Which Player Had A Higher Peak? Tracy Mcgrady or James Harden?

[MiamiBulls]

Which Player Had The Higher Peak? 1 yr- 2 yr peak or otherwise.

[Cavsfansince84]

I give it to Harden mainly because of the absurd record that the Rockets had with him, CP3 and Capela in the line up(2018). Something like 50-5. That says a lot about the impact Harden was having that year.

[iggymcfrack]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

[SHAQ32]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

It's a puzzler probably because your McGrady assessment is wrong in two regards. 1, T-Mac was efficient. He averaged 32 & 6 in a very low scoring era while not turning the ball over. And 2, he was a particularly good defender. Wasn't very good, definitely not great, but good. Especially in comparison with Harden.

[Primedeion]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

"Not very efficient" when he was rocking a 116 ORTG in the dead ball era. Jesus.

[iggymcfrack]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

"Not very efficient" when he was rocking a 116 ORTG in the dead ball era. Jesus.

He has a career TS% add of -278.6 so solidly below average for his career. Although looking at the numbers, I was a little surprised how well he shot specifically in his peak season of 2003. It was the only season of his career where he was meaningfully above league average, but for that season in particular, he was actually quite efficient.

[migya]

Very different eras. Harden would struggle considerably in the environment of the 2000s. It's difficult to compare.

[RCM88x]

To me it's pretty clearly Harden, mostly because he had multiple seasons at a similar level making his "peak" feel like less of an outlier. I'm generally adverse to rating outlier seasons like '03 McGrady highly relative to someone like Harden because of that. No doubt McGrady definitely deserves to be in the conversation for top 25 peaks since 2000 though so I'm glad they included him, and if it wasn't for his ranking relative to Harden I don't think too many would bat an eye at his spot either.

I feel like Thinking Basketball has always been a little lower on Harden than average though, for whatever reason.

[Doctor MJ]

Which Player Had The Higher Peak? 1 yr- 2 yr peak or otherwise.

So I have Harden higher when forced to just players in rankings, but I think it's important to note how much uncertainty there is in the McGrady analysis. Players don't age at the same rates, particularly when they have very different bodies, and McGrady was someone who didn't stay at peak long, and didn't have a great team around him while he was there.

I do criticize McGrady for not being more effective than he was in Houston, and part of that criticism is a failure to adapt as he lost physical advantage, but technically this shouldn't be relevant to the peak discussion.

[f4p]

I give it to Harden mainly because of the absurd record that the Rockets had with him, CP3 and Capela in the line up(2018). Something like 50-5. That says a lot about the impact Harden was having that year.

42-3. Started 25-0 in their first 25 games together.

[f4p]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

Since harden isn't a threat to Steph it's hard to see why he's so low on harden, but it does somehow feel related to how much he overrates Steph, like he's following the same process of overindexing on the wrong stuff and not asking "wait, how did the overall results play out if my evaluation of this player is correct since the results should have been different if I am correct?"

Like it feels like you have to just be using all sorts of inconsistent criteria to have harden 19th or 20th and behind someone like tmac. Because the reasons he's behind tmac wouldn't follow for some of the other people he's behind.

[Hook_Em]

T-Mac is probably top-25 all time if Grant Hill’s body didn’t break down. At least one title and multiple finals. But we live in reality and Harden had the better peak/career.

[Primedeion]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

"Not very efficient" when he was rocking a 116 ORTG in the dead ball era. Jesus.

He has a career TS% add of -278.6 so solidly below average for his career. Although looking at the numbers, I was a little surprised how well he shot specifically in his peak season of 2003. It was the only season of his career where he was meaningfully above league average, but for that season in particular, he was actually quite efficient.

1) TS add is a crap stat
2) TF does his career have to do with his peak season?
3) scoring efficiency isn't efficiency. T-Mac's turnover rate was incredibly low and he was also a good offensive rebounder. A 116 ORTG in 2003 flat out makes him one of the most efficient players in the entire league.

[ReggiesKnicks]

"Not very efficient" when he was rocking a 116 ORTG in the dead ball era. Jesus.

