Top 25 peaks of the 2001-25: #1-#2 Spots

[70sFan]

Alright, I guess it is now time to vote. Before that I will share a few things regarding my criteria and how they influence my final choices.

1. Let's start with the fact that despite the project focusing on one-year peaks, I actually weigh surrounding seasons a big amount. I don't like the idea of separating what happened in the one "peak" season from the rest of player's prime. Of course there are situations when it is necessary to focus on the single year (like Walton), but I still want to see as big of a sample as possible and lack of consistency hurts given player in my evaluation.

2. I really like the discussion so far and plenty of data-based arguments have been provided, for which I am really thankful. With that in mind, I will focus more on my amateur tracking eye and what I collected throughout the years for the simple reason - I don't think at this stage of the voting one player clearly separates himself from the rest data-wise. The amount of long, excellent posts in this thread resulting in different lists only supports that. I want to point out that I don't mean to ignore stats - quite the opposite, I will use stats in my explanation - but I just don't think you can separate one player from another using only stats.

Without waiting longer, let's start my list

1. 2011/12 LeBron James (HM: 2008/09, 2012/13)



So the start isn't surprising, but don't mistake that with an easy choice. I considered at least 2 another guys I have in my next spots.

LeBron James is well known to everybody and smarter people than me presented his case. I will just add one thing that puts him on the top for me - the first point I mentioned on my criteria. LeBron is a longevity GOAT and I say it in a positive manner - he has an insane amount of top tier levels. You can basically pick any of his top ~8 seasons and he'd compete for the number 1 spot anyway: 2009, 2010, 2012-14, 2016-18. Hell, some even consider 2020 that high and although I wouldn't, I understand the rationales behind that logic. I think the sheer amount of amazing RS and PS basketball from James just puts him at the absolute top on that list, even though I am not really sure if he peaked 100% higher than my next players.

Why 2012? Well, in the case of someone with so many great seasons I simply decided to pick the most well-rounded one of his career. I know that some people don't like that version of James due to his poor 3P shooting in the postseason, but to me the fact that he was so freaking incredible without his usual jumpshot almost worked to his advantage. Besides, I think the "no shooting" argument is clearly overstated, these are his midrange numbers (numbers per nba.com):

2009 RS: 36.8% on 6.5 FGA
2010 RS: 38.8% on 6.4 FGA
2012 RS: 42.3% on 7.2 FGA
2013 RS: 43.2% on 5.3 FGA
2014 RS: 38.5% on 4.2 FGA
2016 RS: 37.5% on 4.1 FGA
2017 RS: 36.2% on 3.6 FGA
2018 RS: 38.9% on 3.7 FGA

2009 PS: 47.4% on 6.7 FGA
2010 PS: 38.3% on 5.5 FGA
2012 PS: 35.9% on 6.3 FGA
2013 PS: 37.2% on 5.3 FGA
2014 PS: 41.7% on 4.8 FGA
2016 PS: 37.3% on 3.6 FGA
2017 PS: 37.3% on 3.3 FGA
2018 PS: 48.8% on 5.5 FGA

Taking everything into account, I think 2012 was the best midrange shooting RS for James and although his efficiency dropped in the playoffs, it was still within the range of typical James performance. I just think people gets caught up too much with 3P% and TS%. 2012 was a very rough season for offensive stars and James did incredible things against quality competition.

I really like James at the 4 position, playing the mixture of PG and bigman on offense. I also think that position suits him the most on defense, which is why I prefer Miami version over 2009 for example.

Sidenote, but it's not surprising that two best James scoring postseason runs (2009 and 2018) were driven by outlier midrange shooting efficiency.

My two next choices would be 2009 and 2013. Although I do think that 2013 struggles against the Spurs (truly ATG defensive team) are a bit overstated at times, it's not like 2012 faced pushovers - 2012 Celtics were incredible defensively on their own. If we take a look at James PS offensive numbers, all these seasons are very close (sourced from thinkingbasketball.net):

2009: 37.2 pp75 on +9.5 rTS%, 12.0 BPM, +7.3 rORtg, 15.0 BoxCreation
2012: 31.6 pp75 on +6.5 rTS%, 8.2 BPM, +8.4 rORtg, 8.3 BoxCreation
2013: 27.6 pp75 on +7.3 rTS%, 8.3 BPM, +8.2 rORtg, 9.4 BoxCreation
2016: 28.2 pp75 on +5.7 rTS%, 9.5 BPM, +11.4 rORtg, 10.4 BoxCreation

I wouldn't consider any other season here. 2010 has the PS injury, 2017 and 2018 has RS coasting. I wouldn't pick 2014 simply because of the lower defensive motor. Then there are all ATG, top tier seasons and you'd fool yourself if you think that the choice between them is easy.

I am aware that 2012 version has less playmaking volume and not top tier efficiency, but he was probably the best defensively in his career and I just like that role for LeBron more than an ball-dominant P&R maestro of the late 2010s or oversized SG with GOAT athleticism from the late 2000s. You can nitpick any hole you want, but all these versions led to remarkable offensive results (and unlike late 2010s Cavs, 2012 Heat was a defensive minded team), all were utterly dominant and I don't find any reason choose any season over my favorite version of LeBron. I think there are two things that made James GOAT candidate - his physical dominance and his mind. 2012 is a perfect sweetspot for these two, though I guess 2013 is up there (for RS alone, I'd take 2013 - it's mind blowing how ridiculous he was back then).

I will note that if you want to take a look at offense only, both 2014 and 2018 have extremely strong cases for the best offensive seasons ever. I just think you need to take two-way monster to stay at the top in such a stacked competition.

2. 2002/03 Tim Duncan (HM: 2001/02)



My basketball idol, possibly the greatest two-way player the league has ever seen... and he's still not recognized as such. Maybe it is because he got the label of the "greatest PF in history" and ironically that puts him out of the discussion for the best true bigmen of all-time. That's unfortunate, because Duncan had 100% center's body, played center's game and had two-way impact of the best centers the league has ever seen.

Standing at +/- 6'10 barefeet and peaking around 260 lbs, Duncan was bigger than many of the ATG "true" centers, like Hakeem or Russell. He played even bigger than that, due to the two things that separated him from the pack - extremely strong and balanced base + insane standing reach. I don't have any verified data on Duncan's reach or wingspan, but it's silly how ridiculously easy it was for him to dominate based on his body type. Of course, that would not work without his great basketball IQ and I truly believe he was one of the best ever at that.

So far, I tracked 35 Duncan games from 2002 and 2003 seasons. I still have 5 2003 finals games left, but the sample started to stabilize. We all know his numbers and his postseason raise, but I want to go a bit further with the scoring breakdown.

Duncan was actually quite versatile offensive player. A lot of people view him as the last dominant post-up heavy guy (rightfully, he was very good), but I think it sells him a bit short. In my sample, Duncan averaged 19.3 FGA, only slightly higher value than the average postseason numbers. Out of them, "only" 7.9 FGA came from the post up possessions. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot when you use 2025 lenses, but it's nothing when you compare it to the ridiculous number of 15 FGA from 2000-01 Shaq (46 games sample) or the earlier era guys. Duncan wasn't a straight up post player, he was used on a number of ways: spot up isolations, P&R game, rebounds, even transition. My sample shows him taking around 2.5 FGA from P&R and he didn't have a reliable perimeter creator at that time. At the same time, he also ran P&Rs as the ball-handler with Robinson quite effectively in limited possessions. Duncan's handles are generally very underrated, there are few centers that stood out more relative to the era in that regard (one of them will join the voting next):

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxIz6pBdC9-se5et24jdSPJhUx386DBzTF?si=IY-zf9lpIkjuOXBy

He wasn't an elite shooter, but his midrange game was a reliable counter to his inside game (in most cases at least, will touch it later):

2001 RS: 41.6 FG% on 6.7 FGA
2002 RS: 40.3 FG% on 6.7 FGA
2003 RS: 41.0 FG% on 5.4 FGA
2004 RS: 39.5 FG% on 6.0 FGA

These numbers are quite respectable on a significant volume. The numbers in the postseason remained consistent outside of 2002 run:

2001 PS: 34.2 FG% on 5.6 FGA
2002 PS: 29.4 FG% on 7.6 FGA
2003 PS: 40.7 FG% on 5.6 FGA
2004 PS: 43.8 FG% on 6.4 FGA

The 2002 run is quite hard to rate. When you watch 2002 WCSF series, there are two things that are very clear:

1. Duncan had no help in that series. With injured Robinson, Duncan was forced to do everything on offense while being the defensive anchor on the other side of the ball. Some people may think it is overstated, but it truly isn't. Duncan didn't have any offensive creator and dealt with such coverages all game long:

Spoiler:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxyZhBT44wgG5qhDxRilGot2eLkPlz_jJy?si=MDUj_ee5WoJm1lJy

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxaGz7POR3eQDep5Nc_m1mhhlOGlyzU8xf?si=9OxBdJj11N06ynaf

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxC80qVBtcv24ZZnlrNbQU_OtOiLTjrucs?si=1aeMZJyKlNW0_OSs

As such it is incredibly hard to blame him for mediocre shooting and high turnover numbers.

2. Duncan struggled against Shaq coverages. O'Neal didn't guard him for the majority of the games, but when he did, Duncan really struggled to create reliable offense:

Watch on YouTube

Without physical advantages down low (especially length advantage, that was critical for Duncan), he was often forced to rely on his jumpshot and it just wasn't good enough as the go-to option.

Duncan was a flawed offensive centerpiece, no doubt about it. He was good enough ISO scorer and good enough playmaker to carry the mediocre casts to decency (they had positive rORtg in all 2002-04 sample in the playoffs) and to destroy mediocre defensive teams. That said, I think people underrate the secondary skills Duncan provided on that end.

Passing skills

Duncan's passing skills are often associated with his excellent ability to find open shooters out of the double teams in the post. I think that sells him a little short though. Timmy kept improving his playmaking throughout his career and by 2003, he could thrive in many situations.

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx08eFktU--3XuVqb_QNS6BEh1qeUi38uq?si=bOkF34SQja_xA90g

Take a look at this play - Duncan set a screen for Parker, he popped out to the midrange and when he got the ball, he immediately attack the paint, sucking in 3 Lakers defenders. Then he made a no-look pass to Robinson under the basket.

Another similar play from the same game:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxhdQWCijuCDwy4Bvy_Ra6K1pVWLfknJH9?si=1fZFpUxt1l5Mfhey

Duncan absorbing defensive focus and creating open layup as a roll-man:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxpTRP77AkKCSAwQ8jLXrZUibEPgggOB1K?si=5yS6NvytZ2hEtpQd

This is another example, this time a bit more advanced read. Duncan plays P&R, gets the ball at the key after a screen and collapses defense. He gets open guy in the corner, but he knows that Manu is a better shooter, so he makes a subtle pass fake to force Kobe to rotate and gives Manu open shot (Manu decides to drive and misses it).

Duncan didn't have top tier vision, but he was very good passer from technical perspective. His passes were fast and crisp and they usually reached the target accurately. Below I attach an example from quick transition play, where Duncan makes a perfect bounce pass for Parker:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxvfdHRiMJhADEF7GjAL6G80OJpd7AoBTA?si=A5idUVJAiOA_dMLE

This time he runs in transition by himself and tricked a defender with a no-look pass leading to a foul:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxyARyFHiPm_zqHM1WXaKeosJG-PShM9ym?si=8BxRul_OlFJ69gTq

Such plays rarely get in highlight reels, but they are very valuable. Duncan was excellent defensive rebounder and outlet passer, which also gave Spurs offense transition chops, even in this slow, grindy era.

Duncan was also a good "connective tissue" passer, here you can see him finding Robinson inside with a quick touch pass against Dallas zone:

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx8Wheyie6x9ePFdpcpv20SDeOAj7OGQGc?si=3HXaECwONtJzWpIn

Another nice example:

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx5u23CE8_VjxOFnNb93ADvf49VSkTPjTm?si=eErCbnHUjW04EePi

This touch pass in transition is truly a top tier pass:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsoMOvNrjd_bxU9mhCm_I2x48z9OTeBwD?si=lTKKHpven2VBhpat

To summarize, Duncan wasn't just a "find open shooter out of double" passer, he provided a lot of double in P&R situation, as a transition starter, as an entry passer and in all these secondary role situations. I know that people often compare him unfavorably to Garnett, which led to the idea that Duncan was just a basic center passer, but Timmy was truly a remarkable passer at his peak and that's the main reason why I decided to put 2003 slightly over 2002 - because Duncan gradually improved as a passer throughout his career (probably peaked in that regard in late 2000s).

