#5 Highest Peak of All Time (Hakeem '94 wins)

[ElGee]

btw realbig3, just found this from earlier:

there have been 80 teams 4.5 points or better than league average in the 3-pt era (since 1980). The distribution of those offenses is

80-94: 35
95-97: 10
98-12: 35

If you want more outlying offenses, of the 28 6+ teams since 1986, the distribution is

80-94: 9
95-97: 7
98-12: 14

So we have 33 years.

12.5% of the +4.5 teams are from 3 years of short 3-line -- 3 more than what we'd expect based on the other years.

If we look to the 6+ outliers...the rates look like this:

80-94: 0.6 per year
95-97: 2.3 per year
98-12: 0.9 per year

So yes, it looks like the 3-point shot matters here.

[JordansBulls]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/ ... ormances-5

1994 OLAJUWON'S STATS
Points per game: 26.9
Boards per game: 9.1
Blocks per game: 3.9
PER: 27.1



http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/ ... nces-31-40

1995 OLAJUWON'S STATS
Points per game: 32.8
Boards per game: 11.5
Assists per game: 5.5
PER: 22.2


http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/ ... ormances-6


1987 MAGIC JOHNSON'S STATS
Points per game: 26.2
Boards per game: 8.0
Assists per game: 13.0
PER: 28.2


http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/ ... ormances-3


2003 DUNCAN'S STATS
Points per game: 24.2
Boards per game: 17.0
Assists per game: 5.3
PER: 32.0


http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/ ... nces-31-40

1986 BIRD'S STATS
Points per game: 24.0
Boards per game: 9.7
Assists per game: 9.5
PER: 22.4

[semi-sentient]

Interesting. Perhaps true. But are we really defaulting to positional arguments? What about Bird's defense?

It's not so much a positional argument as it is the effect a PG has on the offense compared to other positions. Not to diminish Bird's impact offensively, but he wasn't the guy bringing the ball up the court and dictating the tempo like Magic. The way that Magic pushed the ball is IMO what made them so difficult to contain, whereas Bird worked more in half court sets with his passing/outside shooting that opened things up for teammates. Not that he couldn't run the break or anything, but in general I see the PG position as having the largest impact on an offense -- assuming we're talking about a great PG.

Edit: Regarding Bird's defense, was there really a big gap? I mean '87 Magic was a pretty good defensive player. Not elite or anything and perhaps a little below Bird, but I think generally speaking neither of these guys had near the impact on defense as they had on offense. I think that's what makes '86 Bird and '87 Magic such an interesting topic -- there is very little that separates them overall.

Technically, the 88 RS Boston offense was farther from mean, and did so with bottom of the league OREB%.

Admittedly, I don't really know how to value that. Some of Nash's offenses were also farther from the mean but I don't believe they were necessarily as unstoppable/good as the Showtime Lakers. What I value most is consistency, and the Showtime Lakers were consistently the best (or among the best) in both the RS and PS for year-in, year-out.

I find this to be a good point, but my goodness look who the Lakers were playing.

Well, you can only beat who you play, and even when the Lakers went up against tougher defensive opponents they weren't necessarily phased by it. It's something to ponder though, but in general I try not to knock players for who they went up against because they have little control over that.

We know the Lakers without Magic were clearly an above average offense team in the early 80's. We know that Cooper had at least 6 double-digit assist games in December 1983 when Magic was out, including 2 games over 16 assists. If the Lakers played at a constant pace, the ORtg in those games was ~ 110 (almost no change). With some quick pace estimations, it looks like they actually played slower, which means an improvement in offense in those 15g.

In 86 Magic misses 9 relevant games and we have the pace numbers: +6.1 ORtg in the lineup and...+5.0 with Magic out of the lineup. Cooper has 15 and 11 assists to start, then 13, 13, 3, 11, 12, 13, 11. Cooper's a good player, but unless you think he was some sort of hidden QB-genius PG who was totally masked/misused his entire career, this is suggesting strong things about the Laker team/strategy, is it not?

I don't completely disagree with that because the Lakers offense was still good in the early years without Magic, but I think we really have to look closer at who the Lakers faced when he was out:

- The Lakers went 8-7 in 15 games.
- 10 of those 15 were home games.
- Only 5 out of those 15 came against teams with winning records.
- Only TWO (!) of those teams had better than average dRtg
- 7 out of the 15 teams were bottom 5 defenses according to dRtg

So while the Lakers offense didn't really fall off you have to take into consideration that they played some awful teams -- and still managed to play barely above .500 basketball.

