RealGM Top 100 #37

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, but your question was how anyone could see Cousy this high and Schayes nowhere close. My answer to that is I do feel we're in Schayes territory as well.

Ah, and as I was saying a bit earlier, props for being consistent.

(and don't forget about Pitchin' Paul Arizin too!)

[therealbig3]

TMACFORMVP, I apologize that I didn't read your post regarding Nique vs Pierce (kind of busy right now), so I'll direct this more towards JordansBulls:

So Nique's only argument over Pierce is MVP voting?

Anyway,

Vote: Pierce
Nominate: KJ

[TMACFORMVP]

Still unsure on the nomination, went with KJ last time, kind of feeling McAdoo now. I don't think either has a shot at winning? So it could be subject to change depending on whomever I like more of the guys with momentum.

Vote: Tracy McGrady
Nominate: Bob McAdoo

[colts18]

Vote: Tracy McGrady

[Dr Positivity]

Wow at Tmac being on the verge of #37. Time to get on my soapbox a little...

I understand not following the winning narrative to the grave, but team culture, warriors beating loafers, and leadership is *not* a myth.

Does anyone believe the 08 Celtics play with the tenacity and fire they did if Tmac was on the team?

What about the 70 Knicks or 74 Celtics? Would they have the mindset of more defense and energy than you, better passing and 5 man for 1 than you, if it was a Tmac team? I'm almost certain that KG, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens would absolutely *hate* playing with Tmac. There's a reason no contenders last year wanted Tmac anywhere near their team. Sure they'd want prime Tmac, but personality wise, he's not a fit with tight knit basketball teams and culture based organizations. This would be true even in his prime. Those teams do not have the superior basketball mindset with Tmac on it. They'd probably say yes to having Tmac just from talent level, kind of like Nets did with trading for Vince and they went from 2 Finals + crazy 04 Pistons series to easy 2nd round knockout, or the Magic did by adding Vince to a Finals team to get over the top. That worked out well.

I don't want to call Vince's failures his, but because they have remarkably similar frustrations personality wise, we can look at the effect of Vince on a team culture as a semi comparison for Tmac as well. Plus Vince may be getting consideration soon so it's worth the paragraph. I think Vince had an unbelievably bad cultural effect in New Jersey and Orlando (and had lol effort level in Phoenix, albeit in a small time frame). I remember thinking near the end of his run for both franchises that Vince had completley drained the heart out of teams who had once made Finals based on heart/defensive commitment/ball movement, and that their list of things they needed to do was 1. Trade Vince 2. Trade Vince 3. Trade Vince. It's clear that he had made those teams flat out miserable. (edit: For the Nets I mean the end of the Kidd/RJ/Vince era here, the 09 team was practically a new team) Vince getting traded to an Orlando was an ultimate litmus test moment for his career. I remember Bill Simmons roughly saying "Think about it, has Vince ever played for a great team? Has Vince ever gotten a chance to redeem himself like Paul Pierce did in 2008? If Vince has ANY greatness in him, we're going to see it this year" I remember thinking 08-09 Vince was the most underrated player in the league and thinking before 2009-2010 that yes, Vince was now in the exact same situation as 2008 Paul Pierce and I believed that he would bust his ass in the summer, come out with a 20, 5, 5 season on a 60 W #1 seed Orlando, get Finals MVP and change his entire career. Then he proved his skeptics rights more than we could ever imagine by taking a Vince all over the Magic's team culture, which they still haven't recovered from. In the future someone may look at the Magic's 2010 season where they won as much games as in 2009 despite Hedo's departure and Shard falling off, at the 2010 Nets who fell apart without Vince, and determine Vince deserves credit for the 2010 season. No way. To me that guy just killed the Magic and the spirited gusto they had built up in their 2009 Finals run

But back to Tmac. He proved that he could dominate statistically... on a team with nothing else and no pressure to win, with no pressure for him to build chemistry with a star. When he went to Houston, the team didn't have. Sorry, I don't buy the decent in/out numbers for Tmac and Yao. Remember the way Kobe and Gasol ripped apart the league their first half season together? That definitely never happened with Tmac and Yao. They were together in the 05 and 07 playoffs and lost in the 1st round. They didn't have it chemistry wise like Kobe and Pau... IMO. The Rockets then made it past the 1st round with him sitting. I just don't think this is all coincidence. If we're talking top 37 players of all time, Tmac just doesn't fit the bill for me as someone I can depend on to lead consistently dominant and superior teams, because being a great TEAM goes far beyond having a lot of talent, that's something we've seen over and over again among all the teams that win and all the teams that lose. There is much more going on here than putting together the highest 2k11 ability scores.

