RealGM's Top 100 Players of All Time (2026) - #20 (Kevin Durant) and #21 (Chris Paul)

[LA Bird]

Paul played on organizations so bad that he is a double franchise GOAT. Still gets blamed for lack of team success.
Maybe he should have teamed up with prime Kareem and steamrolled some negative SRS teams to show how much of a "winner" he was.

Anyways, my 2nd spot is still open and here are some thoughts on other players:

Harden, Giannis: This used to be a debate but then it seemingly got forgotten once Giannis won a ring and "proved" he was better. Which is a pretty silly narrative IMO since the Rockets faced the KD Warriors in the conference finals while the Bucks beat an injured Trae Hawks even without Giannis. Still have Harden ahead on longevity but probably not for long. Then again, who knows about Giannis' future? I thought Harden was still trending upward in 2020 at only 30 but then he got fat, switched teams, injured, and then was never the same again.

Dr J, Malone: Two older stars with some questionable +/- numbers. Malone at least still had strong raw figures both on and on/off but Erving's were Webber-esque and that's not a good thing at all. The redundancy excuse doesn't work unless you have the reserve anywhere near the high volume superstar. That applies for Webber vs Divac/Miller and for Erving vs Jones. Sure, Bobby Jones was a great 6th man but so was Cooper and Magic still had godly +/- numbers regardless. If your team is almost the same with or without your MVP, how "valuable" are they really?

Nash, Wade: I think this is an overlooked comparison. Their primes overlapped almost exactly at the same time in 05-12 and while you still get a couple more accolade seasons from both beyond that, their impact numbers were pretty weak in those years (01-04 Nash: +0.9, 13-16 Wade: -0.4). Personally would pick Nash of the two because of better health.

Moses: Not that high on him outside of the 83 peak. Rockets Moses gets the Iverson treatment where he is remembered solely for the one weak Finals run and none of the other disappointing exits. Then his post title career was so underwhelming that people almost forgot about 83 completely. Sure, he still had a 20+ on/off in 85 but so did Cheeks in 86 and he actually had the higher average over those 4 years. Outside of 83, there is little evidence of MVP level impact from Moses (+2 SRS in 18G missed 84-86, +2 SRS in 9G missed 87, 70th percentile RWOWY in 78-82) and while the Rockets did fall off a cliff after he left, they were also tanking for Ralph Sampson.

[Dr Positivity]

The evidence isn't really there for Paul being great defensively until midway through his Clippers tenure. Chandler was more than likely a more impactful defender than him in New Orleans.

Then there's some discussion on whether to count turnover avoidance as offense or defense. CP3 was a very good defender, certainly among ATG lead guards. Imo he wasn't ahead of good wing defenders or just decent defensive bigs.

Agree with the point that part of the Clippers playing good D with Paul on could be his offensive style of play and inflating a stat like DRAPM (It looks a bit high to me, higher than peak Lebron and Kawhi), but that could also make his offense more valuable than his ORAPM, so the final result is the same of strong RAPM backed player.

[lessthanjake]

When Moses made his first all defense appearance, his team had the second worst defensive rating in the league (3.9 rdrtg ). His entire time in Houston the team was worse than league average.

Okay, but that fact wasn’t lost on voters at the time. They didn’t know DRTGs back then, but the Rockets were also amongst the worst in the league in terms of points given up per game too. And Moses Malone was still voted to the all-defensive second team.

ppg against
Clipper (worst) 114.9
Rockets 112.4
Lg avg 110.3

Drtg
Clippers (worst) 107.9
Rockets 107.7
Lg avg 103.8

Points per game against looks closer to average than to league-worst. Drtg looks league-worst adjacent.

all per: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1979.html

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

[Owly]

Charles Barkley is someone I really want to rank highly. I’ve always liked him. But I just find the impact case for him pretty dubious. His play-by-play era RAPM makes him look great from an offensive perspective but genuinely bad on defense, and the result is that the overall RAPM is good but not great. Granted, that’s in not in his best years, so those numbers actually are not bad. But then Squared’s RAPM also has him as an elite offensive player whose negative defensive impact holds him back a lot. Okay, but that’s just a partial RAPM. But for Barkley we actually have his on-off for his entire 76ers career—which includes a lot of his best years. And we also have his on-off for 1994-1996 from the Pollack stuff. And it’s not particularly great. It’s certainly not bad and is consistent with a very good player who had a significantly positive impact. But it’s not indicative of an elite impact player either. Barkley was a playoff riser and that mitigates this some, but it’s just hard for me to put him this high.

I would humbly argue that the on/off and RAPM underrate his impact when you look at team WOWY.

In 1991, when he missed 15 games with the Sixers, they were 39-28(.582) with him and 5-10(.333) without him. And he dragged that roster to the second round of the playoffs and took a game off the Bulls(something he also did the year before in 1990).

