RealGM Top 100 #49

[Dr Positivity]

Hmm, Hayes. I like health that strong and he did have a ton of success, but ronnymac throwing Jermaine O'Neal (with more rebounding) as a comparison for him has stuck with me. Like JO I think he can be an integral part of a great team, but the pieces have to be right and it virtually has to be an elite defensive team who scores enough to win, since I don't trust running a great offense through them at all. As a comparison, Hayes has 83.7 of his 120.8 total WS as DWS (69%), JO has 42.2/60.2 (70%). I don't think that's far off for either player. Then again, if JO had an exceptionally healthy career, he'd probably find himself above Bosh, Amare, Melo, Carter, Deron as their cases stand right now, so maybe as high as top 70 - and if Indy won a title with him as the best player he'd probably have a tonnn of fanship. And Hayes has extra rebounding and appears to be the slightly better offensive player.

Still, if you ask me whether I'd rather have prime JO or a great play initiator like Deron, Rose, Roy, etc., I'd probably go with the latter. It's not so much them being offensive players as much as the fact that their teams seem to line up behind them more and I feel pretty confident in building a reliable offensive and defensive system around them. For that reason a dependable initiator like KJ and some players near him on my list like Pierce and Drexler would get my vote over Hayes, but once Johnson is voted in I have no problem with his candidcy compared to say, Ray Allen

Hayes vs Parish seems like a hard decision. Both log a ton of games, are big men, they have success. Hayes plays a lot more mpg but Parish lasts more years as a valuable player, especially considering past his prime but still an egotistical dick Hayes isn't someone you want at all. Parish is better offensively, Hayes defensively. I would say it's more a case of Parish getting nominated too late than a problem that Hayes is going this high.

[drza]

I'm about to go out to dinner with my family to celebrate a birthday, and I have no idea whether I'll get back and online again in time to get involved in another conversation before I vote. I'm really in the same spot as I was when I started the thread...between Hayes and Paul, but since then I've spent a bit more time and feel even more confident that Hayes really was at the level of impact that I suspected. I would like to further explore this Jermaine O'Neal comp, but really, stylistic comparisons are very limited. As you say, O'Neal at his peak was finishing top-3 in MVP votes and leading 60-win teams. So an O'Neal that was a better rebounder that was also an iron man could very well have been an MVP.

Vote: Elvin Hayes

[Dr Positivity]

Votes

2 KJ (Dr Mufasa, JordansBulls)

1 Moncrief (penbeast0)

5 Hayes (Laimbeer, lukekarts, Snakebites, Fencer reregistered, drza)

5 Paul (Dr MJ, therealbig3, mysticbb, DavidStern, ElGee)

1 McAdoo (ronnymac)

Nom

1 Pau (Dr Mufasa)

5 Rodman (penbeast0, DavidStern, drza, mysticbb, Fencer reregistered)

1 Penny (JordansBulls)

1 Schayes (Laimbeer)

2 King (Dr MJ, ronnymac)

3 Marques (therealbig3, Snakebites, ElGee)

1 Worthy (lukekarts)

I'll change my vote to Elvin Hayes and Bernard King, the latter might not matter much but I'm not any more sold on Marques than Rodman but I am on King and his huge, 'best on a title team' caliber peak (this is about the time I'd be nominating Paul, as well)

[Dr Positivity]

Is King's longevity even that bad? King actually has 10 pretty healthy years - 2 with NJN, 2 with GSW, 2 and a half epic year with NY, then 4 with Wash. It's just his monster peak only lasts a year and a half. But when I look at it, even the tier 2 Bernard King is basically the same player as Marques Johnson aside from his big year, playing the same position. Both are 21/7 slashers at similar efficiencies. King's career looks like Marques' with 1.5 jesus juice seasons thrown in the middle. Seems like he should be ahead

And if you compare King's peak as pretty close to Paul's, he's another player where it seems hard to argue for Paul's case over if you consider the guy has so many more years thrown on top of it than Paul does

[Doctor MJ]

As you say, O'Neal at his peak was finishing top-3 in MVP votes and leading 60-win teams. So an O'Neal that was a better rebounder that was also an iron man could very well have been an MVP.

