Bulls as a proper contender, even outside of 1994...

The Bulls Supporting Cast: 94, 95, Jordan's Individual "Production", and the Triangle

Spoiler:

This is an extremely common refrain and the type of thinking that is inevitable when we spend more times looking at name than at real production.

The 1994 Bulls played at a 4.7 SRS pace when healthy, but because we need to portray the Bulls as untalented, we instead need to ignore Pippen and Grant separately missing ten games for the first time in their career. There we need to look past the “55-wins”. And then the following year, when Grant is replaced with Ron Harper and they play at a 3.8 SRS pace before Jordan’s return, well, we look at the win totals painting them as a barely over .500 team. They play like more of 6.5 team with Jordan (3.8 —> 6.5 quite the feat of ceiling raising!), and when Rodman is added to that 6.5 core, Jordan is the one who receives all the credit for that lift.

That last point is a very common trend for Jordan’s teams. 2.74 SRS in 1990, then a massive spike up to 8.57 in 1991. What changed? Jordan played 160 fewer minutes. His TS ADD went down from 315 to 301. His VORP went up 0.2, his win shares went up 1.3, and his PIPM wins went up 1.4… Then the following year the Bulls are even better: 10.07 SRS, rarefied air. But Jordan? TS ADD down to 196. VORP down 1.6, win shares down 2.6, and PIPM wins up 0.5. But of course it is not a super team. 1993, they take a step back to 6.19 SRS. A 4 SRS fall out of nowhere! And contributing to that fall, Jordan’s TS ADD is now down to 124. His win shares are down 0.5, his PIPM wins are down 0.9, and his VORP… is up 1.

So if Jordan is not the one driving these massive swings, I wonder who else possibly could be.

We see elements of this in effect more clearly in 1998, where Pippen misses a large chunk of the season. With Pippen out, the Bulls play at a +6 pace. With Pippen returns, the Bulls play at a +9.5 pace, and this is where I urge readers to remember 1995.

This entire line of thought is another instance of classic Jordan double-speak where we praise Jordan because he lifts teams people claim are less talented teams… but we also call him a “ceiling raiser” because he supposedly fits so much better with the same talent!

The other issue with "Jordan bullied his teammates to greatness" is they did exceptionally well with him entirely absent(55-win full-strength srs, 58-win when when you add the playoffs, 53-win srs without Jordan and Grant in 95) despite a metric-ton of ongoing off-court drama. Why were the Bulls able to fully contend without Jordan with Pippen beefing with management, and Grant and Scottie at each other's throats? Why were they able to fully contend without Jordan with Pippen actively beefing with the guy who management repeatedly tried to replace him with? Why were they still good when Grant left and their best player went and filed a trade-request?

Doc has argued that "leadership is not always linear", but that only leaves "Jordan the great galvanizer" as plausible, not probable. As it happens, the Pre-Jackson Bulls never had a team comparable to Jordan-less Chicago.

And even if you want to put their great success(which was mysteriously absent before jackson entered the fray and limited Jordan's influence)as a byproduct of Jordan, that doesn't really change that Jordan was given far less leeway to "lead" in Chicago than he was in Washington. If "power reveals", does it really make sense to pretend Jordan at his most powerful isn't indicative, but the results when Jordan was at his least powerful were?

Never said anything about "confident", but I don't really have an issue making probabilistic judgments(uncertainity is fine). Main thing about 1971 vs 1991 is
-> there is no triangle equivalent(Bulls offense goes from +2.3 to +6.5 between the first and 2nd half of 1990),
-> there's no equivalent to the defensive jump(Bulls go from below average at the start of the season to a -3 defense by the 90 playoffs(-5 in the last 2 rounds)).

The Bucks are closer by 1970 with rookie Dandridge than the Bulls get pre-triangle despite Kareem joining a similar team. The Bucks are also still great In 72 in the games Oscar completely misses and unlike 91 where there's no real discernible improvement(Mj's on/off, rapm, defensive tape all looks worse actually)despite facing significantly weaker competition(pistons are way worse defensively and overall in the first two rounds of 1991 compared to 1990).

Kareem's production jumps between 70, 71, and 72 despite worse help(oscar hobbled) and much tougher comp(west+wilt) in 72 vs 71(west hurt). Their full-strength srs also improves iirc. It's also obvious the Bulls were historically loaded when we look at the full-lineup performances in 94 and 95(58-win without Jordan, 52-win without Jordan and Grant), and there's nothing that indicates the same for the Bucks

See the thing about the triangle was it wasn't about getting Jordan to do more. If 90/91 MJ was a better player than 88 or 89 MJ, it wasn't because he was out there impacting the game in more ways. It's because he was more effective in a scaled-down, specialized role. The box-score only tracks the ends of possessions. It does not track Jordan facing way less doubles. It does not track Jordan making less plays at the perimeter than Scottie, nor does it track him being less involved in the full-court presses.

Usage rate measures assists(the pass before a shot) and shots, it does not track who is handling the ball and who is floating off-ball where it's very hard to double because of illegal-d. Jordan was, in a raw sense, doing less. There was a trade-off between effeciency and volume even if you don't put it down to help and competition.

So some thinghs here about that +7 number

First that is really weird to use the 93 bulls playoffs improvement as their "real level" cause they improved in the playoffs after coasting. Then not use the 94 bulls playoffs (where they also improved a lot) as their "real level" too

The 94 bulls actually had a +8.9 postseason srs which is almost the same as their 93 seasom +10 post season srs ( +1 difference)

The 94 bulls also missed 20 combined games from their two stars and played a +4.7 srs when healthy in the regular season (+1.5 difference with the 93 bulls with jordan) and in a very generous best case scenario a (+5.3 difference with even the 92 bulls regular season )

If i average the 94 bulls (+4.7 at full strenght in regular season and +8.9 in playoffs) vs the 92 reg season + 93 playoffs combination draymomd used (and please notice i am already picking and choosing the parts that help jordan more) the gap is only 5 points

That is not goat level.