In 1993, upon joining the Suns, they were already a good team, but he did provide some lift, going from 53 wins and 5.68 SRS to 62 wins and 6.27 SRS. Also, looking at the context, that was a season where KJ missed nearly half the season too. There wasn't really any falloff without him(37-12(.755) with KJ, and 25-8(.758) without), but when Barkley missed 6 games, they went 1-5.

In 1994, they were 48-17 with Barkley and 8-9 without. In 1996, they were 38-33 with him and 3-8 without.

1995 was the only year of his Phoenix tenure where they looked ok without him - 49-19 with and 10-4 without.

It is also worth noting the degree to which the Suns collapsed after he was traded to Houston: in 1996-97, they started 0-13 and were 17-32 at the deadline(though for clarity sake, KJ did miss some time early in the season too) when they traded for Jason Kidd, himself an impact monster that turned their year around as they went 23-10 the rest of the way.

Upon Barkley's arrival in Houston, they went from 48 wins and 1.63 SRS in 95-96 to 57 wins and 3.85 SRS in 96-97. Barkley played 53 games that year, and the team went 41-12 with him and 16-13 without. Drexler also missed a chunk of time(with some overlap) where they went 46-16 with and 11-9 without. Parsing it, they went 6-3 with Barkley/without Drexler, and 11-7 with Drexler/without Barkley.

In 1997-98, the Rockets were 36-32 with Barkley and 5-9 without, with Hakeem missing nearly half the season.

In this respect, I think he showed consistent positive impact.

I also want to circle back to this real quick:

But then Squared’s RAPM also has him as an elite offensive player whose negative defensive impact holds him back a lot.

Not just an elite offensive player. On a quick scan, I believe he has the #3 O-RAPM on the entire list, meaning by Squared's data, he was the most impactful offensive player of 85-96 not named Michael or Magic.

WoWY's a substantially cruder tool though (obviously how much depends to an extent which one you're using, here binary w-l is cruder end) than granular on-off and derived measures.

And then especially
Suns departure and highlighting 0-13 ...

Pretty muddy.
Only rotation center "Hot Rod" Williams out for almost all of that (bar game 13).
Big men were thus
Joe Kleine
A.C. Green - small for a power forward - at 33 losing the energy, athleticism advantage that made allowed that to work (got killed in his minutes)
Robert Horry - tall combo forward - playing about the least productive basketball of his career in Phoenix
Danny Manning - tall finesse combo forward - skilled but not a center
Wayman Tisdale, Chucky Brown, Ben Davis - at this point just chucking bodies out there (maybe Tisdale still had some juice?).

KJ out bar two games too. Yeah this isn't really a good way of measuring Barkley.

[Owly]

Okay, but that fact wasn’t lost on voters at the time. They didn’t know DRTGs back then, but the Rockets were also amongst the worst in the league in terms of points given up per game too. And Moses Malone was still voted to the all-defensive second team.

ppg against
Clipper (worst) 114.9
Rockets 112.4
Lg avg 110.3

Drtg
Clippers (worst) 107.9
Rockets 107.7
Lg avg 103.8

Points per game against looks closer to average than to league-worst. Drtg looks league-worst adjacent.

all per: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1979.html

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

I'm not sure what you mean by "limited" in this context.

To restate more explicitly
Their defensive ppg is circa 46% of the way down (from average) to the "worst" defensive team (0.456521739)
Their drtg is circa 95% of the way down (from average) to the worst defensive team (0.951219512).
With more sophisticated tools they go from looking like a quite poor defensive team to just about equivalent to the worst.

I'm not making any particular claims on Moses (team performance overall is a noisy, blunt "tool") but the "among the worst" (6th worst of 22) ... yeah I suspect people weren't quite aware how bad they were.

[lessthanjake]

ppg against
Clipper (worst) 114.9
Rockets 112.4
Lg avg 110.3

Drtg
Clippers (worst) 107.9
Rockets 107.7
Lg avg 103.8

Points per game against looks closer to average than to league-worst. Drtg looks league-worst adjacent.

all per: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1979.html

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

I'm not sure what you mean by "limited" in this context.

To restate more explicitly
Their defensive ppg is circa 46% of the way down (from average) to the "worst" defensive team (0.456521739)
Their drtg is circa 95% of the way down (from average) to the worst defensive team (0.951219512).
With more sophisticated tools they go from looking like a quite poor defensive team to just about equivalent to the worst.

I'm not making any particular claims on Moses (team performance overall is a noisy, blunt "tool") but the "among the worst" (6th worst of 22) ... yeah I suspect people weren't quite aware how bad they were.

