RealGM Top 100 List #2

[E-Balla]

Kareem put up 39.2/16.2/4.6 on 62.2 TS without Oscar in 72. Or 30.5/12.6/3.5 per 36. Time to reevaluate because those numbers definitely threw me off.

My first guess is that its the KD effect. He increased scoring and volume without Westbrook but the rest of the team fell way off for KD to get his.

[trex_8063]

It was a wash with regards to playoff TS%, also league averages improve as competition improves and having star teammates like PGs relieves double teams or facilitates to help increase efficiency.

I pretty much reposted my earlier comments on the previous post. It was a typo mistake, but going this far to point out one thing and not reading the other substance the post has is your right.

No no, I read the other stuff, and fwiw it seemed a reasonable assessment. The reason I singled out this one thing was because it seemed an error (which could mislead a reader). Not accusing you of intentional "spin" (sorry if it came off that way).

[trex_8063]

Results so far:

Bill Russell - 12 (penbeast0, MacGill, fpliii, DQuinn1575, JordansBulls, HeartBreakKid, DHodgkins, magicmerl, Texas Chuck, Quotatious, Jaivl, ardee)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 9 (Baller2014, colts18, RayBan-Sematra, Imon, Greatness, DannyNoonan1221, Basketballefan, TrueLAfan, trex_8063)

Hakeem Olajuwon (90sAllDecade)

You forgot the vote for Sprewell .

I was scrolling thru and actually had counted one more vote for KAJ at that point.
If I've counted right thru the end, I got it at:

KAJ--15
Russell--16
Hakeem--1

Although I wasn't sure if Owly had officially cast his vote for KAJ??? He seemed to say so, but wasn't sure (and that would even the vote).
***Remember to bold your vote guys***

[RayBan-Sematra]

Oscar was still putting up All-Star level numbers in 71.
Plus he completely orchestrated the offense and was the vocal team leader a role a young Kareem would not have been able to even try and fill given how extremely introverted he was at the time.

To say that the Bucks without him would have been just as good or wouldn't have skipped a beat is absolute lunacy.
They wouldn't have been nearly as good without him and you could count on one hand the number of guards/wings from that year who could have even hoped to replace or mimic his impact.

[JordansBulls]

Sure, Oscar helped, nobody denies this. But I was responding to the idea put forward that Kareem needed Oscar to "lead him" to a title. The evidence is the other way around. As I pointed out, it looks to me like the Bucks would have won the 71 title anyway, and Oscar rode Kareem's coat tails to victory. Oscar being there made that win more decisive, and helped the Bucks get into historic territory (rather than "just" winning the title), but the Bucks would have been the best team in the NBA without Oscar in 1971, and as Oscar fell off over his 4 years there they continued to be awesome without him (or with him in a lesser role).

http://webuns.chez-alice.fr/finals/1971.htm#


MILWAUKEE G MN FG-FGA FT-FTA REB AST PF PTS PPG RPG APG
Alcindor 4 168 46-76 16-21 74 11 12 108 27,0 18,5 2,8
Robertson 4 164 34-65 26-32 20 38 15 94 23,5 5,0 9,5
Dandridge 4 157 35-67 11-16 38 14 13 81 20,3 9,5 3,5

Oscar averaged 23.5 ppg, 9.5 apg and 5.0 rpg on 52% FG
Dandridge averaged 20.3 ppg, 3.4 apg and 9.5 rpg on 52% FG

[DQuinn1575]

Oscar was still putting up All-Star level numbers in 71.
Plus he completely orchestrated the offense and was the vocal team leader a role a young Kareem would not have been able to even try and fill given how extremely introverted he was at the time.

To say that the Bucks without him would have been just as good or wouldn't have skipped a beat is absolute lunacy.
They wouldn't have been nearly as good without him and you could count on one hand the number of guards/wings from that year who could have even hoped to replace or mimic his impact.