Even by you guys own approach[Draygold and DJoker are the "guys" for context] as it is below other all time greats lift in either absolute terms or in "ceiling raising" situations


I also dont get the "improving a good team is harder" part in relation to kareem, who led a goat level team in the 71 bucks so he was not exactly lacking in "ceiling raising" either compared to jordan while also having better "floor raising" lift as evidenced by their 60~ win pace without oscar in 1972

Or 08/09 garnett who had a similar lift from +3.4 to +9 and he is not even among the goat candidatws short list yet matches jordan here

i could also bring up other cases of lift like 2015 lebron cavs +10 postseason srs with a lot less talent and that the 91 bulls (kirye and love hurt) which strikes me as a even more extreme example of "ceiling raising" considering the floor it came off.
Iirc it's +5 if you combine the rs and playoff sample but feel free to take the +4.7

To summarize...

-> with their starting lineup, the 94 Bulls played like a 55-win team in the regular-season, dominated a decent opponent and outscored a New York side, without home-court, that came within a couple of possessions of winning the championship in 6.

-> In 95, health or no health-adjusted they played like a 50+ win team(52-win health adjusted) despite the loss of Grant(who helped the Magic to their first finals).

-> And from the onset of the triangle through to the 1992 regular season, the Bulls defense and offense skyrocketed(with a huge jump within 1990 itself) despite Jordan's own individual numbers, box or non-box, not seeing a similar jump as Jordan scaled down his role on the team.

I could of course say that the "without" from Russell's rookie year is a noisy 28-game sample and thus there is "nothing backing up" Russell's Celtics having excellent help.

But I believe good arguments are internally consistent so I will acknowledge that just like the Jordan-less Bulls, the Celtics were capable of contention without their best player. Here's the difference...

-> Won at least one(probably three) titles with less
-> Led two dominant teams(statistically better with most of the Bulls if you go by standard deviation(more relevant to winning championships than "srs")), one was probably with less
-> Led a third team not too far behind in 2005(not sure what "help" is there but there's still no Pippen equivalent) with less
-> Beat two teams better or on par with anyone Jordan beat(05 and 07 suns, great in the rs too, great in the rs missing key pieces, greatest offense ever, led by an offensive goat candidate who also led a goat offense in Dallas pre-prime)
-> Beat two tougher gauntlets better than any Jordan beat(05, 07)
-> Beat, with less, a reigning champion that had posted a top 10 all-time full-strength srs after sweeping the Shaq-Kobe-Payton-Malone Lakers
-> Won at least 50 games every season(Jordan managed that once pre-triangle)
-> Won in multiple systems(Jordan managed that never)
-> Won with completely different 2nd bananas(Jordan managed that never)

You see all these points I brought up about Duncan? I can also make similar ones about Russell. After it was

Russell who kept winning that initial "superteam" was depleted, not Jordan
Russell who kept winning with different co-stars, not Jordan
Russell who won when the league got tougher(Jordan only won after the competition broke down)
and
Russell who, by the data, won with less

Speaking of. Remember that 82-game sample I mentioned earlier?

What happened to the Celtics with a bad positional replacement(like Chicago had in 84 and 94(Pippen controversially ended up played minutes as a shooting guard)) as they lost a 28mpg role-player and Russell's best teammate "having learned how to win under Bill" significantly improving?

Well let's do a comparison. And while we're at it, why don't we do the Bulls *before Jordan taught them how to win. In fact let's give Jordan, at his statistical apex in 1988, all the credit for the Bulls getting better from when they drafted him. He should beat out the retiree player-coach who doesn't score enough points or isn't "the most productive player in every series he plays in", right?

Spoiler:

Correct, though to be specific it is a 22-23 win improvement on a bad team(taking a 40 win team to 65-wins for example would be harder). Furthermore, with an eye to future threads, this is especially disappointing in comparison with Kareem and Russell once you account for srs tresholds(assuming you are still worried about championships, how you compare to the best opposition matters alot more than how you compare by raw-score):

((1988), Bulls were +3.8 at full strength)

((1977), Lakers were +4.9 at full strength)

(1969, no clue what the Celtics were at full-strength)

In terms of positional replacements Jordan replaced a bad shooting guard in 84. Russell was replaced by a bad center in 1969. For the purposes of what we're using for Kareem(pretending the Lakers didn't lose anything in the trade including their starting center), Kareem's signal should actually be suppressed if we looked at "positional replacement".

retiree-player-coach russell, on a team that would run a tougher gauntlet than any of Jordan's Bulls, saw the celtics drop by 7 points with an otherwise near identical roster(sam jones was a 28 mpg chucker on an average offense) despite hondo improving and a 2-point offensive improvement. (key to note is that this 7-point drop was from a much better league-best lvl team even if u just go by the regular-season)

Kareem, assuming the Lakers lost nothing when they traded for him in 1975(actually lost 2nd and 5th mpg guys) saw the Lakers jump from -3.95 to .500 to +4.9 with the addition of 29 mpgDon Chaney and one-off head-coach Jerry West. That is a bigger jump in a league on a team that posted a higher srs in a league where the best teams were +4 to +6.

Simply put, having inflated Jordan's mark beyond reason, retiree-player coach russell looks like an outright peer, and Kareem having given him a lower mark than is reasonable, looks outright better. And with Kareem it is hardly a one-off(will get into that on the next thread). And for Russell while we have much, what we do have all corroborates beyond a 20-game stretch on a much better team as a rookie. Also beyond the numbers Russell won 5 rings with a completely different core than he won his first 6. Jordan only ever won with a specific infrastructure and co-star, Bill only ever lost when hurt.

And yet, no. Russell is still a match for (emperically)apex Jordan on a much, much[b] better team.

Some other signals

[b]-> WOWYR, which was used to argue for Jordan against Lebron puts Russell's help for his career at 40-wins
-> WOWY, which does not make weird corrections such as applying 2nd-year Pippen to 91 MJ's "without", views the Bill-less Celtics as a 35-win cast throughout his career.
-> In 1969 Russell missed 5 games and the Celtics were bad
-> If we do health-adjustment for 69 and 70, Russell does not merely match Jordan's drop-off, he outright looks more valuable:

Tom Sanders, KC Jones and John Havlicek made up an excellent supporting cast of defenders, although Boston lacked a second big man to play next to Russell. When he retired in 1969, along with Sam Jones — who was down to 26 minutes per game by then — the Celtics dropped a whopping 8 points in SRS (from a 59-win full-strength pace to a 36-win one) despite returning the rest of their eight-man rotation.10 So while Boston fielded a strong team around Big Bill, there’s nothing indicating that they could sniff the same heights without him.