Secondary scoring skills

Duncan was comfortable running short P&Rs. He could not only find a roll man, but also create for himself after a screen:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxAXt88kV9zvJgXdFKYYq4APRi75Z5jefO?si=L0p3UGRyXElu1ZXi

He had also a versatile faceup game for a center, as he could both create shots off a drive:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxuqHRK3a_xPRXRW5R2D69A_IbAn9CNvSx?si=SItPKy_BIAu6Gxc3

and use his decent midrange game:

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxe4Evqgm8tDPeZrgxBAzcBeU9cGxQ_HP8?si=wTAsn8joRQsPG4Tk
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxYb8cz0ZC7ywDLN9HiyJ41uSqV0aFGF6Y?si=l8Ky6ZTbvaTRNt8F

Of course, he was also an excellent offensive-rebounder. In my tracking sample, Duncan scored 3.2 ppg on 67 FG% from putbacks, that's not GOAT-tier rebounding but still very valuable addition to his well rounded game.

It's very clear that Duncan is the weakest offensive player in this thread (with the exception of Garnett), but people definitely overstate how problematic his offense was. In 2002-04 period, the Spurs had 107.3 ORtg in minutes Duncan played and 99.7 ORtg without him on the floor. That's roughly +4 -> -4 rORtg swing, the Spurs just didn't have much offensive talent around him. The raw ON ORtg goes slightly down in the playoffs (105.6) but the OFF number is just ridiculously low (92.7). It was a very clear carryjob, even if Duncan didn't show fancy boxscore numbers.

Some people point out that Duncan's offensive impact regressed during the mid-2000s with reduced role, but I think we can realize a few things. The Spurs offense still showed a remarkable difference with and without him on the floor:

2005-08 Spurs with Duncan: 110.6 ORtg
2005-08 Spurs without Duncan: 102.6 ORtg

The numbers are basically identical for the playoffs. If you want to isolate Duncan and Manu, then the Spurs look basically the same with Duncan and with Manu (again, playoffs show similar story):

2005-08 Spurs with Duncan and Manu: 113.4 ORtg
2005-08 Spurs with Duncan, without Manu: 107.2 ORtg
2005-08 Spurs without Duncan, with Manu: 108.0 ORtg
2005-08 Spurs without Duncan, without Manu: 96.8 ORtg

The idea that Duncan didn't scale well enough with additional offensive talent doesn't seem to agree with what actually happened. It's true that their raw rORtg doesn't look amazing in the RS, but the Spurs were heavily defensive slanted teams and their rORtg in the playoffs for that period was still +4.8 in 2005-07 period (I excluded 2008 run because of injuries). Of course all of that should be contextualized - Duncan wasn't at his peak in that period, his mobility regressed quite significantly due to injuries.

I still don't understand what real scenario proved that Garnett scaled better to offensive talent than Duncan. I mean, we have seen Garnett in comparable situation in 2008 and 2009 (pre-injury) and the results didn't scream that Garnett did things that Duncan would never be able to. I am afraid that this whole idea that KG scales better than Duncan is based more of the idea of scaling players than the actual basketball facts. Garnett is often seen as this idealized version of modern swiss-army knife player that can do everything at elite level, while Duncan is seen as an obsolete post up guy who became worse and worse with time, but that is not based on the reality. Duncan himself was extremely well-rounded player and the biggest differences between the two are very subtle - Garnett was more intuitive passer and better midrange shooter, Duncan was better inside scorer and offensive rebounder. It's not like Duncan needed to play this 4 out offense to maximize his offensive impact, he did just fine as a secondary creator, P&R partner and passing big. The beautiful game Spurs happened in the mid-2010s in part BECAUSE of Duncan, not in spite of Duncan.

Anyway, it is not a knock on anyone having Garnett higher, I just wanted to present my thoughts about it.

Unfortunately, I don't think I will find the time to focus on Duncan's defense, at least not now. A shame that I didn't gather the clips I do for other guys, but maybe I will make the separate post about his defense.

2023/24 Nikola Jokic (HM: 2022/23)

I think Jokic has a very solid argument for the GOAT offensive player and the last 3 years were just remarkable all-around. I think especially his RS performances put him extremely high, because you just can put 4 mediocre players around him and he'd still produce excellent offensive results.

I was more interested in the postseason peak for Jokic. A lot of people don't see any problems with his postseason peak and I am not here to thrash him at all, but we have to remember that the stake is so high in this thread that any criticism will end in some kind of nitpicking.

I think we can all agree that Jokic peaked somewhere in the 2022-25 range. All of his RS performances are remarkable during that period and some may argue that he just kept improving. If we take a look at the 4 years playoff runs for the top 3 big candidates, this is how Jokic stacks up:

2000-03 Shaq: 30.2 pp75 on +6.1 rTS%, 3.2 ap75 to 3.1 tov75, 12.9 ORB%, +8.0 rORtg, -2.5 rDRtg
2002-05 Duncan: 26.0 pp75 on +4.1 rTS%, 4.3 ap75 to 3.5 tov75, 10.8 ORB%, +2.8 rORtg, -6.5 rDRtg
2022-25 Jokic: 27.3 pp75 on +5.2 rTS%, 8.1 ap75 to 3.5 tov75, 9.2 ORB%, +3.0 rORtg, -1.8 rDRtg

Jokic doesn't really translate his GOAT-tier efficiency from RS and his defense becomes a bit problematic. Of course, you can point out that I sampled 2022 which might be unfair, but it's only 5 games and if I exclude it from the comparison, the boxscore numbers would look clearly worse. I still give Jokic the massive edge over Duncan offensively and a reasonable advantage over Shaq, but I wonder if his style of play doesn't get slightly easier to gameplan vs Shaq's simpler, but remarkably effective approach.

Looking at the scoring numbers, which don't look that spectacular for Jokic (he's only slightly better than Duncan here), I decided to track 2023 and 2024 postseason scoring numbers to see how Jokic scores in the post, out of the P&R coverages etc. I will provide details later.

2000/01 Shaquille O'Neal

Will edit later

[One_and_Done]

The 2023 Nuggets had a net rating of +12.0 in the regular season and +9.0 in the playoffs with Joker on the floor.

The 2003 Spurs had a net rating of +9.1 in the regular season and +9.1 in the playoffs with Duncan on the floor.

Are you really going to say Joker can't be in the top tier because the bench units don't perform well enough in the regular season? In what world is that Joker's fault? If the Nuggets' **** bench is costing them 7 wins, whose fault is that? Is it more reflective of them having a childish coach and GM and San Antonio having Pop, or Joker failing to teach his backups how to play better?

Some of us aren't basing 100% of our evaluation on advanced stats, whereas you've been very clear that you are, to the point you've admitted it wouldn't even be necessary for you to watch the games.

OMG, I'm so sick of this made up bull you parrot about me any time you quote any of my posts even when I'm not using advanced stats at all! I used no advanced stats in that post!!! I just said that the 2023 Nuggets played much better with Jokic on the floor than the Spurs played with Duncan on the floor so who cares if the Spurs better bench allowed them to win more games? You're the one who brought up regular season success. I'm just limiting it to things that the player can possibly control.

Whether you call net rating an advanced stat or not, it falls under the same category to me as stuff like RAPM, VORP, etc. It isn't reliably telling us anything, for the many reasons I provided already.

If your methodology has changed since we last discussed it, I'd be glad to hear it. Last I heard you told me that your approach just involves comparing numbers you like, and that strictly speaking you wouldn't need to watch any games to rank players.

NB: shouldn't you delete the old voting post? It's confusing having 2 voting posts, and might accidentally get counted twice.

[One_and_Done]

Spoiler:

Alright, I guess it is now time to vote. Before that I will share a few things regarding my criteria and how they influence my final choices.

1. Let's start with the fact that despite the project focusing on one-year peaks, I actually weigh surrounding seasons a big amount. I don't like the idea of separating what happened in the one "peak" season from the rest of player's prime. Of course there are situations when it is necessary to focus on the single year (like Walton), but I still want to see as big of a sample as possible and lack of consistency hurts given player in my evaluation.

2. I really like the discussion so far and plenty of data-based arguments have been provided, for which I am really thankful. With that in mind, I will focus more on my amateur tracking eye and what I collected throughout the years for the simple reason - I don't think at this stage of the voting one player clearly separates himself from the rest data-wise. The amount of long, excellent posts in this thread resulting in different lists only supports that. I want to point out that I don't mean to ignore stats - quite the opposite, I will use stats in my explanation - but I just don't think you can separate one player from another using only stats.

Without waiting longer, let's start my list

1. 2011/12 LeBron James (HM: 2008/09, 2012/13)



So the start isn't surprising, but don't mistake that with an easy choice. I considered at least 2 another guys I have in my next spots.

LeBron James is well known to everybody and smarter people than me presented his case. I will just add one thing that puts him on the top for me - the first point I mentioned on my criteria. LeBron is a longevity GOAT and I say it in a positive manner - he has an insane amount of top tier levels. You can basically pick any of his top ~8 seasons and he'd compete for the number 1 spot anyway: 2009, 2010, 2012-14, 2016-18. Hell, some even consider 2020 that high and although I wouldn't, I understand the rationales behind that logic. I think the sheer amount of amazing RS and PS basketball from James just puts him at the absolute top on that list, even though I am not really sure if he peaked 100% higher than my next players.

Why 2012? Well, in the case of someone with so many great seasons I simply decided to pick the most well-rounded one of his career. I know that some people don't like that version of James due to his poor 3P shooting in the postseason, but to me the fact that he was so freaking incredible without his usual jumpshot almost worked to his advantage. Besides, I think the "no shooting" argument is clearly overstated, these are his midrange numbers (numbers per nba.com):

2009 RS: 36.8% on 6.5 FGA
2010 RS: 38.8% on 6.4 FGA
2012 RS: 42.3% on 7.2 FGA
2013 RS: 43.2% on 5.3 FGA
2014 RS: 38.5% on 4.2 FGA
2016 RS: 37.5% on 4.1 FGA
2017 RS: 36.2% on 3.6 FGA
2018 RS: 38.9% on 3.7 FGA

2009 PS: 47.4% on 6.7 FGA
2010 PS: 38.3% on 5.5 FGA
2012 PS: 35.9% on 6.3 FGA
2013 PS: 37.2% on 5.3 FGA
2014 PS: 41.7% on 4.8 FGA
2016 PS: 37.3% on 3.6 FGA
2017 PS: 37.3% on 3.3 FGA
2018 PS: 48.8% on 5.5 FGA

Taking everything into account, I think 2012 was the best midrange shooting RS for James and although his efficiency dropped in the playoffs, it was still within the range of typical James performance. I just think people gets caught up too much with 3P% and TS%. 2012 was a very rough season for offensive stars and James did incredible things against quality competition.

I really like James at the 4 position, playing the mixture of PG and bigman on offense. I also think that position suits him the most on defense, which is why I prefer Miami version over 2009 for example.

Sidenote, but it's not surprising that two best James scoring postseason runs (2009 and 2018) were driven by outlier midrange shooting efficiency.

My two next choices would be 2009 and 2013. Although I do think that 2013 struggles against the Spurs (truly ATG defensive team) are a bit overstated at times, it's not like 2012 faced pushovers - 2012 Celtics were incredible defensively on their own. If we take a look at James PS offensive numbers, all these seasons are very close (sourced from thinkingbasketball.net):

2009: 37.2 pp75 on +9.5 rTS%, 12.0 BPM, +7.3 rORtg, 15.0 BoxCreation
2012: 31.6 pp75 on +6.5 rTS%, 8.2 BPM, +8.4 rORtg, 8.3 BoxCreation
2013: 27.6 pp75 on +7.3 rTS%, 8.3 BPM, +8.2 rORtg, 9.4 BoxCreation
2016: 28.2 pp75 on +5.7 rTS%, 9.5 BPM, +11.4 rORtg, 10.4 BoxCreation

I wouldn't consider any other season here. 2010 has the PS injury, 2017 and 2018 has RS coasting. I wouldn't pick 2014 simply because of the lower defensive motor. Then there are all ATG, top tier seasons and you'd fool yourself if you think that the choice between them is easy.