He has a career TS% add of -278.6 so solidly below average for his career. Although looking at the numbers, I was a little surprised how well he shot specifically in his peak season of 2003. It was the only season of his career where he was meaningfully above league average, but for that season in particular, he was actually quite efficient.

1) TS add is a crap stat

Why do you consider TS+ a bad stat? What is a good stat for measuring efficiency?

3) scoring efficiency isn't efficiency. T-Mac's turnover rate was incredibly low and he was also a good offensive rebounder. A 116 ORTG in 2003 flat out makes him one of the most efficient players in the entire league.

Where are you getting 116 ORTG from? Are you referencing basketball-references predictive offensive efficiency? If so, that is a formula derived and an estimate. It has its uses, but I struggle to see how it should be the basis for analyzing efficiency in basketball.

[tsherkin]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

"Peak series" is the key here.

In his peak season, McGrady was a 56.4% TS player in a league environment of 51.9% TS. That's 109 TS+, or +4.5% rTS.

There is no intelligent way to describe that as "not particularly efficient."

I can see the pro-Harden argument and everything, but let's not invent nonsense to denigrate McGrady, yea?

[penbeast0]

And, one doesn't have to be a particularly good defender, which McGrady could be when he was focused in on it (which wasn't consistent), to be significantly better than Shaqtin the Fool's favorite defensive mistake maker James Harden.

[iggymcfrack]

Of all the rankings Thinking Basketball has done in their peaks series, T-Mac rating so high is the biggest puzzler for me. Not particularly efficient, not a particularly good defender, and the dude literally never won a single playoff series his whole life. I don't even know what the argument is for him over Harden.

"Peak series" is the key here.

In his peak season, McGrady was a 56.4% TS player in a league environment of 51.9% TS. That's 109 TS+, or +4.5% rTS.

There is no intelligent way to describe that as "not particularly efficient."

I can see the pro-Harden argument and everything, but let's not invent nonsense to denigrate McGrady, yea?

OK, but the series said they did look at surrounding years to help figure out their peak. T-Mac in his best 3 year stretch, had rTS% of +1.2, +4.5, +0.7. Harden from 2018-2020 had rTS% of +6.3, +5.6, +6.1.

Harden was also a better passer and had more postseason success.

Hell, if you want to say T-Mac was efficient because he had one season of +4.5 rTS%, even Draymond Green beats that with a +4.6 rTS% in his peak season of 2016. Would you say Draymond was an efficient scorer for a superstar just because he had one peak season where he was above average?

[tsherkin]

OK, but the series said they did look at surrounding years to help figure out their peak. T-Mac in his best 3 year stretch, had rTS% of +1.2, +4.5, +0.7. Harden from 2018-2020 had rTS% of +6.3, +5.6, +6.1.

I agree about the Harden portion, as I said. But I was noting that McGrady was very efficient in that one peak season.

Hell, if you want to say T-Mac was efficient because he had one season of +4.5 rTS%, even Draymond Green beats that with a +4.6 rTS% in his peak season of 2016. Would you say Draymond was an efficient scorer for a superstar just because he had one peak season where he was above average?

But that'd sort of be a foolish mention because he's never been any kind of volume scorer. +4.5% rTS is very different on 16 ppg versus 32 ppg; not really comparable situations. Also, +4.5% rTS on high volume is very much more than just "above average." It's better than Kobe ever managed, for example.

[f4p]

tmac's one season stats are just so far removed from his other years.

30.3 PER vs 25.3 second best season
0.262 WS48 vs 0.189 second best season (40% higher)
10.5 BPM vs 7.0 second best season (50% higher!)

there's probably no one with this disparity between their best and second best season. meanwhile 2018 to 2020 harden basically just had the same season 3 years in a row and 2017 and 2015 look similar to each other and are just a small step down from 2018-2020. if ben really said they were looking at surrounding seasons and then picked tmac over harden, then ben's a liar.

[70sFan]

if ben really said they were looking at surrounding seasons and then picked tmac over harden, then ben's a liar.

You don't need to agree with his conclusions, but he explained Tmac's case in the episode. You are free to listen to it, instead of accusing someone of being a liar.

Do people really think there is nothing wrong with throwing serious accusations around on the Internet or what?