-> For those tempted to put it all to "the Celtics didn't have centers", the Celtics were [b]largely unaffected when Russell's teammates missed time throughout his career:

For instance, when his teammates missed time, Boston rarely missed a beat. In 1958, Bob Cousy sat for seven games and the Celtics played far better without him. In ’59 and ’60, Sharman, Cousy and Tom Heinsohn missed a few games each, and the machine kept on ticking. In ’61, Sharman missed 18 games and the Celtics were (again) better without him. In ’62, Cousy missed five and, yes, the Celtics were better without him (portending his retirement years).6

But Russell missed four games in 1962 and Boston’s differential fell by 22 points. Four games is infinitesimally small, but all of these stories point in the same direction. It was only when Russell was hampered by injury (in the 1958 Finals) that the Celtics fell short of a title — the single time a Russell team failed to win in a 12-year span dating back to college.7

This trend would hold throughout most of Russell’s career. In ’66, Sam Jones missed eight games and Boston’s performance didn’t budge. Jones missed 11 more contests in ’69 and the team was about 2 points worse without him. All told, as the roster cycled around Russell, his impact seemed to remain.

Does this all make Russell being more valuable certain?, no. But when you are ranking one player over another, appealing to uncertainty is not justification.

Is Russell absolutely for sure better? No. But, if you value winning championships, I believe it is more likely that Russell is better(era-relative) than Jordan is, and I do not think there's much of a counter-case.


I also said I would justify Russell peaking higher, but honestly at this point, I think I can just offer these earlier assumptions:

(For the purposes of this post, "goat-level" can just be "peak/prime Micheal Jordan")

-> All else being equal, a player with more high-level years has a greater chance of having a higher peak than a player with less high-level years. If a player is "at" the top more often, then they have more chances to fluctuate up and "peak"
-> All else being equal, a player who starts off as better has a greater chance of having a higher peak than a player who starts off worse
-> All else being equal, a player who ages better has a greater chance of having a higher peak than a player who does not'
-> All else being equal, a player with better longevity is also more likely to be better at their best. After all, higher peaks have more room to fall, and the ability to maintain excellence over time is usually indicative of a both versatility and a special sort of mental resilience(Kareem does not win 6-rings if he copies MJ's antics in Washington).
-> All else being equal, a player who is generally better, is more likely to be better at their best

In fairness Russell's rookie year looks worse per "without", but pre-nba he was winning ncaa championships with a program that had never made the final in a league where more proffessional players played.

Additionally(and I only realized this mostly done with this post), using full-health with and without, 1969 Russell already looks more valuable than an inflated signal for Micheal(assuming the Bulls improved or maintained as a cast between 84 and 88) when we account for srs-suppression.

If you are looking to be convinced that Bill was clearly the best player of his era. I would ask you to consider how you would feel about Jordan if he retired beating the Reggie-Stockton-Malone Jazz. The data is rather conflicted about Jordan being the best in his perceived prime with certain players(Magic, Drob) consistently advantaged while his draftmate switches between being favored or disfavored depending on the signal before elevating better than Jordan does in the playoffs.

Regardless, I think I've said about all I can think to say so I'll end with this:

If the forest is "winning", then arguing for Jordan over Bill on the basis of "individual production" is missing the forest for the leaves.

A good theory has explanatory power. What phenomenon does "Jordan was more valuable" explain? If you can't think of a satisfactory answer to the question, then perhaps Bill Russell is just better, and we don't need a theory saying otherwise.

[f4p]

Seriously how has Michael Jordan not been picked yet?

‘91 Michael Jordan, take this as my voting post.

DraymondGold explained it better than I ever could. viewtopic.php?p=119288894#p119288894

‘64 Bill Russell is my 2nd pick, will repeat my first post - I think he simply had more impact on the game due to the nature of the 60s style than any individual player could have today and his winning is obviously completely unmatched.

If Jordan played for the Charlotte Hornets today, would anyone think he was the GOAT? Would he even be ranked over Jokic? I am unconvinced Jordan in today's game would be as good as even peak Giannis. Like, maybe, but also a pretty strong argument against.

a) would anyone be considered the GOAT if they played for the Hornets? I'm guessing no.
b) why is it any more likely that a magical time machine transports jordan to today than anybody else to any other part of nba history?

[EmpireFalls]

Seriously how has Michael Jordan not been picked yet?

‘91 Michael Jordan, take this as my voting post.

DraymondGold explained it better than I ever could. viewtopic.php?p=119288894#p119288894

‘64 Bill Russell is my 2nd pick, will repeat my first post - I think he simply had more impact on the game due to the nature of the 60s style than any individual player could have today and his winning is obviously completely unmatched.

If Jordan played for the Charlotte Hornets today, would anyone think he was the GOAT? Would he even be ranked over Jokic? I am unconvinced Jordan in today's game would be as good as even peak Giannis. Like, maybe, but also a pretty strong argument against.

a) would anyone be considered the GOAT if they played for the Hornets? I'm guessing no.
b) why is it any more likely that a magical time machine transports jordan to today than anybody else to any other part of nba history?

The Bulls were also basically the Hornets of the NBA in the 80s before Jordan arrived.

[f4p]

If Jordan played for the Charlotte Hornets today, would anyone think he was the GOAT? Would he even be ranked over Jokic? I am unconvinced Jordan in today's game would be as good as even peak Giannis. Like, maybe, but also a pretty strong argument against.

Even old Michael Jordan was giving our sorry bums the business back in the mid-2010s unfortunately. I absolutely despise MJ the owner but as a player, at his best, he was a force of nature. One of the highest motors I’ve ever seen in any sport and simply relentless athletic output. He’d be fine.

Also doubly funny to pose this question when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (an obvious modern Jordan analogue) just won the MVP/FMVP double and managed to outdo Jokic on quite a few impact metrics. I think he could be Shai today, at least.