I am aware that 2012 version has less playmaking volume and not top tier efficiency, but he was probably the best defensively in his career and I just like that role for LeBron more than an ball-dominant P&R maestro of the late 2010s or oversized SG with GOAT athleticism from the late 2000s. You can nitpick any hole you want, but all these versions led to remarkable offensive results (and unlike late 2010s Cavs, 2012 Heat was a defensive minded team), all were utterly dominant and I don't find any reason choose any season over my favorite version of LeBron. I think there are two things that made James GOAT candidate - his physical dominance and his mind. 2012 is a perfect sweetspot for these two, though I guess 2013 is up there (for RS alone, I'd take 2013 - it's mind blowing how ridiculous he was back then).

I will note that if you want to take a look at offense only, both 2014 and 2018 have extremely strong cases for the best offensive seasons ever. I just think you need to take two-way monster to stay at the top in such a stacked competition.

2. 2002/03 Tim Duncan (HM: 2001/02)



My basketball idol, possibly the greatest two-way player the league has ever seen... and he's still not recognized as such. Maybe it is because he got the label of the "greatest PF in history" and ironically that puts him out of the discussion for the best true bigmen of all-time. That's unfortunate, because Duncan had 100% center's body, played center's game and had two-way impact of the best centers the league has ever seen.

Standing at +/- 6'10 barefeet and peaking around 260 lbs, Duncan was bigger than many of the ATG "true" centers, like Hakeem or Russell. He played even bigger than that, due to the two things that separated him from the pack - extremely strong and balanced base + insane standing reach. I don't have any verified data on Duncan's reach or wingspan, but it's silly how ridiculously easy it was for him to dominate based on his body type. Of course, that would not work without his great basketball IQ and I truly believe he was one of the best ever at that.

So far, I tracked 35 Duncan games from 2002 and 2003 seasons. I still have 5 2003 finals games left, but the sample started to stabilize. We all know his numbers and his postseason raise, but I want to go a bit further with the scoring breakdown.

Duncan was actually quite versatile offensive player. A lot of people view him as the last dominant post-up heavy guy (rightfully, he was very good), but I think it sells him a bit short. In my sample, Duncan averaged 19.3 FGA, only slightly higher value than the average postseason numbers. Out of them, "only" 7.9 FGA came from the post up possessions. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot when you use 2025 lenses, but it's nothing when you compare it to the ridiculous number of 15 FGA from 2000-01 Shaq (46 games sample) or the earlier era guys. Duncan wasn't a straight up post player, he was used on a number of ways: spot up isolations, P&R game, rebounds, even transition. My sample shows him taking around 2.5 FGA from P&R and he didn't have a reliable perimeter creator at that time. At the same time, he also ran P&Rs as the ball-handler with Robinson quite effectively in limited possessions. Duncan's handles are generally very underrated, there are few centers that stood out more relative to the era in that regard (one of them will join the voting next).

He wasn't an elite shooter, but his midrange game was a reliable counter to his inside game (in most cases at least, will touch it later):

2001 RS: 41.6 FG% on 6.7 FGA
2002 RS: 40.3 FG% on 6.7 FGA
2003 RS: 41.0 FG% on 5.4 FGA
2004 RS: 39.5 FG% on 6.0 FGA

These numbers are quite respectable on a significant volume. The numbers in the postseason remained consistent outside of 2002 run:

2001 PS: 34.2 FG% on 5.6 FGA
2002 PS: 29.4 FG% on 7.6 FGA
2003 PS: 40.7 FG% on 5.6 FGA
2004 PS: 43.8 FG% on 6.4 FGA

The 2002 run is quite hard to rate. When you watch 2002 WCSF series, there are two things that are very clear:

1. Duncan had no help in that series. With injured Robinson, Duncan was forced to do everything on offense while being the defensive anchor on the other side of the ball. Some people may think it is overstated, but it truly isn't. Duncan didn't have any offensive creator and dealt with such coverages all game long:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxyZhBT44wgG5qhDxRilGot2eLkPlz_jJy?si=MDUj_ee5WoJm1lJy

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxaGz7POR3eQDep5Nc_m1mhhlOGlyzU8xf?si=9OxBdJj11N06ynaf

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxC80qVBtcv24ZZnlrNbQU_OtOiLTjrucs?si=1aeMZJyKlNW0_OSs

As such it is incredibly hard to blame him for mediocre shooting and high turnover numbers.

2. Duncan struggled against Shaq coverages. O'Neal didn't guard him for the majority of the games, but when he did, Duncan really struggled to create reliable offense:

Watch on YouTube

Without physical advantages down low (especially length advantage, that was critical for Duncan), he was often forced to rely on his jumpshot and it just wasn't good enough as the go-to option.

Duncan was a flawed offensive centerpiece, no doubt about it. He was good enough ISO scorer and good enough playmaker to carry the mediocre casts to decency (they had positive rORtg in all 2002-04 sample in the playoffs) and to destroy mediocre defensive teams. That said, I think people underrate the secondary skills Duncan provided on that end. I will provide the examples later, because I lose time today.

I will also edit the post later to discuss Duncan's defense.

2023/24 Nikola Jokic (HM: 2022/23)

Will edit later

2000/01 Shaquille O'Neal

Will edit later

The offensive stats vs Shaq are very misleading in some ways, because:
1) Shaq only guarded Duncan on a limited number of possessions, and would have fouled out if he tried guarding him for long stretches.
2) Shaq is mostly going to cover Duncan on matchups where it's favourable to him (e.g. when he already has good position and is feeling energised, which links to the next point...
3) These possessions don't factor all the times Shaq should have been covering Duncan, but wasn't. Maybe because he got lost on a switch or on the P&R, maybe because Shaq was still lazily jogging up the court, or maybe because Shaq just felt too tired to go out and guard Duncan.

As noted, Duncan had absolutely no help in 02 vs the Lakers. I'd attribute his worse percentage that series to that, rather than any genuine ability of Shaq to slow down Duncan. If Shaq could actually do that, Duncan wouldn't have cooked him and the Lakers in 99 or 03.

[IlikeSHAIguys]

I know this is not popular but I think if we're talking Jokic as like top 3 or 4 then shouldn't we talk about Shai here too?

[IlikeSHAIguys]

Also I think I asked this before so sorry but where do you get stats like on/off and WOWY and RAPM from? I know they're like really big in these threads but I've been relying on other people for all this info lol.

[trelos6]

Shai will be in the top 10, no doubt. His post season efficiency left a lot to be desired. His volume was great though. I think that’s what’s holding him back from the top 5.

[ReggiesKnicks]

I know this is not popular but I think if we're talking Jokic as like top 3 or 4 then shouldn't we talk about Shai here too?

To me, Jokic was clearly better than Shai this year. It was close, but clearly a gap.

[eminence]

Also I think I asked this before so sorry but where do you get stats like on/off and WOWY and RAPM from? I know they're like really big in these threads but I've been relying on other people for all this info lol.

BBref is pretty easy to check basic on/off (and just on rating). Pick a player and scroll down to the play-by-play section.

WOWY/RAPM aren't as standardized.

nbarapm.com is pretty straightforward and has 2/3/4/5 year rapm variants on it. It also has a factor apm here:

https://www.nbarapm.com/datasets/six_factor

[DraymondGold]

Voting Post
(abbreviated, but have spelled out reasons throughout thread -- may expand tomorrow)

1. 2016 LeBron James (>2013 > 2012 > 2009).
GOAT-candidate player. Tier 1 impact player all-time in plus minus and WOWY stats. Significantly more impactful in the regular season than say Duncan or Shaq, even when coasting (up until 2016/17). After he improved his skills, he became a more playoff resilient relative to his own ability than Curry (health) or Jokic (defense when younger, shooting/volume when older) or Garnett (isolation shooting / lack of opportunity). GOAT-tier/All-time tier offensive player like Curry or Jokic in the era where individual offense > individual defense, but with clear positive defense unlike Curry or Jokic. Great versatility defensively.

I've grown less and less confident in choosing a single LeBron year as time has gone on. Could be swayed to another year with some compelling discussion (which I tried to prompt but haven't seen enough of yet). 2009 is definitely the most impactful single-year for LeBron from a statistical perspective. But good statistics and good analysis in geeranl requires sufficient sample size, and there's noise still on the full-year scale. Looking more broadly from a CORP-style perspective, at adjacent years, I do lose a little confidence in how 09 LeBron would perform when paired with better teammates forcing him to reduce his primacy, and when going up against the best opposing teams. If there are some playoff concerns against great rim protectors or more zone-style defenses in the surrounding playoffs, and if 09 seems to have a fair bit of hot shooting that wasn't representative of his true shooting ability in larger samples, does a later LeBron end up giving slightly higher championship odds?

This preference for older LeBron is also supported by long-sample impact data. For example in 5-year RAPM, 2012-2016 and 2013-2017 are often favored. Cheema's 5-year RAPM (RS+2xPS weighting) for example. nbarapm's 2–5 year RAPM portrays samples that include 1st Cavs and 2nd Cavs LeBron fairly comparably, and these only use regular season data when 2nd Cavs LeBron was at least somewhat coasting. Long-peak/short-prime (5 and 6-year) full-season On-Off also favor Miami to 2nd Cavs LeBron over his younger self. Skill-wise, LeBron's spoken himself about building skills that I would describe as more scalable, e.g. in his podcast. He developed his shooting, developed his post up game, worked to be more active as a cutter, while of course improving his IQ (e.g. building up a great memory of counters to different defenses), his control of pace, and his passing game. Of course his athleticism waned, and in particular his defensive and regular season motor waned, which is one of the things that makes ranking a single year so difficult.

I ended up going with 2016 LeBron. I do think he was at his peak playoff resilience in his 2nd Cavs stint. His offensive mastery and versatility allowed him to perform well against a variety of defensive schemes, with fewer spotty series. We also see him this in the data (e.g. his playoff EPM is 3rd all time in 2017 and tied 5th all time in 2016). That said, I do punish him for coasting in the regular season, which was enabled by a somewhat weaker conference at the top level, and I do value the defense. In 2016, his impact in the regular season and on defense was still higher than it would be. He had a higher EPM in the 16 RS than 2011 or 2014, had a higher RS on/off than any Miami year (albeit by a smaller margin, and with a worse On than 2013), and still had pretty great regular season RAPM. Some of this was boosted by the more favorable role -- the Cavs played more heliocentric LeBron ball around him which likely boosted his impact, whereas the Heat played more of a team-centric style. I think that partially helped them play at such heights in 2012/2013, at the cost of some juice to LeBron's impact numbers those years. At the same time, 2016 Cavs were still a fantastic team (16th all time in overall SRS). All in all, I could be convinced for a few other years.

2. 2017 Steph Curry (>2016).
GOAT tier impact metrics. Significantly better pure/raw impact numbers (#1 prime WOWY all time, much better plus minus than the competition, roughly best on/off). A smaller but still relatively consistent advantage in the more intelligent metrics, including better RS EPM in each of 2015–2017 than Jokic/Duncan/Shaq/Garnett, and the 4th best playoff EPM on record in 2017.

In short... he was more valuable to his team than the competition.
And that team happened to be the most dominant dynasty of the century at its peak.

I value winning championships, which means I value ceiling raising. Yes, the situation was favorable, and yes, he had plenty of help. But if you want to win championships, you need good teammates, and you need to dominate when you have those teammates. The Curry-led Warriors dominated like no other in the past few decades, and they did that of the back of Curry.

For more film analysis and contextual analysis, see my earlier posts. I won't spam more Curry propaganda here.

3. 2023 Nikola Jokic (>2024).

His impact is well documented. One of the best offensive players ever, again in an era where individual offense is at its most valuable. He’s also arguably the most versatile offensive GOAT candidate. Beautiful passing game and IQ, combined with a diverse and versatile scoring package. He’s a positive shooter as a big, with a great mid range, and perhaps the best touch near the rim of any big ever. I love that his game fits so well with teammates; you can run him as a passing hub in the middle of the floor with pretty poor surrounding talent, and he can floor raise them to good heights. He’s clearly a more impactful regular season player than Duncan or Shaq. But you could also pair him with a perimeter star, and the resulting two man game can be deadly — pick and rolls, pick and pops, great screening, great shooting, hand offs, offensive rebounds and tips, on ball passes from the nail, off ball tip passes to cutters, whatever you need.

At the same time, the data we have suggests he’s not quite as valuable as Curry. Basketball’s not a video game, where you add points in different areas until you max out. It’s more of a complex chemistry, where skills of a player interact with other skills of a player and with the other players on the court, to create some nonlinear effects. Curry’s GOAT shooting, all-time scoring package, all-time handle, and GOAT off-ball ability just breaks the game. It creates constant openings for the offense and scramble the defense. It’s versatile against a wide variety of defensive coverages as we saw perhaps most clearly in the 2022 finals and I think it breaks defense is more than Jokic’s versatility.