They wouldn't have been just as good, but their SRS was 6.44 better than anybody else that year.
In the playoffs they faced

SF -.83
LA 3.26 but no West
Balt .91


So, they would have won without Oscar
LA

[drza]

It's interesting. In the two long posts that I made this afternoon, I cited a lot of discussion from the RPoY project. I reviewed what my default was entering that project: that Kareem was one of the most gifted scorers that the game has ever seen, and that he was a very good defender, passer and rebounder as well. And that at the time, my thought was that this overall package made him arguably the GOAT. But I referenced a lot of anecdotal and later some initial quantitative evidence about Kareem vs Walton in 1977 and 1978, and pointed out the interesting dynamic at play...that the box scores said that Kareem was clearly much better in those two years than Walton, but a good number of anecdotes and the in/out data suggested that Walton was clearly having the larger impact. In the case of the in/out data, it seemed that Walton might even be having the MUCH larger impact. I ended my posts with a call for more discussion of Kareem's impact, with a willingness for someone else to prove to me that Kareem's peak impact really was just as all-history as Walton's seemed to be.

There's been some good discussion since. Coltsfan18 listed Kareem's All-Defensive team totals, which wasn't so helpful to me but I appreciated the data point. Mr. Westside and Fatal went much more in depth and gave more anecdotal evidence that supported my previously held opinion of Kareem on defense...very good, but not all world. More vertical than horizontal, and a step down from the defensive elite.

Owly had an interesting post, which I'd like to actually quote part of here though I won't really discuss it until later in this post. But keep the underlined part in mind:

Contextual value (to me) isn't necessarily a fair measure of (typical?) contribution. There's synergy issues, morale issues, replacement level issues etc

With a center as an offensive hub, a style centered round that, a and team of gifted cutters, solid shooters, high IQ players, non-shot creators (Steele, Twardzik, Gross coming to mind from what I've heard though I haven't seen them much) are players who are valuable - in concert with a playmaking center. And whilst that is a positive for Walton, synergy, complementary players, fit etc is a two way street, so whilst Walton is the more important, valuable part he is also to a degree dependent on the right pieces.

Another possible debate (throwing this out there), if Kareem's less roaming D (by that point), more individual (though a good passer) offense might have a lower upside (and I'm not absolutely sold on this being applicable to Jabbar) one might also argue that self sufficient shot creation and safer, less team contingent D (often, you can't really roam as a big unless confident in rotations) is safer and more consistent in its value.

Then there was a mini-debate about whether Kareem or Oscar was more important to the 71 Bucks. Again, on the surface (much like the Walton debates) there shouldn't have been any contest. Kareem seems like the obvious choice. But again, like the Walton debate, anecdotes from the time suggest that the non-boxscore-beast is due more respect in the comparison than the boxscores would indicate. Then, fpliii (whose avatar, by the way, happens to be Kareem) busts out this ridiculous series of posts from David Stern/Lorak that traced the time line of the Bucks from pre-Kareem to Kareem to Oscar to declining Oscar with injuries and missed time factored in. And darn it if the sequence of impact stats and quantified estimates don't mirror the results from the 1977 - 1978 Kareem/Walton debate. Once again, the impact estimates seem to support that the "lesser" player according to the box scores was making a bigger impact than Kareem. That Kareem's impact was great...around a +7 SRS estimate...but that it was a step below the truly super elite of history. In fact, he indicates that the impact estimates (primarily in/out data) from 1973, 1975, and 1978 all independently estimate Kareem's impact to be about the same.

Mr. Westside comes to the conclusion that agrees with where I was when I did my RPoY votes: Kareem's really good on defense and the glass, and he's an all-world scorer, so that's got to be worth more than "just" all-history defense.

sp6r=underrated brought up a contention that I've seen him make before, that making an argument based on estimates of impact that don't agree with the box scores is an assertion that the box score has no value and/or is irrelevant. I don't necessarily agree with that...I just think that they are two different approaches to analysis. Often there is a large degree of agreement between the two. But the box scores are meant to count how many individual accomplishments of a certain type a player has accumulated, while the "impact" stats are attempting to quantify/correlate how much a player's contributions change their team's outcomes. As Doc MJ often says, the two approaches are orthogonal to each other. I think many like the approach of measuring an individual's countables, and then projecting that someone who racks up enough of them in the right ratio must be the best player. But I find that this approach doesn't resonate with me. I would rather do my best to estimate how much a player is lifting his team's results, as I think that team lift is more important than individual contributions.

The problem, of course, is that it is difficult to accurately estimate impact. The methods to do so have gotten much more sophisticated in recent years, but even so they are still not perfect. Context and observation, the box scores, anecdotes, and discussions are still key parts of any good analysis.

But in this case, I'm starting to reach my conclusion and the impact studies have heavily swayed me.

