#22 Highest Peak of All Time (Paul '08 wins)

[Doctor MJ]

I'm not in the project and you guys have done a lot more research than me, but I'm also pretty confused by CP3 over Dwight. CP3 had amazing offensive impact, but Dwight had an even bigger defensive impact with his team finishing top 3 in defense in all three years that could be considered his peak despite really bad help on defense compared to CP3's team finishing 5th in offense in 2008 despite having pretty good support. Dwight was also the focal point of the Magic's offense whereas CP3 doesn't impact the game that much defensively. It seems like Dwight's D > CP3's O and Dwight's O >> CP3's D.

Dwight's plus or minus isn't as good, but it seems like that's more about him having good backups while CP3 had bad backups. When the Magic's backup center was bad like this year, Dwight's plus or minus was terrific.

I appreciate your civil tone Jazzfan12. You're welcome to ask any questions you want - even if they imply we're wrong - as long as you're nice about it.

So I feel like I'm a broken record at the moment because of the data set I'm playing with but here's some +/- data to consider.

A few notes:

1. This is RAPM, which means there's no explicit bias based on teammates. it's true that if you're simply working with players you don't fit well with that will hurt you and nothing's perfect, but take a look at the values and see if you really see an issue relating to Gortat.

2. This data is from Engelmann, he uses prior seasons as part of his algorithm for a given year, so it's my opinion that any year you think a player had a huge jump in his impact, he might be a bit underrated.

3. The numbers I'm posting are variance-adjusted to try to make for apples to apples comparisons. They are not meant to literally be the points a player is helping his team get, but rather how many standard deviations above a zero rating he is.

'07-08
Howard +1.47
Paul +1.34 (huge jump for Paul in play, probably underrated by this metric)

'08-09
Paul +2.59
Howard +1.52

'09-10
Howard +2.36
Paul +1.60 (Paul gets hurt)

'10-11
Paul +2.61
Howard +2.47 (Gortat traded midseason)

'11-12
Paul +2.77
Howard +1.89 (Howard's flying circus)

So what I see when I look at this is that we have two players who basically have the same 5 year peak ('08 to '12). In those years Paul has the +/- edge 3 of 5 years. Such an edge isn't exactly jawdropping for Paul, but some things to point out generally:

1) If you just feel like Howard's GOT to be more impactful because of his 2-way impact, we don't see any such separation at any time. This isn't to say Howard's defensive numbers don't beat Paul's. I could list those out but Howard beats Paul every single year on defense. The overall impact though isn't showing Howard having the clear overall edge.

And in truth this relates to a general trend: The defensive stars don't matter as much as the offensive stars. Not that defense isn't as important as offense, but we just don't see defensive guys equaling the impact of offensive guys. This is a modern thing certainly, but it is a thing none the less.

Of course with that said, this stat LOVES Garnett. If you were to really to take it as the definitive statement of who the best players were, the best player of the last decade was a debate between LeBron & Garnett, and Garnett was doing this in part because he put up defensive numbers significantly better than even Howard's.

2) Do we buy that Garnett's impact on defense surpasses Howard's? Well, I do, but let me speak to some objections I know people will have:

- In Howard's Orlando heyday, their defense was excellent. Surely that's not a coincidence, right? No but yes. Howard was a significant part of making that happen, but the data's been telling us generally that no one man can make a defense good...which relates to why we saw serious falloff for the Magic last year.

- Doesn't Gortat distort things in some way? I understand a lack of faith that this system can truly normalize for Gortat, but look at the data, do you see signs that it was getting majorly thrown off by Gortat? I don't.

3) Has to be noted that the only two years where Howard beats Paul, there are very legit reasons to think that the numbers don't capture Paul's healthy impact. In '07-08, Paul took his big leap and thus was probably underrated by Engelmann's prior influenced system. In '09-10, Paul was hurt.

To me the numbers clearly seem to be favoring Paul.

