RealGM 2025 Greatest Peaks Project #5 — 2003 Tim Duncan

AEnigma · Post #1 » by **AEnigma** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 9:46 pm

Voting will close sometime after 18:00PM EST on Sunday, July 27. I have no issue extending the time to vote so long as discussion is strong, but please try to vote within the first three days.

Official ballots must include 3 different player peaks (name + year) and at least one line of reasoning for each of them. Votes which fail to do this will not be counted. Keep in mind that the expectation is to generally try to offer more than the bare minimum: reasoning such as “GOAT player in his GOAT season,” absent any other engagement or commentary in the thread, contributes exceedingly little to the primary purpose of the project, which is the thought and discussion behind the comparisons rather than the vote results themselves. If you want to distinguish among the “top” candidates past your three-man ballot, you may do so — but please do not do so excessively, and if you are doing so, be clear that is what you are doing.

Example #1
1. 2004 Andrei Kirilenko: Explanation
2. 2006 Shawn Marion: Explanation
3. 2004 Metta Artest: Explanation

You may also list alternate peak seasons from your three players. This is an optional step included to give clearer representation in the event that consensus is split on the choice of peak seasons. Do not list every good season a player has; the intent of this feature is to help settle disputes between specific seasons contending for selection as that player’s peak.

Example #2
1. 2004 Andrei Kirilenko: Explanation
2. 2006 Shawn Marion (> 2003 > 2007 = 2005): Explanation
3. 2004 Metta Artest (> 2003 > 2006): Explanation

Ballots need not follow this exact format, but I request you format your ballot in such a way that a) it is obvious that post is your voting post, b) a quick glance is sufficient for me to tally your vote, and c) the order of your alternate year preferences is clear. If you decide to change your vote before the votes are tallied, please edit that same voting post rather than posting a new ballot (although you are encouraged to make separate posts about what changes you made and why).

Each thread will last at least 72 hours before I begin tallying. If there is no simple majority, then the winning player and that player’s winning season will be determined with a Condorcet tally. Players can be selected from the NBA, ABA, NBL, or BAA, with seasons from 1947-2025.

Below is the list of approved voters for this thread:

Spoiler:

Anyone may post on-topic thoughts in the thread, but only approved voters will have their ballots counted. Requests to join the project can be made on the general discussion thread; however, unless you were included on that initial notification list or otherwise have an established history voting in forum projects, you will need to wait until the next thread to be given consideration as an approved voter. Finally, meta commentary or questions should be restricted to the above-linked general thread to keep voting threads focused on discussing peaks.

#1 — 2013 LeBron James
#2 — 1974 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#3 — 1991 Michael Jordan
#4 — 1994 Hakeem Olajuwon
#5 — ???

One_and_Done · Post #2 » by **One_and_Done** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 9:47 pm

1. Tim Duncan (02, then 03)
2. Shaq (00)
3. Bird (84, 86, 85)

Duncan is an easy choice for me. As I elaborated on at length in the RPOY and top 100 project, Duncan’s impact is slept on by people who only remember late career Duncan. In truth, Duncan was never at his absolute peak again after his 04 injury. He was still amazing over the rest of his prime from 04-07, maybe 95% as good as 02 and 03, but the drop was noticeable. That 2002 Spurs team wouldn’t have won 20 games without Duncan, let alone 58. Everyone on his support cast was old and washed, young and inexperienced, or highly limited. That he managed to carry a slightly better Spurs support cast to the title the next year remains one of the GOAT carry jobs of all-time. Defensively, Duncan is IMHO the GOAT, over Russell, Hakeem, etc.

Duncan 02 had nothing around him. He anchored the Spurs entire defence, and almost every offensive possession was run through him. In the playoffs, he matched up with Shaq and guarded him 1 on 1 for much/most of the series, and the stats speak for themselves. Duncan clearly outplayed Shaq.

Shaq 00 isn’t controversial. He has one of the most dominant peaks of all-time. His defence holds him back, but what he’s giving you on offense is so impactful that his foibles there don’t matter (except in comparison to someone like peak Duncan).

Not sure about vote #3 yet. We'll see who gets traction.

EDIT: I have tentatively gone with Bird at #3, who needs a shout out. I barely rank him top 10, but his absolute peak was incredible. His lift is particularly evident when looking at the 32 game improvement of the 1980 Celtics, which was overwhelmingly driven by Bird.

I think it's notable that during the 80s, when both Bird and Hakeem were in their prime, there was no question as to who the better player was.