1) Repitition of similar results in different circumstances helps to make my conclusion firm. Kareem's impact seems great, bun not all-history, in different years with different teams in different situations. And in two examples that have been well documented in this project, there was one of Kareem's contemporaries that DID seem to be/measured out to be producing an all-history impact.

2) Historical stylistically similar situations bearing similar results helps make my conclusion firmer. In one of the two well-documented cases, the all-history impact player (Walton) was playing in a style with a lot of similarities to Bill Russell. Russell, too, had an (independent) impact study that indicated that he was making all-history impact of a similar caliber to Walton 15 years earlier. Meanwhile, in the second of the two now well-documented cases, the all-history impact player (Oscar) was playing in a style with a lot of similarities to Magic Johnson. Magic, too, had an (independnt) impact sutdy that indicated that he was making all-history impact of a similar caliber to Oscar's but two decades later.

3) Having the study results corroborated by historic trends helps make my conclusion firmer. With the rise in the "impact stat" approach, there are some trends that seem to be somewhat consistent with big impact. All-world floor generals on offense seem to have the biggest offensive impact, be they "pure" point guards or more lead ball handlers that score and pass. Floor spacing is a big positive for offensive impact. All-history big men, for the most part, make more of an impact with their defense than their offense. The highest upside offenses run through the perimeter players, and the highest upside defenses are anchored by the big players. These are all trends, not set-in-stone facts. There are notable exceptions. So none of this would guarantee that Kareem COULDN'T have been one of those exceptions to the trends. However, the fact that these trends seem to corroborate the more direct examination of Kareem's impact helps strengthen my conclusions.

From here, I'd return to the underlined portion of that quote from Owly, but without the comments in parentheses (that admittedly strengthen his comment more than he intended. I'm no longer quoting/speaking for Owly, but instead am pointing out that his postulated comment fits my current mindset):

"Another possible debate, if Kareem's less roaming D, more individual offense might have a lower upside one might also argue that self sufficient shot creation and safer, less team contingent D is safer and more consistent in its value."

More and more, this quote fits the way I'm viewing Kareem. He is one of the safest bets in NBA history. He's going to give you right around (let's say) about +7 SRS value, year in and year out, for a long time. There are players that have higher impact in any given year or group of years, but with Kareem you know what you're going to get for essentially two decades. And that package is extremely value, on the whole. I made the analogy in the #1 thread that Kareem might be the center version of Karl Malone that had better fortune with his historic timing and the all-history PGs that he got to play besides. And honestly, the more I look into this, the better that analogy seems to work for me.

In Malone's case, he played at the same time as one of the few players in history that clearly demonstrated that having a higher impact player, even if for a shorter period, can lead to better results. I'd take 13 years of Jordan over 20 years of the Mailman any day.

Similarly, I'm finding that I'd take 13 years of Bill Russell over 20 years of Kareem. And frankly, if Kareem doesn't win the #2 vote (which he might), I'm likely to vote for a shorter period with some other players before I vote Kareem in as well.

[DQuinn1575]

Results so far:

Bill Russell - 12 (penbeast0, MacGill, fpliii, DQuinn1575, JordansBulls, HeartBreakKid, DHodgkins, magicmerl, Texas Chuck, Quotatious, Jaivl, ardee)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 9 (Baller2014, colts18, RayBan-Sematra, Imon, Greatness, DannyNoonan1221, Basketballefan, TrueLAfan, trex_8063)

Hakeem Olajuwon (90sAllDecade)

You forgot the vote for Sprewell .

I was scrolling thru and actually had counted one more vote for KAJ at that point.
If I've counted right thru the end, I got it at:

KAJ--15
Russell--16
Hakeem--1

Although I wasn't sure if Owly had officially cast his vote for KAJ??? He seemed to say so, but wasn't sure.
***Remember to bold your vote guys***

I just went back and re-bolded.

Can we put an official time to cut off for everyone?
This looks like it will go down to the wire, and we should make sure notice is given when the voting will end.
Also, when someone recaps, can they put names in? I like to double check and make sure my vote is counted.

Thanks

[drza]

My vote: Bill Russell

[Baller2014]

Oscar was still putting up All-Star level numbers in 71.
Plus he completely orchestrated the offense and was the vocal team leader a role a young Kareem would not have been able to even try and fill given how extremely introverted he was at the time.

