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

[colts18]

I'm not seeing how CP3 is ahead of Howard 09. In the playoffs, Howard averaged 15.3 Rebounds/game. His DRB% was 2nd best ever in playoff history (Min. 10 games). His TRB% is 3rd best ever behind Rodman 95 and Reggie Evans 2012. He had an absurd 20 PPG on .634 TS% and beat 2 60+ win teams without HCA, the only other guys who did that were Wade and MJ. Only 15 players have ever had a playoff with 20+ PPG on .630 TS% (min. 10 games) (McHale did it 3x ). Kevin Durant 2012 also did it and he should be mentioned soon too.

[mysticbb]

Indeed. I suppose the next question would be how you're going about calculating the on/off values for the title teams and the other teams we're discussing. I'm assuming you're not just using raw on/off, yes?

The on/off for the title teams from 2001 to 2012 are from b-r.com, thus they are raw on/off. We could look at the RAPM values, I did that for the average teams and they came out to be at -2.9 in average, which is pretty close to the -3.0 raw number of the off values. I haven't checked it yet for the titles teams, but I can do that tomorrow.

But actually, I don't think that this is so important, because at the end of the day we are comparing players and what they can give me on an average supporting cast for the simple reason, that I can not expect to get such high level talented cast in order to compensate for weaknesses which are limiting the overall impact of a player.


bastillon, I don't think that the issue scorer vs. shooter is such a big one, because neither of those player types is really hard to get. There is constantly talent available, which can score 10 to 15 ppg on good enough efficiency, while there are also good enough shooters. So, I can basically assume that each player can get the necessary shooter or scorer rather easily. Obviously, it gets tricky, if I have a player who is in need of a better skilled shooting big or in desperate need of a constant 20 ppg as his 2nd option, neither of those is as easy to get. Maybe there is some need to provide hard facts for the availability of certain player types in order to make some of the things more clear.

Regarding how much a shooter depends on the star player, we can look at Radmanovic 2008. With Radmanovic and without Bryant the Lakers had 120 ORtg, with Bryant and without Radmanovic they had 112 Ortg, while with both they had 118 Ortg. In regards to the overall team offense, a shooter might be more valuable than you think, but that obviously also depends on the used offensive settings. The Lakers TPO when Bryant was off, really helped a lot of players to get into good positions to succeed offensively, and especially weaker offensive players can take advantage of that. Someone like Radmanovic was an easy one, because he knows how to move into positions without the ball to keep the spacing. Horry looked to me as having the same ability, whether it was in LA, Houston or on the Spurs. Overall I would say that the value of the shooter depends as much on the offensive system as it depends on the star player.

He's had one healthy season with a DRB% of 20%+, the other two being his 16- and 39-game seasons. I'm not really willing to trust that a career 18.7% DRB center is going to make a huge difference on the defensive glass when he's coming in to replace Camby, who was a 31.1% DRB player that year. Maybe Nene boxes out really well ala Sheed.

The latter is indeed the thing I was talking about. Just the fact that the Nuggets with Camby on the court in 2007 had a clearly lower DRB% than with Nene, despite that both played substantial minutes together on the court, should have told you that. Rebounding is really not that much about the individual DRB%, but rather about the team DRB%. The distribution of the rebounds is pretty much equal for all teams, keeping the opponents out of the better positions underneath the own basket becomes a more valuable trait, because that ensures that the ball is even more likely to fall into the hands of the defending team. Now it doesn't really matter who grabs the board at the end, but that the team gets the rebound.
One even more extreme example would be Jason Collins on the Nets. The Nets were a much better defensive rebounding team with him on the court. Let us take a look at the difference in terms of DRB% with and without Collins for the Nets and compare that to his individual DRB%:

2003: +4 vs. 13.9
2004: +2 vs. 13.6
2005: +6 vs. 16.1
2006: +3 vs. 15.6
2007: +6 vs. 14.4
2008: +7 vs. 11.1

We can compare that a bit to Nene on the Nuggets:

2012: +5
2011: +4
2010: +6
2009: +6
2008: 0
2007: +2

Now, with the exception of 2008, where he also had to deal with the thumb injury and the cancer, Nene showed a clear improved to the DRB% of the Nuggets when he was on the court. In fact, in 2007 the Nuggets had a nearly 3 percentage points higher DRB% with Nene on the court than with Camby, and that despite having Nene with just 19.4 individual DRB% and Camby with 30.5. What does that tell us about the value of such individual DRB%, when the team overall doesn't look better on the defensive glass?

Also, those 82games.com numbers are rendering your theoretical approach with the numbers rather useless, wouldn't you agree?

Putatively, they might have been more like the 05 Nuggets, of course, rather than a mid-20s DRB team, but I think you're still overstating his impact on the boards.

No, not at all. I base that entirely on the fact how Nene plays underneath the board and what kind of result really came out of this.

No, I realize that you're not equating the two teams, I'm just looking at them in terms of their fit and overall level of play and seeing how they look a lot different in terms of their overall impact. At a glance, Moses was still kind of important to that team's elevation because two of their biggest strengths were their offensive rebounding and FTR, both of which were obvious strengths for him.

I think one issue is that we saw the 76ers play in 1983, while my scenario obviously is more based on an assumption.

