#17 Highest Peak of All Time (Wade '09 wins)

[Lightning25]

Wade was a legitimate MVP candidate in 2009 while in 2010, Wade wasn't even top 4 in the MVP voting. I remember there were people saying Durant and Dwight surpassed Wade and it wasn't until the playoffs when people were convinced Wade was still the same.

[thizznation]

ok that is starting to make sense, I was about to say Im surprised you arn't leaning to 06 with your weighting of playoff success. I guess we have narrowed it down to that wade 09' will never get your vote because of the post season falter, I'm fine with that I just wanted to know why.

[Josephpaul]

So who won?
I see bunch different votes for wade and west ./ :shrug:

[thizznation]

the voting ends mañana

[Dr Positivity]

The one thing I don't like in regards to voting a season like 10 Wade, is that he was relieved of the opportunity to fail. For example I voted 10 Wade 1st in the RPOY that year over Lebron mainly because of that G5 disaster. But is that really fair when Wade didn't even have to play the 2nd rd? At the same time it doesn't feel right to me to punish a player strictly because his team wasn't good enough to make it past Rd 1. So evaluating 1st rd loss years in a project like this is a tough thing in general. It's hard to punish 11 Wade for being bad in the CHI series when 10 Wade didn't have to play that long... OTOH it's hard to give 11 Wade more credit strictly for having the team to play longer

I have a hard time with 11 Wade though because tbh it really felt like him and Lebron made each other worse that year. Not just their abilities overlapping, but flat out worse. Also I definitely have 11 Dirk over 11 Wade. I went back to read my RPOY entry on them where I ranked them 1 2 and my justification was all else equal, Dirk was great all 4 series and Wade laid an egg against Chicago, so advantage Dirk. I'd stand by that

06 Wade comes down to worse defense and just a much less smart/experienced player vs 09 and 10 Wade

[Josephpaul]

the voting ends mañana

Oops lol..... Feels like Sunday

[toodles23]

I think the reason Wade played so well against the '10 Celtics is simply because he got hot with his jumpshot. He shot 41% on threes in that series on a ridiculous 7.4 attempts per game, and made 9 of his 15 midrange FGA. To me it looks like nothing more than a case of a guy getting hot from the perimeter for a few games; and it's not like he went completely bonkers ala '09 Lebron, he had a good series but it wasn't historically great.

[LikeABosh]

Wade seems to have the plurality of the votes, but the years are all over the place. 2 for 2010, 2 for 09, 1 for 11, 1 for 06

I'm not feeling 06 or 11. Gotta get away from the winning bias.....would 09 wade have done any worse with the opportunity he had with shaq or with lebron/bosh? I doubt it

09 vs. 10 is somewhat of a debate thanks to Dr. Pos, but I'm taking issue with the lack of credit given to wade before the ASB. Those were 52 games and they weren't wade as his usual self....when has he ever averaged 28/5/7 in a post/pre split? Besides the same 09 season, he's never done that.

[therealbig3]

I'm switching my vote to 09 Wade.

[mysticbb]

Against Barkley, or the way he was utilized?

You see, I know that players are the ones playing the games, but we can't act as if coaching/coaching strategy/systems don't exist. They do, and they matter.

See, the issue is that you are implying the coaches would have just used Barkley wrong, while I say that the coaches used Barkley in order to achieve maximum team success. A player like Barkley, with his skillset and height, makes it really difficult to find fitting teammates to build a really, really good team. You need an incredible skilled big who can defend not only in the post, but is also capable of stepping out to compensate for Barkley's mistakes. Now what? The 76ers did not fall apart without Barkley, neither in 1987 nor in 1991. And when we look at the 1993 76ers, we see that they played -2.38 SRS ball for the first 40 games, just to collapse with internal trouble, coaching changes, etc. to -7.98 SRS for the last 42 games. Now, coaching matters, no doubt about that, but do you really think it would have been easy to just use different offensive and defensive schemes for the coaches in order to make a better team? Or isn't it the case that Barkley himself was the cause for the coaches to put him into that post position, because it would have been worse, if Barkley played a different position?