70sFan · Post #3 » by **70sFan** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 9:51 pm

I hope nobody will be mad at me for copying my last post about Shaq.

So, since most of my recent posts about Shaq can be perceived as very negative, I decided to make a short post about one particular that made Shaq such a good player.

1. Off-ball game

When we think about off-ball players, we usually have guys like Reggie Miller or Steph Curry in mind - and for a good reason. Movement shooters are extremely valuable. They create space on the floor and force defenses to move all the time. It is not the only way to confuse defenses though and Shaq is the perfect example of that and it's not just caused by double teams in the post.

Let's take a look at this screenshot from the 2001 finals. The defense is set, everyone is guarded and there is no way to take advantage of that situation, right?

Well, you'd be shocked that it turned into Lakers dunk in 1 second:

Watch on YouTube

Shaq created open dunk in split second by just a quick off-ball move. It's very simple, yet extremely rare to see such scenarios. Of course this is not one-time play, Shaq did it consistently:

Watch on YouTube

These plays were against Dikembe Mutombo, 7'2 guys with insane length. Another example:

Watch on YouTube

The hard thing is that you just can't scheme against it, not on consistent basis. As long as you put semi-respectable perimeter players around Shaq, such baskets are inevitable.

Of course that as only one-trick would be very useful, but Shaq had far more than that.

In this possession, O'Neal hunted for this lob opportunity again, but the passer was defended tightly, so he came back with very good low post position, but his teammate moved the ball out of Shaq's zone. You may think that the Pacers succeeded, as they denied the inside opportunity, but Shaq just outworked his man inside, got a rebound over him and dunked on help defender like they were childs:

Watch on YouTube

This brings us another incredible dimension of his off-ball play - offensive rebounding. Shaq wasn't statistically the best offensive rebounder ever, but he was still very good (14.0 ORB% in 2000-01 postseasons across 39 games is fine, to say the least). He might be the best ever at converting these opportunities to inside points though. Just a few ridiculous examples below:

Watch on YouTube

Look here how he just grabed the rebound over Duncan (excellent rebounder with strong lower body) and found his teammate inside with the nice pass:

Watch on YouTube

Of course, there is his famous ability to establish deep position inside that is unmatched in the league history (maybe Artis Gilmore, but on a lower volume). Don't focus on the shot alone, take a look how hard he worked to get there:

Watch on YouTube

This time I will be kind for good old Mutombo and I won't show constantly repeated clips.He could do that even against massive dudes like old Sabonis:

Watch on YouTube

Granted, Sabonis mass gave him some resistance and sometimes it was just enough for help to come:

Watch on YouTube

but to be honest, that didn't happen too often.
In short - Shaq generated inside points against set defenses like nobody else in the league history and he didn't even have the ball in his hands. His off-ball activity also made fit him very nicely with perimeter creators like Kobe (or Penny).

Of course, his lob finishing ability (GOAT-level at that) could make him a potential great roll-man as well, but this part of the game wasn't utilized that much in the early 2000s.

I think I will stop now, but maybe I will come back with some of his defensive strengths (especially man defense), if anyone is interested of course.

Post #4 » by **tsherkin** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 10:00 pm

Reiterating my previous work for the voting post.

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.

Bolding my HMs to make AEnigma's life easier.

ceoofkobefans · Post #5 » by **ceoofkobefans** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 10:27 pm

just gonna copy paste since my ballot is the exact same. Will go into more depth on shaq vs duncan if needed

Here's the ballot

1. 2000 Shaquille O'Neal

00 is the one year shaq combines his sub goat clear all time O with elite defense which is enough for him to be my 3rd highest peak

2. 2003 Tim Duncan

All time two way impact floor raising a very mid team to best in the league level, rising in the playoffs, and capping it off with arguably the best finals by a non bron mj shaq player ever.