I think playoff resilience issues are touchy subjects, as they can often be subject to overinterpreting small sample sizes, or to biases inspired by memorable moments, or to overgeneralizing trends from specific matchups. Correctly diagnosing the signal from the noise can be hard. I don’t see either as massive playoff improvers (I don’t think they need to be, given their both all-time regular season performers). But I also don’t see Jokić is more resilient than curry across a variety of years as we see a slight plus minus decline from Jokić. I think much of that is noise. But if there is some signal, I think it may be from either (a) his having defensive weaknesses that are more detrimental than Curry’s, and (b) not having a game breaking weapon in the way some of the other offensive GOATs do. Jokic’s defensive improvements, which I described in past posts, have been key to getting him to this level at the same time mismatch hunting seems to produce more effective offense for opponents against Jokić than Curry. Likewise, from a teambuilding perspective, having a player with defensive weaknesses at the center seems much more limiting than having a player with defensive weaknesses from the point guard. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Currys teams reached significantly higher highs defensively, and overall. Of course, much of that comes from the massive talent, disparity, but I also think Curry is more scalable. Jokić has also shown a slight weakness offensively in his lack of handle, and lack of willingness to volume score and volume shoot from distance in the face of defenses that are key in on stopping his playmaking. To be clear, these are nitpicks, but they are the kind of nitpicks that make me hesitant to agree with the sentiment that Jokić is more resilient than Curry, which I’ve seen a few times. Thankfully, for Jokic, he’s still in the middle of his peak, and so we will hopefully have the pleasure of watching more runs to come from him.

4. 2004 Kevin Garnett
This last one was tough. I was tempted to pick Shaq and have had Shaq over many of these players in the past. However, I’m not sure exactly how to handle the era split. Without 2000, it’s unclear exactly how to treat 2001 Shaq. I decided to consider “true” peak Shaq in the prior era, for better or worse. 2001 Shaq has some massive regular season costing and defensive decline. He’s still one of the most dominant playoff players ever as is evident in his all-time playoff on/off over multi year runs (usually ones that include prior years). He’s still an all-time player from WOWY data. But these limitations seem unique to 2001 onward, and seems significant enough that I decided to downgrade Shaq rank in here, expect him to be higher in the prior era. Open to other suggestions. Particularly, if film analysis can show that the 2001 Lakers were so dominant from three-point shooting that was open as a result of Shaq’s gravity, and that there’s compelling reason to down weight the regular season from a championship odds perspective, that would make me higher on Shaq.

Duncan meanwhile lacks good performance in a lot of the impact metrics that I would like to see particularly in the regular season. He does look better in playoff plus minus data, but he also has been known to have unusually lucky three point shooting improving his playoff on/off beyond what you would expect based on the quality of the shooter and the openness of the shot, specifically in his peak years where his playoff plus minus looks so good. You can always find a metric where he looks better, but those two points (the lack of regular season impact and the playoff luck relative to this crazy good competition) made me a bit hesitant, when compared to a guy with all time impact like Garnett.

Specifically, I wonder whether Duncan’s offense is as much of a needle mover as I would want. I fear how it would scale to good teams and while Duncan did show fantastic leadership in being willing to play second fiddle offensively to Manu as the years went on, we also see this coincide with the decline in his impact. The 2003 Spurs were not a particularly strong championship, and while of course this is limited by the overall roster, I also have some hesitancy that it is limited by Duncan’s lack of scalability or impact. Duncan’s a fantastic score in an underrated passer, but how much would he be able to play as an offensive hub if he were surrounded by more offensive talent, and how much less effective would Duncan be in a reduced role playing more as a screener and secondary scorer. As I mentioned in a prior post, Duncan got this offensive impact while playing for Popovich the surrounding talent was not great, but compared to Garnett, Duncan was in a much more favorable situation.

Meanwhile, I have no concerns for how Garnet would scale as a secondary score. He’s a better passer than Duncan, he’s a more efficient score from each region of the floor than Duncan (he just shoots more volume from his less efficient spots on the floor, which reduces his individual efficiency, but has spacing benefits), and I like Garnet more as a “little things” guy (think rebounder, screener, pick and roll partner, offensive communicator, etc.)

Defensively, I think Garnet has an argument for being the best defender of the century. His defensive RAPM arguably look the best, and they look even better when he got to a more favorable situation in Boston, albeit in a slightly reduced role garnet is a better communicator, is more versatile on the perimeter, and is quicker and help defense, at the cost of fouling slightly more and being a slightly worse individual room protector. The backline communication and versatility are especially intriguing. When you consider Garnett’s versatility on both sides of the floor and his ability to not clog the paint offensively, that suggests it would be even easier to pair Garnett with a rim protecting center than Duncan (who’s already great in that area), which helps reduce my concerns about that weakness for Garnett.

In short, if Duncan individually had less impact than LeBron, Curry, Jokić, and Garnett, and if Duncan‘s team wasn’t better at its peak than most of them, then that starts to make me wonder whether he would be quite as impactful leading in all-time team at his peak.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a clear cut top 10 player ever. He has some of the best longevity ever. He led one of the greatest dynasties ever. He played a versatile, unselfish game, and has some of the best intangibles ever. He’s a great player, and from a story perspective, that 2003 run is legendary. I just think he has a slightly worse case for top four peaks of the century than Garnett.

At least, that’s how I see it today, although I’m still willing to be convinced otherwise. In particular, the lack of mid-peak playoff runs for Garnett give me higher uncertainty. Is there something real to Garnett’s playoff decline that we can’t describe to his poor situation? He played well in Boston, but unfortunately, we only saw a 2008 (and a single run is too small for me sample size wise) before injuries started to wear him down. Is there evidence on film to suggest that the passing gap between them was smaller? Is there an explanation for Duncan’s lower impact performance, or evidence to suggest that Duncan could still maintain or improve his offensive impact if he played a more complementary role next to improved offensive talent (e.g. looking at 2005 film and data)? That might make me high on Duncan.

It’s a tough choice, but that’s how I’m leaning today.

[70sFan]

The offensive stats vs Shaq are very misleading in some ways, because:
1) Shaq only guarded Duncan on a limited number of possessions, and would have fouled out if he tried guarding him for long stretches.

It's true, Shaq guarded Duncan only in limited time. Doesn't change the fact that he was very effective in these possessions.

2) Shaq is mostly going to cover Duncan on matchups where it's favourable to him (e.g. when he already has good position and is feeling energised, which links to the next point...
3) These possessions don't factor all the times Shaq should have been covering Duncan, but wasn't. Maybe because he got lost on a switch or on the P&R, maybe because Shaq was still lazily jogging up the court, or maybe because Shaq just felt too tired to go out and guard Duncan.

You are free to find such examples on the tape, but I don't think I missed them cause Shaq rarely switched on P&Rs. I included the possessions when Shaq left Duncan outside unguarded... and Duncan didn't capitalize on these possessions in most cases. He had a poor shooting series from outside the paint.

As noted, Duncan had absolutely no help in 02 vs the Lakers. I'd attribute his worse percentage that series to that, rather than any genuine ability of Shaq to slow down Duncan. If Shaq could actually do that, Duncan wouldn't have cooked him and the Lakers in 99 or 03.

Again, Shaq didn't guard Duncan for very long stretches in any H2H series, but he was also very effective on Duncan in 2003 series.

[70sFan]

I added my Duncan offense breakdown, will try to end defense and move on to Jokic's scoring profile.

[70sFan]

Specifically, I wonder whether Duncan’s offense is as much of a needle mover as I would want. I fear how it would scale to good teams and while Duncan did show fantastic leadership in being willing to play second fiddle offensively to Manu as the years went on, we also see this coincide with the decline in his impact. The 2003 Spurs were not a particularly strong championship, and while of course this is limited by the overall roster, I also have some hesitancy that it is limited by Duncan’s lack of scalability or impact. Duncan’s a fantastic score in an underrated passer, but how much would he be able to play as an offensive hub if he were surrounded by more offensive talent, and how much less effective would Duncan be in a reduced role playing more as a screener and secondary scorer.

A few questions to that part:

1. What do you base on your observation of Duncan's offensive impact decline with the emergence of Manu?

2. What makes you believe that 2003 Spurs are particularly weak champions in comparison to 2023 Nuggets?

3. Are your reservations about his skillset driven by the results, or do you find anything in tape that looks worrying to you?

Meanwhile, I have no concerns for how Garnet would scale as a secondary score. He’s a better passer than Duncan, he’s a more efficient score from each region of the floor than Duncan (he just shoots more volume from his less efficient spots on the floor, which reduces his individual efficiency, but has spacing benefits), and I like Garnet more as a “little things” guy (think rebounder, screener, pick and roll partner, offensive communicator, etc.)

Is that based on the skillset comparison, or do you think you can point out to some examples when Garnett did far better at meshing with solid offensive talent?

He played well in Boston, but unfortunately, we only saw a 2008 (and a single run is too small for me sample size wise) before injuries started to wear him down.

Do you think he played better than 2007 Duncan for example? I think Garnett was fantastic in 2008 playoff run (my playoff MVP), but I think due to the fact that it was the only winning run for Garnett, some people overstate how amazing he was in comparison to the late 2000s Duncan.

Is there evidence on film to suggest that the passing gap between them was smaller?

I think Garnett is a better passer, but the question of the better playmaker remained unanswered. Duncan was slightly less versatile with his passing bag, but at the end of the day he created more open looks for his teammates on the basis of his insane inside gravity and that's extremely valuable, especially for the era he played in.

I hope you'll find time to answer these questions

[Doctor MJ]

So I wanted to just say on this that is has my eyebrows raised. The way DPM rates Duncan is considerably higher than any APM/RAPM study I've ever seen, and I'd really like to understand how that's happening.

At this point, it makes me cautious to use DPM as anything other than the short-term projection system - though I should note, in practice, that's all I was using it for. I hadn't made a choice not to use for longer term studies to be clear - just one of many intriguing tools on my list to explore - but now I feel like I need to gain a deeper understanding before I do anything else with it.

Does anyone have a window into the method that might explain it's divergence from RAPM?

(And to be clear, I definitely don't think RAPM is some perfect metric so I'm eager for superior methods to become widely available, but I'll always think that regression studies of the scoreboard itself are useful, and I have a long history of caution and push-back when people try to merge that with forms of BPM. It's not that such mergers can't be useful, but if I don't feel I can see inside the black box of a stat, then it's problematic for incorporation into a larger process - and for me all these statistical tools are always part of a larger process with the ultimate step always being non-statistical.)

[DraymondGold]

Specifically, I wonder whether Duncan’s offense is as much of a needle mover as I would want. I fear how it would scale to good teams and while Duncan did show fantastic leadership in being willing to play second fiddle offensively to Manu as the years went on, we also see this coincide with the decline in his impact. The 2003 Spurs were not a particularly strong championship, and while of course this is limited by the overall roster, I also have some hesitancy that it is limited by Duncan’s lack of scalability or impact. Duncan’s a fantastic score in an underrated passer, but how much would he be able to play as an offensive hub if he were surrounded by more offensive talent, and how much less effective would Duncan be in a reduced role playing more as a screener and secondary scorer.

A few questions to that part:

1. What do you base on your observation of Duncan's offensive impact decline with the emergence of Manu?

2. What makes you believe that 2003 Spurs are particularly weak champions in comparison to 2023 Nuggets?

3. Are your reservations about his skillset driven by the results, or do you find anything in tape that looks worrying to you?

Thanks for your pushback 70s! I appreciate your insight a ton, so I'll try to cover everything.
So, I’ll start by reiterating that this was a tough choice for me like I said in my post I very much could be wrong, and the uncertainty bars are certainly wide enough to take either player over any of the adjacent players. I also still could be persuaded to flip the ordering.

1. Re: Offensive decline in reduced role:
So looking back more closely today, this might be one area where I was a little wrong or at least oversold it. Across a rage of regular season impact metrics (pipm, APM, RAPM), it does look like 04 and 06 regular season metrics are lower, but 05/07 are more comparable to 02/03 than I realized.

Where I do see decline is in the postseason numbers. If we look at full season On/off per 48 with fairly heavy playoff weighting (let’s say 5x), here are the seasonal values:
-00: +7.4
-01: 21.05
-02: +15.9
-03: +20.72
-04: +5.03
-05: +5.77
-06: +10.42
-07: +10.14
So there’s clearly a large dip going into 04/05 as Manu gains more prominence. We also see a clear dip in the post-season only numbers in more complex/accurate metrics like AuPM.