[Fencer reregistered]

Great points, Dr. Mufasa, on TMac and his teammate/second-cousin Vince.

Vince is particularly famous as a quitter, both because he has the honesty to admit it and because Bill Simmons has spent years pointing it out. He probably is indeed worse in that regard than his cousin. But even if you don't accuse him of egregious quitting, TMac has never proven the ability to mesh as a key part of a championship-worthy team.

[therealbig3]

Well T-Mac is leading Pierce 5-4 right now...and I can't really complain, it's pretty even between them for me personally. However, the arguments against Pierce in terms of All-NBA voting and MVP voting is pretty weak. I thought it was established that Pierce was vastly underrated in terms of All-NBA voting and that MVP voting is greatly biased towards how good a team is, and not how good an individual player is.

Pierce has higher multi-year RAPM results in both the 6-year and 10-year study. And T-Mac lifted bad teams to mediocrity, which has been said to be easier than lifting good teams to elite status...which is what Pierce did. Well, KG is giving the lion's share of credit, but I think that without Pierce, the post-07 Celtics aren't serious contenders. They'd be good, with KG, Allen, Rondo, a solid supporting cast, and great defense...but they wouldn't be elite. They wouldn't have anyone that can consistently create offense for himself and for others. The Celtics noticeably get worse offensively to this day when Pierce goes out of the game, and they aren't a great offensive team overall anyway. They very much rely on his ability to generate offense. We don't really know if T-Mac had the ability to lift a good team to contender status. I mean, I believe he did, and like I said, T-Mac and Pierce are very close to me, but we know that Pierce can lift a good team, because he did.

[TMACFORMVP]

Mufasa, I do not understand the comparison to Gasol/Kobe at all. It's already been established that Kobe is a much better player than McGrady; we're not comparing these two, we're comparing him with others for the spot right now. Gasol was also better than Yao, especially in 2005. In 06, 07, and 08 (the remainder of McGrady's prime), Yao missed 86 games total, including an entire post-season. And besides, it wasn't just Kobe/Gasol, the remainder of the supporting cast was very good. The bottom line is:

a.) McGrady/Yao aren't as good Kobe/Gasol in the first place.
b.) They never had the same supporting cast as them.
c.) They didn't get a large chance to play w/each other because of severe injury problems.

Honestly, that's sort of a flawed way to look at things, narrative based arguments that no one should be arguing in the first place (I don't understand why an inferior combo with an inferior supporting cast that's oft injured should accomplish the same as a superior one in all those aspects). As for the hypothetical, we wouldn't know either way, considering KG was the leader for those Celtic teams with that exact sort of tenacity and fire you describe. And I don't understand the 70's arguments either; obviously their mindset would be different, because they're completely different players and bring different things to the table. That same argument would apply to Pierce as well.

I just don't think these are really strong enough arguments to knock off McGrady versus the competition, something more concrete could potentially do that (like Pierce's longevity, or that he wasn't too far off for the majority of his prime, etc).

RE: Carter. I completely agree with you about his mind-set in Orlando. That was tremendously disappointing for any NBA fan; he was supposed to come in to Orlando, add that perimeter star, and be that missing piece for that Magic team. But I do think it's a bit unfair to apply that same label to that Nets team. "From two finals team to an easy 2nd round exit," is a bit broad, because that Nets team clearly wasn't the same -- they were 9-16 before Carter joined, and went 33-24 w/him.

[lorak]

It's between TMac and Pierce, so I'm changing my vote to Pierce.