4) With that said, the difference in peak values for these guys isn't exactly a blow out. +2.77 vs +2.47, I'm not going to argue that you should have so much faith in this system that you should take that lead as too big to side against.

[Doctor MJ]

Re: Paul '08 vs Paul '09

I'm inclined to side with Paul '08.

If I just look at raw regular season numbers, '09 Paul has only a very slight edge. When I factor in the playoffs, even if I only count them as being like more regular season games, by the end of the first round Paul '08 has taken the lead by total Win Shares and then he goes on from there.

Of course I count playoff games more than regular season games, so that makes it even easier.

I just quoted Engelmann's yearly RAPM, but as mentioned there, while Paul '09 has the edge, to me there's good reason to wonder if the '08 numbers underrate Paul. There's also the matter that it's one hell of a coincidence if New Orleans went through a HUGE improvement in '08 only to give a lot of it back in '09 if Paul truly only started having superstar lift in '09.

[Jazzfan12]

RAPM is a good stat, but I think it's hard for any stat to balance out for teammates production perfectly. I mean, going by RAPM, Paul Millsap and Luol Deng are far more impactful than Durant. Your analysis on the NBA is amazing, Doctor MJ, but I think sometimes you look a little too much into impact stats.

CP3 and Dwight already have very limited sample sizes for their off-court in their peaks so I think it's not as important to see how much worse their teams were when they were off the court, but how good the teams were when they were on the court. The Magic had a 101 DRtg (best in the NBA) in 2009 when Dwight was on the court with his defensive supporting cast being Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alston, and rookie Courtney Lee. The Magic had a 101.5 DRtg this year with Dwight on the court with a defensive support cast of Turkoglu, Ryno, Jameer, and JRich despite Dwight playing at around 80-85% effort. These are guys who have been on mostly terrible defensive teams without Dwight and have bad athleticism, BBIQ, effort, and technique. I know most plus or minus stats may disagree, but I think raising that defensive supporting cast to that level was a historic achievement. The Magic being able to still be great for 10 MPG when Dwight was out and when they were playing against backups and had a legit center to protect the paint for those minutes doesn't discount that achievement I think.

I have a lot of respect for the opinions of everyone in this project, but I think adjusted plus or minus stats miss on some players and I think Dwight is one of those players. Thank you for the detailed response about why you think CP3 is better than Dwight though, Doctor MJ. I will think about and look into Dwight's impact more, but from what I've seen, he seems hugely impactful and just has some weird teammate circumstances that affect his plus or minus.

[Doctor MJ]

It's not though, because a big part of the project has been a player's portability, and how well a player scales to good teams. LeBron and Wade got knocked for it a bit, because even though they both still play well, they haven't shown the super-dominant type offense that they SHOULD lead due to their talent, and that's because neither one of them is all that great without the ball in their hands. So it's been something to think about with these players, how well they can fit with great talent around them, and for the most part, that's meant how well they can play without the ball in their hands as much.

Now, Paul is such a good on-ball player, that it does seem a little silly to knock him for it, because yes, PGs tend to be ball-dominant, and a PG as good as Paul deserves to be very ball-dominant...but he's not as good as Nash or Magic or Oscar, and I think if you're not at that elite of a level, and you can't really fit all that well around other talented players unless you have the ball in your hands (which would reduce their effectiveness), then at #22, it becomes something to think about, at least IMO.

It's interesting. When ElGee first started talking about 'portability', I felt like it was largely what I call 'versatility' but the concepts are truly distinct though related. To my mind their relationship can be expressed like this:

Versatility relates to how many different roles you can play, while portability relates to how easily you can fit in productively with other talent. If your primary role has high portability, then versatility is not very important. If your primary role has limited portability, then versatility can make you highly portable.

Someone like Garnett is of the latter kind. His astonishing versatility makes him highly portable.

I think though, that a truly great distributor is inherently more portable than other offensive roles because his primary job will always be to make good use of his other teammates. You put Paul with LeBron or Wade, and the result is something better than what LeBron & Wade can do (at least on offense).