I see a similar thing with Moses Malone. Imagine Erving wouldn't have had the versatility to play differently with less touches, how would that have effected the 1983 76ers? The team had to change in order to accommodate Moses Malone. That's why we haven't seen such big impact by Moses Malone despite his massive numbers. When the clearly less productive Erving in 1983 was missing, the team lost a lot of it strength. As for 1983, I can see a couple of players replacing Moses Malone and the 76ers wouldn't lose much of their strength, while it would be tougher to replace Erving. If we would have the 1983 pbp data, I wouldn't be surprised, if we find that Erving was some sort of +6 to +7 player per 100 possessions, while Moses Malone was rather a +3 to +4 player. Obviously, it is important to have production and efficiency for a team, and Moses Malone was able to provide a lot of that production. I have him with +7.01 SPM during the playoffs, which is most certainly an impressive value. But that is hardly a value others, not selected players haven't achieved, while we actually saw a bigger impact by them.

I think in 1983 we just see a 76ers team, which is a good fit for Moses Malone, because they are unselfish with high basketball IQ, a team with Erving as their most impactful player. Moses Malone could play to his strength and was able to collect the boxscore numbers. And I agree with Doc MJ's assessement as well, we don't hear people raving about Malone's skillset, transcendent abilities, high basketball IQ, great decision making, whatsoever, people liking Moses Malone most times bring up raw ppg and rpg numbers, that is all. That he turned it over quite often even though he didn't pass often, is somewhat ignored, that Malone had limitations defensively seems to be ignored (heck, there were some people recently claiming he was a defensive anchor, which means they really had no clue how Malone even played). I don't think that Moses Malone had a great peak in the context of a 5on5 game, were his skill level and playing abilities would have allowed to build a great team with a great variety of teammates.

I see Malone and Barkley as players, who were able to produce and be efficient, which means they had for sure positive impact on the game, but even if we want to assume that their teammates for a big part were just not good enough, we have seen other players pushing similar weak casts to much more than those two players. And some of those players are still not voted in.

[lorak]

What do you guys think about '97 or '96 Penny? IMO He seems to be as good as Wade or Kobe.

[mysticbb]

You're saying those RAPM's are nearly identical, but the scaling of RAPM is custom with each analysis, so if you want to get a sense for how a player stood out, I think it wise to do a standard deviation analysis on the years in question. Here's what I get for the years Wade's been mentioned:

'10 3.7
'06 2.8
'09 2.8
'11 2.3

While I agree with using standard deviation here, you should use minute weighted standard deviation instead of normal standard deviation, otherwise you will simple have a lower standard deviation when a season has more low minute players.

With minutes weighted standard deviation we get:

2010: 3.5
2009: 2.5
2006: 2.5
2011: 2.1

2009 is slightly higher than 2006 (2.53 vs. 2.48).

[mysticbb]

What do you guys think about '97 or '96 Penny? IMO He seems to be as good as Wade or Kobe.

Nah, 96 Penny Hardaway and 2003 Tracy McGrady might be in the same mold, but I would put both below 2006 to 2010 Bryant and 2009 to 2010 Wade. For me, I would rank the peaks: Wade, Bryant, McGrady, Hardaway.

[lorak]

mysticbb, what about Penny vs West?

[therealbig3]

I actually tend to lean towards mysticbb's stance regarding Barkley, to be honest. Big box score numbers...but production like that is really not that useful when it's not leading to impact. The whole point is to make your team better.

I mean, yeah, but why is this always on the player? You can be a great player and be used incorrectly in the team context or not be in the ideal team environment (as a Heat fan, I would think that LBJ didn't forget how to play basketball on the offensive end between 2010 when he "impacted" his teams and when he joined the squad). Do the words "Jim Lyham" and "offensive genius"/expert" occupy the same sentence when you type your posts?

Ok but we have multiple instances of Barkley with a strong supporting cast, and not doing THAT great with them. I mean, when a player has different, but talented, supporting casts throughout his career, and the result isn't anything super amazing (or at least, isn't any better than what we've seen from other players, like Dirk or Nash), why does he HAVE to be voted soon?