[Fencer reregistered]

I started a Cousy thread in the Celtics forum to see if we could get input from guys who saw him play. A little insight so far; not a lot.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1131081

The problem is that in those days most people just followed games on the radio, so their view was Johnnie Most's. My wife is an example of that; she was a Celtics fan starting about in the Russell/Heinsohn rookie season, but hasn't really ever been able to give me detailed insight into how they played.

[Laimbeer]

Pierce/Hayes?

Hayes was probably the more dominant guy and was considered a more elite player in his day. Great longevity, a title, big statistical footprint. Pierce has been very good for a long time, it's just hard for me to imagine taking him over Hayes in terms of what they do for a team on both ends. He's obviously a better board guy, more of an impact defender, and for me commands more attention from a defense.

Pierce has a longevity argument over Reed and Cowens, but doesn't even have that on Hayes.

[colts18]

Wow at Tmac being on the verge of #37. Time to get on my soapbox a little...

I understand not following the winning narrative to the grave, but team culture, warriors beating loafers, and leadership is *not* a myth.

Does anyone believe the 08 Celtics play with the tenacity and fire they did if Tmac was on the team?

What about the 70 Knicks or 74 Celtics? Would they have the mindset of more defense and energy than you, better passing and 5 man for 1 than you, if it was a Tmac team? I'm almost certain that KG, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens would absolutely *hate* playing with Tmac. There's a reason no contenders last year wanted Tmac anywhere near their team. Sure they'd want prime Tmac, but personality wise, he's not a fit with tight knit basketball teams and culture based organizations. This would be true even in his prime. Those teams do not have the superior basketball mindset with Tmac on it. They'd probably say yes to having Tmac just from talent level, kind of like Nets did with trading for Vince and they went from 2 Finals + crazy 04 Pistons series to easy 2nd round knockout, or the Magic did by adding Vince to a Finals team to get over the top. That worked out well.

I don't want to call Vince's failures his, but because they have remarkably similar frustrations personality wise, we can look at the effect of Vince on a team culture as a semi comparison for Tmac as well. Plus Vince may be getting consideration soon so it's worth the paragraph. I think Vince had an unbelievably bad cultural effect in New Jersey and Orlando (and had lol effort level in Phoenix, albeit in a small time frame). I remember thinking near the end of his run for both franchises that Vince had completley drained the heart out of teams who had once made Finals based on heart/defensive commitment/ball movement, and that their list of things they needed to do was 1. Trade Vince 2. Trade Vince 3. Trade Vince. It's clear that he had made those teams flat out miserable. (edit: For the Nets I mean the end of the Kidd/RJ/Vince era here, the 09 team was practically a new team) Vince getting traded to an Orlando was an ultimate litmus test moment for his career. I remember Bill Simmons roughly saying "Think about it, has Vince ever played for a great team? Has Vince ever gotten a chance to redeem himself like Paul Pierce did in 2008? If Vince has ANY greatness in him, we're going to see it this year" I remember thinking 08-09 Vince was the most underrated player in the league and thinking before 2009-2010 that yes, Vince was now in the exact same situation as 2008 Paul Pierce and I believed that he would bust his ass in the summer, come out with a 20, 5, 5 season on a 60 W #1 seed Orlando, get Finals MVP and change his entire career. Then he proved his skeptics rights more than we could ever imagine by taking a Vince all over the Magic's team culture, which they still haven't recovered from. In the future someone may look at the Magic's 2010 season where they won as much games as in 2009 despite Hedo's departure and Shard falling off, at the 2010 Nets who fell apart without Vince, and determine Vince deserves credit for the 2010 season. No way. To me that guy just killed the Magic and the spirited gusto they had built up in their 2009 Finals run

But back to Tmac. He proved that he could dominate statistically... on a team with nothing else and no pressure to win, with no pressure for him to build chemistry with a star. When he went to Houston, the team didn't have. Sorry, I don't buy the decent in/out numbers for Tmac and Yao. Remember the way Kobe and Gasol ripped apart the league their first half season together? That definitely never happened with Tmac and Yao. They were together in the 05 and 07 playoffs and lost in the 1st round. They didn't have it chemistry wise like Kobe and Pau... IMO. The Rockets then made it past the 1st round with him sitting. I just don't think this is all coincidence. If we're talking top 37 players of all time, Tmac just doesn't fit the bill for me as someone I can depend on to lead consistently dominant and superior teams, because being a great TEAM goes far beyond having a lot of talent, that's something we've seen over and over again among all the teams that win and all the teams that lose. There is much more going on here than putting together the highest 2k11 ability scores.