To say that the Bucks without him would have been just as good or wouldn't have skipped a beat is absolute lunacy.
They wouldn't have been nearly as good without him and you could count on one hand the number of guards/wings from that year who could have even hoped to replace or mimic his impact.

They wouldn't have been just as good, but their SRS was 6.44 better than anybody else that year.
In the playoffs they faced

SF -.83
LA 3.26 but no West
Balt .91


So, they would have won without Oscar
LA

This. Nobody has said they would be "just as good" without Oscar. Nobody. Yet it is a straw man that every post replies to. What we have said is that the Bucks would still have been awesome without Oscar, and would have likely won the title in 71 without him... and a bunch of evidence was cited to this effect. So to claim "Oscar led him to a title" or "without Oscar the team couldn't have been a contender" is just absurd. They were a contender the year before Oscar even arrived, they had the 2nd most wins that year. That many wins in 1971 would have made them the best team in the NBA. And of course Kareem improved after his rookie year, the Bucks were on a 60 win pace in games Oscar didn't play over his 4 years there, the team who eliminated them in 1970 (the single team with a better record than them that year) had taken a step back and wouldn't have been in the way come playoff time, Kareem was still putting up awesome stats with Oscar off the court, Oscar's numbers dropped and the team was still a contender, etc, etc, etc. There's a mountain of evidence to show the Bucks would have been a 60 win team without Oscar anyway, they won 56 the year before he got there, I have no idea how anyone can make some of the claims I've seen, that Kareem "could never have won the title without Oscar" or that "only Oscar made them a contender". It's ahistorical.

[D Nice]

There are so many beastly posts in this thread that at this point it would seem a bit pointless to add the second or third-tier explanation that my current schedule permits. Drza, Doc, and Regul8r have pretty much highlighted over the course of this thread (and the #1) why I tend to rate Russell and Magic higher and Kareem/Wilt a tad lower than others from a career valuation perspective, and it comes down to team elevation and reproducibility of results across all environments and condition sets. I'll probably go back and quote the excerpts that best underscore my take tomorrow after work, but a mega +1 to the post Drza just made.

[RayBan-Sematra]

Oscar was still putting up All-Star level numbers in 71.
Plus he completely orchestrated the offense and was the vocal team leader a role a young Kareem would not have been able to even try and fill given how extremely introverted he was at the time.

To say that the Bucks without him would have been just as good or wouldn't have skipped a beat is absolute lunacy.
They wouldn't have been nearly as good without him and you could count on one hand the number of guards/wings from that year who could have even hoped to replace or mimic his impact.

They wouldn't have been just as good, but their SRS was 6.44 better than anybody else that year.
In the playoffs they faced

SF -.83
LA 3.26 but no West
Balt .91


So, they would have won without Oscar
LA

I will defer to your opinion when it comes to the bolded since you clearly know more about that years playoffs then I do.
However I always saw the 71 Bucks as a team similar to the 01 Lakers. They had their two big guns and.... roleplayers.

I bet the 01 Lakers had a HUGE Playoff SRS edge over any other team from the 01 playoffs but if you removed Kobe do you think they would still easily win the title (or win period?).
Just something to think about.

Losing Oscar would have changed that team in countless ways.
They would have gone from having an ATG 1-2 punch to just riding Kareem's back.

[lorak]

As an aside, if you're going to be making competitions arguments in comparison of Hakeem to KAJ you have to at least acknowledge defenses generally performed significantly better during KAJ's peak years relative to Hakeem.

Defenses didn't perform better in the 70s than in 90s. Offenses were worse and that's why league drtg looks "better".

[Narigo]

Just in the last thread, my reason for voting Kareem over Russell is because he has the superior peak, prime and longevity. He is probably the second best offensive player behind Jordan. He is not as good as Russell on the defensive end, but he is a good rim protector and shot blocker.

In his sixteenth season in the league, Kareem averaged 25.7ppg, 9.0rbg, 5.2 ast per game in the 1985 NBA Finals. He ended up winning finals MVP that year. It goes to show that Kareem’s longevity was really that amazing.

Also, there is a myth, that Kareem did not have the competitive drive that Russell and Jordan had. Here is one example of him having that competitive spirit:

The 1985 series against Boston was perhaps the most satisfying for Abdul-Jabbar. At age 38 the league's senior center was thought by many observers to be washed up. In Game 1 it looked as though they were right -- Abdul-Jabbar had only 12 points and 3 rebounds in his matchup with Robert Parish. The Celtics romped to a 148-114 win in what became known as "the Memorial Day Massacre."