Now, you might say, "Yeah, but that's only because Paul's a distributor and those guys have other primary jobs, if the team had two superstar distributors, then Paul would need versatility in order to stay portable." and you're right, but there is a clear distinction: There are FAR more excellent scorers than there are excellent distributors. You add that rarity to the inherent advantage of the team-first approach of the distributor, and yeah, I'd say it doesn't make a lot of sense to knock the portability of one of these guys.

Of course if you truly think Paul is weak enough as a distributor, then all of that criticism is still fair game. I agree with you he's not Magic or Nash, but I do think he's an all-timer on that front. Among current players, it's Nash & Paul, and a rather huge gap between everyone else for example. (Paul's "rival" Deron is probably the 3rd best going, and the gap between Paul & Deron by every conceivable metric is huge.)

[Doctor MJ]

RAPM is a good stat, but I think it's hard for any stat to balance out for teammates production perfectly. I mean, going by RAPM, Paul Millsap and Luol Deng are far more impactful than Durant. Your analysis on the NBA is amazing, Doctor MJ, but I think sometimes you look a little too much into impact stats.

CP3 and Dwight already have very limited sample sizes for their off-court in their peaks so I think it's not as important to see how much worse their teams were when they were off the court, but how good the teams were when they were on the court. The Magic had a 101 DRtg (best in the NBA) in 2009 when Dwight was on the court with his defensive supporting cast being Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alston, and rookie Courtney Lee. The Magic had a 101.5 DRtg this year with Dwight on the court with a defensive support cast of Turkoglu, Ryno, Jameer, and JRich despite Dwight playing at around 80-85% effort. These are guys who have been on mostly terrible defensive teams without Dwight and have bad athleticism, BBIQ, effort, and technique. I know most plus or minus stats may disagree, but I think raising that defensive supporting cast to that level was a historic achievement. The Magic being able to still be great for 10 MPG when Dwight was out and when they were playing against backups and had a legit center to protect the paint for those minutes doesn't discount that achievement I think.

I have a lot of respect for the opinions of everyone in this project, but I think adjusted plus or minus stats miss on some players and I think Dwight is one of those players. Thank you for the detailed response about why you think CP3 is better than Dwight though, Doctor MJ. I will think about and look into Dwight's impact more, but from what I've seen, he seems hugely impactful and just has some weird teammate circumstances that affect his plus or minus.

Hehe. A very courteous response, and I think it's very understandable if you think I focus on these stats too much. I question it myself.

Re: Millsap & Deng better than Durant by RAPM. You're right, and that looks damning...but the thing is the stat isn't saying Millsap & Deng are actual MVP candidate level guys. The issue is simply that Durant is not ranking up there with the MVP candidate class like one would expect. I think it's worth asking: Y'think maybe there's something to that? I mean I truly believe a guy who does nothing but off-ball score can have a huge impact, but when he doesn't, is it a shock given how little he's actively dictating play?

[bastillon]

to argue for Dwight, his defense may have been even better if he wasn't also far away best player offensively on his own team. we gave benefit of the doubt to D-Rob (well I didn't but I guess I would've to some extent as well) because he could make more impact on a team with better players around him. Paul on the other hand had virtually perfectly built team for his skillset in 08-09 and you don't see his RAPM numbers going through the roof over Dwight's peak. Dwight would clearly be more valuable if he was put in a better position to succeed. I would think Dwight would look like a monster in San Antonio 09-11 instead of Duncan. so while Paul was perhaps making a larger impact, Dwight should be impacting the game more on optimal team. Paul meanwhile was already playing on the best team imaginable for him (from a fit standpoint, not talent-wise, obviously).