I can only assume you’re either trolling or are infected with terminal “modernity over everything” illness.

In an awkward pick up game setting where guys are worried about injuring an elderly legend who is also their boss. We saw in Jordan's Washington comeback how far gone he was. In the 2010s he couldn't have made a G-League roster, the dude was 47 years old in 2010.

Shai does several things Jordan can't do, namely run a low TO offense as a point guard and hit the 3pt shot pretty reliably (most recent playoffs notwithstanding). Also it's generally agreed Jokic is the better player than Shai.

shai's 6.4 apg to 32.7 ppg is not giving me "ran the offense as a point guard" vibes over mj's 5.7 apg to 31 ppg in the first 3-peat, when the bulls finished 3rd, 2nd, and 1st in TOV%. shai is as stylistically similar to jordan as we're going to get and his team just won 68 games in the regular season with shai having an enormous on/off by his team needing him to be a high volume efficient scorer, basically jordan's wheelhouse. and even with shai falling off in the playoffs, they still won a title with an amazing defensive cast and somewhat limited offensive cast. hard to see MJ struggling to slither his way into the mid range and then elevating for buckets just like shai did all year.

also, shai was a very low 3PA guy the previous 2 seasons, really only kicking into (somewhat) high gear this year. of course, somewhat in line with MJ being a resilient playoff performer and shai's last 2 seasons being very much in the harden/giannis resiliency range (not good), shai's 3P% in the last 2 playoffs is 32% while MJ from 89-96 is 36.7%. and i'm being nice including 89 and 90 because it's 38.9% if we just zoom in on 91-96.

[One_and_Done]

Seriously how has Michael Jordan not been picked yet?

‘91 Michael Jordan, take this as my voting post.

DraymondGold explained it better than I ever could. viewtopic.php?p=119288894#p119288894

‘64 Bill Russell is my 2nd pick, will repeat my first post - I think he simply had more impact on the game due to the nature of the 60s style than any individual player could have today and his winning is obviously completely unmatched.

If Jordan played for the Charlotte Hornets today, would anyone think he was the GOAT? Would he even be ranked over Jokic? I am unconvinced Jordan in today's game would be as good as even peak Giannis. Like, maybe, but also a pretty strong argument against.

a) would anyone be considered the GOAT if they played for the Hornets? I'm guessing no.
b) why is it any more likely that a magical time machine transports jordan to today than anybody else to any other part of nba history?

I've posted before about why a) today's superior league should be weighted more heavily, b) even if it wasn't the 3pt line has existed for most of NBA history, and c) modern players generally would have great backwards compatibility. You don't think Jokic would be even better if he was deployed optimally in the 80s and 90s? Of course he would.

[One_and_Done]

If Jordan played for the Charlotte Hornets today, would anyone think he was the GOAT? Would he even be ranked over Jokic? I am unconvinced Jordan in today's game would be as good as even peak Giannis. Like, maybe, but also a pretty strong argument against.

a) would anyone be considered the GOAT if they played for the Hornets? I'm guessing no.
b) why is it any more likely that a magical time machine transports jordan to today than anybody else to any other part of nba history?

The Bulls were also basically the Hornets of the NBA in the 80s before Jordan arrived.

Feels like they had a GM who was pretty decent at building a team at the time in Jerry Krause. Chicago is also one of the biggest markets. Not sure I'm seeing the parallels. The Bulls had made the playoffs 10 out of their first 18 years, whereas Charlotte has made the playoffs 3 times in the last 21.

[One_and_Done]

Even old Michael Jordan was giving our sorry bums the business back in the mid-2010s unfortunately. I absolutely despise MJ the owner but as a player, at his best, he was a force of nature. One of the highest motors I’ve ever seen in any sport and simply relentless athletic output. He’d be fine.

Also doubly funny to pose this question when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (an obvious modern Jordan analogue) just won the MVP/FMVP double and managed to outdo Jokic on quite a few impact metrics. I think he could be Shai today, at least.

I can only assume you’re either trolling or are infected with terminal “modernity over everything” illness.

In an awkward pick up game setting where guys are worried about injuring an elderly legend who is also their boss. We saw in Jordan's Washington comeback how far gone he was. In the 2010s he couldn't have made a G-League roster, the dude was 47 years old in 2010.

Shai does several things Jordan can't do, namely run a low TO offense as a point guard and hit the 3pt shot pretty reliably (most recent playoffs notwithstanding). Also it's generally agreed Jokic is the better player than Shai.

shai's 6.4 apg to 32.7 ppg is not giving me "ran the offense as a point guard" vibes over mj's 5.7 apg to 31 ppg in the first 3-peat, when the bulls finished 3rd, 2nd, and 1st in TOV%. shai is as stylistically similar to jordan as we're going to get and his team just won 68 games in the regular season with shai having an enormous on/off by his team needing him to be a high volume efficient scorer, basically jordan's wheelhouse. and even with shai falling off in the playoffs, they still won a title with an amazing defensive cast and somewhat limited offensive cast. hard to see MJ struggling to slither his way into the mid range and then elevating for buckets just like shai did all year.

also, shai was a very low 3PA guy the previous 2 seasons, really only kicking into (somewhat) high gear this year. of course, somewhat in line with MJ being a resilient playoff performer and shai's last 2 seasons being very much in the harden/giannis resiliency range (not good), shai's 3P% in the last 2 playoffs is 32% while MJ from 89-96 is 36.7%. and i'm being nice including 89 and 90 because it's 38.9% if we just zoom in on 91-96.

Apg isn't an indication of whether you are a point guard, and what sort of offence you run. Jordan was not the point guard during the Bulls 3-peat.

The 3pt analysis is too simplistic. Shai takes completely different types of shots to Jordan. Jordan was shooting when he was wide open, because nobody really guarded the 3pt shot back then. Today, defences are geared around stopping the 3. Shai may be relatively low volume, but the ability to hit the 3 is essential. If opens up everything for him. If guys can just give you a cushion and focus on your drive, it's so much easier to defend you. Because Shai is a legit threat from 3, guys guard him, and when they scramble to cover his 3 he can punish them by going right by them to the basket. It's why for years Harden was so hard to guard. Guys couldn't press too much because he might blow by you, but also had to be wary of not being close enough because he might take a pull up (or stepback) 3. That tension in the guys you are defended by is huge. This playoffs, Shai's shots didn't go in as much as the year before... but it didn't even matter that much, because guys were forced to guard him out there, because of his proven reputation as a 3pt shooter.