If nothing else this re-iterates how important Magic was to the team.

Even in 1988, with the "prime" Magic -- outside shot, post game, etc. -- the Lakers ORtg was -1.1 in the 10 games he missed. Cooper himself was injured as well (!) and did not start in place of Magic. Instead, the Lakers started

So we have yet another (small) piece of evidence that the Lakers were quite excellent on offense or geared toward offense (even Matthews had some big assist games while starting).

Again, look at who they played. Half of those teams had a losing record, and half of them were bottom 7 defenses. The only top 10 defense they faced was the Jazz (#1 defense) who they met twice. They went 5-5 (5 home, 5 road) without Magic, and 57-15 with him. The offense might have looked respectable but they were again playing against mostly garbage defenses.

[semi-sentient]

Not sure how you feel DoctorMJ but haven't seen a vote from Rapcity in any thread, not sure if you want to replace him or not or if he will start participating, but others such as the thebottomline, Fatal9, Semi have been in threads participating as well not sure if they want to be regulars though

I can't really commit to the project as I'm starting a new job on Monday which is really going to reduce the amount of time I spend on the boards. I may try to contribute here and there when it comes to players I'm familiar with, but I'm mostly following this thread to gain more perspective on the players being scrutinized.

[ElGee]

^^^FTR those statistics are *opponent adjusted.* That means a -1.1 doesn't mean from the league, it means against their opponents. There is no adjustment for HCA thought in that. The individual player stats are also not adjusted, but I think over the years we see very good things from Cooper, Scott and Worthy without Magic. Cooper, Scott, Worthy, PF, Kareem -- it just SOUNDS like a monster team, does it not? (not that we don't know that, i just feel like people are radically losing sight of this stuff by defaulting to RS ORTG relative to League Average...)

[drza]

@ Colts -- There's definitely an over-emphasis on the team stat. It's instructional, it's useful, it tells us a lot, but it's not an individual statistic. It's very possible for one key offensive player to be on a +10 offense and another on a +5 and the weaker team features the better offensive player.

I agree with this sentiment. Once we go back more than a decade we no longer have +/- data, which is a shame because obviously the non-boxscore impact is still an important data point. So I understand looking for broader patterns in team performance to estimate that impact. For a guy like Walton it works, because he missed so much time during his peak year that we can get some reasonable in/out estimates.

For a guy like Russell on defense (or Magic on offense) we can make some impact inferences based on the consistency of their huge team performance across a long period of time, with entirely different sets of teammates and coaches with themselves as the only constant. But it's very hard to make detailed comparisons to separate closely matched players using this method. In Russell's case he had no defensive contemporary that was making anywhere near the impact that he did, so the broader strokes work reasonable. But for Magic vs Bird, I just don't see a definitive way to separate players that potentially close using these broad strokes.

Magic and Bird has always been a close comparison, and for good reason. But just as the broad strokes advantages the Lakers have on offense isn't enough to fully convince me to side with Magic, I also don't see any great advantage for Bird defensively. Neither Magic nor Bird often guarded their offensive position (PG and SF), relying on teammates to cover opponents that weren't in their athletic wheelhouse. That said, both were smart defenders that were able to use instincts and quick hands to be disruptive and both were good defensive rebounders. I don't see either as a huge impact defensive player, enough (when compared to each other) to make a definitive difference compared to their offense.

So with me, in this particular comparison, I move to more qualitative differences. At their cores, Bird was a big man who could give you the scoring of a wing and a lot of the floor generalship of a guard. Magic was a point guard who could give you the rebounding and post presence of a big and proved that he could provide scoring when called upon to do so. In general a point guard has the advantage on offensive impact, and a big man has the advantage on defensive impact. But Bird didn't make his mark on defense...and on offense, I just don't think he could orchestrate to the level that Magic could because Magic was the one controlling the offense from the word go.

In this match-up, I'll be voting Magic before Bird. Perhaps as soon as this thread (would have voted Magic above Wilt last thread, had such a vote not been a throw-away due to the nature of the other votes).

Looking at the current landscape, among those with a chance to win I'd lean towards Hakeem (either '94 or '95) and Magic as my 2 options. If Magic makes a late run in the vote I might go with him, but again I'm not sure what my access will be this evening so I'll give my default vote now just in case, with caveat that I can change it later.

Vote: Hakeem Olajuwon (whichever of '94 or '95 has the lead)

[Rapcity_11]

I'm not going to be voting so go ahead and remove me from the panel.

I try to stay away from commenting too much on guys I've never seen play or don't know all that much about.

Good stuff so far though.