Okay, but what’s the upshot of this point supposed to be? That if people had known that they were really the 21st ranked defense rather than the 17th ranked defense then he might not have been all-defensive second team? Like, okay, it’s possible that’s right. But knowing that a bad defense had an rORTG 3.9 worse than league average as opposed to knowing the team gave up 2.1 points per game more than league average is not going to make people go from putting a guy in all-defensive second team to thinking he’s a bad (or even average) defender. That’s what I mean by it being a limited point. I just don’t think it does much work here. At best, it eats away a little at the all-defensive team selection, but it doesn’t realistically suggest he was a bad defender. And I especially don’t think it does so when Moses also swapped teams a few years later with the reigning back-to-back all-defensive-first-team center and the team Moses left got significantly worse defensively and the team he joined got a little better defensively.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Charles Barkley is someone I really want to rank highly. I’ve always liked him. But I just find the impact case for him pretty dubious. His play-by-play era RAPM makes him look great from an offensive perspective but genuinely bad on defense, and the result is that the overall RAPM is good but not great. Granted, that’s in not in his best years, so those numbers actually are not bad. But then Squared’s RAPM also has him as an elite offensive player whose negative defensive impact holds him back a lot. Okay, but that’s just a partial RAPM. But for Barkley we actually have his on-off for his entire 76ers career—which includes a lot of his best years. And we also have his on-off for 1994-1996 from the Pollack stuff. And it’s not particularly great. It’s certainly not bad and is consistent with a very good player who had a significantly positive impact. But it’s not indicative of an elite impact player either. Barkley was a playoff riser and that mitigates this some, but it’s just hard for me to put him this high.

I would humbly argue that the on/off and RAPM underrate his impact when you look at team WOWY.

In 1991, when he missed 15 games with the Sixers, they were 39-28(.582) with him and 5-10(.333) without him. And he dragged that roster to the second round of the playoffs and took a game off the Bulls(something he also did the year before in 1990).

In 1993, upon joining the Suns, they were already a good team, but he did provide some lift, going from 53 wins and 5.68 SRS to 62 wins and 6.27 SRS. Also, looking at the context, that was a season where KJ missed nearly half the season too. There wasn't really any falloff without him(37-12(.755) with KJ, and 25-8(.758) without), but when Barkley missed 6 games, they went 1-5.

In 1994, they were 48-17 with Barkley and 8-9 without. In 1996, they were 38-33 with him and 3-8 without.

1995 was the only year of his Phoenix tenure where they looked ok without him - 49-19 with and 10-4 without.

It is also worth noting the degree to which the Suns collapsed after he was traded to Houston: in 1996-97, they started 0-13 and were 17-32 at the deadline(though for clarity sake, KJ did miss some time early in the season too) when they traded for Jason Kidd, himself an impact monster that turned their year around as they went 23-10 the rest of the way.

Upon Barkley's arrival in Houston, they went from 48 wins and 1.63 SRS in 95-96 to 57 wins and 3.85 SRS in 96-97. Barkley played 53 games that year, and the team went 41-12 with him and 16-13 without. Drexler also missed a chunk of time(with some overlap) where they went 46-16 with and 11-9 without. Parsing it, they went 6-3 with Barkley/without Drexler, and 11-7 with Drexler/without Barkley.

In 1997-98, the Rockets were 36-32 with Barkley and 5-9 without, with Hakeem missing nearly half the season.

In this respect, I think he showed consistent positive impact.

I also want to circle back to this real quick:

But then Squared’s RAPM also has him as an elite offensive player whose negative defensive impact holds him back a lot.

Not just an elite offensive player. On a quick scan, I believe he has the #3 O-RAPM on the entire list, meaning by Squared's data, he was the most impactful offensive player of 85-96 not named Michael or Magic.

WoWY's a substantially cruder tool though (obviously how much depends to an extent which one you're using, here binary w-l is cruder end) than granular on-off and derived measures.

And then especially
Suns departure and highlighting 0-13 ...

Pretty muddy.
Only rotation center "Hot Rod" Williams out for almost all of that (bar game 13).
Big men were thus
Joe Kleine
A.C. Green - small for a power forward - at 33 losing the energy, athleticism advantage that made allowed that to work (got killed in his minutes)
Robert Horry - tall combo forward - playing about the least productive basketball of his career in Phoenix
Danny Manning - tall finesse combo forward - skilled but not a center
Wayman Tisdale, Chucky Brown, Ben Davis - at this point just chucking bodies out there (maybe Tisdale still had some juice?).

KJ out bar two games too. Yeah this isn't really a good way of measuring Barkley.

Fair point about that particular one(though I'd be skeptical about Hot Rod having any significant impact at that point), but I argue that when a tool shows consistent impact over the span of a decade, it become less crude, less noise, etc.

[trex_8063]

A fair assessment, with the qualifier that "when he [Barkley] was working hard at that end" was, in fact, not all that often [most years].

Mailman was also arguably the GOAT at "pulling the chair" in the post, imo.


Crazy [to me] that Karl Malone may end up outside the top 20. Though I'm heavy on longevity.
Still......if the Jazz had won the title in '98, which they very likely would have done if not for two egregiously horrible shot-clock calls in game 6---missed calls which would literally be impossibly in today's league, btw---I'm confident Malone would have been voted top 15-16 [at worst].
It would remove this "can't win with him as your #1" narrative that dogs him, holding him back on these lists.