Pierce is the one who benefitted the most from a narrative change. Without the Big 3, he is considered a loser. Pre Big 3, Pierce had 0 50+ win seasons and 2 positive SRS seasons. He was never able to lift mediocre teams. Maybe T-Mac can't win with the 08 Celtics, but I doubt Pierce holds together the Rockets when Yao was injured. Pierce hasn't shown he could carry a team.

[Doctor MJ]

Pierce is the one who benefitted the most from a narrative change. Without the Big 3, he is considered a loser. Pre Big 3, Pierce had 0 50+ win seasons and 2 positive SRS seasons. He was never able to lift mediocre teams. Maybe T-Mac can't win with the 08 Celtics, but I doubt Pierce holds together the Rockets when Yao was injured. Pierce hasn't shown he could carry a team.

Absolutely correct about the narrative change, but that doesn't make the change wrong

Re: "never able to lift mediocre teams". Well that's not true, he was lifting them. He had solid +/-. Now was he able to take scrubs and make them contenders in a LeBron-esque fashion? No, and neither was TMac.

Re: "I doubt Pierce holds together the Rockets when Yao was injured". My how perspective spins things differently. I understand how one could say "Wow, Yao went out and TMac kept the team going, amazing!". But from the other perspective it's "Wow, the team didn't really get better or worse without Yao". And then when you add in "Wow, the team didn't really get better or worse without TMac as long as they had Yao", and "Wow, the team actually didn't get much worse missing both TMac AND Yao", your "TMac carrying the team without Yao" clearly isn't a coherent narrative.

The narrative of those Rockets is that they were about the most redundant teams I've ever seen. No matter what happened they were solid, no matter what happened they weren't contenders. That says great things about the role players, might or might not say great things about the coach, but it says TERRIBLE things about the stars.

The one thing you want in a star more than anything else is for it to be the case that if you surround him with decent talent he'll lift them to contender status. TMac has shown that it's far from a given that such good things will happen when you build around him.

Pierce on the other hand has shown at the very least that he can play on an absolutely spectacular team if you put talent around him, and thus he has shown more than TMac on that front. When you add in that Pierce is less of a volume scorer, and more of an efficiency guy, it gives you a perfectly legit reason why Pierce might be more able to play well with others than TMac.

[Doctor MJ]

If someone would be so kind as to do a vote count.

[ElGee]

Wow at Tmac being on the verge of #37. Time to get on my soapbox a little...

I understand not following the winning narrative to the grave, but team culture, warriors beating loafers, and leadership is *not* a myth.

Does anyone believe the 08 Celtics play with the tenacity and fire they did if Tmac was on the team?

What about the 70 Knicks or 74 Celtics? Would they have the mindset of more defense and energy than you, better passing and 5 man for 1 than you, if it was a Tmac team? I'm almost certain that KG, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens would absolutely *hate* playing with Tmac. There's a reason no contenders last year wanted Tmac anywhere near their team. Sure they'd want prime Tmac, but personality wise, he's not a fit with tight knit basketball teams and culture based organizations. This would be true even in his prime. Those teams do not have the superior basketball mindset with Tmac on it. They'd probably say yes to having Tmac just from talent level, kind of like Nets did with trading for Vince and they went from 2 Finals + crazy 04 Pistons series to easy 2nd round knockout, or the Magic did by adding Vince to a Finals team to get over the top. That worked out well.