3. 1964 Wilt Chamberlain

One of the goat floor raising seasons. led a young and below average warriors team to a 48-34 record with a 54 win pace by SRS (+4.41) where he averaged 36.9 PPG (1st in the league by 5.5 points a game) 22.3 RPG (2nd only to bill russell) 5 apg (6th in the league) with a 53.7 TS% (+4.8 rTS% which was good for 7th in the league) and took said warriors to the finals where they lost in 5 to the boston celtics who had 3 all stars and 3 of the other 9 all nba members that season other than Wilt; Bill Russell, John Havlicek (All NBA but not all star), Sam Jones (All star and 9th in MVP voting but not all nba), and Tom Heinsohn. While they lost in 5 it wasn't some lost cause of a series despite the talent disparity (Only lost by an average of 4 points per game, won their only game by 24, and the last two games of the series were lost by 3 and 6 points). Wilt averaged 29/2/28 on 50.9 TS% (+4.7 rTS% based on the celtics estimated TS% allowed in the RS) and the warriors had a 40.3 TS% (-5.9 rTS%) outside of wilt (not to mention would be finals mvp sam jones averaged 21.2 ppg and 2.8 apg on 60 TS% which is absurd efficiency for 1964). The warriors had a below average offense which will be used against wilt but I think that says more about his help than the offensive ability of the leagues best scorer and offensive rebounder who averaged 5 assists on top of that, but I also don't think Wilt's offense is quite the level of the Offensive GOATs or the guys a tier or 2 below (we've seen guys like MJ LeBron Kobe etc lead above average and even high level offenses without help offensively) but he's still an elite Offensive player (somewhere in the top 50 all time) and a top 5 or so defender ever which is enough to be the 6th highest peak ever for me. Could see the argument for him over Duncan or Kareem (mayve shaq but it takes some convincing), but also could see the argument for hakeem over him (maybe steph jokic or kobe with some convincing)

Reardonwd · Post #6 » by **Reardonwd** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 10:31 pm

Peaks #5 voting post:

1. 2016 Stephen Curry: Led the league in volume and in efficiency in an unprecedented offensive season that should comfortably rank among the best individual seasons in addition to his insane gravity that improved all of his teammates’ skills.

2. 2025 Jokic: 30-13-10, one of the best rebounders in the league in addition to one of the best scorers and probably the best passer, undeniable offensive player who is dragging half-teams to the brink of the conference finals multiple years after winning the title.

3. 2003 Tim Duncan: The most complete player of the early 2000s, a dominant, dominant playoff defender while also being a fantastic passer and paint scorer, perhaps the best floor-raiser of the 2000s.

OhayoKD · Post #7 » by **OhayoKD** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 11:06 pm

tsherkin wrote:Reiterating my previous work for the voting post.

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: [b]2000 Shaq91 Jordan, 2016 Steph, 03 Duncan.

Bolding my HMs to make AEnigma's life easier.

I've been noticing a lack of substantial argumentation for those who prefer Shaq over Duncan. So i'd like to use this as a jumping off point to raise some queries for those who think Shaq peaked higher.

If Shaq peaked higher than Duncan,

1. Why does Duncan consistently smash shaq in RAPM over basically any time frame despite
-> peaking with a similar co-star with way more overlap than any of shaq's
-> averaging way more minutes than any of his team's other starters
-> not getting to play with coaching rapm outlier + won 8 titles without Shaq Phil Jackson

2. Why did the Spurs improve in the playoffs in 2003 while the 2000 Lakers got worse?

3 Why did Shaq-anchored Lakers defense turn to below average in the year he's praised for being an "elite defender"

4. Why is 03 Duncan so far quadrupling 2000 Shaq in how many possessions he's the primary paint-protector and still being way more effective

5. Why is Duncan also the doubling the number of possessions he's the primary perimeter defender more and still more effective:

Spoiler:

I'm very very curious actually what basis people have for thinking anything Shaq is doing offensively makes up for this gigantic gulf on defense even when RAPM, being strongly biased towards Shaq in this comparison, strongly prefers Duncan?

I'd be especially interested to hear it from anyone who has Bill Russell at #1

Top10alltime · Post #8 » by **Top10alltime** » Thu Jul 24, 2025 11:52 pm

OhayoKD wrote:I'd be especially interested to hear it from anyone who has Bill Russell at #1

Bill Russell shouldn't be considered for #1 though, I don't understand why he should.

trelos6 · Post #9 » by **trelos6** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 2:24 am

Compiled some career xRAPM data for the contenders. These are more for career conversations, but you can still see single season peaks. (Defense is inverted, so + is good)

And LeBron for comparison.

trelos6 · Post #10 » by **trelos6** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 2:40 am

A couple more graphics courtesy of Backpicks.

Regular season

Post season

SHAQ32 · Post #11 » by **SHAQ32** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 2:42 am

Hakeem #4, wow!

Djoker · Post #12 » by **Djoker** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 3:12 am

trelos6 wrote:Compiled some career xRAPM data for the contenders. These are more for career conversations, but you can still see single season peaks. (Defense is inverted, so + is good)

And LeBron for comparison.

Great figures!

I was wondering... Is xRAPM scaled meaning we can actually compare different years?