I don't think it necessarily has any bearing on voting here, but they also would've won Game 6 if he hadn't turned the ball over with the lead.

This isn't necessarily true. It could have been they'd have missed a shot, Chicago gets the board, scores and thus wins anyway (bear in mind Utah got the ball back with 37 seconds left; so even if they run out the shot clock entirely, Chicago has ~13 seconds to counter).

But again, it's unlikely to have been a one point/one possession game in the first place if Chicago hadn't been gifted 5 points by the refs.


From the 01:45 remaining in the 1st quarter, onward, Chicago held the lead for a grand total of just 1:42 (out of 37:45), never by more than a single point. Despite being GIVEN 5 pts unearned. It felt like Utah was largely in control, beyond the 1st quarter, with Chicago scrapping just to stay in the game.
'98 is not like present day, where 6-pt leads vanish in 30 seconds.
And again, these were officiating errors which would be quite LITERALLY impossible in the modern era (since they began automatic review of questionable shotclock calls).

And the context of a potential Game 7 would have been that it was played in Salt Lake City, with Scottie Pippen being questionable to play at all (and almost certainly at well below 100%).


It's speculative for me to say Utah probably wins the title if not for those two calls.......though perhaps little more speculative than your assertion that Utah wins game 6 if not for that turnover.

[trex_8063]

A fair assessment, with the qualifier that "when he [Barkley] was working hard at that end" was, in fact, not all that often [most years].

Mailman was also arguably the GOAT at "pulling the chair" in the post, imo.


Crazy [to me] that Karl Malone may end up outside the top 20. Though I'm heavy on longevity.
Still......if the Jazz had won the title in '98, which they very likely would have done if not for two egregiously horrible shot-clock calls in game 6---missed calls which would literally be impossibly in today's league, btw---I'm confident Malone would have been voted top 15-16 [at worst].
It would remove this "can't win with him as your #1" narrative that dogs him, holding him back on these lists.

Very likely probably a touch generous. Still have to win that last game. It's in Utah and Pippen is probably hurting but ... looking to see if "very likely" has an accepted associated probability and the results are coming back with something like circa 90% or above 90% (not saying that's an absolute truth, but that's what I've seen). Which seems bullish in terms of how much better you'd expect them to be to have those odds in a single game.

A fair point, which I willingly concede (you are, as ever, a stickler for semantics; though I can't fault you for it, as I sometimes do so myself).

I'll amend my statement to say Utah is "likely" [as opposed to "very likely"] to win the title if not for those blown calls.

As per subsequent post (and the degree to which Chicago was barely hanging around), I think it's an ~95-98% probability [or more] that they win Game 6 if not for those calls.....calls which, again, are not even possible for the last 10-15 years. Seriously imagine a circumstance where such calls are impossible (which has very literally been the reality of the NBA for the last decade or so).

And then I think they're at least something like 55:45 fav in Game 7 due to the factors we've both alluded to. That makes them at least a slim "likely" to win it all that year.

Fwiw I'm inclined that Stockton was the better player.

It's an intriguing position, and I'm not fully against it, though I can't quite get there myself. Both of them are comfortably in the top 25 for me. The added focus [of the opposing defense] that Malone had to deal with is what kind of allows me (based also on his box production) to give him the nod. Watching some of those old games, and watching the defense sag WAAAAY to F off of Stockton, I must admit I am occasionally irritated that as good a shooter as he is, he doesn't just take the uncontested 19-21' shot. Are we not confident Stockton will hit that 60+% of the time? It's a high% shot that he repeatedly passes up, and I must admit there are instances I think this hurt their offense.

Alternately though I'm not certain that Kobe was better.

I suppose I'm not certain either. Kobe loomed large on basketball culture in a way Karl Malone never approached, however. This isn't a BIG consideration in my criteria. But it's not nothin' either.

[Owly]

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

I'm not sure what you mean by "limited" in this context.

To restate more explicitly
Their defensive ppg is circa 46% of the way down (from average) to the "worst" defensive team (0.456521739)
Their drtg is circa 95% of the way down (from average) to the worst defensive team (0.951219512).
With more sophisticated tools they go from looking like a quite poor defensive team to just about equivalent to the worst.

I'm not making any particular claims on Moses (team performance overall is a noisy, blunt "tool") but the "among the worst" (6th worst of 22) ... yeah I suspect people weren't quite aware how bad they were.

Okay, but what’s the upshot of this point supposed to be? That if people had known that they were really the 21st ranked defense rather than the 17th ranked defense then he might not have been all-defensive second team? Like, okay, it’s possible that’s right. But knowing that a bad defense had an rORTG 3.9 worse than league average as opposed to knowing the team gave up 2.1 points per game more than league average is not going to make people go from putting a guy in all-defensive second team to thinking he’s a bad (or even average) defender. That’s what I mean by it being a limited point. I just don’t think it does much work here. At best, it eats away a little at the all-defensive team selection, but it doesn’t realistically suggest he was a bad defender. And I especially don’t think it does so when Moses also swapped teams a few years later with the reigning back-to-back all-defensive-first-team center and the team Moses left got significantly worse defensively and the team he joined got a little better defensively.