Thing is, the reason the comparison is damning is that most of us don't think Jermaine deserved to be anywhere near 3rd in the MVP race. He's not in my top 10 for that year, and I consider Artest to be the true MVP of the team. Remember that after the suspensions the next year, the team did much better than people expected, and what kept them from being elite was not the lack of Jermaine's volume scoring (offense actually improved) but defense (where Artest was universally acknowledged as the star). Jermaine is thus the poster child for being overrated because of some scoring and team success.

So if Hayes impact was simply Jermaine-esque, with a lot of longevity, I think it's pretty safe to say he was well overrated back in the day. Of course that is only an "if" statement waiting to be rebutted.

The only disturbing thing to me is that after a couple of us made people really ponder Elvin's impact, he basically disappeared from the voting altogether for a long time, which included ZERO of the 11 votes in the last thread...until now when a new non-Paul candidate is needed.

[Doctor MJ]

Is King's longevity even that bad? King actually has 10 pretty healthy years - 2 with NJN, 2 with GSW, 2 and a half epic year with NY, then 4 with Wash. It's just his monster peak only lasts a year and a half. But when I look at it, even the tier 2 Bernard King is basically the same player as Marques Johnson aside from his big year, playing the same position. Both are 21/7 slashers at similar efficiencies. King's career looks like Marques' with 1.5 jesus juice seasons thrown in the middle. Seems like he should be ahead

And if you compare King's peak as pretty close to Paul's, he's another player where it seems hard to argue for Paul's case over if you consider the guy has so many more years thrown on top of it than Paul does

Yup, so it seems. My continued nomination of King right now is by no means hard and fast, but I really think he's prominent enough he warrants time spent in discussion if only to establish why exactly it's too early for him. To this point, haven't gotten anythign like that.

[lorak]

Could Hayes supporters explain why he's better than Lanier?

[ElGee]

Does Rodman have a great peak? Goodness no.
Does Rodman have great longevity? No.
Is Rodman a headcase that could be problematic? Yes
Can Rodman possibly the leader of a great team? Seems impossible.

I love Dennis, but how can people nominating him take him over someone like Marques? I don't get the rationale...

As for Bernard King, I'd be careful not to get too excited about those non-peak years. I say this as someone who holds King as basically the greatest one-dimensional/Iverson's Law player of all-time. He just jacked the Knicks up to offensive respectability and that didn't seem capable of being stopped, even in the PS, because he was SUCH a good scorer. We're talking what Carmelo Anthony wants to be when he grows up...and Melo is already a big-time scorer.

But let's look at these other years:

In 1977 the Nets are a -6.5 team and last (92.2) in ORtg. The team is a mess with 5 of the top 6 scorers by average missing major chunks of the season. Only Al Skinner and Jan Van Breda Kolff manage to play most of the season, and overall Tim Bassett (?) leads the team in minutes played, averaging 9 and 8.

In 78 Loughery stays on as coach and they improve to a whopping -5.6 SRS and again, dead last in offense (95.0). Again, most of the team misses major time. They play super fast and John Williamson averages 30 a game for 33 games. Rookie King averages 24 and 10. Unfortunately, NJ was also -407 (!) on the glass so it's hard to infer great bounding there.

Then in 79 they jump to, wait for it...-4.0. Williamson plays the whole year (with Bassett and Van Breda Kolff). Still fast-paced. Still dead last in offense. King's ORtg is a measly 102 as he shoots 54% TS on his 22 and 8 (4 TOV per).

At this point in his career he's traded to Utah for Rich Kelley ALONG WITH two other players. It was thought King should be moved for rebounding (Kelley was a 15-12 player in 79) and that Calvin Natt -- a good CBA player -- joining the team made King expendable. That, and him being a "problem" because of drugs and related arrests.

In 1980 he was suspended and tried for forced sexual abuse. He was suspended indefinitely at the beginning of January for "holding a woman in his hotel room. " He played 19 games in Utah, and from what I've found the team looks WORSE with King in the lineup...and that was a -5.7 Jazz team. Fittingly, King is traded again for Wayne Cooper (11 pt 6 reb 2nd=year player in GS).

Now in 1980, GS was a -4.2 team and 20th in offense (102.0 per 100) (Parish, Lucas, Short core) +Sonny Parker and Phil Smith plays 51 games. In 1981 they add World B Free and top pick Joe Barry Carroll (19-9 rookie year), keep Lucas and Parker and improve to -1.4. King's still averaging 22-7, but I would not say this is a high-impact player. He does shoot 59% on the good offensive Warrior team and they finish 3rd in ORtg. His Ortg jumps to 116 (TS% 62%) and he is acknowledged with a few trace MVP votes.