Elpolo_14 · Post #13 » by **Elpolo_14** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 4:52 am

trelos6 wrote:Compiled some career xRAPM data for the contenders. These are more for career conversations, but you can still see single season peaks. (Defense is inverted, so + is good)

And LeBron for comparison.

KaiGee - Jhokic - LeJuan are really men Among Boy in term of xRAPM. Even tho Currie is surprisingly highter I what I initially thought.

If you don't mind, Can you share the XRAPM of KD Giannis CP3 Harden and SGA

Elpolo_14 · Post #14 » by **Elpolo_14** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 4:56 am

Top10alltime wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:I'd be especially interested to hear it from anyone who has Bill Russell at #1

Bill Russell shouldn't be considered for #1 though, I don't understand why he should.

Best Defender to ever touch the court ( Most important skill at that period of time ). Goat-like Impact and Signal to uplifted his team. Also his ability Translate to the playoff both as Favorite or Underdog

Elpolo_14 · Post #15 » by **Elpolo_14** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 5:16 am

I just went back to reread the previous thread #4 to see who was the winner of the 4th spot " Hakeem" which is not that surprising in itself Cause I was having him at 5th Peak behind Tim Duncan ( Actually 4th all time ) And the Voting results come in a really Close battle for Hakeem to win *it was neck and neck* so that make this project even more enjoyable. I Also like how wholesome the conversation about Shaq - Duncan - Hakeem and the criteria to evaluate the progression of the game was in #4 thread.

The premises of my post here is to ask what was the "Traits / Production / Impact or anything you value" that made you guys have Hakeem edging out ( for people who voted Hakeem ofc ). My Post is not a Complain or whining about the results at all ( I agree with whatever the results is ). I'm just trying to learn + see each PoV of our Panelist and try to have a conversation.

trelos6 · Post #16 » by **trelos6** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 5:18 am

Djoker wrote:
trelos6 wrote:Compiled some career xRAPM data for the contenders. These are more for career conversations, but you can still see single season peaks. (Defense is inverted, so + is good)

Great figures!

I was wondering... Is xRAPM scaled meaning we can actually compare different years?

Off the website

xRAPM is one the player impact metrics, and used to be ESPN’s Real Plus Minus (RPM). The inventor of the xRAPM, Jeremias Engelman has launched a website to publish xRAPM stats.

Conventional adjusted plus-minus does a poor job of predicting the outcome of future games, particularly when you have less than a season of data. Adding regularization greatly improves accuracy, and some players’ plus-minus ratings change dramatically.

With “Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus” (RAPM), the goal is to provide more accurate results by employing a special technique called “ridge regression” (a.k.a. regularization). It significantly reduces standard errors in adjusted plus-minus (APM).
The enhancement with the RAPM is a Bayesian technique in which the data is combined with theoretical beliefs regarding reasonable, large data ranges for the parameters in order to produce more accurate models. That is what ridge regression does.

RAPM is about twice as accurate as an APM using standard regression and using 3 years of data, where the weighting of past years of data and the reference player minutes cutoff has also been carefully optimized.

Elpolo_14 · Post #17 » by **Elpolo_14** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 5:24 am

70sFan wrote:I hope nobody will be mad at me for copying my last post about Shaq.

So, since most of my recent posts about Shaq can be perceived as very negative, I decided to make a short post about one particular that made Shaq such a good player.

1. Off-ball game

When we think about off-ball players, we usually have guys like Reggie Miller or Steph Curry in mind - and for a good reason. Movement shooters are extremely valuable. They create space on the floor and force defenses to move all the time. It is not the only way to confuse defenses though and Shaq is the perfect example of that and it's not just caused by double teams in the post.

Let's take a look at this screenshot from the 2001 finals. The defense is set, everyone is guarded and there is no way to take advantage of that situation, right?

Well, you'd be shocked that it turned into Lakers dunk in 1 second:

Watch on YouTube

Shaq created open dunk in split second by just a quick off-ball move. It's very simple, yet extremely rare to see such scenarios. Of course this is not one-time play, Shaq did it consistently:

Watch on YouTube

These plays were against Dikembe Mutombo, 7'2 guys with insane length. Another example:

Watch on YouTube

The hard thing is that you just can't scheme against it, not on consistent basis. As long as you put semi-respectable perimeter players around Shaq, such baskets are inevitable.

Of course that as only one-trick would be very useful, but Shaq had far more than that.