Let's look at the offenses he's been a part of throughout his career, starting in 86 (when he became a 20+ ppg player):

86: +1.4
87: +0.0
88: +0.8
89: +5.2
90: +5.4
91: +0.0
92: +0.1
93: +5.3
94: +5.4
95: +6.2
96: +2.7
97: +2.1
98: +2.7
99: +3.2

So let's analyze some of these teams. From 86-88, he's a part of very average offenses, despite playing with still very productive versions of Moses, Dr. J, Mo Cheeks, and a plethora of double-digit scorers. The offenses are pretty elite in 89 and 90 finally, but again, he has quite a few very good scorers on his team. Impressive stuff, but nothing that some of the other players haven't done to a greater degree. The offenses once again become quite mediocre in 91 and 92...he does miss 15 games in 91, and using ElGee's SIO, we see that the Sixers were -1.2 without him, and +0.0 with him.

It's during 93-95 when his team offenses once again explode to elite levels, while playing next to KJ, who was injury-prone during this time.

KJ misses 33 games in 93, and the Suns were +4.5 without him, and +8.2 with him (+3.7). Also keep in mind that they had Dan Majerle on the team as well.

Both Barkley and KJ miss a bunch of games in 94, much of the same ones. The Suns played with KJ and without Barkley in 4 games (so very small sample size). In those games, the Suns had a 113.4 ORating vs an average 107.6 DRating (+5.8)...technically better than with Barkley. Like I said, very small sample size, and that wouldn't have held up for a whole season, but those Suns were clearly more than just Barkley, and they could sustain elite offense without him...kind of like they did with a healthy KJ in 97.

In 95, the Suns played 8 games with KJ and without Barkley, and in those games, they had a 110.2 ORating vs an average DRating of 107.9 (+2.3). Again, a very talented supporting cast that could certainly play strong offense with Barkley on the bench.

Personally, Barkley to me is someone whose box score stats overrate how good he was...he played with different supporting casts that were all quite strong, and the offenses were never truly historic (at least in the regular season, haven't checked the playoffs), like we've seen with players like Dirk or Nash, who aren't as impressive by the box score.

I think at some point, when a player is playing with different talent and the results just aren't at the level that's expected, it's time to start looking at the player (Barkley has poor portability imo) and to stop assuming that the coaches or the teammates just don't allow him to play an ideal role.

To be clear, Barkley did lead some really strong offenses, but at this level of peaks, Dirk and Nash have led stronger offenses on a routine basis. Furthermore, this doesn't even get into the fact that Barkley was worse as a defensive piece than either of them.

[mysticbb]

he does miss 15 games in 91, and using ElGee's SIO, we see that the Sixers were -1.2 without him, and +0.0 with him.

Those numbers are not adjusted for the strength of schedule. The 76ers played a pretty easy schedule during those 15 games with 9 home games and against -0.52 SRS teams in average. That makes it -2.35 SRS without Barkley and +0.05 SRS with Barkley.

We have a similar thing for 1987, where Barkley missed 14 games. Without him the 76ers were at -2.76 SRS, with him +0.71 SRS. Not a huge positive impact.

I agree in most parts with the rest of your post.

[thebottomline]

Personally, Barkley to me is someone whose box score stats overrate how good he was...he played with different supporting casts that were all quite strong, and the offenses were never truly historic

I don't know if that's fair given KJ's missed time from 93-95... From ElGee in a previous thread, the Suns' offenses when KJ and Barkley played together were:

1993: +7.6
1994: +7.1
1995: +6.7

Pretty historic there. But yeah, how underrated is KJ? The Suns were below average offensively before he joins, then when he starts getting starters' minutes in his 2nd year he leads +5.3, +5.0, +4.7, and +3.9 offenses in the four years before Barkley joins. Averaged 21 and 11 on 59 TS% over those four seasons. Pretty damn good. I think I'd put his peak above guys like Stockton, Payton, Kidd, Isiah who often get ranked ahead of him in all-time rankings.