[Gibson22]

I don't know if my vote will be casted but I will contribute

My Official Ballot
1. 1964 Bill Russell
Russell’s 1964 season is possibly the highest-impact defensive peak in NBA history. He led a Celtics team with the worst offense in the league (out of 9 teams) to the best record and another championship, all through defense and rebounding. He averaged 25+ rebounds in the regular season and upped it to 27 in the playoffs.
His defensive gravity was unprecedented. Opposing teams had to rethink their entire offensive strategy just to deal with him. He elevated a roster of offensive talents into a defensive dynasty. What makes this peak special is how singular his impact was not just as a cog in the system, but as the system itself.
Other strong years: 1960–62, 1965–66.

2. 1991 Michael Jordan
This is the peak where Jordan fully married elite scoring with high-level efficiency and team success. He was unstoppable on offense:

GOAT-tier scoring with +7.1 rTS in the regular season, +8.0 in the playoffs

Elite midrange + rim finishing, dominant in isolation or structured offense

33.7 PPG per 75 possessions, 36.4 PPG on +10.2 rTS in the Finals

What sets 1991 apart is not just the numbers, but how he adapted, he wasn’t just a scorer. His passing off doubles and gravity was elite, and he had one of the best turnover economies ever for a high-usage wing.
On defense, Jordan was an elite point-of-attack stopper, with great hands, instincts, and fast-break playmaking.
The Bulls went 15–2 in the playoffs with a +15.7 playoff SRS — a historically dominant run.
Other peak years: 1990, 1989.

3. 1967 Wilt Chamberlain
This was the year Wilt cracked the code, playing within a team while still dominating. He averaged 24–24–8, shot 68% from the field, and led the Sixers to 68 wins and a title, interrupting Boston’s reign.
What makes this version of Wilt special is how he changed his game:

Played unselfishly, led the league in assists among bigs

Focused on defense and efficient scoring

Was still an unmatched physical presence that dictated the flow of the game on both ends

His impact was systemic and foundational — not just great, but game-changing.
Other notable years: 1962, 1964.

[OhayoKD]

In an awkward pick up game setting where guys are worried about injuring an elderly legend who is also their boss. We saw in Jordan's Washington comeback how far gone he was. In the 2010s he couldn't have made a G-League roster, the dude was 47 years old in 2010.

Shai does several things Jordan can't do, namely run a low TO offense as a point guard and hit the 3pt shot pretty reliably (most recent playoffs notwithstanding). Also it's generally agreed Jokic is the better player than Shai.

shai's 6.4 apg to 32.7 ppg is not giving me "ran the offense as a point guard" vibes over mj's 5.7 apg to 31 ppg in the first 3-peat, when the bulls finished 3rd, 2nd, and 1st in TOV%. shai is as stylistically similar to jordan as we're going to get and his team just won 68 games in the regular season with shai having an enormous on/off by his team needing him to be a high volume efficient scorer, basically jordan's wheelhouse. and even with shai falling off in the playoffs, they still won a title with an amazing defensive cast and somewhat limited offensive cast. hard to see MJ struggling to slither his way into the mid range and then elevating for buckets just like shai did all year.

also, shai was a very low 3PA guy the previous 2 seasons, really only kicking into (somewhat) high gear this year. of course, somewhat in line with MJ being a resilient playoff performer and shai's last 2 seasons being very much in the harden/giannis resiliency range (not good), shai's 3P% in the last 2 playoffs is 32% while MJ from 89-96 is 36.7%. and i'm being nice including 89 and 90 because it's 38.9% if we just zoom in on 91-96.

Apg isn't an indication of whether you are a point guard, and what sort of offence you run. Jordan was not the point guard during the Bulls 3-peat.

The 3pt analysis is too simplistic. Shai takes completely different types of shots to Jordan. Jordan was shooting when he was wide open, because nobody really guarded the 3pt shot back then. Today, defences are geared around stopping the 3. Shai may be relatively low volume, but the ability to hit the 3 is essential. If opens up everything for him. If guys can just give you a cushion and focus on your drive, it's so much easier to defend you. Because Shai is a legit threat from 3, guys guard him, and when they scramble to cover his 3 he can punish them by going right by them to the basket. It's why for years Harden was so hard to guard. Guys couldn't press too much because he might blow by you, but also had to be wary of not being close enough because he might take a pull up (or stepback) 3. That tension in the guys you are defended by is huge. This playoffs, Shai's shots didn't go in as much as the year before... but it didn't even matter that much, because guys were forced to guard him out there, because of his proven reputation as a 3pt shooter.

The more pertinent point is according to f4p themselves Shai's postseason knocked him down to sub-kobe, thereby rendering a favorable comparison to Shai kind of pointless for hyping Jordan.

[One_and_Done]

shai's 6.4 apg to 32.7 ppg is not giving me "ran the offense as a point guard" vibes over mj's 5.7 apg to 31 ppg in the first 3-peat, when the bulls finished 3rd, 2nd, and 1st in TOV%. shai is as stylistically similar to jordan as we're going to get and his team just won 68 games in the regular season with shai having an enormous on/off by his team needing him to be a high volume efficient scorer, basically jordan's wheelhouse. and even with shai falling off in the playoffs, they still won a title with an amazing defensive cast and somewhat limited offensive cast. hard to see MJ struggling to slither his way into the mid range and then elevating for buckets just like shai did all year.

also, shai was a very low 3PA guy the previous 2 seasons, really only kicking into (somewhat) high gear this year. of course, somewhat in line with MJ being a resilient playoff performer and shai's last 2 seasons being very much in the harden/giannis resiliency range (not good), shai's 3P% in the last 2 playoffs is 32% while MJ from 89-96 is 36.7%. and i'm being nice including 89 and 90 because it's 38.9% if we just zoom in on 91-96.