as Dwight's peak I wouldn't choose 09, even though he really put up great playoff performances, particularly in the ECFs. if LeBron 09 was so impressive to some of you, doesn't that make Dwight's accomplishment that bigger ? he was dominating the game like few others have vs Cavs. it was still a 9 SRS team he was going up against, even if they were overrated statistically, they were no doubt a very good team, especially on defense. Dwight thrashed them. I think Dwight's peak was in 2011. he was gradually improving in terms of scoring skills and to me that's a much bigger deal than bad playoff matchup + failure performance from supporting cast. even though he didn't get far in the postseason, you can't really blame him. as a matter of fact, Dwight put up a 27/16.6 @ 68% TS and 113 ORTG (21.6 to-rate, that's why surprisingly "low" ORTG). he was being guarded single coverage so that can definitely be used as a kncok on him, that he can't dominate offensively opp frontline when they're guarding him 1 vs 1... but he still put up quite good playoff performance and he should've been his team's 1st option in the first place, Magic were built terribly.

I remember Dwight working out with Olajuwon in both 09 and 10 and every november I could see noticeable improvement in his scoring skills. after 09 sessions he added some basic spin moves and jump hooks. he was looking much more fluid than before. in 10 sessions he added some little midrange bank shots, more fluidity on his spins, improved his off hand, I remember him starting the 11 season with some crazy offensive performances... I think he had a stretch when he was averaging like 26-27 ppg,,, and now he's quite capable post scorer though can be very inconsistent. he's gonna be a beast this year, no doubt about it for me. I think this year we're gonna see peak Dwight, dominant 2-way player with boxscore numbers, impact stats and huge ceiling. I believe Dwight is right there with LeBron when he's fully healthy. LeBron's more dominant on a consistent basis but Dwight's skills are giving me an equally good title shot because they matter more in the postseason. I'll take 11 Dwight as his peak but 13 Dwight is gonna be even better.

[colts18]

I'm not seeing where CP3 was making a huge impact. He missed significant amount of games in 2007 and 2010 and here were the results:

07:
With: -1.04 SRS
W/O: -1.78 SRS
+0.74 SRS impact

10:
With: -2.59 SRS
without: -1.88 SRS
-0.71 SRS impact

So in 2010 coming off his 2 year peak, the Hornets actually played better in the games CP3 missed. Thats 55 missed games in that span and the team did fine without him.

[fatal9]

I have Malone's peak at any season between '96-'98. I'd vote for any of these three years but will have trouble getting behind early/mid 90s Malone. A dark horse year might be '92.

I think we might be giving his head to head with D-Rob in '94 too much weight. In the end, it's just 4 games against a guy known to underperform in the playoffs who Malone matched up well with on both ends (especially defensively with his physicality and also ability to predict which D-Rob's moves. It should be noted that D-Rob tweaked his knee in game 2, then again in game 3...Rodman also was suspended for game 3, doubt it would have mattered much, Malone would still have gotten the best of him). Malone statistically at least had his worst year in a long time, he shot FTs below 70% for the first and only time since '88, didn't shoot 50% from the field for the first time in 7 years, posted his lowest TS% by far for all of the 90s. Seems like he was having problems with his shot that year, so it kind of comes off as a down year to me (maybe someone who followed the Jazz closely at the time can explain why?). Rest of the playoffs weren't exactly mind blowing either. He almost led the Jazz in to blowing a 3-0 lead against the 8th seed Nuggets (but came through in game 7), IIRC that was the series where he had stretches of playing so bad that the Larry Miller was calling him out during the game. He was nothing special vs. Houston either. A solid playoff run, but does it make up for an unusually weak regular season?

'95 and on versions of Malone were the most automatic from midrange, so his one on one scoring was better, his passing was steadily getting better and better as 90s moved on, he posted great numbers (best of his career) while relying less on Stockton. I feel '96-'98 Malone is the most capable versions of him offensively and you don't lose anything on the boards either (same TRB% as previous years). Loved what I saw out of him in the Sonics series when he brought the Jazz back from a 3-1 deficit (Stockton was playing injured in that series), even if he missed those FTs in game 7. I prefer '98 over '97 because I do think '97 was a bit of a learning experience for him in the finals with him playing as bad as he did. Still didn't come out on top in '98 but he had a better finals/playoff run plus also did a decent job keeping the team afloat with Stockton out. Those two years are particularly tough to separate.

