Better 1 Year Peak: SGA, KD, Dirk, D-Wade, Kobe

[falcolombardi]

Looks significant that Kobe did what he did against greater competition and defenses, as was stated above in this thread.

True. The 09 Magic had a defensive rating that was -6.5 points better than league average DRTG. That's one of the twenty best marks in NBA history. The 06 Pistons (-3) aren't even on the same planet. And the 06 Mavs (-1) aren't even in the same universe.

It was not a series win but wade also had crazy numbers against garnett celtics which were pretty elite

[trelos6]

They are close enough that it basically comes down to how you value regular season v playoffs.

Regular season, SGA > all

Playoffs Wade ‘06 is probably the best.

But I personally have Wade ‘09 > Wade ‘06. I think he was better, but again, it’s probably because I’m valuing regular season performance over playoff peak.

[The Master]

Looks significant that Kobe did what he did against greater competition and defenses, as was stated above in this thread.

Did he though?

First:

rDRTG of Heat '06 opponents in the regular season: -3.0
rDRTG of Lakers '09 opponents in the regular season -3.3

Second:




Besides CP3 - who was injured as he usually was - Roy, Dirk or LeBron played super strong series against teams that Kobe faced that year. On the other hand, Wade easily outproduced what LeBron did against Pistons '06. So I really doubt that these teams that Kobe faced were really any better in containing stars of the opposing teams.

Third:

SRS of Heat '06 opponents in the regular season: +3.46
SRS of Lakers '09 opponents in the regular season +3.91

So the only argument you can realistically have is that 2nd round opponent for Kobe (+3.7 SRS Rockets team) was much better than respectively Nets '06 (+1.1 SRS team), if you're really that focused on the regular season. Pistons '06 and Mavs '06 were +6 SRS teams, while Nuggets '09 and Magic '09 were +4.8 SRS teams on average. Also, Jazz '09 (+2.3) were better than Bulls '06 (+0.5), but not defensively (-3.8 rDRTG vs -1.0 rDRTG). Also, Rockets' best player (Yao) was out of the series since game 4.

But even if you assume that Wade had handicap by playing a worse competition, when we take a look on ECF/WCF + Finals production, we'll get:

31-7-5, with +11,4 BPM, on 61.6% TS vs 33-6-7, with +9.8 BPM, on 57.9% TS.

You can argue perhaps that Kobe was on par with Wade '06 in the playoffs - but Wade outproduced him in respective regular seasons. I don't think you can realistically claim that Kobe was better in the playoffs considering that they played against similar defenses and the difference in competition basically is that Kobe played against +3.7 SRS team without their best player. Yao-less Rockets played really well, that's for sure, but are they that much better than Nets with Carter, Kidd and Jefferson to make a serious argument out of it? I doubt it. Are they better at all?

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Also - keep in mind that Wade averaged 33-6-7 on 65.0 TS% with 13.5 BPM against the Celtics 2010, and 27-5-4 on 54TS% with +7.1 BPM against Pistons 2005 until he got injured in G5, and these are teams that Bryant struggled a lot (LeBron as well at that time).

We didn't see that much of healthy peak Wade in the playoffs with decent supporting cast - but his resilience as a scorer in sub-optimal conditions (Heat weren't a great shooting team at that time) was great and he was a very gifted playmaker.

[Caneman786]

Why is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander so low?

Last season he had both the highest EPM in the league as well as the highest 1-year RAPM.

There is more to basketball than best regular season impact metrics....i just wish people didnt pick and choose when to use them like that

(Ex jokic, garnett, curry)

Yeah, you're right (and I changed my post before you fully responded). But the fact he places so highly shows that he has an argument.

It seems like people aren't even debating or saying reasons he shouldn't be there, and they're not even putting him in the conversation. I don't think that's fair considering what he's been doing.

He's in the mix for sure.