I don't want to call Vince's failures his, but because they have remarkably similar frustrations personality wise, we can look at the effect of Vince on a team culture as a semi comparison for Tmac as well. Plus Vince may be getting consideration soon so it's worth the paragraph. I think Vince had an unbelievably bad cultural effect in New Jersey and Orlando (and had lol effort level in Phoenix, albeit in a small time frame). I remember thinking near the end of his run for both franchises that Vince had completley drained the heart out of teams who had once made Finals based on heart/defensive commitment/ball movement, and that their list of things they needed to do was 1. Trade Vince 2. Trade Vince 3. Trade Vince. It's clear that he had made those teams flat out miserable. (edit: For the Nets I mean the end of the Kidd/RJ/Vince era here, the 09 team was practically a new team) Vince getting traded to an Orlando was an ultimate litmus test moment for his career. I remember Bill Simmons roughly saying "Think about it, has Vince ever played for a great team? Has Vince ever gotten a chance to redeem himself like Paul Pierce did in 2008? If Vince has ANY greatness in him, we're going to see it this year" I remember thinking 08-09 Vince was the most underrated player in the league and thinking before 2009-2010 that yes, Vince was now in the exact same situation as 2008 Paul Pierce and I believed that he would bust his ass in the summer, come out with a 20, 5, 5 season on a 60 W #1 seed Orlando, get Finals MVP and change his entire career. Then he proved his skeptics rights more than we could ever imagine by taking a Vince all over the Magic's team culture, which they still haven't recovered from. In the future someone may look at the Magic's 2010 season where they won as much games as in 2009 despite Hedo's departure and Shard falling off, at the 2010 Nets who fell apart without Vince, and determine Vince deserves credit for the 2010 season. No way. To me that guy just killed the Magic and the spirited gusto they had built up in their 2009 Finals run

But back to Tmac. He proved that he could dominate statistically... on a team with nothing else and no pressure to win, with no pressure for him to build chemistry with a star. When he went to Houston, the team didn't have. Sorry, I don't buy the decent in/out numbers for Tmac and Yao. Remember the way Kobe and Gasol ripped apart the league their first half season together? That definitely never happened with Tmac and Yao. They were together in the 05 and 07 playoffs and lost in the 1st round. They didn't have it chemistry wise like Kobe and Pau... IMO. The Rockets then made it past the 1st round with him sitting. I just don't think this is all coincidence. If we're talking top 37 players of all time, Tmac just doesn't fit the bill for me as someone I can depend on to lead consistently dominant and superior teams, because being a great TEAM goes far beyond having a lot of talent, that's something we've seen over and over again among all the teams that win and all the teams that lose. There is much more going on here than putting together the highest 2k11 ability scores.

This really makes no sense to me.

If a guy isn't good at basketball, he just isn't good. We've been discussing T-Mac for weeks, presenting all kinds of coherent arguments (that line up with general perception, and the eye test) for one of the best players in the league on multiple occasions. INCLUDED in that is the intangible element you are talking about. If you think than they are such a big deal, why aren't they reflected in any of the issues we've discussed?

And no offense, but I read you're description of Carter and just think "well, it's not Vince Carter's problem that you grossly misunderstood how good he was in 2009." Frankly, I thought Orlando got worse with that trade. I don't understand what made you think he was going to be a high impact player in 2010, when he hadn't been a high impact in a long time.

But nonetheless, there are two real sticking points on this rant.

(1) Who cares what number we are on?

Really, I've discussed this before. People have such a mental block with the number. The issue is who remains. I understand that people are more comfortable with an established, top50 anniversary name going, well, in top-50 spots...but try and open your mind to the possibility that someone simply is better than the remaining candidates...whether it's the No. 1 spot of the No. 37 spot and that people in the past have been lionized for reasons beyond their basketball impact.

(2) There really are hardly any "losers" we're going to discuss in the project.

I just loathe that categorization. I can get behind calling Ricky Davis a loser, because when he's on the court I think he's a negative. In the locker room, he's probably a negative. He's just bad. Period. And it's reflected in most of our metrics.