[Doctor MJ]

to argue for Dwight, his defense may have been even better if he wasn't also far away best player offensively on his own team

I don't know what you mean really. I understand the idea that the offensive needs of the team could push a player to an offense-defense balance that doesn't quite maximize his impact, but Howard wasn't actually a volume scorer. When you're taking 13 FGA per game and you aren't working as a big time distributor, I expect a big man to be able to do that without sacrificing his defense much at all.

Heck, I've even said before that the advantage of bigs in genearl is not that they CAN have 2-way impact, but that they can do it with human levels of energy exerted. When Wade or Jordan go nuclear, they are seemingly EVERYWHERE on the court. Bigs need to do much, much less movement in order to have that same defensive impact.

[bastillon]

RAPM is a good stat, but I think it's hard for any stat to balance out for teammates production perfectly. I mean, going by RAPM, Paul Millsap and Luol Deng are far more impactful than Durant. Your analysis on the NBA is amazing, Doctor MJ, but I think sometimes you look a little too much into impact stats.

CP3 and Dwight already have very limited sample sizes for their off-court in their peaks so I think it's not as important to see how much worse their teams were when they were off the court, but how good the teams were when they were on the court. The Magic had a 101 DRtg (best in the NBA) in 2009 when Dwight was on the court with his defensive supporting cast being Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alston, and rookie Courtney Lee. The Magic had a 101.5 DRtg this year with Dwight on the court with a defensive support cast of Turkoglu, Ryno, Jameer, and JRich despite Dwight playing at around 80-85% effort. These are guys who have been on mostly terrible defensive teams without Dwight and have bad athleticism, BBIQ, effort, and technique. I know most plus or minus stats may disagree, but I think raising that defensive supporting cast to that level was a historic achievement. The Magic being able to still be great for 10 MPG when Dwight was out and when they were playing against backups and had a legit center to protect the paint for those minutes doesn't discount that achievement I think.

I have a lot of respect for the opinions of everyone in this project, but I think adjusted plus or minus stats miss on some players and I think Dwight is one of those players. Thank you for the detailed response about why you think CP3 is better than Dwight though, Doctor MJ. I will think about and look into Dwight's impact more, but from what I've seen, he seems hugely impactful and just has some weird teammate circumstances that affect his plus or minus.

I think it's something ElGee was talking about when he was comparing his in/out with on/off. he said he used to think they were the same thing, just with different possession sample. but then he realised they were not the same at all. on/off is more of a lineup evaluation whereas in/out you really see what happens when certain player misses games. on/off data is indeed contaminated with some low samples of backups going vs backups and that can screw things up. even though RAPM does a pretty good job of making up for those shortcomings, it's still not perfect in that regard.

Dwight's in/out does seem to look entirely different though. you simply see Magic struggling mightily without him, as they should be, given their putrid talent level. I don't think people understand how bad were some of his Orlando teams. he got to the finals with Hedo Turkoglu being his sidekick. that's a hell of an accomplishment. people were saying LeBron's supporting cast in 09 was trash and he did everything he could to take them to championship... well Dwight's cast was arguably worse and Magic won against supposedly superior Cavs team.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm not seeing where CP3 was making a huge impact. He missed significant amount of games in 2007 and 2010 and here were the results:

07:
With: -1.04 SRS
W/O: -1.78 SRS
+0.74 SRS impact

10:
With: -2.59 SRS
without: -1.88 SRS
-0.71 SRS impact

So in 2010 coming off his 2 year peak, the Hornets actually played better in the games CP3 missed. Thats 55 missed games in that span and the team did fine without him.

Hmm, well first off I have to note:

1. '07 was before he took his leap to being a star so I don't see it as relevant.

2. '10 he was injured, clearly playing worse than normal, and all the +/- data agrees with that. So that isn't how you should look at his normal impact.