Moses Malone was indeed a perfect fit and the 76ers a perfect fit for him. Keep in mind that they needed players with high bb-iq around who are willing to take a step back and focus on other things than scoring. Erving's willingness to sacrifice his "numbers" in order to put more focus on the defensive end is huge here. Malone's playing style required players to be able to defend better in transition and Erving's abilities as a help and weakside defender was crucial for the 76ers in order to accommodate Malone's skillset. Moses Malone himself as a weak passer and ball handler while occupying the inside position made it tough to get easy scoring opportunities for other players, while they had to take the tougher shots.
A similar thing is seen with Iverson, who also needed specific players around him. Obviously, Iverson didn't shy away from the tough shot, which was actually were his impact came in, lowering turnovers and increasing the amount of free throws.

All of that stands in at least some level of contrast to a team like the 08 Nuggets in terms of coaching, on-court chemistry, the interlocking of roles on the team, etc. Some of it is surely more to do with the actual talent level of the core stars coupled with health, but enumerating the roster components, you can see certain trends in how the roleplayers relate to the stars that you don't always see in an average team.

I think some of that has also to do with the tendency to find some sort of pattern in anything, to explain some stuff, because the concept of probability and variance is something people are not happy with. Thus, people like to see not fitting talent, when in fact it is just a lack of talent, or some sort of chemistry issues, when that is likely more related to injuries and variance. Sure, the Nuggets were far from perfect, but overall the average championship team is at about +6.6, which means we have teams with worse differential than that winning championships. For sure the Nuggets would have been one of those worse championship teams, but they still had the chance to play close to that level with a healthy Nene. And that's all I wanted to say: with a clearly above average supporting cast, I can build a championship contender around +3 to +4 type players, whether their names are now Allen Iverson or Kevin Love or Charles Barkley or Moses Malone. But that doesn't mean that they give me a better chance than others to win a championship with an average cast.

[fatal9]

'09 Howard wasn't even his peak, unless there was some injury in the '11 playoffs that I'm not aware of. He is a phenomenal rebounder but those numbers need to be placed in context. His starting PF was Rashard Lewis. When you say two 60+ win teams, the Celtics were without KG and Magic barely squeaked by them in 7 games. If KG had played and Boston takes care of the Magic in 5-6 games, would you still be asking for his peak to be ranked this high? over CP3? Would you still consider '09 Howard to be his peak over '11?

He's not offensively reliable, definitely not as reliable as the '11 version who had added all sorts of moves to his repetoire. And you can see it in his playoff run. Against teams that played team good defense and had guys to defend him, he was rendered ineffective in the post (16.4 ppg on 56 TS% against the Celtics, 15.4 ppg on 56 TS% + 4 TO/game against the Lakers). To win a championship you will have to rise up offensively against those type of opponents. Against a team that had no matchup answer for him (Cavs), and wasn't exactly as good/talented as their record indicated, he had a great series (though the three point shooters deserve a LOT of credit too).

Great defender (though not quite as good as people like to suggest based on Magic's D-rating), great rebounder (but put numbers in context because he's always played with stretch 4s), but offensively he's just not reliable (definitely not as reliable as '11 version...and even that version has flaws). Magic play "4 around 1" strategy that we've seen work really well around some bigs, but it's a high variance strategy (can beat anyone, lose to anyone) and for it to really work, your offensive anchor in the post needs to be good enough to score on call and also have moves/shots to score before the double comes (like the bank shot he added in '11 for example) for when guys aren't shooting lights out. '09 Howard wasn't good enough to provide that.

I have him coming up though.

[mysticbb]

'Would you still consider '09 Howard to be his peak over '11?

I'm not. Howard anno 2011 seems to be a clearly better choice here than 2009. Only because the Magic reached the finals in 2009, doesn't make it Howard's peak. And I can see Howard being in the same ballpark as Paul, Nash or Bryant ahead of Durant (2010 to 2012, whatever version someone likes the most, probably rather 2011 or 2012) or Kidd (2003) or Yao Ming (2007).

But I also don't see someone wanting to make a strong case for Dwight Howard?

[colts18]

This is the Nuggets from 05-07. Keep in mind Nene missed 06 so some of the numbers could be biased due to that.

Nene 05-07:
19.3 DRB%, 14.5 TRB%

Camby 05-07:
31.2 DRB%, 19.7 TRB%

With Nene on court:
74.3 DRB%, 51.7 TRB%

With Camby:
72.0 DRB%, 50.8 TRB%

Both Nene and camby on court:
73.2 DRB%, 50.8 TRB%

With Nene, no Camby:
75.1 DRB%, 52.3 TRB%

with Camby, no Nene:
71.6 DRB%, 50.8 TRB%

Nene+Martin:
75.6 DRB%, 54.5 TRB%

Camby+Martin:
72.9 DRB%, 51.1 TRB%

Nene+Melo:
74.5 DRB%, 51.8 TRB%

Camby+Melo:
71.3 DRB%, 50.6 TRB%

Nene+Reggie Evans (arguably the best rebounder in league):
75.1 DRB%, 55.6 TRB%

Camby+Reggie Evans:
72.7 DRB%, 53.7 TRB%

So literally every combination is better with Nene despite his individual rebounding numbers being worse.

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, Paul '08 takes it.

[flashwade33]

LOL at ALL of you guys. How many 00s guys have been enshrined before Barkley, Moses, Karl, West, Hawkins, Frazier? This list is soooo biased.

[ardee]

LOL at ALL of you guys. How many 00s guys have been enshrined before Barkley, Moses, Karl, West, Hawkins, Frazier? This list is soooo biased.

And have you even bothered to read the debate ? No one is going to pay attention to a comment like that if you don't even back it up.