So I think most of this is covered

If you want me to restate it I think you oversold the "there isn't much difference" vibe between the two measures. That was the point. If you asking where that lands us, I don't know. I didn't try to make the claim in the first place.

I've said "I'm not making any particular claims on Moses" so I'm not sure whether you're seeking a battle on those grounds ...


fwiw ... There have been enough awful calls on All-D that as an indirect proxy and often pretty bad one, it means either next to or actually nothing to me. The caveat I'd have is the further back you go the less information you have (although so did the voters ... not just stats but they aren't going to have some great tape library in the 70s) so maybe you live with it a little more. I suppose most of the most egregious calls were for superstars so you probably trust it more on other players. But also team level stuff is crude. Houston are bad enough for long enough that the chances of him being a notably good defender start to slim. But defense is a team endeavor. I won't pretend to have a great read on his D.

Other random thoughts ...
I've been clear where I am on reading into Rockets departure with any detail. Sixers is where the Pollack data looks really good for him net (which is what matters). The other thing that comes to mind is "what is offense and what is defense". Because Caldwell Jones being an awful offensive player puts pressure on others to take bigger risks, take worse shots meaning more "live" end of possessions and perhaps some worse defensive outcomes. Conversely Moses's threat on the offensive glass might - depending on a coaches point of view - cause teams to focus on their defensive rebounding shell, leak out and focus on transition less.

[Owly]

I would humbly argue that the on/off and RAPM underrate his impact when you look at team WOWY.

In 1991, when he missed 15 games with the Sixers, they were 39-28(.582) with him and 5-10(.333) without him. And he dragged that roster to the second round of the playoffs and took a game off the Bulls(something he also did the year before in 1990).

In 1993, upon joining the Suns, they were already a good team, but he did provide some lift, going from 53 wins and 5.68 SRS to 62 wins and 6.27 SRS. Also, looking at the context, that was a season where KJ missed nearly half the season too. There wasn't really any falloff without him(37-12(.755) with KJ, and 25-8(.758) without), but when Barkley missed 6 games, they went 1-5.

In 1994, they were 48-17 with Barkley and 8-9 without. In 1996, they were 38-33 with him and 3-8 without.

1995 was the only year of his Phoenix tenure where they looked ok without him - 49-19 with and 10-4 without.

It is also worth noting the degree to which the Suns collapsed after he was traded to Houston: in 1996-97, they started 0-13 and were 17-32 at the deadline(though for clarity sake, KJ did miss some time early in the season too) when they traded for Jason Kidd, himself an impact monster that turned their year around as they went 23-10 the rest of the way.

Upon Barkley's arrival in Houston, they went from 48 wins and 1.63 SRS in 95-96 to 57 wins and 3.85 SRS in 96-97. Barkley played 53 games that year, and the team went 41-12 with him and 16-13 without. Drexler also missed a chunk of time(with some overlap) where they went 46-16 with and 11-9 without. Parsing it, they went 6-3 with Barkley/without Drexler, and 11-7 with Drexler/without Barkley.

In 1997-98, the Rockets were 36-32 with Barkley and 5-9 without, with Hakeem missing nearly half the season.

In this respect, I think he showed consistent positive impact.

I also want to circle back to this real quick:



Not just an elite offensive player. On a quick scan, I believe he has the #3 O-RAPM on the entire list, meaning by Squared's data, he was the most impactful offensive player of 85-96 not named Michael or Magic.

WoWY's a substantially cruder tool though (obviously how much depends to an extent which one you're using, here binary w-l is cruder end) than granular on-off and derived measures.

And then especially
Suns departure and highlighting 0-13 ...

Pretty muddy.
Only rotation center "Hot Rod" Williams out for almost all of that (bar game 13).
Big men were thus
Joe Kleine
A.C. Green - small for a power forward - at 33 losing the energy, athleticism advantage that made allowed that to work (got killed in his minutes)
Robert Horry - tall combo forward - playing about the least productive basketball of his career in Phoenix
Danny Manning - tall finesse combo forward - skilled but not a center
Wayman Tisdale, Chucky Brown, Ben Davis - at this point just chucking bodies out there (maybe Tisdale still had some juice?).

KJ out bar two games too. Yeah this isn't really a good way of measuring Barkley.

Fair point about that particular one(though I'd be skeptical about Hot Rod having any significant impact at that point), but I argue that when a tool shows consistent impact over the span of a decade, it become less crude, less noise, etc.

On Williams I'd note a couple of things. One is he was still pretty well regarded as a defender coming in to that season (I haven't checked the stats but recall the last Barry Bible still pretty positive on him in that regard). And two value is contextual. If you're saying "I don't think Williams rates X high in the league" ... maybe. But in this context he was valuable because losing him opened a gaping wound at center.