Apg isn't an indication of whether you are a point guard, and what sort of offence you run. Jordan was not the point guard during the Bulls 3-peat.

The 3pt analysis is too simplistic. Shai takes completely different types of shots to Jordan. Jordan was shooting when he was wide open, because nobody really guarded the 3pt shot back then. Today, defences are geared around stopping the 3. Shai may be relatively low volume, but the ability to hit the 3 is essential. If opens up everything for him. If guys can just give you a cushion and focus on your drive, it's so much easier to defend you. Because Shai is a legit threat from 3, guys guard him, and when they scramble to cover his 3 he can punish them by going right by them to the basket. It's why for years Harden was so hard to guard. Guys couldn't press too much because he might blow by you, but also had to be wary of not being close enough because he might take a pull up (or stepback) 3. That tension in the guys you are defended by is huge. This playoffs, Shai's shots didn't go in as much as the year before... but it didn't even matter that much, because guys were forced to guard him out there, because of his proven reputation as a 3pt shooter.

The more pertinent point is according to f4p themselves Shai's postseason knocked him down to sub-kobe, thereby rendering a favorable comparison to Shai kind of pointless for hyping Jordan.

Yes, well I'm not opposed to the idea Jordan is better than Shai. I'm sure I'll rank MJ over peak Shai in fact. It's just an odd comp because few people think peak SGA is as good as peak Jokic or Giannis (or even Luka), so saying that Jordan = modern SGA doesn't really advance his case much.

[OhayoKD]

Apg isn't an indication of whether you are a point guard, and what sort of offence you run. Jordan was not the point guard during the Bulls 3-peat.

The 3pt analysis is too simplistic. Shai takes completely different types of shots to Jordan. Jordan was shooting when he was wide open, because nobody really guarded the 3pt shot back then. Today, defences are geared around stopping the 3. Shai may be relatively low volume, but the ability to hit the 3 is essential. If opens up everything for him. If guys can just give you a cushion and focus on your drive, it's so much easier to defend you. Because Shai is a legit threat from 3, guys guard him, and when they scramble to cover his 3 he can punish them by going right by them to the basket. It's why for years Harden was so hard to guard. Guys couldn't press too much because he might blow by you, but also had to be wary of not being close enough because he might take a pull up (or stepback) 3. That tension in the guys you are defended by is huge. This playoffs, Shai's shots didn't go in as much as the year before... but it didn't even matter that much, because guys were forced to guard him out there, because of his proven reputation as a 3pt shooter.

The more pertinent point is according to f4p themselves Shai's postseason knocked him down to sub-kobe, thereby rendering a favorable comparison to Shai kind of pointless for hyping Jordan.

Yes, well I'm not opposed to the idea Jordan is better than Shai. I'm sure I'll rank MJ over peak Shai in fact. It's just an odd comp because few people think peak SGA is as good as peak Jokic or Giannis (or even Luka), so saying that Jordan = modern SGA doesn't really advance his case much.

Yep.

Also no idea why people are still trying to push Jordan as a high-volume creator in the triangle. He was not. It's a large part of why the Bulls drop-off in 94 (especially if we count games with Pippen) even compared to 92 was not near GOAT-level offensively, The tape is out already:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=118749716#p118749716

Even in 13 assist games with significantly more possessions bringing the ball up, Jordan is getting worked multiple times over by a 2007 Lebron.

Jordan did not create at volume in the triangle. His assists are largely coming from single coverage much like Durant on the Warriors. It is what it is.

[f4p]

so i like your first 2 choices, but this is the internet so i'll focus on the disagreement.

#5 Steph Curry (2017 > 2016 > 2015). I was going to put Hakeem, then Duncan, but I can’t talk about players revolutionising the game, and not put Curry in the same grouping. All 3 of my votes go to players whose impact goes beyond the 48 minutes on the parquet. Curry has stretched defences to the brink in the opposite manner to Shaq, and one could argue his gravity is even more effective as it enables the paint to be open for offensive rebounds and cutters. 27.4 pp75, +7.1 rTS%. Team rOrtg of +6.8. Top 6 playmaker. Playoffs; 28.5, +10.6%. But all of that means nothing. Teams were leaving Kevin Durant wide open because they were worried about Stephen Curry (6.3% wide open shots in 2016 vs 12.2% wide open shots in 2017 playoffs for KD). That is the definition of gravity. +8.21 OPIPM, +0.11 DPIPM, +8.32 PIPM. 21.6 Wins Added.

Yes, the 2017 Warriors were probably the greatest team of all time. They were a +7.7 rOrtg and -5.8 dRtg in the playoffs. The reason great teams are great, is usually because they have a transcendent talent on the roster. Curry transcended basketball, like Shaq and MJ before him.

i feel like steph posts (since Doctor MJ focused on it too) a lot of times fall back on "revolutionized the game" like even they don't really believe he belongs this high (i mean, i guess you actually said as much so maybe we agree). ignoring that analytics far and away are the reason we shoot so many 3's today (steph certainly isn't why baseball players do "three true outcomes" or football coaches go for it on 4th down all the time) and basically no #1 option plays like steph and no team really seems to run the warriors offense, ignoring what actually happened on the court just seems wrong in this context. your other 2 picks that revolutionized the game actually dominated without necessarily super favorable circumstances (and basically at that level for 5 or 6 other playoffs), and the other 2 people you mentioned also did (duncan and hakeem).

it also just feels like really wanting steph's 2016 regular season to be followed by his level of play in the 2017 playoffs. as opposed to the 2016 playoffs being a massive disappointment and the 2017 regular season being a sizable step back, especially in terms of giving a crap.

we always hear that teams were just ignoring kevin durant to guard steph, but steph also sees all of his best playoff stats, by a WIDE margin, in the 2017 playoffs playing next to KD. if teams were truly trying so hard to stop steph, this likely isn't the case (i mean, they're always trying hard to stop steph, i just don't see this being special).

