drza wrote:This was an interesting turning point in the project, as apparently there was a consensus top-3 and then an explosion of others. A lot of interesting cases can (and have) been made, but I actually fear that the numbers of worthy candidates makes it impossible to give every candidate their just due. Whereas we hit Kareem's and Russell's cases in thorough depth, it feels like we've gone a bit more superficial in this thread. And again, I can understand why...you just can't go max depth on so many players at once. I missed the first day of posting, and which kind of makes me feel like I lost contact with the thread. It appears that Wilt has the sure momentum here. That said, I at least would like to paint thumbnails for the various candidates and what I see is their initial strengths and weaknesses.
*Wilt: Clearly his box-score stats are ridiculous. But it's very interesting to me how his seeming lack of impact for those stats has been swept under the rug in this vote. Colts18 posted his in/out list, and DocMJ quoted it, but no one else really seems to lend it any credence at all. The last few posts on Wilt have spoken of how the poster worried about Wilt's lack of success, but then they read that Wilt's support wasn't so strong so now they're ok with it. They relate it to players like KG and his situation in Minnesota. The big difference, though, is that no matter what you may think of the team results of the Timberwolves, Garnett's impact stats (on/off, in/out, APM, RAPM, pick your poison) were always off the charts high. It is very clear, in every in depth analysis of impact, that Garnett was pulling superstar weight as far as helping his team's results. Wilt, to the extent that we have data on, did not. Repeatedly. In different situations, over the course of his career. That is something I would have liked to have seen some analysis/commentary on from Wilt supporters before he was voted in.
(For full disclosure, if you go back to the 1965 thread of the Retro Player of the Year project, you'll see that I was actually voting FOR Wilt higher than most despite that being one of the seasons where his in/out didn't measure well at all. I don't think the in/out or +/- stats are a be-all end-all, but I do think they deserve more consideration than they've gotten thus far for Wilt.
Shaq and Duncan: I think this is and will continue to be a rich discussion. While I regret that I wasn't around to try to generate more discussion on Wilt's impact, I am happy that I will be able to participate in this discussion in future threads. With Shaq and Duncan being in greatly overlapping generations and the fact that it is the one where we have the most statistical evidence, I think there is a great opportunity to do a more complicate quantitative argument for these two than we've had for any of our candidates so far. Shaq's peak is beastly, Duncan's consistency is wonderful, and both have lots of other areas to discuss as well. I look forward to it.
Magic and Bird: I'm pretty shocked that there has been little to no discussion of them so far. Magic has seemingly gained more consensus over Bird around here, and I know in the last project I argued for him over Kareem. In fact, I was greatly looking forward to building on that Magic over Kareem case in this project, but Kareem snuck in past Russell and thus made that discussion thread moot. But Magic's offensive and overall argument has a lot of similarities to Russell's, and I thought we might see more of it here. And since many believe that Bird was clearly better than Magic early in their career and debatable later, I thought that we'd start hearing his name here as well. ElGee isn't voting here, but I know he's extremely high on Bird. Surprised at the silence.
Olajuwon: He's an extremely interesting case, because he's very modern...I can remember watching him all the way back to his Phi Slamma Jamma days...but his career ended just before the current level of statistical analysis becomes relevant. He has an outstanding on-paper skillset description, and he had his beastly peak run. He also had other great production indicators throughout, though there are some question marks as well that. I think there is rich discussion to be had here. And I hope that Dipper 13's work scouting and quantifying a bunch of Hakeem's games gets some good attention in this project moving forward.
Garnett: It is extremely interesting that DocMJ brought KG up in this thread. I don't think that many of you realize just how remarkable of a transition that this is for DocMJ. When we did the Retro Player of the Year project four years ago, DocMJ was a) not a big fan of KG as a player and b) not all that impressed with his contributions. People see that in the last couple of years Doc has been arguing more for KG and think of him as a "KG guy", but in reality Doc MJ (to his credit) did his analysis over years in a lot of detail, then over time the picture that emerged elevated Garnett in his esteem. Whether you agree with him or not, I really like seeing someone open minded enough to make conclusions outside of his apparent interests.
That said...my initial thoughts on KG. I think that Garnett very well may be the best player left on the board. He and Duncan were always a classic debate, and I'd love it if that happens here though I don't know if it will. Garnett had the versatility of impact that no one outside of Wilt (and maybe David Robinson) showed, but he seems to have more of the mentality and mindset of Russell. He is the only person in the last 15 years that measured out at any given time as both the highest impact offensive player and the highest impact defensive player in the league (though at different times). Along with Robinson, Garnett is the modern player most readily tied to momentous regular season team over-achievement given circumstances. Unlike Robinson, though, Garnett continued to squeeze maximal impact out of himself and his team in the postseason as well as the regular season. Garnett may be the best "make his teammates better" player that I've ever seen, because his skillset and mentality are such that players of any type can play to the best of their ability on the teams that he leads. Some argue that this makes him a #2 player...to me it makes him one of the best possible choices to be a #1 that the league has ever seen. I'm sure there will be plenty of time to expound upon this as the project goes along, so I'll cut it short for now.
Official Vote: Kevin Garnett
Wow KG #4, I don't see how that is even remotely possible that he is considered better than Magic, Bird, Lebron, Kobe, Hakeem, Shaq, or Duncan.