[JordansBulls]

1. ardee - Magic 87
2. Doctor MJ - ??? (Haven't seen a vote unless I missed it) - Voted for LBJ 09 last time
3. C-izeMe - Hakeem 94
4. colts18 - Lebron 09
5. DavidStern - Lebron 09
6. DrMufasa - Hakeem 94 (Switched at post 100)
7. drza - Hakeem 94 (picked the one in the lead)
8. ElGee - Bird 86
9. JordansBulls - Kareem 71
10. Rapcity_11 - OFF the list
11. Vinsanity420 - (Haven't seen a vote unless I missed it)
12. therealbig3 - Lebron 09
13. Josephpaul - Kareem 71
14. ThaRegul8r - Magic 87
15. PTB Fan - Hakeem 94

Hakeem 94 - 4 votes
Lebron 09 - 3 votes
Kareem 71 - 2 votes
Magic 87 - 2 votes
Bird 86 - 1 vote


OTHERS who have voted but not on panel -->

thebottomline - Bird 86
bastillion - Hakeem (didn't say which year)
Semi-Sentiment - Magic 87
Fatal9 - assumming Hakeem

[ThaRegul8r]

I'll go with '87 Magic.

[Doctor MJ]

not sure if I'm not on the voting pannel but I got the invitation to join this project so hopefully Doc will count me in.

Okay folks a few things:

First, bastillon is officially in (and RapCity is out).

Second, at every stage I've made clear I need you to contact me personally via PM now that we've gotten started if you want to be assured that I'm considering you. An invitation from me was sent to some folks, but you're typically not going to start getting counted unless you go through the formal process. This is done to make my life more sane. I'm quite busy and about to get more busy in every day life. I'm quite enjoying that others are doing the tallying right now, and they can't do that if there's ambiguity in all this.

So yeah, if you want in, PM me.

Also, bast, it looks like you haven't picked a particular season for Hakeem. You've got to do that. Read up on the first post of the Project page.

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: LeBron James '09

Same reasons as before. LeBron's the all-around dude, and while others have arguments ahead of him, I'm not yet so convinced I'd change my vote.

[therealbig3]

btw realbig3, just found this from earlier:

there have been 80 teams 4.5 points or better than league average in the 3-pt era (since 1980). The distribution of those offenses is

80-94: 35
95-97: 10
98-12: 35

If you want more outlying offenses, of the 28 6+ teams since 1986, the distribution is

80-94: 9
95-97: 7
98-12: 14

So we have 33 years.

12.5% of the +4.5 teams are from 3 years of short 3-line -- 3 more than what we'd expect based on the other years.

If we look to the 6+ outliers...the rates look like this:

80-94: 0.6 per year
95-97: 2.3 per year
98-12: 0.9 per year

So yes, it looks like the 3-point shot matters here.

Thanks.

So considerations should be taken when discussing players between modern players and 80's/early 90's players, but it seems that it was mainly the 95-97 offenses who benefitted hugely from the (shorter) 3pt line.

[therealbig3]

not sure if I'm not on the voting pannel but I got the invitation to join this project so hopefully Doc will count me in.

Now, you could say that 21.0 pp36 and 55.4% TS is good compared to an average player, but among the best of the best, it counts as "low volume, middling efficiency", but outside of Shaq and Kareem, what big men that are being discussed at this point don't qualify as such? Garnett and Walton are the same way. I know Hakeem was an explosive scorer at times, but from 85-96, Hakeem averaged 23.1 pp36 on 55.8% TS. It looks eerily similar to Duncan's scoring stat line (and Hakeem turned it over more). I know Hakeem had some ridiculous scoring playoff series/games, and I'm not trying to argue that Duncan was on Hakeem's level as a scorer, but Duncan stepped up his volume scoring (and efficiency) in the playoffs plenty of times throughout his career as well.

that doesn't come close to showing the real gap between Duncan and Hakeem. Dream is the only back to the basket big in history who could score really from anywhere inside 17 feet. he could do things Duncan wouldn't dream of. really look at some YouTube clips posted by fatal with peak Hakeem and you'll know what I mean. Duncan just doesn't pass any sort of eye test. you can use numbers whatever you want, but trust me, after watching one or two games with both players, you'll no longer have doubts as to who's the better scorer.

the fact that Hakeem was far superior as a scorer didn't mean that much against weak opposition because they could score on them anyway. but against the very best Hakeem maintained his volume and efficiency. that's what seperates them. Duncan could not stay effective against great defense. Hakeem could somehow raise his effectiveness. if Hakeem wanted to, he could dominate much more in the RS than he did. he just needed motivation. that's why he improved in the playoffs. that's why he performed the best vs the very best.

when I think about Duncan I can't forget about several things.