Now I suppose the new qualifier I’ve added (post-season only) does open this argument up to the usual postseason limitation. The sample size is small, so it could just be noise — which would get magnified when we add too much weighting on the playoffs. In 05, Duncan did injure his ankles and miss the end of the regular season. If there’s reason to think 05 playoff Duncan was still limited by the injury (e.g. in a cursory look, it does seem like the 1st round was his worst series statistically which was nearest to the injury), and that 05 playoff Duncan would have had peak-postseason impact in his play with Manu if he had been healthier, that might sway me a bit.

The decline in playoffs post-03 is also consistent with the notion that Duncan had shooting luck boosting his plus minus signal in ~ 01–03 (which there is evidence for), which is not present in other years. That would help explain the dip — making it a change in luck rather than a change in role/fit. But it also lowers his impact in his best few playoffs somewhat, which brings me back to one of my main concerns with him: why does he seem less impactful in the pure scoreboard metrics (e.g. per possession by plus minus data, or per game by wowy data) than players like Curry, Jokic, or Garnett, if he was actually better than some of them?

2. Re: 03 Spurs vs 23 Nuggets:
In terms of championship strength, I usually look to Overall SRS as a good ballpark estimate for how good the team is. If you want to go deeper, there’s always contextual analysis and other stats ( there are a few teams that are made higher and lower in that list by a specific context we can see, and specific blind spots in the method… but these blind spots can be accounted for by looking deeper ). The 03 Spurs are 37th all-time in 2023, while the Nuggets are 43rd. So right around the same level, solid teams, but also clearly not too dominant either. The teams both benefited from injured opponents (03 Dirk getting injured for the Cavs is big, while the 23 Suns and Heat teams were both injury-ridden by the time they faced off against the Nuggets), making it hard to think this stat is underrating either of these teams.

I didn’t necessarily mean that 03 Spurs are weaker than the 23 Nuggets (and meat to put in some qualifier saying so but may have forgotten). I moreso meant that I see both the 03 Spurs (and the 23 Nuggets like I mention in my Jokic vote) as weaker than the teams led by peak LeBron, peak Curry, peak Shaq. Team success is a noisy metric for rating a player, and obviously shouldn’t be the only mode of analysis for a player. But it does provide some insight and context if taken with appropriate care — and the 03 Spurs’ lack of dominance was moreso meant as lack of a positive for Duncan, rather than the thing that swayed me to Jokic specifically. I also point out team building concerns I have with Jokic in the Jokic vote / prior posts. For Jokic the team building concerns are defensive, for Duncan they’re offensive.

3. Re: Doing this analysis via skillset or results,
A bit of both. Results-wise, the best Spurs teams seem exactly opposed to when Duncan was at his best. Take overall SRS (a good first pass for estimating team value, but of course one that could be improved/debated), the top Spurs teams go in order of best to worst:
-2014 Spurs
-1999 Spurs
-2013 Spurs
-2016 Spurs
-2007 Spurs
-2005 Spurs
-2003 Spurs
That’s not exactly encouraging for Duncan’s ceiling raising when he’s playing at his most impactful individually in 03. The mid 2014 Spurs seemed to be the Spurs’ most dominant championship (with the surrounding years in 13/16 being pretty great too, albeit with less postseason success). Now of course this is highly complementary to Duncan’s longevity. And one could argue they would be better with a peak Duncan rather than old Duncan (which given the improvement in player quality, is hard to dispute)… but it also seems contextually relevant that these more dominant Spurs teams had shifted significantly away from Duncan-offense. Great credit to Duncan as a leader for being so unselfish, but it’s also not like his efficiency shot up in his reduced offensive role (in fact it declined to slightly above league average at best). The performance of the 99 Spurs is definitely complementary to Duncan’s ceiling raising during his prime, but I’m someone who’s high on Robinson, and have argued Robinson had the more impactful playoffs even in the reduced role. Then during Duncan’s prime, having 07 > 05 > 03 seems to suggest the Spurs got better as Duncan’s role reduced.

Of course, drawing some trend line between personal-evaluation-of-individual-impact and team performance is a very noisy form of analysis at best, and misleading at worst. I’ve definitely seen some analysis like this that leads people astray (e.g. OhayoKD arguing Jordan might have been better in the 2nd three peat than the 1st). Obviously the support cast is the primary difference. So I don’t think it’s particularly compelling. But when it lines up with my scalability skillset concerns, it does provide some supportive context.

For example, I do have a bit of concerns of an offensive centerpiece built around a post up player, when the post up lacks some of the game-breaking skills that the best post up players (Jokic/Shaq in this era) have. This is less concerning as we go back to older eras, but as we go to newer eras and more modern rules, traditional post up offense does start to become a touch outdated. We see evidence of post up offenses being more susceptible to more zone style defenses with the opponents of the peak Pistons for example, and by 05 we see the Spurs’ post-ups looking clearly outdated and less effective than the 05 Suns (with the Spurs relying on their still-dynasty level defense and possession advantage to win the day).

Now Duncan’s an underrated scorer, with underrated gravity. But he also lacks the scoring gravity and punch of some of the best (Kareem, Shaq, Jokic) to really ‘stir the pot’ quite as much with his scoring. I find his efficiency decline as reduce his role a little concerning (relative to the all-time competition here). For example, in RS rTS:
-02 Duncan: +5.6%
-03 Duncan: +4.5%
-04 Duncan: +1.8%
-05 Duncan: +1.1%
-06 Duncan: -1.2% (injury year)
-07 Duncan +3.8%
-08 Dunca: +0.6%
Now some of this is just natural aging. We expect a player’s edge to get worse as they get older of course. But as Duncan relinquished the ball more to Manu, and as the offense got better, it doesn’t seem like he made the most of Manu’s playmaking or the defensive-attention Manu drew to get easier shots (e.g. as an offensive rebounder, finisher, open midrange). Maybe a more Duncan-friendly analysis could see this as coming from a decline in his athleticism/speed?

Duncan had solid midrange shooting, but not as much as Garnett, particularly as we go out to the log midrange, and that definitely has differences in the resulting spacing for the team. Gravity-wise, Duncan definitely had better gravity than Garnett — how much of that gravity gravity and defensive attention do you see coming from Duncan’s post-up threat? As he shifted to have less postups with Manu, was he still drawing as many doubles?

The film in your voting post does give me a little more confidence in Duncan’s passing in areas outside of the post/double team, so that does help assuage some of my concerns there. Indeed I was probably underselling him as a passer, although I do think he was still better when eh could see and process the action ahead of time (even for what become no-look passes) compared to Garnett, who was a quicker thinker to me.

Now again, this is mostly nitpicking. But when combined with the lesser individual impact, and the clear trends for individual offensive impact >> individual defensive impact in the modern era across a variety of stats, and it starts to shift my preference for peak towards the more offensive guys. Maybe there’s an argument for peak defensive impact in 02–04 specifically when there were both no illegal defense rules and no freedom of movement rules making up for this, but it’s less clear to me.
Maybe I’m overselling the impact disadvantage has, but if my perception of Duncan being a bit behind in individual impact is real, and if the team performance during his peak specifically (longevity looks great) doesn't stand out at this level, then partly my voting post is trying to figure out what gaps in Duncan’s game might be holding him back a touch. This is a bigger issue for me when comparing Duncan vs the competition, although I suspect it's a lesser concern for others.

Meanwhile, I have no concerns for how Garnet would scale as a secondary score. He’s a better passer than Duncan, he’s a more efficient score from each region of the floor than Duncan (he just shoots more volume from his less efficient spots on the floor, which reduces his individual efficiency, but has spacing benefits), and I like Garnet more as a “little things” guy (think rebounder, screener, pick and roll partner, offensive communicator, etc.)

Is that based on the skillset comparison, or do you think you can point out to some examples when Garnett did far better at meshing with solid offensive talent?

So compared to Garnett skill-wise, Garnett certainly didn’t decline in efficiency as he went to Boston to play alongside Paul Pierce (Garnett went from from +0.5% rTS in 07 to +4.8% in 08, although this two-year trend oversells it… he had +3.1% in 04). So pure efficiency wise, it looks like Garnett did scale his scoring up a little better than Duncan.

Garnett was at his peak more efficient than Duncan in basically every extended shooting zone. He also took more shots from distance. For example, see our past discussion in your excellent shot chart tracking thread here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=114343276#p114343276 , where Garnett’s shot distance is clearly further than the other all time bigs. This combined limits his total efficiency, but does provide more spacing value. Spacing and gravity are the kind of thing that’s helpful for passively helping good offensive teammates; so if Garnett clearly provided better spacing, did Duncan clearly provide more gravity in that slightly reduced role by 05/07 to offset the spacing?
Could be, I’m genuinely unsure.

As a pick and roll partner, Garnett is a pretty great screener himself and roller, so it does seem like he could provide plenty of pick and roll/pop value next to a ball handler. And again Garnett’s slightly superior passing seems better to pair with an off-ball perimeter player, although it could be that the gap is smaller than I credit.

Now I haven’t had the chance to deep-dive into some Duncan vs Garnett film recently. So I do look to the takeaways of others who I trust (including you!) who have had the chance to look at more film than me. If you or others have any film on Garnett’s passing readily accessible, or on Duncan’s gravity in his older role, that kind of thing could be compelling.

He played well in Boston, but unfortunately, we only saw a 2008 (and a single run is too small for me sample size wise) before injuries started to wear him down.

Do you think he played better than 2007 Duncan for example? I think Garnett was fantastic in 2008 playoff run (my playoff MVP), but I think due to the fact that it was the only winning run for Garnett, some people overstate how amazing he was in comparison to the late 2000s Duncan.

Is there evidence on film to suggest that the passing gap between them was smaller?

I think Garnett is a better passer, but the question of the better playmaker remained unanswered. Duncan was slightly less versatile with his passing bag, but at the end of the day he created more open looks for his teammates on the basis of his insane inside gravity and that's extremely valuable, especially for the era he played in.

I hope you'll find time to answer these questions

Hopefully addressed some of my playmaking/passing thought process I had above.

Definitely open to the idea that 07 Duncan was better. Off the cuff, I see them as quite comparable. Similar levels of impact. I do see clear decline from Garnett as he got older too, but whereas I’m more comfortable saying this came from a combination of Duncan’s declining athleticism (speed in particular as his injuries added up) and a change in Duncan’s role, I’m less clear what specifically was declining for Garnett. Do you see 07 Duncan > 08 Garnett, and do you think that might provide insight into 03 Duncan vs 04 Garnett?

[One_and_Done]

I have Duncan as the GOAT defender, though it isn't based on DPM. Not exactly a surprise he'd he rated highly on defensive stats though, as unreliable as they can be.

[70sFan]

Thanks for your pushback 70s! I appreciate your insight a ton, so I'll try to cover everything.

So, I’ll start by reiterating that this was a tough choice for me like I said in my post I very much could be wrong, and the uncertainty bars are certainly wide enough to take either player over any of the adjacent players. I also still could be persuaded to flip the ordering.

I am glad that you are participating and just to be clear - I genuinely want to know your position on this matter. I agree that any criticism at this stage is basically nitpicking and almost any order can be defended. So please don't take this as an attack or anything like that

1. Re: Offensive decline in reduced role:
So looking back more closely today, this might be one area where I was a little wrong or at least oversold it. Across a rage of regular season impact metrics (pipm, APM, RAPM), it does look like 04 and 06 regular season metrics are lower, but 05/07 are more comparable to 02/03 than I realized.

Yeah, that is mostly why I asked - I don't think Duncan looked significantly worse in his late prime seasons than the earlier ones. I think I'd exclude 2004 from that conversation because:

a) Duncan still had significant primacy in that season, his role wasn't really reduced. The main reason why people think that way is because his raw numbers got a little worse, but it was caused by the late season comeback when he played limited minutes. If you compare 2003 with the first 54 games of the 2004, you get basically the same numbers:

2002/03: 23.3/12.9/3.9 on 56.4 TS% in 39.3 mpg
2003/04 (first 54 games): 23.2/13.0/3.1 on 52.4 TS% in 38.1 mpg

The only difference in these raw numbers are in the efficiency, which leads us to the 2nd point...

b) Duncan's offensive decline in 2004 is mostly caused by his outlier FT% during that season. I don't know why, but it was by far the worst FT% of his career, the only time he went below 60%. In comparison, he shot healthy 71% the year before and 67% the year after. If you assume 70 FT% for this sample, Duncan would have had a far better looking 54.5 TS%.