2017 vs 2nd best playoffs
PER: 27.1 vs 24.5
TS%: 65.9% vs 62.0% (technically 63.6% but that was this year and lg TS% is way higher)
WS48: 0.272 vs 0.228
BPM: 9.7 vs 8.8

those are fairly huge gaps. steph's numbers fell off fairly significantly from the regular season in the 2015 playoffs and his 67 win team needed a lineup change and a talking to from draymond after game 3 of the finals to barely beat an injured lebron team. they fell off a cliff in the 2016 playoffs. 412th out of 416 playoff runs that i tracked. they fell off almost as hard as 2016 in 2018 and needed cp3's predictable playoff hamstring injury to possibly save them (one year after theoretically being the greatest team ever). the numbers only fell off a little in 2019, but only because the 2019 regular season were already down numbers. they also fell off in 2013 and 2014.

only one run before steph's 13th season in the league in 2022 stands out as "resilient". the "i'm playing for the most loaded roster ever and there's really no pressure and KD is attracting attention" run in 2017. it's too much of a coincidence that the first run with really all-time great numbers is the game on easy mode. it feels less like a culmination of a bunch of great playoffs and more like a landmine side-stepped. especially since the very next year is another big drop off from the regular season and nearly losing with the best team ever. i mean even to focus in more, in the spurs series, steph had his best TS% series ever. who also did? kevin durant. same series, after kawhi gets hurt. so for them, it was like the game on easy mode and you made the AI bench it's best player.

even the greatest team ever stuff. i would say 2 things. were they really? and the refrain is often "well, lots of teams have been talented, only the warriors were that good", but has any team ever actually been as talented as the warriors?

were they more dominant in the playoffs than the 2001 lakers? i wouldn't say so, especially factoring in the kawhi injury. that was at least one more loss. and who knows if the spurs sneak in another win with kawhi. there's certainly nothing like the 2001 WCF on their resume. the 2017 cavs were very good but a +6.8 net rating isn't a +25 net rating. did they really combine a 72-10 regular season domination with starting 14-1 in the playoffs like the '96 bulls (bulls tripped up after being up 3-0 in the finals but this would get back to not having to face kawhi and get more losses).

i mean those 2 teams seem like they are just as good. one just had 2 ATG's and role players. the bulls had 3 ATG's but rodman was already 35 and even MJ was 33. the warriors? they had 2 MVP's, one of whom was 29 and at his peak (steph). the other was also 29 and if he wasn't at his absolute peak, he was within shouting distance (KD). and then i assume draymond and his DPOY credentials and enormous impact profile need no introduction on this board. he was 27, smack in the middle of his peak. and he was as synergistic with steph and KD as it's going to get. klay might be slightly overrated but is probably at least top 150 or 200 all time and was 27, smack in the middle of his peak. and klay might not really be the 4th best player. because they had iggy, who Doctor MJ just made a thread showing how good he looks by cumulative RAPM. he was basically a mini-draymond in terms of being a generational wing defender who also had a high IQ to make the passes in the offense. at least iggy was a little on the older side.

forget 2 MVP's and a DPOY at their peak ages, but 2 more all-star level guys and they all have skillsets that fit perfectly together? i mean, they probably should be the best ever. it feels like a talent/fit situation that would be akin to just plopping hakeem onto the 90's bulls.

the only teams i can think of that might have a claim for being as talented and not living up to it are the Heatles and the Wilt/West/Baylor lakers. on paper, the Lakers are like 3 of the 5 greatest players ever (at the time) on one team, but 1969 baylor was not anything like early career baylor and i'm not sure how high people even are on him. and volumes have been written on wilt and whether he was done wrong by popular perception or just didn't fit in all situations. but i can buy them as a disappointment.

on paper, the Heatles look like a similar situation, what with 3 guys all at their prime ages essentially. but the biggest difference is wade and lebron seemed to fit together as friends much moreso than as basketball players. they are as carbon copy as you are going to get. and bosh is probably already overrated when we dig into impact metrics, but even then he was basically getting all of his value by needing the ball, making him basically the opposite of the synergistic add-ons that draymond and rodman were by getting all of their value from defense or even all of their offensive value (draymond) from passing. and on top of those 3 for the heat, you basically had replacement level players in year 1 and a few nice role players by year 2 before wade was completely shot. so they don't really seem the same (they still won a title, so it's not like they sucked). the warriors had a whole other secret top 100 guy like Iggy and another all-star in klay.

and of course, it seems to be a one year phenomenom, because the warriors were almost surpassed by harden and cp3 and role players just one year later. so either those 2 need to be a lot higher or the 2017 warriors maybe aren't quite as great as they seemed.

i know people really want to give steph a high peak, but he doesn't ever actually seem to put it all together from game 1 to the last game of the finals and basically nothing indicates he had any level of "best peak ever" playoff resilience until well into his career (and even 2022 is more outperforming a bad regular season than anything ATG since those weren't even the "2nd best playoff" numbers I listed above).

[BusywithBball]

I think it is finally Michael’s turn. Great stats and incredible teams. There have been three three-peats only after Bill Russell and Jordan led two. Respect Bill but I need offense also. Greatest scorer and a good defender. Jordan First. Year 1991

I must also put Tim Duncan ahead. On the analyse sent his defense over Kareem and Shaq looks incredible. I struggle to imagine Bill’s defense as so good to replace Duncan’s great scoring. So I will vote Duncan Second. Year 2003.

To make clear what makes me change I add web link:
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2469052&start=80

Bill Russell Third. Year 1962
Ultimate winner and greatest defender. I think he can fall no further and I wonder if I respect him enough.

[One_and_Done]

Voting Post

Reiterating my post for earlier spots and try to get more involved in the conversation. We've seen Lebron and Kareem go so far, but I still think these guys should be in the running.

The root idea here is that I think Russell's defensive impact is unprecedented stuff and that the dominance Boston exerted there with fairly weak offense (indeed, the WORST offense in the 64 regular season, among the 9 teams) is quite impressive to me. They killed the boards, they crushed it on D and they were really, really unremarkable on O. But it worked. Even if that strategy doesn't really work in the post-Russell eras, it did at the time, and that's vaguely insane. I feel like Jokic's inclusion is reasonably clear, even if one disagrees. That 2023 season was wild. With Magic, he was leading best-in-league-history kind of offenses and still crushing it with Old Kareem and without him. If not for the HIV situation, I feel like the first half of the 90s would have been very, very different, particularly as he developed his shot and his post game and was just putting people on an island and murdering them.