1) defensively, the defenses he anchored were sometimes getting gangraped in the playoffs. Suns absolutely embarassed those schemes because Duncan struggled guarding pick and rolls. Mavs never seemed to have any trouble scoring either. don't get me started on Kobe who always torched the Spurs the most. I mean were the Spurs really that elite defensively in the playoffs ? who did Duncan stop from scoring ? not only didn't he do that, some players just had their way with Duncan in the playoffs (Amare rings a bell). compare that to Hakeem and his defense vs Parish, Ewing, Robinson and Shaq. not to mention that Tomjanovich never had Olajuwon hiding behind Thorpe to stay out of foul trouble. Duncan was never used as a defensive stopper until late in games, he didn't have half of Olajuwon's defensive responsibilities.

2) offensively, I always felt like Duncan was very overrated scorer because of how often he got easy layups from his teammates. I mean post-2003 once Parker and Ginobili developed into very good pick and roll players, Duncan was often scoring tons of open layups. Parker and Ginobili rarely get credit for that, but I think they prolonged Duncan's career a lot. you don't see Duncan scoring from the low post since basically 2008, and he was still posting about 17-20 ppg after that. Hakeem never had that kind of luxury. he had to create everything on that team because there were no playmakers. more importantly, Duncan never performed well vs elite post defenders. Sheed, Karl Malone, Varejao, Grant, they all gave him a lot of trouble. watch some 2005 tape of Duncan struggling to do anything against Sheed 1 on 1, and then look at what Hakeem was doing with NYK's frontline or DPOY David Robinson. just no way, they're comparable post scorers.

Outside of Grant, notice how none of those defensive players went up against 02 or 03 Duncan? And against Grant, Duncan had two great games, and two bad games, and his team got destroyed. Duncan in 02 and 03 was just at his absolute peak in terms of his physical ability and skill level. I have a hard time imagining anybody stopping Duncan one on one in 02 or 03. And Duncan was injured in 04 and 05.

And, the Spurs offense in the 05 Finals were +2.2. I know Ginobili played great, but the Spurs offense was very much Duncan-centered, and their #1 offensive strategy was to feed Duncan in the post and let him create. He went up against a Wallace/Wallace front line and couldn't score efficiently against them, but much like ElGee said before, even if Hakeem didn't score, if he was creating opportunities for others, he was doing a good job. The same credit should be given to Duncan in 05.

And as a scorer purely, Hakeem was definitely better than Duncan, and I'm very impressed by his ability to not be slowed down one on one. But as an overall offensive player, I think it's closer than most people think, because Duncan was a better passer/read the defense better.

And I think your agenda is showing with regards to defense. Hakeem's teams never got lit up? And the Suns were great offensively, and Amare was killing Duncan...because Nash was awesome and unstoppable, and that's part of the reason he's so highly regarded. And this is a point you've admitted to before when you wanted to prop Nash up. You yourself said that Amare was only scoring because of Nash creating for him in the PnR, and that Amare got owned when he tried to score on post ups against Duncan.

Also, with regards to Kobe...how come Bowen doesn't get the blame, but Duncan gets discredited for playing with such a "great" defensive teammate? Bowen guarded Kobe one on one a lot, and got lit up constantly. And a criticism that can be levied against Popovich for his "take away the 3 and paint, and give up the midrange" strategy is that players like Kobe feast on the midrange game, and would be prone to light them up.

And the players you mention Hakeem shutting down, the only legitimately awesome defensive job was against Ewing. Parish was a 3rd option, isn't that the kind of player Duncan gets criticized for being "hidden" on? Why wasn't he guarding McHale, who averaged 26/9 on 63% TS? Robinson was a very mediocre post scorer, with no back to the basket game. He didn't shut down Shaq at all. I can agree he outplayed him, but Shaq was scoring at elite levels. How is this any different from Amare vs Duncan in 05? Amare was no Shaq, but Shaq was also not getting spoonfed on every play. And Duncan did defend Shaq quite a bit in 02 and 03, and guarded him quite well, better than Robinson did, actually.

And you're talking about man defense mainly. Team defense is what matters most, and there's really nothing wrong with Duncan's team defense, especially earlier prime Duncan (98-03).