During the next two days Abdul-Jabbar watched hours of game films and took part in marathon practice sessions that included over one hour of sprinting drills. Repeated attempts by Coach Pat Riley to persuade Abdul-Jabbar to take a break failed.

In Game 2, Abdul-Jabbar recorded 30 points, 17 rebounds, 8 assists and 3 blocked shots in a 109-102 Lakers win. Los Angeles went on to win the series in six games. In the Lakers' four victories Abdul-Jabbar averaged 30.2 points, 11.3 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 2.0 blocks. In one memorable sequence Abdul-Jabbar grabbed a rebound, drove the length of the court and swished a sky-hook. He even dove for a loose ball. "What you saw," Riley told Sports Illustrated, "was passion." Abdul-Jabbar was named Finals MVP.

Jabbar has said that the 1985 championship may have been the sweetest of his six. It was won on the floor of the Boston Garden and vanquished the ghosts of the arena and the Celtics, the team that defeated the Lakers just the year before and many other times during Russell's reign. http://www.nba.com/history/players/abduljabbar_bio.html

Vote: Kareem Abdul Jabbar

[Baller2014]

Wow, I think we're deadlocked almost (EDITED total; 18-17 in Russell's favour, with the solitary Hakeem voter indicating they'd support Kareem). Might need more than the 2 days for this.

EDIT (here's the breakdown, since everyone else is posting what the vote tally is I might as well do mine too):

Kareem- 17 votes (Baller, Colts, RayBan, Imon, Greatness, Dr P, DannyN, Basketballefan, tlafan, trex, Ronny, MacGill, realbig3, Owly, Mutnt, Clyde, NArigo)

Russell- 18 votes (Pen, fplii, Quinn, JBulls, HBkid, Dhodgkins, mmerl, batmana, Texas, Quo, Jaivl, Ardee, Dr MJ, D Nice, Drza, PCP, GC Pan, Rich316

Hakeem- 1 (90'salldecade)

Yet to vote: Sacto (Wilt/KAJ/Russell), Kayess, UBfan (leaning KAJ), Gregoire (Kareem or Wilt), Notnoob

[TrueLAfan]

I’m asking this not to be combative or rude, but as a genuine question—one that I’ve asked from time to time in player value discussions. If Oscar was as important and necessary as people say with the Bucks then … what about the rest? His first ten years in the league?

No matter how you slice it, Oscar's Cincinnati teams were .500 teams. It wasn't that they had great years and some really bad years; they were, by and large, mediocre every year. They had over fifty wins once in Oscar's ten years there. They had less than 35 wins once (in Oscar's rookie year). So, in eight out of ten years, the Royals won between 36 and 48 games. That's about as average as it gets. Oscar’s main value is in offense (he was a good defender—not a great one—when young, and definitely moved more toward average as an older player.). And here's the rub—if any team is an all-time great one on offense, it should win more than 50% of its games more regularly than the Royals did. The Nash-led Suns were not a great defensive team. And the Suns did far, far better than the Oscar's Royals did. The Nuggets offensive ratings in the 80s were huge. They were a miserable defensive team; the focused on matchups for offensive reasons. (Your starting PF … Kiki Vandeweghe!). But they also had a better record in the ten years from 1981 to 1990 than Oscar's Royals did. So are the Royals not as good offensively as the 80s Nuggets? Or (shudder) are they somehow worse defensively? Where is the impact the Oscar is sometimes given credit for with the Bucks?

People are asking how much Kareem helped or got from his teammates; some are saying that Oscar deserves a big share of credit. What happened earlier? Why didn’t Oscar elevate the teams where he was the Alpha player—in his Royals years? That gets complicated on an individual player level too. Oscar played with excellent offensive players for multiple seasons. Jack Twyman and Jerry Lucas were Oscar’s teammates for close to 500 games each with the Royals. There were some good to very good defenders too-- Embry, Bob Boozer, Happy Hairston, Tom Hawkins, Bob Love and Jon McGlocklin. What happened?