2006 is another weaker RS from Duncan, because he was dealing with injuries.

I think that pre-injury 2005 is the clearest example of peak-ish Duncan thriving next to the higher level offensive talent and the results were just ridiculous. Before Duncan sprained his ankle against Detroit on March 20th 2005, the Spurs played at ridiculous level:

50-15 (63 wins pace, but 1-3 without Duncan)
108.6 ORtg (would be 6th best in the league with +2.0 rORtg)
97.1 DRtg (would be 1st with -9.0 rDRtg)
Duncan +/-: +11.2
Duncan ON Net Rating: +17.3

Unfortunately, Duncan played with two sprained ankles in the playoffs, which turned this amazing RS performance into the worst postseason of Duncan's career.

Where I do see decline is in the postseason numbers. If we look at full season On/off per 48 with fairly heavy playoff weighting (let’s say 5x), here are the seasonal values:
-00: +7.4
-01: 21.05
-02: +15.9
-03: +20.72
-04: +5.03
-05: +5.77
-06: +10.42
-07: +10.14
So there’s clearly a large dip going into 04/05 as Manu gains more prominence. We also see a clear dip in the post-season only numbers in more complex/accurate metrics like AuPM.

Could you do the same thing for Garnett's long postseason runs (2004 and 2008)?

AuPM show the similar dip for peak Garnett:

2004: 6.9 -> 5.4

While the numbers on 2008 run improves:

2008: 5.1 -> 5.4

The numbers don't really look like in a different tier to late-prime Duncan at this point:

2007: 5.3 -> 4.5

Now I suppose the new qualifier I’ve added (post-season only) does open this argument up to the usual postseason limitation. The sample size is small, so it could just be noise — which would get magnified when we add too much weighting on the playoffs. In 05, Duncan did injure his ankles and miss the end of the regular season. If there’s reason to think 05 playoff Duncan was still limited by the injury (e.g. in a cursory look, it does seem like the 1st round was his worst series statistically which was nearest to the injury), and that 05 playoff Duncan would have had peak-postseason impact in his play with Manu if he had been healthier, that might sway me a bit.

Duncan re-injured the same ankle in the last game against Seattle and he was notably bothered by it for the rest of the season. It's not a coincidence that Duncan looked so bad against Phoenix (a team best equipped to exploit his limited mobility) defensively, even though he looked so much better in 2007 while being older.

Duncan was very limited in 2005 playoffs and the injuries he played through wasted his next RS - that's why he was so uninspiring for the majority of the 2005/06 season.

The decline in playoffs post-03 is also consistent with the notion that Duncan had shooting luck boosting his plus minus signal in ~ 01–03 (which there is evidence for), which is not present in other years. That would help explain the dip — making it a change in luck rather than a change in role/fit. But it also lowers his impact in his best few playoffs somewhat, which brings me back to one of my main concerns with him: why does he seem less impactful in the pure scoreboard metrics (e.g. per possession by plus minus data, or per game by wowy data) than players like Curry, Jokic, or Garnett, if he was actually better than some of them?

I don't know exactly why, but I also don't think Duncan looked massively less impactful than them.

I will point out that 2008 Celtics run for Garnett was also heavily influenced by shooting luck.

2. Re: 03 Spurs vs 23 Nuggets:
In terms of championship strength, I usually look to Overall SRS as a good ballpark estimate for how good the team is. If you want to go deeper, there’s always contextual analysis and other stats ( there are a few teams that are made higher and lower in that list by a specific context we can see, and specific blind spots in the method… but these blind spots can be accounted for by looking deeper ). The 03 Spurs are 37th all-time in 2023, while the Nuggets are 43rd. So right around the same level, solid teams, but also clearly not too dominant either. The teams both benefited from injured opponents (03 Dirk getting injured for the Cavs is big, while the 23 Suns and Heat teams were both injury-ridden by the time they faced off against the Nuggets), making it hard to think this stat is underrating either of these teams.

I didn’t necessarily mean that 03 Spurs are weaker than the 23 Nuggets (and meat to put in some qualifier saying so but may have forgotten). I moreso meant that I see both the 03 Spurs (and the 23 Nuggets like I mention in my Jokic vote) as weaker than the teams led by peak LeBron, peak Curry, peak Shaq. Team success is a noisy metric for rating a player, and obviously shouldn’t be the only mode of analysis for a player. But it does provide some insight and context if taken with appropriate care — and the 03 Spurs’ lack of dominance was moreso meant as lack of a positive for Duncan, rather than the thing that swayed me to Jokic specifically. I also point out team building concerns I have with Jokic in the Jokic vote / prior posts. For Jokic the team building concerns are defensive, for Duncan they’re offensive.

Fair enough, I think these two teams are comparable in terms of talent and results, although I'd argue that Duncan takes the lead here with less talented roster and slightly better results (especially in the RS).

3. Re: Doing this analysis via skillset or results,
A bit of both. Results-wise, the best Spurs teams seem exactly opposed to when Duncan was at his best. Take overall SRS (a good first pass for estimating team value, but of course one that could be improved/debated), the top Spurs teams go in order of best to worst:
-2014 Spurs
-1999 Spurs
-2013 Spurs
-2016 Spurs
-2007 Spurs
-2005 Spurs
-2003 Spurs
That’s not exactly encouraging for Duncan’s ceiling raising when he’s playing at his most impactful individually in 03.

What do you mean by "overall SRS"? Is it some kind of weighed mean between RS and PS SRS?

I mean, I think it's hard to put that on Duncan's scalability, because there is much simpler explanation - Spurs teams were simply far less talented in the early 2000s than the mid-2010s.

About ceiling raising, 1999 Spurs are basically at the top of the list and Duncan did the most of work for them. I also think that the differences between places are very slim.

The mid 2014 Spurs seemed to be the Spurs’ most dominant championship (with the surrounding years in 13/16 being pretty great too, albeit with less postseason success). Now of course this is highly complementary to Duncan’s longevity. And one could argue they would be better with a peak Duncan rather than old Duncan (which given the improvement in player quality, is hard to dispute)… but it also seems contextually relevant that these more dominant Spurs teams had shifted significantly away from Duncan-offense. Great credit to Duncan as a leader for being so unselfish, but it’s also not like his efficiency shot up in his reduced offensive role (in fact it declined to slightly above league average at best).

Again, his efficiency dropped but he was 37 in 2014. At that age, Garnett was basically done as a relevant player and didn't even reach 50 TS%.

I have a few problems with that point. First of all, isn't the fact that Duncan was the part of such a good team in reduced role helps his case as a ceiling raiser, at least to some degree? Secondly, we're talking about peaks here and although I agree that the more data we use, the better - I don't think talking about 36-39 years old Duncan is relevant to peaks discussion.

I also want to point out that this criticism does seem a bit too nitpicky in the context of Garnett comparison. Yeah, it's true that the best offensive (and overall) Spurs teams happened after Duncan's primacy, but at the same time Garnett's teams never came even remotely close to the offensive heights these Spurs managed to reach. In fact, the Celtics "dynasty" was quite underwhelming on the offensive end considering the talent they had. I don't think Garnett's Celtics years give him that much argument over Duncan to be honest.

The performance of the 99 Spurs is definitely complementary to Duncan’s ceiling raising during his prime, but I’m someone who’s high on Robinson, and have argued Robinson had the more impactful playoffs even in the reduced role.

I think it would be hard to argue for Robinson over Duncan, especially in the Lakers and Knicks series. I truly get that Robinson was still a remarkable player at that point, but it relies way too much on the noisy PS impact metrics, instead of more holistic analysis.

Then during Duncan’s prime, having 07 > 05 > 03 seems to suggest the Spurs got better as Duncan’s role reduced.

How big these differences are?
I don't think Duncan's primacy was really reduced between 2005 and 2007 by the way.

For example, I do have a bit of concerns of an offensive centerpiece built around a post up player, when the post up lacks some of the game-breaking skills that the best post up players (Jokic/Shaq in this era) have. This is less concerning as we go back to older eras, but as we go to newer eras and more modern rules, traditional post up offense does start to become a touch outdated. We see evidence of post up offenses being more susceptible to more zone style defenses with the opponents of the peak Pistons for example, and by 05 we see the Spurs’ post-ups looking clearly outdated and less effective than the 05 Suns (with the Spurs relying on their still-dynasty level defense and possession advantage to win the day).

Well, I guess it depends on what your criteria are. I try to evaluate players based on what they did and how they maximized their impact in the era they played in. Of course we can agree that the Spurs weren't amazing offensively, but I'd just point out that 2005 Spurs didn't do that horribly against the Pistons with injured Duncan - they actually fared significantly better than the Lakers the year before. Different Pistons teams of course, but still.

Now Duncan’s an underrated scorer, with underrated gravity. But he also lacks the scoring gravity and punch of some of the best (Kareem, Shaq, Jokic) to really ‘stir the pot’ quite as much with his scoring.

I do have the post up numbers for Duncan, Shaq and Jokic (also Kareem, but he's not coming here so I will leave him off). I tracked 35 games for 2002-03 Duncan seasons, 46 for 2000-01 Shaq seasons and 31 postseason games from 2023-24 Jokic (missing one game, couldn't find the footage). These are the numbers, I don't have the FT data for Jokic, so I included the NBA.com numbers for him with red font:

2000-01 Shaq: 17.8 ppg on 14.7 FGA, 49.0 FG% and 49.8 TS%
2002-03 Duncan: 11.4 ppg on 7.9 FGA, 50.0 FG% and 56.8 TS%
2023-24 Jokic: 51.0 FG% on 4.9 FGA, 6.6 ppg on 4.7 FGA, 52.7 FG%

I don't have the TS% numbers for Jokic, but he was fouled considerably less in the post than the other two. Jokic data is for playoffs only, while Shaq and Duncan samples have some RS games, but they are also postseason-centric.

I think that people overstate the difference in post scoring between the best guys. Jokic is a bit more efficient in the playoffs than the two, but he also picked his spots more. Shaq was actually by far the least efficient, but his immense volume has to be taken into account.

It's a sidenote, but in general, with closer look I realized that Jokic ridiculous scoring numbers from the RS consistently went down in the playoffs, to the point where he almost look similar to playoff Duncan... which is something I would never expect. Of course, it doesn't mean that Jokic isn't far better than Duncan offensively, but I think sometimes we take things for granted too easily.

I find his efficiency decline as reduce his role a little concerning (relative to the all-time competition here). For example, in RS rTS:
-02 Duncan: +5.6%
-03 Duncan: +4.5%
-04 Duncan: +1.8%
-05 Duncan: +1.1%
-06 Duncan: -1.2% (injury year)
-07 Duncan +3.8%
-08 Dunca: +0.6%
Now some of this is just natural aging. We expect a player’s edge to get worse as they get older of course. But as Duncan relinquished the ball more to Manu, and as the offense got better, it doesn’t seem like he made the most of Manu’s playmaking or the defensive-attention Manu drew to get easier shots (e.g. as an offensive rebounder, finisher, open midrange). Maybe a more Duncan-friendly analysis could see this as coming from a decline in his athleticism/speed?

It can be concerning indeed, that's a good point.

Duncan had solid midrange shooting, but not as much as Garnett, particularly as we go out to the log midrange, and that definitely has differences in the resulting spacing for the team. Gravity-wise, Duncan definitely had better gravity than Garnett — how much of that gravity gravity and defensive attention do you see coming from Duncan’s post-up threat? As he shifted to have less postups with Manu, was he still drawing as many doubles?

I didn't track Duncan post-peak games specifically, but I remember him sucking in a lot of defensive pressure inside in 2005 finals. I think that Duncan had immense gravity, short of only the baddest post players ever in Shaq/Kareem/Hakeem tier. It's strange, because some teams allowed Duncan to post up straight more, but against some opponents (not necessarily bad equipped to defend him) it was almost Shaq-esque in how team feared Duncan back then. Sometimes, I even wonder if teams didn't react too heavily on past-peak Duncan post ups in the mid-00s.

The film in your voting post does give me a little more confidence in Duncan’s passing in areas outside of the post/double team, so that does help assuage some of my concerns there. Indeed I was probably underselling him as a passer, although I do think he was still better when eh could see and process the action ahead of time (even for what become no-look passes) compared to Garnett, who was a quicker thinker to me.