In 1982 King's production is slightly worse and the Warriors pop to +0.8 SRS and 6th in offense. Similar core...King makes his first AS team, and all-nab team.

In 1983 his shooting goes way down in New York. The 82 Knicks, under Red Holzman, finished -2.1 and 15th in offense. In 83 the Hubie Brown team was +2.6 and 17th in offense. However there was a lot of roster turnover noise.

The final year to note is post-injury King, finally making it back to the AS game (and all-nba) in 1991. He averaged 28-5-5 that year, but the Bullets were -4.9 with him and -5.4 without him. So despite these gaudy numbers were seeing very little impact and very little recognition in these seasons.

To me, King is lack a bad Melo in these peripheral seasons. He doesn't offer much despite looking he offers a lot. It's not to say in the right fit he couldn't score 15 or 18 awesome points, or that in 1982 he
didn't have a good year. But people shouldn't look at big scoring numbers and assume it was a high-quality (or any quality) season. His peak he put something together from a scoring machine standpoint that couldn't be handled. And when that happened, and on a bad offensive team in NY that just fed him, it all came together.

Otherwise, not so much.

[penbeast0]

Could Hayes supporters explain why he's better than Lanier?

Defense and his teams won during his peak, best team of the 70s while Detroit was thorougly mediocre with Lanier and Bing over their decade . . . whether it's Hayes or Unseld, one of them should get credit since the rest of the team turned over.

Lanier is statistically better, more efficient, but those Detroit teams had one good defensive year surrounded by a lot of bad ones. (They actually were better defensively the year before and after Lanier became their starter with Nat Moore/Zaid Abdul-Aziz and Kent Benson -- neither known for great defense. Big Bob was a very good player but there's a reason why someone else always got the All-NBA teams despite nice numbers.

[penbeast0]

I FINALLY have internet again after a lot of false starts in the past week and a half. Hayes wins, Rodman gets added to the list (if Dr. Mufasa hadn't switched, I would have since I think Moncrief and KJ are better than Paul in terms of short peak players -- I will try to write a good Moncrief v Paul post if I have time on the next one but basically Moncreif's peak is as long as Paul's, he is at least Paul's equal as a scorer, a far superior defender, and the impact he had in Milwaukee during his 5 year peak. Sid was one of the two key stars (with Marques Johnson then Terry Cummings) on an equal or better offensive team plus he led the Milwaukee defense to a top 2 rating in the league with rotating mediocre centers 4 of those 5 years -- although they did stay there when he went down as Paul Pressey and Ricky Pierce stepped up with career years plus they had terrific wing depth.

[ElGee]

Could Hayes supporters explain why he's better than Lanier?

Defense and his teams won during his peak, best team of the 70s while Detroit was thorougly mediocre with Lanier and Bing over their decade . . . whether it's Hayes or Unseld, one of them should get credit since the rest of the team turned over.

...Big Bob was a very good player but there's a reason why someone else always got the All-NBA teams despite nice numbers.

That's a very dangerous mindset. A good front office can exchange value for value. Or draft value to replace exiting value. Phil Chenier was a very good player from my limited exposure to him. Clark and Riordan were good too. Jump to 76 and Dave Bing and Truck Robinson were there. Then of course Dandridge joins the team in 78 and 79 and they win the title and the ECF.

To further denigrate Bob Lanier by saying "there's a reason why someone else always got All-NBA" and not mention the reason is totally unfair. Lanier didn't get it because prime Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was in the league and there was one other spot...which in 1973 went to high-profile (and media darling) center Dave Cowens, in 1974 to Bob McAdoo (2nd in MVP) in 75 to McAdoo (MVP) and Cowens, 76 to Cowens, 77 and 78 were taken by PEAK Bill Walton and Kareem. 79-81 Moses and Kareem.

Meanwhile Lanier played in Detroit on teams that clearly weren't very good. I don't see how that knocks on Lanier at all.

[penbeast0]

That was support to my contention that Lanier was a mediocre to poor defensive center, not a stand alone assertion -- and that Hayes (or Unseld) was a good defender who helped his team win far more games than Lanier's because of that fact. Defense is half the game although many people here say it doesn't matter (especially when talking about guards -- but here we are talking about centers in the age of the post up dominant, no 3 point shot, work the ball in close offense).