[therealbig3]

Barkley's playoff offenses from 86-96 (2nd round teams):

86 Sixers: +7.8
90 Sixers: +1.5
91 Sixers: +4.8
93 Suns: +4.6
94 Suns: +7.6
95 Suns: +11.5

A couple of really nice offensive teams in 91 and 93, and then some monstrous offenses in 86, 94, and holy cow, look at 95.

Let's look at Barkley's individual ORatings in the big offensive playoffs (in relation to himself in the regular season):

86 playoffs: 114 (+3)
91 playoffs: 123 (even)
93 playoffs: 119 (-1)
94 playoffs: 118 (+5)
95 playoffs: 121 (+2)

We see that yes, in 94 he went back to playing at a high offensive level in the playoffs following a disappointing regular season, and he did something similar early in his career in 86. But in 91, 93, and 95, his offensive production stayed relatively constant between the regular season and the playoffs. The 91 Sixers offense was exactly average in the RS, as opposed to +4.8 in the playoffs, despite pretty much the same offensive production from Barkley. So what changed? Hershey Hawkins got way more efficient in the playoffs, and Armen Gilliam actually played (and played well) after missing 32 games in the regular season.

The 93-95 Suns actually maintained elite offense in both the RS and PS. The offense stayed pretty constant between the 93 RS and the 93 PS, and Barkley's production was pretty constant. So why is pretty much the same level of play being maintained against better defenses despite Barkley not playing better? KJ and Dumas are relatively healthy and play all but one game in the playoffs.

94 is when Barkley makes a huge offensive leap between his RS and his PS, and the offense gets a bit better as well. But also worth mentioning, KJ, Ceballos, and Majerle all missed significant time in the RS, and played in all of the PS games (not to mention, Barkley himself missed time).

The offense exploded big time in the 95 PS compared to the 95 RS, despite Barkley's offensive production staying about the same. So what happened? Again, Barkley did miss some time in the RS, but more importantly imo, KJ not only plays in all of the playoff games after missing 35 games in the RS, but he dominates the playoffs and posts a 130 ORating.

From what I'm seeing, Barkley had elite offensive talent around him when he led those 93-95 offenses. They get downgraded to merely "good" because of the shaky health of the 2nd most important player, KJ. So Barkley with a good offensive supporting cast is generally a guy who will lead +5 or +6 offenses. I believed LeBron could lead a +7 or better offense if you gave him shooters and a reliable 2nd option that fits him well. So clearly, I'm seeing a large difference in the offensive capabilities of Barkley in comparison to LeBron. I consider Dirk to be closer to LeBron offensively than Barkley, while Nash imo is even better than LeBron.

Now, from the data I remember seeing from the top 100, Barkley might very well have been a negative impact defensive player, despite his rebounding numbers. If true, I just can't see why he should go over Dirk or Nash, since Nash is more or less neutral as a defensive player, while Dirk is actually quite good.

[therealbig3]

Personally, Barkley to me is someone whose box score stats overrate how good he was...he played with different supporting casts that were all quite strong, and the offenses were never truly historic

I don't know if that's fair given KJ's missed time from 93-95... From ElGee in a previous thread, the Suns' offenses when KJ and Barkley played together were:

1993: +7.6
1994: +7.1
1995: +6.7

Pretty historic there. But yeah, how underrated is KJ? The Suns were below average offensively before he joins, then when he starts getting starters' minutes in his 2nd year he leads +5.3, +5.0, +4.7, and +3.9 offenses in the four years before Barkley joins. Averaged 21 and 11 on 59 TS% over those four seasons. Pretty damn good. I think I'd put his peak above guys like Stockton, Payton, Kidd, Isiah who often get ranked ahead of him in all-time rankings.

Yeah, I'd definitely take KJ's peak over those guys'. IMO, KJ might have a top 5 peak among all PGs (along with Magic, Oscar, Nash, and Paul). With relative health in 97 after Barkley leaves, KJ leads a +2.6 offense as well. This is the last year of his prime too.

