Quotatious wrote:ardee wrote:Not talking about RealGM, I mean general ATLs you see from writers and other people.
And I personally see a good case for it. He was the second most efficient 60s player besides Wilt, second best rebounding guard behind Oscar, basically ran the offense for the Lakers even if you consider him an SG, best defensive guard of the era besides Hondo, put up monster Playoff numbers every year... He's considered neck and neck with Oscar, and if Oscar has a case for top 10 shouldn't he too?
I have him at 12, right behind Hakeem.
I think he's very comparable to Kobe, KG, Dirk, Dr. J and Oscar, but I generally rank him last in this group (16th), because for me, the other guys have a more compelling case (and for instance he has the worst longevity, clearly below KG, Dr. J or Oscar in terms of peak, doesn't separate himself from the others based on prime etc. ).
My impression is that Oscar is generally regarded as the better player - they're close, but Robertson comes out on top in vast majority of lists. Even Jerry himself admitted that.
Robertson has finished ahead in all published lists (overall and position based) except both editions of the Book of Basketball (8th over 9th and 9th over 10th) and Keith Thompson's 2005 Heroes of the Hardcourt which has West tied 16th with Heinsohn (
) then Havlicek 18th and Robertson 19th.
Given they're from the same era and all lists are since their retirements there's no issue in comparing their average career rankings (even with Simmons counted both times Robertson's is 6.444444444; West's 10.02777778).
Erving over West is far less typical (not that you said it wasn't or anything, he's just the only guy with a comparable number of listings, where a comparison can be done fairly, though even then there could be issues as to how people have considered Erving's ABA career). Erving's average ranking is 13.69444444. There is an outlier in that his former GM Pat Williams (with Michael Connelly) places him 37th (without which his average rank would be 12.32353) and makes you think the ranking could be NBA only, though it's hard to say if there's a consistent weighting of ABA years, here's all players who played in the ABA that make the list (101 deep) Issel makes the list at 73; David Thompson at 92 (assuming you say that the guy after the players tied at 80th is 82nd, the book technically says '91 iirc); Artis Gilmore at 70, George Gervin 51, Billy Cunningham 49, Rick Barry 25. It does say it's a rating of players from "NBA and ABA history" and a measure of ""players who had the greatest positive impacts on their eras, teams, leagues, and the game of basketball itself" so you'd think it sounds like criteria that would favour him but he falls behind Jerry Lucas.
Either way Erving over West has been relatively rare (Martin Taragano in '93, Peter C Bjarkman in '94 and Thompson in 2005). Notably Erving is ahead in two of the three earliest lists and his stock seems to have dropped considerably in relative terms, wheras West (who as I noted was considered 7-9 in most pre 2000 listings) hasn't typically dropped many places despite, as you (Quotatious) note, a number of new competitors to the top 10/15/20 area (Shaq, Duncan, LeBron, Garnett, Nowitzki, Kobe even Hakeem, Robinson, K. Malone and Barkley).
The biggest uncertainty for me with Erving (even beyond ABA competition levels) is his D. He has good defensive boxscore stats for what that's worth and David Friedman has argued vehemently for Erving as a good defender whilst citing sources that were critical of him. Bill Simmons has suggested on the other hand that he was a "surprisingly subpar defender" (is Simmons influenced more by the Bird era version of Erving? Perhaps though he was going to games well before then, though he would have been young. Anyway it's Simmons so it's hardly gospel, but it's probably worth noting). He made one All-ABA defensive team (they only had first teams, he made it in '76). I
think I've read stuff on here (or from guys on here) that have him as a significant plus on D.