[AnaheimRoyale]

Looking over their careers, the perception Hakeem owned D.Rob is just wrong. By and large D.Rob and Hakeem were perceived as even at worst, and then one playoff series somehow washes that away. Absurd. D.Rob didn't play badly most of that series btw, and he suffered from having no support, which meant the Rockets could double D.Rob at will, knowing the other Spurs would brick shot after shot in response. Hakeem outplayed him that series, and he has a higher peak, but let's not overstate the difference between him and D.Rob, which is pretty negligible by and large.

[Doctor MJ]

Hmm, okay so where we are right now among the leaders is a dilemma very much relating to peak year. Right now, here's the relevant standings as I see it:

LeBron '09 - 4
Hakeem '94 - 3
Hakeem '95 - 1
Hakeem - 1

The absurdity of the situation is plain. I'm not going to back off the rules of specification here, but I'm also not going to rush the result here when my rules seem so clearly like they'd give the win to a guy people aren't going for. So here's the deal:

1. Deadline is extended a day. Call it a tiebreak if you'd like.

2. I'm going with what penbeast did in the Top 100 project, you get ONE vote. You don't get to say "A, but B if A gets eliminated." That's essentially giving that poster additional voting power that others aren't having, and it will soon be followed by everyone and their mother giving instant runoff lists. Instant Runoff is a good idea, but I said no to it for a reason (it's very tricky to do right, and no, I don't feel like I could outsource it in good conscious), and I'm not going to have us sneak back into it.

If you want your vote to go to the majority year for your guy, you'll have to ensure that by manually checking these things. Sorry.

I will note that while some might think this is unreasonable because the two Hakeem camps would pick '94 & '95 Hakeem ahead of all other contenders, I actually think anyone who thinks that's a given needs to check themselves. Those were two vastly different years. I think it would be challenging to come up with any statistical metric that would rate those years in consecutive places.

3. As mentioned many times, you've GOT to pick a year if you want your vote to count.

[GetItDone]

09 LeBron.

[therealbig3]

I was also curious how the Mavs did against the Spurs offensively, since bastillon mentioned them:

In 01, with Dirk, Finley, and Nash, the Mavs had a 100.4 ORating in 5 games against the Spurs. That's -6.7 from what they were in the regular season.

In 03, through the first 3 games with Dirk, Nash, and Finley (again), the Mavs had a 104.9 ORating against the Spurs. That's -5.8 from what they were in the regular season.

In 06, the Mavs had a 114.7 ORating in 7 games against the Spurs. That's +2.9 from what they were in the regular season.

That was the last time that the Mavericks played the Spurs in Duncan's prime. So we see the Mavs have an excellent offensive series against the Spurs in 06, but then get shut down in 01 and 03 (01 is a personal top 5 season, and 03 is his arguable peak).

So I wouldn't say that the Mavs had that much offensive success against the Spurs.

[ThaRegul8r]

Hmm, okay so where we are right now among the leaders is a dilemma very much relating to peak year. Right now, here's the relevant standings as I see it:

LeBron '09 - 4
Hakeem '94 - 3
Hakeem '95 - 1
Hakeem - 1

The absurdity of the situation is plain.

I had a feeling something like this would eventually end up happening.

[ardee]

I will note that while some might think this is unreasonable because the two Hakeem camps would pick '94 & '95 Hakeem ahead of all other contenders, I actually think anyone who thinks that's a given needs to check themselves. Those were two vastly different years. I think it would be challenging to come up with any statistical metric that would rate those years in consecutive places.

This.... '94 Hakeem was at full throttle from game 1 of the regular season to the end of the Finals. Say he was a 9.5 throughout.

'95 Hakeem hovered between 8-8.5 during the regular season, but then cranked it up to an unreal level, call it an 11, throughout the Playoffs.

His defense was certainly better in 1994. It's harder to stop Shaq than Ewing, but the difference in the numbers of the guys he was guarding in the Finals in those two years is startling. Ewing scored 18 ppg on 36% shooting, while Shaq managed 28 ppg on 58% shooting...!

Personally I would pick '94, mainly because of his higher defensive impact and the fact that he didn't really have a security blanket in the Playoffs like '95 Drexler was.

Anyway, that's just food for thought.

My vote is still '87 Magic.

[drza]

Hmm, okay so where we are right now among the leaders is a dilemma very much relating to peak year. Right now, here's the relevant standings as I see it:

LeBron '09 - 4
Hakeem '94 - 3
Hakeem '95 - 1
Hakeem - 1

Who is the Hakeem '95 vote? From JB's summary I see four Hakeem '94 votes, plus Bastillon who still needs to specify a year.

If you're counting me as the '95, then consider my vote officially changed to Hakeem '94.