3. Played better without Paul? They were were 23-22 with him, and 14-23 without him. Add in the time when he played but wasn't 100%, and that's still a pretty dang clear falloff.

All that said:

There is a legit question out there about the difference between going to the bench and missing large swaths of games from an on/off perspective. Obviously the longer a guy is away, the more you can plan a different strategy of attack and learn to implement it. So it is not just possible for a guy to have a significantly bigger apparent +/- impact than what he's lifting in the long term, it's pretty much a given to some degree.

The question is to what degree, and how you measure it. I've yet to feel comfortable doing anything that bold on this front.

[bastillon]

to argue for Dwight, his defense may have been even better if he wasn't also far away best player offensively on his own team

I don't know what you mean really. I understand the idea that the offensive needs of the team could push a player to an offense-defense balance that doesn't quite maximize his impact, but Howard wasn't actually a volume scorer. When you're taking 13 FGA per game and you aren't working as a big time distributor, I expect a big man to be able to do that without sacrificing his defense much at all.

Heck, I've even said before that the advantage of bigs in genearl is not that they CAN have 2-way impact, but that they can do it with human levels of energy exerted. When Wade or Jordan go nuclear, they are seemingly EVERYWHERE on the court. Bigs need to do much, much less movement in order to have that same defensive impact.

well looking at Dwight's FGA seems like very dumb thing to do considering how many times he shoots free throws because teams intentionally put him on the line trying not to get dunked on everytime Dwight touches the ball near the rim. am I supposed to ignore that he'd shoot at least 5-10 times more if it wasn't for that intentional fouling ? also Dwight is not merely an iso scorer, he's actually someone how plays within the flow of his team's offense. he rebounds well offensively, not epic good like say Moses, but he doesn't sacrifice transition defense nearly as much either. he's constantly moving on offense, from setting picks to setting up down low. I see Dwight at least being involved in nearly every Magic offensive possession when he's on the floor. how many times did teams get burned just because they were helping on Dwight rolling inside and Jameer/Hedo kicked out to the open 3 point shooter ? Dwight was creating tons of opportunities just by being so dangerous inside that people had to come over to help out. that's how Magic offense functioned even before Dwight became a low post scorer. back in the day he couldn't score at all so they were mostly using pick and rolls to get him deep in the post for an entry pass, or kicked out to the 3pt shooters. that's classic SVG Magic basketball. so Dwight was involved in tons of plays in all kinds of ways. he's definitely not someone whose FGA tell the story. his defense could definitely suffer because of his involvement offensively.

[tsherkin]

One thing I notice with Chris Paul, and this is a subjective comment:

His teams are SLOOW.

From his rookie season forward, pace/rank:

89/21, 90.2/23, 89.9/26 (08), 87.8/28 (09), 92.6/15 (Bower replaces Scott), 88.7 (29, Monty Williams), 89.2/27 (Clippers).

That's an average pace/rank of 89.6/24.

If you watch him, it's not a killer surprise because everything is centered around the PnR and dribble isolation (even last year, representing ~ 41% and ~ 28% of his total possessions). He's an extremely deliberate player.

When you're playing that much slower compared to the rest of the league (and especially on teams that didn't really stun with all-time defensive excellence apart from 08 and 09), well, now you're really limiting your options. There was a rather long and interesting discussion about pace and offensive efficiency in a thread on the Stats board here, and I wonder at the impact of slowing the game down that much.

I have nothing quantitative to add, just an observation. Chris Paul's teams play slow; it's not a subjective point, either, since their offense remained effective and they won a pile of games, especially when he was balling his mind out in 08 and 09, with them peaking at 111.5 ORTG in 08 when they won 56 games (and hilariously still being "only" the 5th best offense in the league that year).