I mean, yeah, so Barkley and KJ are leading +7ish offenses when they're both playing together...but consider the fact that Dirk and Nash in Dallas led comparable or better offenses. And consider the fact that a healthy KJ, along with the role players on those Suns teams, is one of the best offensive supporting casts ever, so how much credit should we give Barkley for leading offenses like that when he has that kind of help?

To be fair, I do understand that offenses are still a team effort, and I do understand that in general, the best offensive teams generally have a lot of offensive talent...but there's a difference between what players like Dirk and Nash have been able to do (the offenses clearly thrive on their individual brilliance), and between what Barkley did with KJ next to him. I think you can make a legitimate argument that the offensive anchor of those teams was actually KJ.

[bastillon]

Code: Select all

    MP      PTS   TRB      AST   ts%      tov   player      years
    39.8   19,57   7,69   12,47   0,60   3,68   Magic Johnson   80-91
    38,50   21,67   4,77   9,02   0,53   3,35   Isiah Thomas   84-90
    34.2   14,67   6,86   7,14   0,49   2,06   Fat Lever   85-90
    39,10   19,73   3,71   6,88   0,61   2,45   Terry Porter   87-93
    37,40   19,23   2,81   7,48   0,61   3,13   Mark Price   88-92
    39.0   15,56   3,49   11,75   0,57   3,26   John Stockton   88-97
    39.4   21,11   3,55   9,71   0,56   3,64   Kevin Johnson   89-97
    41.6   20,26   3,56   7,70   0,52   3,33   Tim Hardaway   91-99
    41.3   21,52   4,61   6,39   0,56   3,06   Penny Hardaway   94-00
    43.1   21,72   4,77   7,07   0,54   2,75   Gary Payton   94-00
    34.9   16,81   3,44   5,77   0,53   2,67   Sam Cassell   99-04
    41.4   16,14   7,84   9,31   0,49   3,37   Jason Kidd   99-07
    38.2   19,80   4,57   6,48   0,55   2,57   Baron Davis   00-07
    37.8   18,36   3,69   9,49   0,59   3,41   Steve Nash   01-10
    37.8   18,21   3,48   6,02   0,58   2,28   ChaunceyBillups   02-10
    36.3   18,78   3,14   4,94   0,51   2,83   Tony Parker   02-11
    40.4   21,14   3,68   9,61   0,58   3,55   Deron Williams   07-10
    40.7   21,91   5,26   11,13   0,58   2,96   Chris Paul   08-11

best modern PGs in the postseason by boxscore stats. KJ had some monster playoff performances. he had his downs as well but mostly he was raising the level of his game in the postseason. definitely better than Stockton or Jason Kidd. I actually think Baron Davis 07 is better than either one of them as well (he's better than Payton too, Baron Davis is an elite offense initiator, great sense for setting up the offense. RAPM supports this over the years and he was much improved player in the postseason. but the guy I'm really looking forward to is Mark Price. possibly better than everybody except Nash and Paul. let's remember in the late 80s/early 90s he was ranked higher than Stockton/Isiah/KJ most of the time. his impact is very impressive by every measure as well. he was poor man's Steve Nash with better defense.

btw, I'll be arguing AGAINST Gary Payton for sure. his portability is laughable given his stint with the Lakers. I couldn't care less how old he was, he was an all-star putting up 20/8 in 2003 so he was pretty much the same boxscore player he had been at his peak, and failed miserably in the Laker uniform, he was one of the worst starting PGs of all-time in that postseason. he's a scoring point guard who was a failure in terms of setting up HCO. his scoring fell off a cliff in the playoffs in terms of efficiency. his defense is severely overrated if you look at his stint without Kemp. I also think Kemp was their best player overall and he gets very underrated on this board. I'll be looking forward for Payton debate but I'm probably gonna argue against his peak for a long time. very overrated IMO.

and in general - Kidd, Payton, Stockton, Isiah are all overrated. in terms of peak play Price and Penny were better than all of them and they never seperated themselves from a guy like Terry Porter (who actually embarassed Stockton with both being at their peak).