In this possession, O'Neal hunted for this lob opportunity again, but the passer was defended tightly, so he came back with very good low post position, but his teammate moved the ball out of Shaq's zone. You may think that the Pacers succeeded, as they denied the inside opportunity, but Shaq just outworked his man inside, got a rebound over him and dunked on help defender like they were childs:

Watch on YouTube

This brings us another incredible dimension of his off-ball play - offensive rebounding. Shaq wasn't statistically the best offensive rebounder ever, but he was still very good (14.0 ORB% in 2000-01 postseasons across 39 games is fine, to say the least). He might be the best ever at converting these opportunities to inside points though. Just a few ridiculous examples below:

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Look here how he just grabed the rebound over Duncan (excellent rebounder with strong lower body) and found his teammate inside with the nice pass:

Watch on YouTube

Of course, there is his famous ability to establish deep position inside that is unmatched in the league history (maybe Artis Gilmore, but on a lower volume). Don't focus on the shot alone, take a look how hard he worked to get there:

Watch on YouTube

This time I will be kind for good old Mutombo and I won't show constantly repeated clips.He could do that even against massive dudes like old Sabonis:

Watch on YouTube

Granted, Sabonis mass gave him some resistance and sometimes it was just enough for help to come:

Watch on YouTube

but to be honest, that didn't happen too often.
In short - Shaq generated inside points against set defenses like nobody else in the league history and he didn't even have the ball in his hands. His off-ball activity also made fit him very nicely with perimeter creators like Kobe (or Penny).

Of course, his lob finishing ability (GOAT-level at that) could make him a potential great roll-man as well, but this part of the game wasn't utilized that much in the early 2000s.

I think I will stop now, but maybe I will come back with some of his defensive strengths (especially man defense), if anyone is interested of course.

Your post are always instructive and very informative in a way that everyone could understand and use as base to analyze basketball in their own way( Which is awesome ). I Appreciate your efforts/ time you put in numerous Post + Tracking + Video compilation of the past ( especially the 60-70 ).

I wish you could have been free enough to be participating in the voting process but just by all the post you made it really help the discussion in this Project to be a lot better.

homecourtloss · Post #18 » by **homecourtloss** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 5:29 am

1. Duncan, 2003

Who was on this team creating this type of team? Duncan’s plus offense and GOAT level defense lifted a team to immense heights. I cannot think of very many scenarios in which this player wouldn't have the same results—1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s (proven), 2010s (proven), space and pace era, etc. Immense lift on both sides of the ball especially the playoffs. great regular and post season in which he shouldered a heavy load and didn’t falter. Impact metrics look great, especially in the playoffs. Defense is replicable in many different eras while his offense was continuously resilient throughout the playoffs. If we’re doing a “Veil of Ignorance” type simulation, I feel very comfortable with this version of Duncan being capable of providing championship impact regardless of era and quite inelastic in terms of championships added over replacement regardless of surrounding cast.

Playoffs:

+3.8 rORtg on, -14.2 rORtg off (offense strong enough with him on, absolutely nothing with him off)
-9.7 rDRtg on, +8.9 rDRtg off (defense incredibly strong with him on, garbage with him off)

2. Shaq, 2000

The gravity at the rim, plus defense, high minutes played, only short coming is FT shooting. The Lakers’ shortcomings were really obvious whenever he wasn’t on the court and that was pretty much the case every season except 2001 playoffs.

Playoffs:

+8.8 rORtg on, -5.1 rORtg off (very strong offense on, very weak offense with him off)
-1.2 rDRtg on, +9 rDRtg off (solid even defense with him on, terrible with him off)

3. 1967 Wilt (> 1964)

Found a balance between scoring, playmaking, and defense that led to at the time the best team ever. One wonders what Wilt in this type of team structure and role would have done earlier in his career. Great offensive efficiency even while having his primary defender in over 70% of his games being ATG defenders Russ and Thurmond, while also. providing ATG defense.

f4p · Post #19 » by **f4p** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 5:44 am

trelos6 wrote:
Djoker wrote:
trelos6 wrote:Compiled some career xRAPM data for the contenders. These are more for career conversations, but you can still see single season peaks. (Defense is inverted, so + is good)

Great figures!

I was wondering... Is xRAPM scaled meaning we can actually compare different years?

Off the website

xRAPM is one the player impact metrics, and used to be ESPN’s Real Plus Minus (RPM).

hmm, xRAPM is just that steph curry RPM stat from espn? that's less than ideal since i don't recall ever thinking steph was 40% better than lebron or kyle lowry was the best player in the world.

trelos6 · Post #20 » by **trelos6** » Fri Jul 25, 2025 8:26 am

xRAPM's for some more players.