Anyway, ramble aside, back on topic. Paul's ability as a distributor. It should bear mention that, on a new team with a different talent array than he had in New Orleans, Paul just led the league in offensive win shares. Again. He wasn't at the 13+ level he managed in 08 and 09, but double-digit OWS are usually rather impressive. Limited as is that stat, when you dominate to that degree, it's typically meaningful to at least a base level. He was just shy of 20 ppg at 19.8 and doing it on 58.1% TS, but again, 35% of his offense came in the last 10 seconds of the clock. And in doing that, he posted the highest ORTG of his career.

He's very athletic and the PnR is an extremely useful play; there are many variations of the play, of course, but especially now that he's got a really dangerous roll man, it's not a huge surprise that he's killing it as a distributor. The big thing is that he's such a dirty scoring threat as well that he exerts a huge pressure on the opposition, so he's not just an excellent distributor, he's an excellent high-teens/low-20s scorer as well, which is what makes him superior to most other PGs.

In terms of portability, that scoring threat remains even if his volume of shots is reduced in order to facilitate ball movement in other contexts (or say to facilitate transition play by passing up, etc). He'd have trouble with other isolation players, so we'd see something similar to Wade/Lebron or Nash/Shaq (though when Phoenix went SSOS, that worked out well enough), though.

Again, he's a possession-control kind of guy, and his effectiveness away from the ball isn't all that remarkable. Because he lacks any kind of size, there's no real option for him to guard post to any serious extent. He's a pretty nasty spot-up shooter, though, so I'm sure he'd find away. Wasn't he top 20 in the league on spot-ups last year? I vaguely recall him bombing away to the tune of 40-something percent from downtown when he got a chance to spot-up and him having a really wicked pay-off out of those sets.

[fatal9]

I'm not seeing where CP3 was making a huge impact. He missed significant amount of games in 2007 and 2010 and here were the results:

07:
With: -1.04 SRS
W/O: -1.78 SRS
+0.74 SRS impact

10:
With: -2.59 SRS
without: -1.88 SRS
-0.71 SRS impact

So in 2010 coming off his 2 year peak, the Hornets actually played better in the games CP3 missed. Thats 55 missed games in that span and the team did fine without him.

2007 is CP before he made the big leap to superstar. He wasn't even a top 10 player in '07. So this hardly matters since '08 and '09 Paul are on another level. It would be like using '07 Dwight's numbers to assess his impact in '09 or '11.

2010, his numbers are brought down by the 7 games he played at the end of the season at no where close to 100% (they were outscored by over 7 ppg in those games...Paul averaged 9/8 on 40%). Up until he tore his meniscus in January, Hornets were a respectable 21-17 in games he played. Byron Scott was also fired 9 games into the season after a 3-6 start, and right afterwards Paul picked up an ankle injury and missed 8 games, when he came back from injury under the new coach, Hornets won 18 of their next 28 games. The numbers kind of get muddled by these issues.

[tsherkin]

I would think Dwight would look like a monster in San Antonio 09-11 instead of Duncan.

Would he, though? He's a much worse passer.

I remember Dwight working out with Olajuwon in both 09 and 10 and every november I could see noticeable improvement in his scoring skills. after 09 sessions he added some basic spin moves and jump hooks. he was looking much more fluid than before. in 10 sessions he added some little midrange bank shots, more fluidity on his spins, improved his off hand, I remember him starting the 11 season with some crazy offensive performances...

But he doesn't use any of that stuff with real consistency. He always uses it for like two months and then goes back to what he was doing before except in rare bursts here and there, which is TERRIBLY frustrating. And he's still a weak, weak passer, especially against multiple coverage.

[lorak]

DS, it's not like D-Rob 95 was any different. the same player with the same fundamental flaws in his game. poor offensive repertoire resulting in weak iso scoring vs strong playoff defenders. Malone would still lock him up if it came down to this confrontation. he'd outplay Robinson very likely. D-Rob only has a case over Malone if you find charismatic offensive perimeter players alongside him - then D-Rob can make his huge defensive impact along with finishing when others make the defense collapse. his overall impact would probably be bigger in that scenario. Malone is far away better offensive playoff performer than D-Rob. puts a lot more pressure on the opposing defenses. although I'm critical of Malone's playoff efficiency, he was still getting to the line, drew double teams and passed well out of the post, while Jazz offense was still very good most years in the playoffs. D-Rob sometimes just made negligible offensive impact period. didn't draw double teams or anything, just did nothing. his 18/9 or whatever he put up vs Malone still overstates his offensive impact.

