drza wrote:ElGee wrote:I was concerned you would misinterpret that sentence (bolded one) -- my mistake. I meant they were clearly *different* offensive players, not to suggest that at their peak Malone had some huge advantage.
I understand you are *saying* you'd take 11 years over 14 as "your way of thinking." What I'm asking, and maybe not very clearly, is simply for you to reconcile that belief with the math I presented earlier. It actually seems to be the crux of the entire Karl Malone issue, and one of the reasons why he clutters my top-10 (and note we wouldn't even be having this conversation if he had a single ring...sigh). The intuition is "peak form, so and so was better, so I'll take him bc I THINK he gives me a better chance to win."
I thought that way in the past. And I'm a big peak guy. But what I'm suggesting is if you actually think about it and plot it out - and that's what I was trying to present with the generous 2 points better per game on elite team (!) - is that those 2, 3 extra years or whatever of having a slightly worse alpha dog are actually better over the entire time span, counter-intuitive as that may be.
Re bolded part. Are you SURE? Remember who you're currently debating with, and who I have thought was the best player of his generation since well before the 2008 championship. If there's ANYONE for whom "the ring is not the thing", it's me. So you can stop with the "losing bias" assumptions whenever we discuss this. Karl Malone is from the first generation for whom that I can remember watching their careers from start to finish. Real time I always thought he was more "very good" than "great", and I actually value his play a LOT more now in hindsight than I did at the time. Now I really believe he's one of the best players in history...I just don't think he's better than Garnett.
Re: your counter-intuitive conclusion. The assumption that you're inherently making with this longevity argument is that your hypothetical team featuring Malone is strong enough that his "peak - 2" extended prime is good enough for that team to win titles. If that's the case, then maybe Malone's longevity would give them more chances at the ring.
But the thing is, suppose your hypothetical team ISN'T quite that strong. Suppose that they're good enough to win a ring or two, but only if they are getting that extra "+2" of value. I'd rather have those years of "+2", especially considering there's about another 8 years of both players playing at about "peak - 2" level, giving my team both the best chance to win at peak as well as a long run of very quality play. And knowing that in most cases it really is REALLY hard for a team to win titles, and that having the best player increases those odds, I'd prefer the elevated peak in exchange for a few years at the extremes. Again, I'll take Malone's ridiculous consistency over Walton's high but extremely short peak. But I'll take Garnett's peak and excellent longevity over Malone's greater longevity but lesser peak.
Haha I really must stink at communicating today. When I said we wouldn't be having the convo, I literally mean because he would be voted in already by other people. But in fairness, I think you know me well enough to know that I know you don't discuss rings either, so that was never the intention of the comment...
This is a good explanation. I'm not saying I buy it, because you are talking about one specific team situation and I'm looking at it as a range of different teams on average, but I get where you are coming from.
You know the guy who was the epitome of losing during his career, the guy whose team the second he left the team, the guy who got 20 years to lose with the Clippers and had the audacity to complain that he was wrongly fired.