For a few years, off and on, I’ve been involved in a project about the 1972 season. The point of the project was that 1972 was the first “true” modern season and a fascinating combination of the old and new. Julius Erving and Artis Glimore entered professional basketball. West and Wilt were still considered top 10 players. The ABA and NBA began playing exhibitions that showed the ABA was close, if not at, parity with the NBA (In the preseason of the 1971-2 season, the record was 14-10 in favor of the NBA. The closeness stunned most observers.) The project has lost funding and (a lot of) interest, but it remains one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever participated in. I talked to many former players from that period, and it was absolutely a pleasure. I can’t quote anything for a variety of reasons (one of which is restricted access/confidentiality), but nothing I found out was really groundshaking or salacious … just interesting. And most of this I’ve noted before.

Through my communications, I have noticed that, as I said, there is almost universal admiration for Oscar as a player. But there’s a distinct hesitation when talking about Oscar as a teammate; it isn’t that the players and administrative personnel have said he was a poor teammate. Still, there has been more than one pause, followed by a comment like “He was a perfectionist” or “He was sometimes hard on the guys he played with.” I am not saying these are bad things; perfectionism is certainly admirable in many ways, and being hard on teammates is sometimes a byproduct of effective leadership. But I get the sense that Oscar’s interpersonal skills were lacking, especially early in his career. I think this is typical of many great players, who don‘t realize that the game does not come as easily to others who lack the mental and physical skillset of a superstar. It’s why a lot of great players aren’t great coaches; they don’t understand why everyone can’t be like them. But Oscar’s personality seemed to make his comments unusually harsh seeming. I don't know whether that was a factor during Oscar's peak years, but it's been noted in the past, and I've heard it firsthand now. It isn't the focus of my project, and I'm not going into more detail on it. It is what it is. Whether it's a factor in the relative lack of team success is, obviously, a matter of debate—but, as I've said, there is a missing piece to this puzzle. And I don't think it can be determined through statistical analysis.

More than one player/personnel guy noted that this had changed to some degree by the 1970s (which is the area of my writing and research). Perhaps this is because Oscar was no longer the physical specimen he had been. By the end of the 1971 season, Oscar had played about 38000 regular season and playoff minutes. That’s about what guys like Joe Dumars and Mo Cheeks and Nate Thurmond played in their (long) careers. In a way, I think this may have been a good thing. I get the impression that being more “normal” made Oscar a better teammate, at least personality-wise. And I suspect that he had a teammate who equaled or excelled his own peak level of physical/mental skills in Kareem may have mellowed him a bit.

[Dr Positivity]

Results so far:

Bill Russell - 12 (penbeast0, MacGill, fpliii, DQuinn1575, JordansBulls, HeartBreakKid, DHodgkins, magicmerl, Texas Chuck, Quotatious, Jaivl, ardee)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 9 (Baller2014, colts18, RayBan-Sematra, Imon, Greatness, DannyNoonan1221, Basketballefan, TrueLAfan, trex_8063)

Hakeem Olajuwon (90sAllDecade)

You forgot the vote for Sprewell .

I was scrolling thru and actually had counted one more vote for KAJ at that point.
If I've counted right thru the end, I got it at:

KAJ--15
Russell--16
Hakeem--1

Although I wasn't sure if Owly had officially cast his vote for KAJ??? He seemed to say so, but wasn't sure.
***Remember to bold your vote guys***

Make sure my pg 1 vote for Kareem is included

[magicmerl]

One thing I've noticed is that in the #1 thread most of the energy and activity seemed to come from the Russell supporters, with Jordan the presumed incumbent.

With Russell the presumed incumbent here, most of the discussion seems to be to me about Kareem, yes?

[Baller2014]

I am sorry I have but a single +1 to give truelafan. I find Oscar to be horribly overrated.

[sp6r=underrated]

sp6r=underrated brought up a contention that I've seen him make before, that making an argument based on estimates of impact that don't agree with the box scores is an assertion that the box score has no value and/or is irrelevant. I don't necessarily agree with that

I think you to have re-read the sentence in question.

If you guys disagree, then tell why using different things than box score stats ("scoring bias")

It is pretty hard to read that sentence as anything other than an assertion that the box score doesn't have value.

If I wrote a player comparison post that argued Player A was better than Player B based on box score and visual analysis that concluded with:

If you guys disagree, then tell why using different things than impact stats.

I am asserting that impact stats lack value. After all the only reason for excluding impact stats in their entirety is if I believe they have no value.