I agree that Garnett was a better, more intuitive passer. I think that Duncan was what you describe when he was younger, because he was a bit reactionary early in his career. I don't think that was the problem in 2003 anymore, though of course he missed some opportunities (like any other player) and he had some tendencies of getting scoring tunnel vision. These problems weren't very relevant though and I think that Duncan's non-post passing skills are extremely underappreciated.

So compared to Garnett skill-wise, Garnett certainly didn’t decline in efficiency as he went to Boston to play alongside Paul Pierce (Garnett went from from +0.5% rTS in 07 to +4.8% in 08, although this two-year trend oversells it… he had +3.1% in 04). So pure efficiency wise, it looks like Garnett did scale his scoring up a little better than Duncan.

I think we shouldn't really compare 2008 Garnett to 2004-05 Duncan, because Duncan simply had a bigger scoring role on his team. Garnett was at 35.3% offensive load, 23.3 pp75 on +4.8 rTS% guy, while Duncan was at 39.2-40.3% load, 25.6-26.3 pp75 on already mentioned +1.1 - +1.8 rTS%.

If we compare 2007 (which is closer in terms of load, though stil ahead), their efficiency looks closer. You can say that's cheating, because Duncan never replicated that number but I can say the exact same thing, when Garnett posted only 20.9 pp75 on +1.8 rTS% in the following season before the injury. I also point out that Garnett didn't sustain that efficiency in the postseason, reaching 23.3 pp75 on +1.1 rTS%. These numbers are clearly worse than anything prime Duncan did in any role, with the exception of 2008 poor shooting postseason.

Garnett was at his peak more efficient than Duncan in basically every extended shooting zone. He also took more shots from distance. For example, see our past discussion in your excellent shot chart tracking thread here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=114343276#p114343276 , where Garnett’s shot distance is clearly further than the other all time bigs. This combined limits his total efficiency, but does provide more spacing value. Spacing and gravity are the kind of thing that’s helpful for passively helping good offensive teammates; so if Garnett clearly provided better spacing, did Duncan clearly provide more gravity in that slightly reduced role by 05/07 to offset the spacing?
Could be, I’m genuinely unsure.

I don't think it's fair to use such argument, because shooting distribution is very important as well. Duncan and Garnett had comparable efficiency inside the paint, but Duncan took 1.5 times more shots inside than him. Creating easy points in the paint is very important and Duncan didn't do that just by his post game. He was significantly better offensive rebounder for example, which also scales extremely well with talent.

As a pick and roll partner, Garnett is a pretty great screener himself and roller, so it does seem like he could provide plenty of pick and roll/pop value next to a ball handler. And again Garnett’s slightly superior passing seems better to pair with an off-ball perimeter player, although it could be that the gap is smaller than I credit.

I agree, Garnett's passing gives him the edge in that regard. I wonder who is a better roll-man, I think it's very close actually.

Definitely open to the idea that 07 Duncan was better. Off the cuff, I see them as quite comparable. Similar levels of impact. I do see clear decline from Garnett as he got older too, but whereas I’m more comfortable saying this came from a combination of Duncan’s declining athleticism (speed in particular as his injuries added up) and a change in Duncan’s role, I’m less clear what specifically was declining for Garnett. Do you see 07 Duncan > 08 Garnett, and do you think that might provide insight into 03 Duncan vs 04 Garnett?

Yes, I do think that Duncan was a little bit better in 2007 than Garnett in 2008, not by much though. I also think that 2007 vs 2008 comparison gives us some insight into the peak discussion, because there is a clear trend to call Garnett a significantly more scalable player, which on paper may look reasonable, but I think the 2007 vs 2008 comparison makes it less valid that many believe.

Anyway, I think I need to end for today. I hope you'll find my answers at least worth reading

[One_and_Done]

Random fact of the day. Jokic is 0-5 in the playoffs against teams with over 50 wins since 2020. Hard to imagine that ever being true for some of the other guys we're discussing here.

[O_6]

Should be fun to see how this list turns out.

1. LeBron James 2013 (HM: 2012, 2016, 2009)

27/8/7 on 57/41/75 with .640 TS% (+10.5 rTS)
- MVP (120/121 first place votes) and runner-up DPOY (18 1st place votes to Gasol's 30)
- Led best record 66 win/+7.03 SRS team with the #2 ORtg in the league
- Led league in PER, Win Shares, WS/48 (.322 which is 5th all-time), BPM, VORP
- Led league in "Clutch +/-" with +125 (17th in clutch mins, 4th in points, 3rd in rebounds, 1st in assists)
- Led league with 411 Restricted Area FGs made
- Led league with 76.0 FG% in the Restricted Area!!!
+15.3 On/Off (2nd to Conley) and +13.2 ON (2nd to Chalmers)
+10.0 5-year RAPM score from nbarapm.com (#1 overall, #1 on O, #6 on D)

LeBron has different options obviously but to me 2013 was the most complete version of him that we ever saw, which makes him the most complete basketball player to ever step foot onto the court.

The 2012 playoff run is where it started, but the 2013 season is when the LeBron at the PF position with Bosh at Center small-ball unit really smacked the league across the face. According to BBRef, 91% of LeBron's minutes were at PF/C in 2013 vs. 26% in the 2012 regular season (just 26% in '09 + 23% in '16 as well). People shouldn't forget what a revolutionary lineup adjustment this felt like at the time, it really sped up the league's transition into wanting more offensive spacing from the 4/5 positions. Not everyone had DPOY caliber LeBron though, switching between guarding PGs and Centers on back-to-back possessions with it not being hyperbole.

At 6'8", he was probably at his heaviest at 270lbs while being the one of the 5 or so fastest players in the league and being able to jump from the FT line as well as get his head near rim-level fairly often. '09 LeBron may have been a hair better of a pure athlete due to the extra explosive quickness, but '13 LeBron was just a cheat code and was bullying people that year. As I mentioned, leading the league in Restricted Area FGs made AND FG% is just insanity. His efficiency that year was absolutely incredible.

2013 LeBron -- 336.6 TS Add (120 TS+) *led league in TS Add
2012 LeBron -- 217.8 TS Add (115 TS+)
2009 LeBron -- 182.8 TS Add (109 TS+)
2016 LeBron -- 153.4 TS Add (109 TS+)

He was just hitting from everywhere that season. So what did he do in the playoffs? Eviscerated a good 38 win Bucks team with 25/8/7 on 63% shooting for a rTS% of +14.8%, then took care of the 45 win #6 defense Bulls in 5 games with a modest 24/7/8 series with a +5.6 rTS%.

Then against the 49 win #1 defense Pacers, the Heat are forced to go 7 games in a struggle. Wade averages 15.4 PPG on .496 TS% and Bosh averages 11.0 PPG on .495 TS% as they are stifled by Peak Hibbert verticality and young George's tenacious perimeter defense. Luckily LeBron torches the #1 defense in the league with 29/7/5 on .609 TS% (+11.4 rTS%) and they advance.

Then the struggles vs. the 58 win #3 defense Spurs occur and you're wondering if we could be watching another 2011 Finals type of poor offensive performance from him. 18, 17, and 15 points in the first 3 games. Had a .494 TS% entering Game 6 of the series and then started off Game 6 by shooting 3-12 for 14 points through the first 3 quarters.

But then he stepped up when he had too and played out of his mind in that 4th quarter. He shot 8-14 for 18 points to finish that game. Then he drops 37 points on .698 TS% in Game 7 of a 95-88 game including the game icing jumper with 27 seconds left. He finished the series averaging 25/11/7 on +1.4 TS%.

I can see arguments for other LeBron years. I can see how the start of the Spurs series feels a little disappointing after all the good stuff I was able to mention about him leading up to the Finals. But at the end of the day, he did step up when his team needed him the most and was able to carry his team to that Championship. Wade averaged 15.9 PPG on .498 TS% during that Finals run, he was far less effective than the year before. This was just LeBron being able to put a team on his back. Truly a special season from possibly the best player ever.

2. Tim Duncan 2003 (HM: 2002)

I do think LeBron at #1 was a kind of an easy choice for me because Shaq's '00 season isn't included here. However, the battle for 2nd place is really deep. There are a handful of guys with an argument imo. Jokic/Curry/Shaq/KG come to mind. But I'm going to have to go with 2003 Tim Duncan as my choice for 2nd best peak of the past 25 seasons.

23/13/4 with 2.9 BPG on .564 TS% (+4.5 rTS)
MVP and 4th in DPOY voting
Led league best 60-win /+5.65 SRS team with the #3 DRtg in the league
Led league in Win Shares
+14.7 On/Off (3rd in the league to KG/Dirk) and +9.1 ON (9th in the league)
+8.4 5-year RAPM score from nbarapm.com (#1 overall, #7 on O, #2 on D)

This wasn't a 2000 Shaq, 2013 LeBron, 2016 Curry type of regular season where the players basically break the league. This was still a phenomenal regular season though which is what you can expect from the MVP of the team with the best record in the league who also ranks 1st in the league in 5-year RAPM.

'03 Duncan was truly one of the best players ever. People forget what a great athlete he was. He was agile and powerful for a man of his size. He had 111 dunks this year which is 2nd only to his rookie season of 149. He was 3rd in the league in Restricted Area FGs made trailing only Shaq and Gary Payton. He was fantastic on both ends of the court in the regular season. But the backbone of his argument for #2 here is how unbelievable his playoff run was.

19/16/5 on +6.9 rTS against the 44 win Suns. It was a tough 6 game series that Duncan closed with a 15/20/10 triple double with 4 blocks in an 87-85 win. Then he drops 28/12/5 on +5.1 rTS against the defending 3-peat Champion Lakers in a 6 game masterpiece where he clearly outplays Shaq and Kobe to lead his team to the next round. Then he goes out and drops an absurd 28/17/6 with 3 BPG on +8.8 TS against the 60 win Dallas Mavs. Its unfortunate that Dirk only pays 3 games in this round, but Duncan just murders the Mavs to get to the Finals. Then 24/17/5 with 5.3 BPG with +4.1 rTS against the 49 win #1 D Nets.

This is the biggest carryjob in NBA history imo. Duncan led his team with 24.7 PPG in the playoffs on .577 TS%. Tony Parker (14.7 PPG on .468 TS%), Stephen Jackson (12.8 PPG on .529 TS%), and Manu (9.4 PPG on .522 TS%) were the offensive support for Duncan. This is with Duncan also leading the team in Assists by a decent margin AND anchoring the defense at a DPOY caliber level.

I think Jokic and Curry are the next two on my list and it was difficult putting Duncan ahead of them. They are clearly a tier or two above Duncan as offensive hubs. But Duncan was able to step into the role as a dominant #1 offensive option in the playoffs while also playing absurd defense in a way Jokic/Curry never could. It's close but Duncan's 2003 is just such a complete overall season highlighted by arguably the most impressive individual playoff run ever.

[DraymondGold]

Thanks for your pushback 70s! I appreciate your insight a ton, so I'll try to cover everything.

So, I’ll start by reiterating that this was a tough choice for me like I said in my post I very much could be wrong, and the uncertainty bars are certainly wide enough to take either player over any of the adjacent players. I also still could be persuaded to flip the ordering.

I am glad that you are participating and just to be clear - I genuinely want to know your position on this matter. I agree that any criticism at this stage is basically nitpicking and almost any order can be defended. So please don't take this as an attack or anything like that

Course not! Productive disagreements can be where we learn most.

Just answering the explicit questions for now (hoping to think more on the other points):

Where I do see decline is in the postseason numbers. If we look at full season On/off per 48 with fairly heavy playoff weighting (let’s say 5x), here are the seasonal values:
-00: +7.4
-01: 21.05
-02: +15.9
-03: +20.72
-04: +5.03
-05: +5.77
-06: +10.42
-07: +10.14
So there’s clearly a large dip going into 04/05 as Manu gains more prominence. We also see a clear dip in the post-season only numbers in more complex/accurate metrics like AuPM.

Could you do the same thing for Garnett's long postseason runs (2004 and 2008)?

AuPM show the similar dip for peak Garnett:

2004: 6.9 -> 5.4

While the numbers on 2008 run improves:

2008: 5.1 -> 5.4

The numbers don't really look like in a different tier to late-prime Duncan at this point:

2007: 5.3 -> 4.5

Garnett:
-01: +4.72
-02: +13.17
-03: +20.56
-04: +20.92
-05: +3.51
-06: +9.84
-07: +15
-08: +13.41

So comparable. Peaks samples in particular are quite similar with the high postseason rating. Post-peak mid-prime, Garnett has higher highs (07/08) but lower lows (05).
In multi-year samples, they alternate who looks better depending on the sample length, with Garnett starting to pull ahead in on/off starting in 6-year runs (although Duncan presumably is ahead in On rating).