On WoWY - I think its nature is crude. Your "on/with" is now "on and off" your "off/without" is now "without but maybe digging some minutes from beyond our rotation, maybe with a different construction than envisioned". In different scales of absence teams might adjust their plans or just make do. When you go from points margin to W-L binary too you lose so much data, too.

Where we have on-off - and we mostly do for Barkley ... maybe there's a marginal role for arrival/departure stuff in terms of a different angle, though that's pretty noisy even by the norms of impact stuff so ... I can't see championing WoWY over more precise measures.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

WoWY's a substantially cruder tool though (obviously how much depends to an extent which one you're using, here binary w-l is cruder end) than granular on-off and derived measures.

And then especially
Suns departure and highlighting 0-13 ...

Pretty muddy.
Only rotation center "Hot Rod" Williams out for almost all of that (bar game 13).
Big men were thus
Joe Kleine
A.C. Green - small for a power forward - at 33 losing the energy, athleticism advantage that made allowed that to work (got killed in his minutes)
Robert Horry - tall combo forward - playing about the least productive basketball of his career in Phoenix
Danny Manning - tall finesse combo forward - skilled but not a center
Wayman Tisdale, Chucky Brown, Ben Davis - at this point just chucking bodies out there (maybe Tisdale still had some juice?).

KJ out bar two games too. Yeah this isn't really a good way of measuring Barkley.

Fair point about that particular one(though I'd be skeptical about Hot Rod having any significant impact at that point), but I argue that when a tool shows consistent impact over the span of a decade, it become less crude, less noise, etc.

On Williams I'd note a couple of things. One is he was still pretty well regarded as a defender coming in to that season (I haven't checked the stats but recall the last Barry Bible still pretty positive on him in that regard). And two value is contextual. If you're saying "I don't think Williams rates X high in the league" ... maybe. But in this context he was valuable because losing him opened a gaping wound at center.

On WoWY - I think its nature is crude. Your "on/with" is now "on and off" your "off/without" is now "without but maybe digging some minutes from beyond our rotation, maybe with a different construction than envisioned". In different scales of absence teams might adjust their plans or just make do. When you go from points margin to W-L binary too you lose so much data, too.

Where we have on-off - and we mostly do for Barkley ... maybe there's a marginal role for arrival/departure stuff in terms of a different angle, though that's pretty noisy even by the norms of impact stuff so ... I can't see championing WoWY over more precise measures.

I just disagree. I think there's a body of impact illustration big there over enough time that makes little sense to ignore.

[Hakeem1995]

Okay, but that fact wasn’t lost on voters at the time. They didn’t know DRTGs back then, but the Rockets were also amongst the worst in the league in terms of points given up per game too. And Moses Malone was still voted to the all-defensive second team.

ppg against
Clipper (worst) 114.9
Rockets 112.4
Lg avg 110.3

Drtg
Clippers (worst) 107.9
Rockets 107.7
Lg avg 103.8

Points per game against looks closer to average than to league-worst. Drtg looks league-worst adjacent.

all per: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1979.html

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

It’s true that drtg wasn’t a thing back then, but we have it now. We also know now that great rebounding doesn’t always equate to great defense; it’s not clear everyone understood that back then.
The rockets were next to last in opponents fg%, a stat that existed back then, so the all-d voters have no excuse. Center is the most important position defensively, so the terrible defensive performance of Moses teams before he joined jones and cheeks in Philadelphia is a mark against him in my book. None of those Houston teams managed 50 wins in a season either. Then he goes to a sixers team that was averaging 60 wins a season and playing great D before he got there
Edit: 79 rockets were 3rd worst , 20 out of 22 in opponents fg%

[f4p]

A fair assessment, with the qualifier that "when he [Barkley] was working hard at that end" was, in fact, not all that often [most years].

Mailman was also arguably the GOAT at "pulling the chair" in the post, imo.


Crazy [to me] that Karl Malone may end up outside the top 20. Though I'm heavy on longevity.
Still......if the Jazz had won the title in '98, which they very likely would have done if not for two egregiously horrible shot-clock calls in game 6---missed calls which would literally be impossibly in today's league, btw---I'm confident Malone would have been voted top 15-16 [at worst].
It would remove this "can't win with him as your #1" narrative that dogs him, holding him back on these lists.

I don't think it necessarily has any bearing on voting here, but they also would've won Game 6 if he hadn't turned the ball over with the lead.

This isn't necessarily true. It could have been they'd have missed a shot, Chicago gets the board, scores and thus wins anyway (bear in mind Utah got the ball back with 37 seconds left; so even if they run out the shot clock entirely, Chicago has ~13 seconds to counter).

But again, it's unlikely to have been a one point/one possession game in the first place if Chicago hadn't been gifted 5 points by the refs.


