#25 Highest Peak of All Time (McGrady '03 wins)

[Doctor MJ]

Moses Malone '83 has been enshrined. We move on.

[Doctor MJ]

Curious to see people discuss Howard more compared to the other contenders. Very hard for me to dismiss him.

[therealbig3]

Howard, Pippen, and K. Malone are next for me. But I'm sticking with the guy I've been pulling for this whole time:

Vote: 03 T-Mac

[bastillon]

guys I'm thinking about now:

A-Train 75
Dwight 11
Lanier dont know which year
K-Malone 95
Barry 75 or 76
TMac 03
Pippen 94 or 95
Penny 95-97
Drexler 90-92
KJ 89-92

leaning towards Karl Malone and Dwight.

[lorak]

vote: Dwight '11

I wouldn't trust those APM numbers just based on the fact that Karl was old.

The point is: Stockton also was old but looks much better than Malone.

Code: Select all

rank in RAPM

year   KM   JS
'01   38   3
'02   288   12
'03   52   19
'04   85


And it's not only non box score evidence we had that Stockton was much better than most people think. We have Winston's decade list or with/without from '98 (Jazz with Stockton were top 5 offensive team of all time). On the other hand there's no evidence that Malone was so impactfull player like his PPG numbers suggest. In fact he was below average team defender (what is really bad thing for big man) and pretty inefficient scorer because he fell in love with his jump shot and don't have any post moves. That kind of big man never had great impact - he wasn't defensive anchor like Russell or Dwight, he wasn't super efficent low post scorer like Shaq or Hakeem, he wasn't great shooter like Dirk or Bird and he wasn't playmaking big like Walton or '67 Wilt.

I really would like to see comparison Karl vs Hayes. Popular opinion is that Malone is clearly better but I'm not so sure and would like to hear what other have to say here.

[ardee]

Hmm, so at this stage, with SO many bigs already in, I'm looking at Barry and T-Mac. Interested to hear some discussion about Barry.

[C-izMe]

I'm voting 03 McGrady

[JordansBulls]

Vote: Karl Malone 1998.

Led team to tied with the best record in the NBA. Was just as good as he was in 1997 but with a better playoffs in 1998. Knocked of the trio of Hakeem/Barkley/Drexler and then Duncan/Drob and then the Lakers with 4 allstars. Also did this with Stockton missing games 18 games on the season as well.

Not to mention even Hollinger ranks his finals in the top 20 all time

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/ ... nces-11-20

FINALS STATS
Points per game: 25.0
Boards per game: 10.5
Assists per game: 3.8
PER: 26.8

[MisterWestside]

The point is: Stockton also was old but looks much better than Malone.

As an avid Stockton fan (I think he's better than Nash career-wise), RAPM can get out of here with ranking Malone 288th in 2002.

And anyone who thinks Malone was actually at that ranking or anywhere close to it is kidding themselves.

[lorak]

The point is: Stockton also was old but looks much better than Malone.

As a avid Stockton fan (I think he's better than Nash career-wise), RAPM can get out of here with ranking Malone 288th in 2002.

And anyone who thinks Malone was actually at that ranking or anywhere close to it is kidding themselves.

Well, actually '02 was clearly down year for Malone. And we see it even by looking at basic box score stats: huge drop in efficiency - from 57.2 TS% in '01 to 53.2 in '02 or more tournovers - from 3.0 to 3.3 and overall WS/48 drop off from .217 in '01 to .155 in '02.

[MisterWestside]

Well, actually '02 was clearly down year for Malone. And we see it even by looking at basic box score stats: huge drop in efficiency - from 57.2 TS% in '01 to 53.2 in '02 or more tournovers - from 3.0 to 3.3 and overall WS/48 drop off from .217 in '01 to .155 in '02.

Okay, but 288th? I'll take an off-year by Malone over many players in the league.

RealGM's own Dr. Positivity (along with several other posters) makes some great points at APBRMetrics about the pitfalls of +/- http://apbr.org/metrics/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8039. It's one tool, not a be-all, end-all.

[lorak]

Well, actually '02 was clearly down year for Malone. And we see it even by looking at basic box score stats: huge drop in efficiency - from 57.2 TS% in '01 to 53.2 in '02 or more tournovers - from 3.0 to 3.3 and overall WS/48 drop off from .217 in '01 to .155 in '02.

Okay, but 288th? I'll take an off-year by Malone over many players in the league.

RealGM's own Dr. Positivity (along with several other posters) makes some great points at APBRMetrics about the pitfalls of +/- http://apbr.org/metrics/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8039. It's one tool, not a be-all, end-all.