...

3. Re: Doing this analysis via skillset or results,
A bit of both. Results-wise, the best Spurs teams seem exactly opposed to when Duncan was at his best. Take overall SRS (a good first pass for estimating team value, but of course one that could be improved/debated), the top Spurs teams go in order of best to worst:
-2014 Spurs
-1999 Spurs
-2013 Spurs
-2016 Spurs
-2007 Spurs
-2005 Spurs
-2003 Spurs
That’s not exactly encouraging for Duncan’s ceiling raising when he’s playing at his most impactful individually in 03.

What do you mean by "overall SRS"? Is it some kind of weighed mean between RS and PS SRS?

I mean, I think it's hard to put that on Duncan's scalability, because there is much simpler explanation - Spurs teams were simply far less talented in the early 2000s than the mid-2010s.

About ceiling raising, 1999 Spurs are basically at the top of the list and Duncan did the most of work for them. I also think that the differences between places are very slim.

Sansterre's overall SRS metric: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2012241 So SRS in the RS and the PS, where the PS is updated sequentially each round as the playoffs progress (like an ELO) and given 7x weighting (so the end result of a finals team is ~65% playoffs, 35% regular season). The exact ranking order has a few extra terms (standard deviation relative to league and playoff rounds won) that don't factor in to the overall SRS value but help the ranking. It's a somewhat arbitrary formula e.g. in terms of weights, but I do think it does a good first-pass job at capturing both RS and PS dominance, and it does gets most teams roughly in the right order (with a few notable exceptions that can often be explained by blindspots in the metric).

To my eye, the 99 Spurs were a little more evenly split between Duncan and Robinson than 'Duncan did most of the work for them' makes it sound (e.g. offensive load had it 36% vs 32% Duncan in the RS and 35% vs 31% Duncan in the PS, with Robinson carrying a slightly higher defensive load at least to my eye), but agreed the 99 Spurs being good is a nice feather in Duncan's ceiling raising cap, and agreed that the uncertainty bars may be wide enough to argue that it's not a clear 07>05>03.

The mid 2014 Spurs seemed to be the Spurs’ most dominant championship (with the surrounding years in 13/16 being pretty great too, albeit with less postseason success). Now of course this is highly complementary to Duncan’s longevity. And one could argue they would be better with a peak Duncan rather than old Duncan (which given the improvement in player quality, is hard to dispute)… but it also seems contextually relevant that these more dominant Spurs teams had shifted significantly away from Duncan-offense. Great credit to Duncan as a leader for being so unselfish, but it’s also not like his efficiency shot up in his reduced offensive role (in fact it declined to slightly above league average at best).

Again, his efficiency dropped but he was 37 in 2014. At that age, Garnett was basically done as a relevant player and didn't even reach 50 TS%.

I have a few problems with that point. First of all, isn't the fact that Duncan was the part of such a good team in reduced role helps his case as a ceiling raiser, at least to some degree? Secondly, we're talking about peaks here and although I agree that the more data we use, the better - I don't think talking about 36-39 years old Duncan is relevant to peaks discussion.

Well, good ceiling raising isn't just being about good teams, it's about maintaining impact on those good teams. Of course by age 36-39, Duncan was much less impactful to the 14 Spurs. Like you say, that decline is due to age as we'd expect of a 36-39 year old player. And of course it's a nice feather in his cap to be on such a dominant team in his old age. So yes it does help his case as a ceiling raiser.

I brought them up not because I necessarily think Duncan should have been more impactful at in his late 30s, nor because I hold later old age against peak Duncan, but out of interest of team building around peak Duncan. How do you build a dominant (or sufficiently effective) offense around Duncan and Garnett; How do you build a dominant (or sufficiently effective) defense around Curry and Jokic? How hard is that kind of team building to do, and if you're successful at doing it, does that require Duncan/Garnett/Curry/Jokic/etc. reducing their individual impact, or does their impact explode when they have a good situation? Duncan's obviously dominant enough to be a clear candidate here, but one of my concerns for him is that his impact seems to be a touch lower in some areas than some of the other candidates, and at best I don't see it shoot up when he gets better support in the surrounding years 99/05/07 (and at worst we see the playoff plus minus decline I mentioned above, though that interpretation still does have the same limitations I mentioned above).

...

The performance of the 99 Spurs is definitely complementary to Duncan’s ceiling raising during his prime, but I’m someone who’s high on Robinson, and have argued Robinson had the more impactful playoffs even in the reduced role.

I think it would be hard to argue for Robinson over Duncan, especially in the Lakers and Knicks series. I truly get that Robinson was still a remarkable player at that point, but it relies way too much on the noisy PS impact metrics, instead of more holistic analysis.

Then during Duncan’s prime, having 07 > 05 > 03 seems to suggest the Spurs got better as Duncan’s role reduced.

How big these differences are?
I don't think Duncan's primacy was really reduced between 2005 and 2007 by the way.

The differences are't too big like I said above. You can check out the link above -- in 03 vs 07 for instance, it's primarily the standard deviation relative to the league that changes (one can debate whether standard deviations or relative magnitudes are more useful measure of team dominance). Like I said in my post, it's not a very compelling point on its own... more context that is slightly indicative / supportive of my skillset analysis.
Fair enough re: 05 vs 07 primacy!

Anyway, I think I need to end for today. I hope you'll find my answers at least worth reading

Cheers, and thanks for the latest post up numbers!

[One_and_Done]

Should be fun to see how this list turns out.

1. LeBron James 2013 (HM: 2012, 2016, 2009)

27/8/7 on 57/41/75 with .640 TS% (+10.5 rTS)
- MVP (120/121 first place votes) and runner-up DPOY (18 1st place votes to Gasol's 30)
- Led best record 66 win/+7.03 SRS team with the #2 ORtg in the league
- Led league in PER, Win Shares, WS/48 (.322 which is 5th all-time), BPM, VORP
- Led league in "Clutch +/-" with +125 (17th in clutch mins, 4th in points, 3rd in rebounds, 1st in assists)
- Led league with 411 Restricted Area FGs made
- Led league with 76.0 FG% in the Restricted Area!!!
+15.3 On/Off (2nd to Conley) and +13.2 ON (2nd to Chalmers)
+10.0 5-year RAPM score from nbarapm.com (#1 overall, #1 on O, #6 on D)

LeBron has different options obviously but to me 2013 was the most complete version of him that we ever saw, which makes him the most complete basketball player to ever step foot onto the court.

The 2012 playoff run is where it started, but the 2013 season is when the LeBron at the PF position with Bosh at Center small-ball unit really smacked the league across the face. According to BBRef, 91% of LeBron's minutes were at PF/C in 2013 vs. 26% in the 2012 regular season (just 26% in '09 + 23% in '16 as well). People shouldn't forget what a revolutionary lineup adjustment this felt like at the time, it really sped up the league's transition into wanting more offensive spacing from the 4/5 positions. Not everyone had DPOY caliber LeBron though, switching between guarding PGs and Centers on back-to-back possessions with it not being hyperbole.

At 6'8", he was probably at his heaviest at 270lbs while being the one of the 5 or so fastest players in the league and being able to jump from the FT line as well as get his head near rim-level fairly often. '09 LeBron may have been a hair better of a pure athlete due to the extra explosive quickness, but '13 LeBron was just a cheat code and was bullying people that year. As I mentioned, leading the league in Restricted Area FGs made AND FG% is just insanity. His efficiency that year was absolutely incredible.

2013 LeBron -- 336.6 TS Add (120 TS+) *led league in TS Add
2012 LeBron -- 217.8 TS Add (115 TS+)
2009 LeBron -- 182.8 TS Add (109 TS+)
2016 LeBron -- 153.4 TS Add (109 TS+)

He was just hitting from everywhere that season. So what did he do in the playoffs? Eviscerated a good 38 win Bucks team with 25/8/7 on 63% shooting for a rTS% of +14.8%, then took care of the 45 win #6 defense Bulls in 5 games with a modest 24/7/8 series with a +5.6 rTS%.

Then against the 49 win #1 defense Pacers, the Heat are forced to go 7 games in a struggle. Wade averages 15.4 PPG on .496 TS% and Bosh averages 11.0 PPG on .495 TS% as they are stifled by Peak Hibbert verticality and young George's tenacious perimeter defense. Luckily LeBron torches the #1 defense in the league with 29/7/5 on .609 TS% (+11.4 rTS%) and they advance.

Then the struggles vs. the 58 win #3 defense Spurs occur and you're wondering if we could be watching another 2011 Finals type of poor offensive performance from him. 18, 17, and 15 points in the first 3 games. Had a .494 TS% entering Game 6 of the series and then started off Game 6 by shooting 3-12 for 14 points through the first 3 quarters.

But then he stepped up when he had too and played out of his mind in that 4th quarter. He shot 8-14 for 18 points to finish that game. Then he drops 37 points on .698 TS% in Game 7 of a 95-88 game including the game icing jumper with 27 seconds left. He finished the series averaging 25/11/7 on +1.4 TS%.

I can see arguments for other LeBron years. I can see how the start of the Spurs series feels a little disappointing after all the good stuff I was able to mention about him leading up to the Finals. But at the end of the day, he did step up when his team needed him the most and was able to carry his team to that Championship. Wade averaged 15.9 PPG on .498 TS% during that Finals run, he was far less effective than the year before. This was just LeBron being able to put a team on his back. Truly a special season from possibly the best player ever.

2. Tim Duncan 2003 (HM: 2002)

I do think LeBron at #1 was a kind of an easy choice for me because Shaq's '00 season isn't included here. However, the battle for 2nd place is really deep. There are a handful of guys with an argument imo. Jokic/Curry/Shaq/KG come to mind. But I'm going to have to go with 2003 Tim Duncan as my choice for 2nd best peak of the past 25 seasons.

23/13/4 with 2.9 BPG on .564 TS% (+4.5 rTS)
MVP and 4th in DPOY voting
Led league best 60-win /+5.65 SRS team with the #3 DRtg in the league
Led league in Win Shares
+14.7 On/Off (3rd in the league to KG/Dirk) and +9.1 ON (9th in the league)
+8.4 5-year RAPM score from nbarapm.com (#1 overall, #7 on O, #2 on D)

This wasn't a 2000 Shaq, 2013 LeBron, 2016 Curry type of regular season where the players basically break the league. This was still a phenomenal regular season though which is what you can expect from the MVP of the team with the best record in the league who also ranks 1st in the league in 5-year RAPM.

'03 Duncan was truly one of the best players ever. People forget what a great athlete he was. He was agile and powerful for a man of his size. He had 111 dunks this year which is 2nd only to his rookie season of 149. He was 3rd in the league in Restricted Area FGs made trailing only Shaq and Gary Payton. He was fantastic on both ends of the court in the regular season. But the backbone of his argument for #2 here is how unbelievable his playoff run was.

19/16/5 on +6.9 rTS against the 44 win Suns. It was a tough 6 game series that Duncan closed with a 15/20/10 triple double with 4 blocks in an 87-85 win. Then he drops 28/12/5 on +5.1 rTS against the defending 3-peat Champion Lakers in a 6 game masterpiece where he clearly outplays Shaq and Kobe to lead his team to the next round. Then he goes out and drops an absurd 28/17/6 with 3 BPG on +8.8 TS against the 60 win Dallas Mavs. Its unfortunate that Dirk only pays 3 games in this round, but Duncan just murders the Mavs to get to the Finals. Then 24/17/5 with 5.3 BPG with +4.1 rTS against the 49 win #1 D Nets.

This is the biggest carryjob in NBA history imo. Duncan led his team with 24.7 PPG in the playoffs on .577 TS%. Tony Parker (14.7 PPG on .468 TS%), Stephen Jackson (12.8 PPG on .529 TS%), and Manu (9.4 PPG on .522 TS%) were the offensive support for Duncan. This is with Duncan also leading the team in Assists by a decent margin AND anchoring the defense at a DPOY caliber level.

I think Jokic and Curry are the next two on my list and it was difficult putting Duncan ahead of them. They are clearly a tier or two above Duncan as offensive hubs. But Duncan was able to step into the role as a dominant #1 offensive option in the playoffs while also playing absurd defense in a way Jokic/Curry never could. It's close but Duncan's 2003 is just such a complete overall season highlighted by arguably the most impressive individual playoff run ever.

Pretty sure you need 4 votes for it to be valid.