When really good players are in CIRCUMSTANCES in which they can't win, that doesn't make them a loser. Competition matters. Teammates matter. Coaching matters. Injuries matter. You cannot possibly watch some of those series, whether it's the pathetically bad 03 Magic team or the Rockets 7-game battles and tell me which team scored more points than the other team without the aid of a scorekeeper. A bucket here, a miss here, etc. and the team is winning. And you can't possibly watch them and think T-Mac isn't the best player on the court (save maybe 1 series vs. Dirk)...so how is he a loser? When I see this I definitely think "sleeping malcontent who doesn't care:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_CGxj3dHGA (yeah, you know what it is )

And since the very point of this project is to focus on how people played, and not these team-related narrative driven confounds, I don't see what place such radical hypotheticals have in this discussion. (And yes, it's a radical hypothetical to presume that Tracy McGrady becomes sort of darn liability because a teammate wouldn't like him or because he doesn't scream and make faces. Pretty sure KG would still lead 08 Boston and Cowens didn't like Charlie Scott but they still won.) Maybe Houston won in 2009 because, you know, Aaron Brooks and Louis Scola improved and Yao Ming and Ron Artest were on the court!

If anything, I find myself severely questioning whether I underrate all the players in NBA history who didn't win/weren't on high profile teams because of the incredibly real and powerful tendency for the mind to focus on the good with the "winners" and the negative with the "losers."

[Fencer reregistered]

Pierce/Hayes?

Hayes was probably the more dominant guy and was considered a more elite player in his day. Great longevity, a title, big statistical footprint. Pierce has been very good for a long time, it's just hard for me to imagine taking him over Hayes in terms of what they do for a team on both ends. He's obviously a better board guy, more of an impact defender, and for me commands more attention from a defense.

Pierce has a longevity argument over Reed and Cowens, but doesn't even have that on Hayes.

Easier era, bad intangibles reported at the time, questionable efficiency.

There are guys for whom questionable efficiency should be disregarded, or at least regarded lightly (e.g. Kidd, Cousy), but I don't recall seeing an argument to cover Hayes' case.

[ElGee]

The one thing you want in a star more than anything else is for it to be the case that if you surround him with decent talent he'll lift them to contender status. TMac has shown that it's far from a given that such good things will happen when you build around him.

Can you expound on this? It seems that's *exactly* what he did in Houston...

[Fencer reregistered]

On intangibles, I think some people are overlooking the wide gap between "not conclusively proven" and "not true".

Few theories about "intangibles" have sufficiently solid evidence for us to be certain about them. But quite a few more do have enough evidence that they should be taken into account.

[drza]

Are we ending this tonight or tomorrow? If tonight I'll go ahead and vote now, otherwise I would let the discussion continue before I weigh in.

[Doctor MJ]

The one thing you want in a star more than anything else is for it to be the case that if you surround him with decent talent he'll lift them to contender status. TMac has shown that it's far from a given that such good things will happen when you build around him.

Can you expound on this? It seems that's *exactly* what he did in Houston...

Turned them into a contender? No he didn't. They were never a contender despite the fact that essentially everyone was certain they would be if they just got healthy because he had Yao and good supporting talent around him.

Guessing you're talking about them showing clear improvement with him, and yes, the team did do better with TMac healthy. He was always a good player, but that lift with McGrady always seemed to come taking a team from weak to solid and disappear win a lift would mean joining the elite.

To hammer this in further: Everyone would agree that TMac in Orlando was fully in that "take crap and lift it to mediocrity" mode right?

Anyone else think it's kind of mindblowing that Houston just had it's first really great offensive season in forever LAST year with their Martin/Scola/Lowry crew? I mean, the team had prime TMac & Yao, they lose them for nothing because of injuries, and by acquiring scraps the offense actually gets better. WTF?

Obviously the team isn't what it was before, because of the defense, but is that really the McGrady defense we want to see? Dude's an offensive superstar never played on an offense that was really elite.

Now, I'm not saying TMac was incapable of playing on an elite offensive team. But what I am saying is that when I have a low efficiency volume scorer, and his team seems to have trouble going from good to great on offense, this is not exactly a shock. Pierce is a more efficient player, with better longevity, who has more success at fitting in with talent, has never had a team give up on him in his prime, and who actually beats TMac on our long term +/- metrics.

I just don't see how TMac clearly beats out Pierce in anyone's mind here unless:

1) They are super-focused on peak, even if it's only a short peak

2) They are just going by accolades