Of course it's one tool (but also one of the best), but the thing with Stockton is that for many years main argument against him was: his GREAT box score stats overrate him. Well, it turns out that he looks also very good in non box score data we have. So was Stockton really overrated or maybe it's Malone, who is overrated because he always scored a lot of points, but he wasn't too efficient (playoffs) and never was very good defensively on team level (very important thing for big man)?

[MisterWestside]

Of course it's one tool (but also one of the best), but the thing with Stockton is that for many years main argument against him was: his GREAT box score stats overrate him. Well, it turns out that he looks also very good in non box score data we have. So was Stockton really overrated or maybe it's Malone, who is overrated because he always scored a lot of points, but he wasn't too efficient (playoffs) and never was very good defensively on team level (very important thing for big man)?

And what are we basing all of this on? One imperfect and still flawed metric (see Dr. Positivity's post in the link)? Which is taking a snapshot of the backend of their careers? "Variants" of +/- don't even agree with each other at times.

Karl Malone not good on defense? The same Malone that easily logged the most minutes on teams that ranked in the top 10 on defense during the 90s?

[lorak]

Of course it's one tool (but also one of the best), but the thing with Stockton is that for many years main argument against him was: his GREAT box score stats overrate him. Well, it turns out that he looks also very good in non box score data we have. So was Stockton really overrated or maybe it's Malone, who is overrated because he always scored a lot of points, but he wasn't too efficient (playoffs) and never was very good defensively on team level (very important thing for big man)?

And what are we basing all of this on? One imperfect and still flawed metric (see Dr. Positivity's post in the link)?

Look at mystic's response... RAPM is much better metric than you think, and for sure better than raw PPG... and we also have with/without for Stockton and Winston's APM. That's actually a lot of data... much more than we have data which prove Malone's big impact.

Karl Malone not good on defense? The same Malone that easily logged the most minutes on teams that ranked in the top 10 on defense during the 90s?

Malone was very good man to man defender, but his help D was different story. And jazz were good defensively mostly because of Sloan's defensive system and great defensive centers - from Eaton to Ostertag. Very good defender like Stockton also had more impact than small players nowadays, because of hand checking.

[Regulio]

why you use Malone's 2002 RAPM to evaluate peak ??
like MisterWestside says, if KM is 288th based on some impact stat, that stat is not very reliable.
througout his career he was constantly ~top5 player in the league

[lorak]

why you use Malone's 2002 RAPM to evaluate peak ??

I'm not doing that....

[MisterWestside]

Look at mystic's response... RAPM is much better metric than you think, and for sure better than raw PPG... and we also have with/without for Stockton and Winston's APM. That's actually a lot of data... much more than we have data which prove Malone's big impact.

Yes, definitely agreed with the PPG. But look at the other posters' responses (and some of them are RAPM proponents). Look at analysts like Pelton (another +/- proponent) who write articles about being careful with its use. Look at Hollinger's flawed PER outclassing RAPM/box blends in prediction contests. It's a great and valuable stat. Not authoritative.

Malone was very good man to man defender, but his help D was different story. And jazz were good defensively mostly because of Sloan's defensive system and great defensive centers - from Eaton to Ostertag.

Correct; but those players weren't always on those Jazz rosters and Stockton played great defense at a position that (throughout NBA history) isn't as important as interior defense. Malone was a constant on defense for those teams.

[Lightning25]

Vote - 1998 Karl Malone

I'm not sure what Karl Malone's peak year was going to be considered since he had plenty ('92, '97, '98 etc.) but the majority here are saying 98 so I'm going to follow.

Malone was a beast of a big who had all-time great portability. He could play any option on a team, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. you name it. Malone was a do it all type of player and could fit it on any team/system. His scoring as the 1st option is the only slight concern especially in closing minutes but it's hard to overlook his other dominant aspects.

[lorak]

Look at Hollinger's flawed PER outclassing RAPM/box blends in prediction contests.

? Really? Mystic was saying that his own metric and RAPM are the best metrics available for predictions.

Correct; but those players weren't always on those Jazz rosters

And when they played less Jazz defense was worse, sometimes below average. For example 13th place in 1993 - last Eaton's season, when he played only 1100 minutes. Or 17th place on defense in 1998, when Ostertag was limited by injuries and played 1288 minutes.

and Stockton played great defense at a position that (throughout NBA history) isn't as important as interior defense.

In modern basketball without hand checking. But before rules change it was different story and small players defense was more important (impactfull) than today.

[colts18]

Does Wayne Winston have APM data for 2000?