1994 is very small sample. Look, in G1 DRob had 25 pts on 9/17 FG, then in G2 he was injured and scored only 12 pts on 2/14. Then G3 and again the same injury and 16 pts with 8/21 FG. And then last game and 27 PTS and 11/21 FG. So it's not big deal. Also, Malone played worse when he was guarded by DRob in 1996 than in 1994 when Rodman was his primary defender.

[colts18]

I'm not seeing where CP3 was making a huge impact. He missed significant amount of games in 2007 and 2010 and here were the results:

07:
With: -1.04 SRS
W/O: -1.78 SRS
+0.74 SRS impact

10:
With: -2.59 SRS
without: -1.88 SRS
-0.71 SRS impact

So in 2010 coming off his 2 year peak, the Hornets actually played better in the games CP3 missed. Thats 55 missed games in that span and the team did fine without him.

Hmm, well first off I have to note:

1. '07 was before he took his leap to being a star so I don't see it as relevant.

2. '10 he was injured, clearly playing worse than normal, and all the +/- data agrees with that. So that isn't how you should look at his normal impact.

3. Played better without Paul? They were were 23-22 with him, and 14-23 without him. Add in the time when he played but wasn't 100%, and that's still a pretty dang clear falloff.

But 07 and 10 surround his 2 peak years. So its interesting he is not making an pact those years.


3. They played better without him in 2010. The only reason the record was worse without him was because they played a really tough schedule without CP3. They played over half of their games without CP3 against 3.3+ SRS teams. They played as many games vs. 4.5+ SRS teams as they did negative SRS teams. They played 25 games vs. 1+ SRS teams and only 12 games vs. negative SRS teams. The average SRS of the opponents was +1.66 which would explain the bad record without him. If you adjust that, they played better without him.

[PTB Fan]

Vote: '83 Moses Malone

[bastillon]

I have Malone's peak at any season between '96-'98. I'd vote for any of these three years but will have trouble getting behind early/mid 90s Malone. A dark horse year might be '92.

94-95: 27.9 ppg 12.6 rpg (9.4 DRB!) 3.5 ast 1.4 stls 0.7 blk @ 53.6% TS and 113 ORTG
96-98: 26.2 ppg 10.9 rpg (8.2 DRB) 3.5 ast, 1.4 stls 0.8 blk @ 51.1% TS and 105 ORTG

right away what jumps out at you is mins and efficiency. mid 90s Malone was just playing more mins (about 3 more or so) which is definitely a tie-breaker when a player is so consistent with his performance. also his efficiency is better in the 94-95. as I said, I think it's because of his more assertive offensive game, whereas old Malone settled for jumpshots more and more. you can actually see a pattern in Malone's postseason career, with his mins going down and efficiency going way down, even under 50% TS. less energy, more willingness to settle for a jumpshot instead of battling hard inside, especially after getting tired, more inconsistent impact offensively, less efficient scoring.

I don't know, maybe it's just an arbitrary cut off and you could see different results with different cutoffs. but I feel pretty strongly about Malone 95+ that he was just not as good offensively. exactly what you talked about in another thread - too many jumpshots. the younger Malone, the less jumpshots he took. why wouldn't you want him taking less jumpshots if you consider this a flaw ?

[Lightning25]

If Dwight is getting mentioned here, I think Yao should as well since I think their peaks were close. I know plenty of people argue that Yao was better at his peak than Dwight was at his. I probably would disagree but the argument can be made.

Yao's peak would be in 2007 by the way at least in terms of box-score stats. I think one could argue it was 2009 though because his impact was still there and he also had a good post-season performance until he got hurt.