From the 01:45 remaining in the 1st quarter, onward, Chicago held the lead for a grand total of just 1:42 (out of 37:45), never by more than a single point. Despite being GIVEN 5 pts unearned. It felt like Utah was largely in control, beyond the 1st quarter, with Chicago scrapping just to stay in the game.
'98 is not like present day, where 6-pt leads vanish in 30 seconds.
And again, these were officiating errors which would be quite LITERALLY impossible in the modern era (since they began automatic review of questionable shotclock calls).

And the context of a potential Game 7 would have been that it was played in Salt Lake City, with Scottie Pippen being questionable to play at all (and almost certainly at well below 100%).


It's speculative for me to say Utah probably wins the title if not for those two calls.......though perhaps little more speculative than your assertion that Utah wins game 6 if not for that turnover.

The eisley waved off 3 was especially egregious. Watching it live it seemed so obviously before the clock and then I think there are still photos (can't verify how accurate) showing the ball a good 5 or 6 feet out of his hands. At least the Harper one is in the range of believability (though mostly in a "I believe they aren't counting it if Russell is the one shooting it for the jazz" kind of way).

[f4p]

I just can't really get to Nash over Wade (or really even close). 2006 for Wade is a far better season than any Nash season, with his ECF/finals just at a level very few have ever reached for volume and efficiency and a carry job against good teams with a weak offensive supporting cast. I would say the worst offensive supporting cast on any champion since 1980, before which I would not know enough to say.

And even if we ignore very good seasons like 2005 and 2012, his 2009/10/11 seasons are healthy seasons (76+ games) with even better numbers than 2006 in the regular season (28 PER, 0.225 WS48, 8.9 BPM) and essentially identical post season numbers to 2006 (27 PER, 0.214 WS48, 9 BPM). In other words, there's not much to suggest that Wade is any lesser of a player than an already incredible 2006 season. And even if we talk on/off, 2005-2012 Wade is +9 in the RS and +10 in the PS, with Nash only matching a long stretch like that in the RS if we go out to post prime 2011/12 seasons where they weren't even making the playoffs. Now if someone has 4 seasons better than the other guy, then the other guy better either have a huge winning advantage or a huge longevity advantage. But it's Wade with the winning advantage, and again with a superlative effort as the main guy for one of those. And Nash is no real longevity guy, ranking near the bottom of anyone in this range for any of the career measures like WS and VORP or the fact he wasn't much in the playoffs until 2005 and never played a playoff game after 2010 (and missed a year in there to boot).

[Hakeem1995]

I just can't really get to Nash over Wade (or really even close). 2006 for Wade is a far better season than any Nash season, with his ECF/finals just at a level very few have ever reached for volume and efficiency and a carry job against good teams with a weak offensive supporting cast. I would say the worst offensive supporting cast on any champion since 1980, before which I would not know enough to say.

And even if we ignore very good seasons like 2005 and 2012, his 2009/10/11 seasons are healthy seasons (76+ games) with even better numbers than 2006 in the regular season (28 PER, 0.225 WS48, 8.9 BPM) and essentially identical post season numbers to 2006 (27 PER, 0.214 WS48, 9 BPM). In other words, there's not much to suggest that Wade is any lesser of a player than an already incredible 2006 season. And even if we talk on/off, 2005-2012 Wade is +9 in the RS and +10 in the PS, with Nash only matching a long stretch like that in the RS if we go out to post prime 2011/12 seasons where they weren't even making the playoffs. Now if someone has 4 seasons better than the other guy, then the other guy better either have a huge winning advantage or a huge longevity advantage. But it's Wade with the winning advantage, and again with a superlative effort as the main guy for one of those. And Nash is no real longevity guy, ranking near the bottom of anyone in this range for any of the career measures like WS and VORP or the fact he wasn't much in the playoffs until 2005 and never played a playoff game after 2010 (and missed a year in there to boot).

I agree, Nash should not be above Wade. At his best Wade was better than Kobe too

[Hakeem1995]

If ABA and NBA are put on equal footing, doctor J is a 4 time mvp, 3 time champ, and 6 time league leader in bpm

Also scored 30k, with 10k boards and 5k assists.

[penbeast0]

I just can't really get to Nash over Wade (or really even close). 2006 for Wade is a far better season than any Nash season, with his ECF/finals just at a level very few have ever reached for volume and efficiency and a carry job against good teams with a weak offensive supporting cast. I would say the worst offensive supporting cast on any champion since 1980, before which I would not know enough to say.