Obviously, decent amount of subjectivity involved in any of these things. The other nominees, guys like Duncan and Jordan and so forth, I can certainly see arguments for them (and there are some well-articulated defenses of their candidacy), but I wanted to generate some discussion about Russell's defensive impact and non-scorers, and then efficient-scoring playmakers and such.

Player #1: Bill Russell 1964

Best defense we've ever seen. Led the league in rebounding in the RS and then again in the PS (and went from like 25 to 27 rpg). Captained the team to a title with his dominant performance, after leading his team to the best record in the RS. We've never seen anything like Russell's era-relative impact defensively, nor anything like his team dominance. I don't subscribe to the idea that we should ignore earlier eras due to the differences between then and now, and Russell's run is the most dominant in league history, authored on the back of what he did as a rebounder and defender (and passer, at that).

Player #2: Magic Johnson 1990

Not quite Magic's scoring peak, but on top of his usual, he was bombing 3s, crushing it at the line, was a dominant playmaker, fully matured in his post game. One of his MVP seasons, and well-earned. An absolute unit leading another insane offense in his first season without Kareem.


Player #3: Nikola Jokic 2023

The wildest offensive RS we've ever seen, IMHO. A 25/12/10 season on 70% TS that turned into 30/14/10 still on 63% TS en route to a title and Finals MVP. Should have been the MVP. An insane mix of post game, shooting ability, court vision, rebounding and so forth.

HM: 2000 Shaq, 91 Jordan, 2016 Steph, 03 Duncan.

I find your criteria pretty baffling to be honest. You rank Russell high due to era dominance, while admitting he wouldn't be that great today, but then you have Jokic on your list who has had nothing like the era dominance of some others not named (e.g. Mikan). The logic doesn't seem internally consistent. Surely the distance in impact between Jokic and Shai, Giannis, and Luka is smaller than the difference in impact between Mikan and his nearest rivals.

[Ol Roy]

1. Michael Jordan: 1991 (1990>1992)

When Michael Jordan came into the league, the two best players (Magic Johnson and Larry Bird) quickly realized he was the best thing since sliced bread. And he still was 15 years later. Everyone at the time knew this. The best player during the NBA's golden era not being selected yet is a bit ridiculous. I realize this is about peak. Well, Jordan was very consistent. His long-lasting peak provides a menu of years to choose from. I'll choose 1991 for reasons well-explained by others, but I'm not going to split hairs with the surrounding years.

_

In the last thread, I decided to introduce David Robinson to the discussion. I'm going to expand a little on my thinking at this point of the voting process.

First, while my occasional posts on this forum usually involve defending an older player from hyperbolic diminishment of their abilities, I actually do have a bit of a preference for post-merger players.

Second, I also have a preference for bigs who dominate both offensively and defensively. In my view, Jordan and James are the only wings who have been able to break out of that value ceiling dominated by the two-way big men, and that's largely due to their own outlier athletic traits.

In narrowing down the best two-way bigs of the post-merger NBA (minus Kareem, who was just selected), we're left with a high tier of greats (in sequential order of debut): Olajuwon, Robinson, Garnett, and Duncan. I believe the differences between them are marginal, so I take no umbrage with how they are ranked.

When I'm evaluating them, I look at how they performed, and I also look at their situation and whether they were optimized. It's subjective, but I attempt to balance their attributes with the context. To lay it on the table, I don't believe Robinson was ever properly utilized in his prime. I don't believe Olajuwon was properly utilized until after he was 30. Ditto Garnett. I believe Duncan, while not perfectly utilized, had by far the best situation of the quartet.

So, I tend to pair Robinson and Garnett together. I view them as the best combinations of athleticism and BBIQ. I don't view their playoff exits as personal failings, but the final exhaustion of the extent that they could make their poorly constructed teams overachieve. They did a tremendous amount of carrying. Both were good passers, though Garnett was better. Both were good shooters, though Garnett was better.

Two areas that put the Admiral a bit ahead for me. One, his rim pressure. Robinson was fouled on 58% of his shot attempts. He was no flopper. That's the same frequency as Shaq (I'll use him for comparison here), and much, much higher than KG, Tim, and Hakeem. From the data we have, roughly 94% of Shaq's recorded shots came within 10 feet of the rim, while 62% of Robinson's recorded shots came within 10 feet.

Let's assume 90% of Robinson's shooting fouls came within 10 feet. I think that's fair. That means 85% of his shot attempts within 10 feet resulted in fouls. Using the same formula, we'd find that Shaq was fouled on 61% of his shot attempts within 10 feet. And while Shaq was a 53% FT shooter, Robinson knocked them down 74% of the time.

I think this tells us that Robinson was a generational finisher, and teams were helpless if he got free. Which is why teams had no choice but to double team him. Because the Spurs didn't have a great facilitator, Robinson's finishing ability was underutilized. Because the Spurs didn't have another scoring threat or particularly good outside shooting, that made those doubles unpunishable. Despite that, look at what he did. This is some of that context I mentioned.

OK, the other differentiator between Robinson and Garnett is their style of defense. Both were mobile, and both protected the rim. But while Garnett was a better perimeter defender, Robinson was a better rim protector and that is more valuable. He also had tremendous hands. Only Hakeem is the better stocks compiler; he and David stand above the rest.

Others are going to go into more detail with KG, his skills and team deficiencies, and I look forward to it!

2. David Robinson: 1994 (1995>1996)

He led his team in assists, led the league in points, and was arguably the best defender in the league. Rodman swallowed up some of his rebounds, otherwise he probably would have led that too.

3. Kevin Garnett: 2004 (2003>2005)

MVP. Similarly dominant in all facets of the game. Led the league in points and rebounds. Over 5 APG.

Coming up next: Olajuwon, then Duncan.

Why did I rank those two lower? No slams here. Again, I'm trying to distinguish on the margins. I have Hakeem a little bit lower on the BBIQ scale and Tim a little lower on the ability scale.