ElGee wrote:So when I say "MVP-level seasons usually," I'm trying to equate the years at a minimum value that is really important (I value peak a lot, as well as many others). Obviously Oscar Robertson doesn't have 10 MVPs. He does, however, have 9 or 10 seasons that IMO would typically put him in the thick of an MVP race or win an MVP in a weak year. Which, of course, was the whole point of the classification.
As I pointed out, if Robertson had MVP like seasons in either 1969 or later, Nowitzki had also one in 2001 and all seasons after that. Seriously, Nowitzki might be not recognized as strong MVP candidate in some of those seasons, but his numbers are speaking for themselves. It is not like we don't have any numbers proving he is a +10 player for the most part of his career with peaks of about +15/16 (in terms of APM). That is in average like Garnett, Duncan or James, while all three I mentioned have two peak seasons of about 16 to 20. In terms of boxscore metrics we have James ahead of Duncan, with a gap to Nowitzki and Garnett in average. While you can accept the non-boxscore contribution by Garnett via defense, it seems to me that you still haven't accepted the non-boxscore contribution by Nowitzki via floor spacing and off-ball movement. That's why you haven't Nowitzki in the same kind of conversation even though the results for 11 years are speaking for Nowitzki. We are not talking about one fluke season here, we are talking about 11 seasons in which the Mavericks clearly played better with him than without him.
Look up how the Spurs are doing with and without Matt Bonner for example. He might be also a great example that bigger shooting players are providing something beyond the boxscore. And if we ignoring that aspect, we will not understand why the Mavericks played so much better with Nowitzki.
Nowitzki doesn't have such a high peak as Garnett, Duncan or James, but for all three we have only two of those really high peak seasons. If we take the best two seasons out for those player, we are getting basically the same impact for 9 years for Garnett, Duncan and Nowitzki and 5 years for James. Is that peak really worth that much more that we can start to ignore the additional high impact seasons by Nowitzki? Is it really useful to say I have rather James than Nowitzki, because James gives me two seasons better than Nowitzki? When we go by championship probability, we are getting 11 seasons in which a team with Nowitzki as the best player can not only be a contender, but also can win it all. We have 7 of those seasons for James. The only reason for picking James here is expecting James to give me 4 more seasons on his current level in the future.