And even if we ignore very good seasons like 2005 and 2012, his 2009/10/11 seasons are healthy seasons (76+ games) with even better numbers than 2006 in the regular season (28 PER, 0.225 WS48, 8.9 BPM) and essentially identical post season numbers to 2006 (27 PER, 0.214 WS48, 9 BPM). In other words, there's not much to suggest that Wade is any lesser of a player than an already incredible 2006 season. And even if we talk on/off, 2005-2012 Wade is +9 in the RS and +10 in the PS, with Nash only matching a long stretch like that in the RS if we go out to post prime 2011/12 seasons where they weren't even making the playoffs. Now if someone has 4 seasons better than the other guy, then the other guy better either have a huge winning advantage or a huge longevity advantage. But it's Wade with the winning advantage, and again with a superlative effort as the main guy for one of those. And Nash is no real longevity guy, ranking near the bottom of anyone in this range for any of the career measures like WS and VORP or the fact he wasn't much in the playoffs until 2005 and never played a playoff game after 2010 (and missed a year in there to boot).

Nash fans have him above anyone except maybe Magic as an offensive engine because of his team Ortg standings. I see it, though I have Stockton higher for his defense and durability (and find the idea that Nash could up his scoring and Stockton couldn't to be questionable).

[lessthanjake]

ppg against
Clipper (worst) 114.9
Rockets 112.4
Lg avg 110.3

Drtg
Clippers (worst) 107.9
Rockets 107.7
Lg avg 103.8

Points per game against looks closer to average than to league-worst. Drtg looks league-worst adjacent.

all per: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1979.html

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

It’s true that drtg wasn’t a thing back then, but we have it now. We also know now that great rebounding doesn’t always equate to great defense; it’s not clear everyone understood that back then.
The rockets were next to last in opponents fg%, a stat that existed back then, so the all-d voters have no excuse. Center is the most important position defensively, so the terrible defensive performance of Moses teams before he joined jones and cheeks in Philadelphia is a mark against him in my book. None of those Houston teams managed 50 wins in a season either. Then he goes to a sixers team that was averaging 60 wins a season and playing great D before he got there
Edit: 79 rockets were 3rd worst , 20 out of 22 in opponents fg%

Again, though, you have to contend with the fact that he swapped teams with the reigning back-to-back all-defensive-first-team center and the Rockets defense got worse and the 76ers defense got better. If the Rockets defense was awful with Caldwell Jones (an elite defensive center), then I really don’t think it’s all that reasonable to hold the Rockets’ bad defense against Moses. It is a team game.

And you can say the 76ers were playing great defense before Moses Malone got there, but that was with the back-to-back all-defensive-first-team center they traded away for Moses Malone! They traded an elite defensive center to get Moses Malone and their rDRTG actually got better than it was the year before! This is *really* not what we’d expect if Moses Malone was a liability on defense. Heck, it’s not even what we’d expect if he was neutral on defense. And, of course, people at the time thought he was much better than neutral defensively, since he was on the all-defensive first team that year. It’s true people didn’t have DRTGs back then, but I think if they did then they’d have seen (1) the 76ers looking even better that year by DRTG than they did by points given up per game; and (2) the 76ers having an even better DRTG after swapping Caldwell Jones for Moses Malone. Which I think would’ve led people to still feel pretty good voting him for Moses Malone on the all-defensive team.

So yeah, I think it really just makes little sense to hold the Rockets’ bad DRTGs against Moses Malone when the Rockets were awful defensively with an elite defensive center. And the fact that Moses Malone was swapped for Caldwell Jones and the team Moses left got worse defensively and the team he joined got better defensively strongly suggests prime Moses was a good defender. Which is backed up by the fact that he made a couple all-defensive teams. I do think that the partial RAPM we have from Squared for later years does suggest that he was probably a liability defensively in his post-76ers years. But prime Moses seems likely to have been a very good defender IMO. Which isn’t that surprising, because dominant defensive rebounding is actually quite impactful defensively and being a strong post defender was very important in an era with tons of post offense.

[homecourtloss]

ppg against
Clipper (worst) 114.9
Rockets 112.4
Lg avg 110.3

Drtg
Clippers (worst) 107.9
Rockets 107.7
Lg avg 103.8

Points per game against looks closer to average than to league-worst. Drtg looks league-worst adjacent.

all per: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1979.html

That seems like a pretty limited point to me. The Rockets may have been a bit worse by DRTG, but they were still ranked 17th out of 22 teams in points given up per game. The voters knew they were giving an all-defensive team nod to a center on a bad defensive team, and they did it anyways. So I’m not sure that the fact that the Rockets were a bad defensive team negates the accolade even if they may have been a bit worse than people at the time realized. It certainly suggests people considered him a very good defender at the time despite his team’s bad defense.

It’s true that drtg wasn’t a thing back then, but we have it now. We also know now that great rebounding doesn’t always equate to great defense; it’s not clear everyone understood that back then.
The rockets were next to last in opponents fg%, a stat that existed back then, so the all-d voters have no excuse. Center is the most important position defensively, so the terrible defensive performance of Moses teams before he joined jones and cheeks in Philadelphia is a mark against him in my book. None of those Houston teams managed 50 wins in a season either. Then he goes to a sixers team that was averaging 60 wins a season and playing great D before he got there
Edit: 79 rockets were 3rd worst , 20 out of 22 in opponents fg%

Thought this might be relevant here: