RealGM Top 100 List #6

[ceiling raiser]

3) How do we know that the Spurs and Thunder put very little emphasis on advanced stats? Note that 3 of the last 4 champions have placed a lot of emphasis on analytics (Dallas and Miami), and I'd need to see some source stating that the Spurs didn't do so. Scouting for the draft also isn't the only way to assemble teams.

Given that the Spurs were the pioneers of the '2-for-1' possession at the end of each quarter (shooting with 26 seconds left to guarantee yourself the last shot of the quarter) plus the whole corner three thing, plus scouting overseas prospects, I'd be astonished if the Spurs didn't place a premium on advanced analytics as well.

However, they absolutely shouldn't publicise the sorts of things that they like, because it seems like half the franchises in the league are actively trying to emulate them, so any 'market inefficiencies' they uncover about undervalued talent will quickly vanish as everyone else bandwagons them.

Great point. I think there was also something about them being at the forefront of giving up offensive rebounds to get back on transition defense more quickly (a decision which seems analytics-informed).

[lorak]

I'll say this with regard to KG. If you want to convince voters like myself that he's coming up soon, then the pitch needs to be different (for me anyway). Right now the pitch is overwhelmingly "advanced stats, advanced stats, advanced stats!"

What is "advanced" in that player improves his team performance level? You really think that for example SRS is "advanced", but at the same time you don't see nothing wrong, when you are using W-L?

[ceiling raiser]

Advanced stats can be skewed by all manner of factors- circumstances, opposition, team mates, coaching, and just unquantifiable randomness inherent in virtually all stats. Win shares will be effected by how much your team wins. Plus minus stats are heavily influenced by things like the quality of your opposition at the time you were on the court, the units you play with, whether you're being used correctly, the gameplan used by your team (fast paced teams who dominate tend to win by bigger margins than slow paced teams that dominate) how important you are to a particular system, etc, etc. Unless every player is in the exact same circumstances (and that's impossible) the stat is no better than a loose indicator at best. And pretty much all advanced statheads will admit they're wrong at times (though the cases where they're wrong seem to be more of a theoretical concession rather than something that is ever actually applied in discussions). Looking at each years advanced stats ranks, it's too easy to find guys who are obviously being massively over/underrated. Yet these flaws are largely ignored when people prop KG here, because he has some marginal advanced stat advantage. And that's supposed to be decisive? I just pointed out a handful of the reasons why it can't be decisive.

People who invest large amounts of their life in these things become too fanatical about it, and instead of using them as they should (to give a loose indicator) they're presented as the decisive (or only) argument. Apparently the other indicators I looked at are too trivial to even reply to, which is bizarre. I watched the NBA in 2002, there were no cries of outrage at Wally making the all-star team, or of Brandon/Billups sucking, or Joe Smith being a bum, or Rasho having no talent, etc. Yet the retrospective analysis sweeps all that aside, because some context variable advanced stats say otherwise. Sheesh.

I am a Spurs fan, I follow their front office closely (as well as the front offices run by former Spurs guys), and they've never been particularly supportive of them in interviews or public. I don't even think they've hired any advanced stat guys over the years, if they have I haven't ever heard about it. There have been stories about how they learnt their lesson on buying into them too much early with mistakes like Jackie Butler, who advanced stats loved. A lot of the Spurs picks are guys they couldn't even have used advanced stats on (they were from overseas). Most of the Spurs work seems to be on looking at whether they have certain tools, what is fixable and not fixable, and the character of the draftee (which helps determine if they will put the work in to fix it). I remember the Spurs/Thunder going to some PI type lengths to look into the background of players like Kawhi/Beal. It was pretty funny reading about it actually.

As for Dallas and the Mavs, they may look at advanced stats, but what moves did they make to win a title using them? It sure wasn't acquiring Lebron, Bosh, Wade, etc. In fact, pretty much every acquisition they've made that was good was pretty obvious without reference to advanced stats. Ditto the Mavs.

As for Drza, he makes a post about the 2002 Wolves, but he doesn't tell me anything that really explains the core issue; the Wolves had good players and won only 50 games and got booted in the first round, and while that's a solid achievement it does not compare to the impact of the guys he's being compared to here. Duncan for example carried worse support casts to notably better outcomes, so to just say "other teams adjusted" over the year is unhelpful. That is true of every team in the NBA every year- other teams are always adjusting, and we call the final result over the year how good you actually were. That's why we judge teams off 82 game seasons and playoffs, not cherry picked sample sizes, because teams always get hot/cold and adjust (or not).

Baller - I appreciate the thorough response. I don't think it would be useful to get into a back-and-forth discussion on the matter (I do take exception with the claim that they should be used as a "loose indicator", but I don't want to harp on that..it's also worth noting that most of us were watching at the same time and might not have come to the same conclusions as you are or that the media is, and still others may look back and change their minds, after rewatching tape and re-analyzing the data), but I do disagree on a fundamental basis with most of what you've said here, for reasons echoed by myself and others throughout the project. You're entitled to your POV without question, but I just can't understand why you feel the way you do. Agree to disagree, I suppose.

As for drza, I'll let him respond to your point, but the problem with judging players off of 82 games and playoffs is, nobody watches every second of every game played by every team every season and playoffs, and the box score doesn't paint a complete picture of what's going on while players are/aren't on the floor. Fortunately, some of the "impact" stats (WOWY, RAPM, etc.) help to get an idea of what's going on during the games, and bridge the knowledge deficit.

[Baller2014]

The funny thing is, it isn't even some of the broad stuff you guys are talking about (much of which isn't advanced at all, like using time efficiently, or valuing corner 3's, etc), it's almost wholly plus minus (in different forms) and winshares (sometimes) and that's it.

[ceiling raiser]

The funny thing is, it isn't even some of the broad stuff you guys are talking about (much of which isn't advanced at all, like using time efficiently, or valuing corner 3's, etc), it's almost wholly plus minus (in different forms) and winshares (sometimes) and that's it.

Well, some trends that have support from analytics (spacing, horizontal game defensively, etc.) have been discussed in the project (and are mentioned a ton in threads across the subform, see some of the player threads, such as the LeBron and KD threads for insteance), but this is a player comparisons board. People are going to ascertain player impact, so metrics that look to do so are going to be cited the most.

[90sAllDecade]

Spoiler:

I'll say this with regard to KG. If you want to convince voters like myself that he's coming up soon, then the pitch needs to be different (for me anyway). Right now the pitch is overwhelmingly "advanced stats, advanced stats, advanced stats!" What about if you're not a big fan of advanced stats? What if they're wrong, as everyone agrees they sometimes are? You need an argument that can be made independently of citing advanced stats (not one that rips on his coach either). Advanced stats are a "tool in the toolbox", but when the impact they claim someone is having doesn't seem to show up in the team results there needs to be more analysis. I made several posts on this in the last few threads, focusing particularly on KG's help in 2002. Nobody made any attempt to seriously reply to them.

I've made arguments outside of advanced stats. If you don't want to believe them, well, I'm not sure you want to be convinced. There are so many role players with uncertain values that it's really hard to pin down what was wrong with those Timberwolves. But even with some pretty basic information you get the sense that he was a monster player.

Someone else made a great case based on an evolution of his defense and how he was used.

ElGee made a post about how they were a 9 SRS team with Garnett on those Celtics. Is that too advanced? He could have cited wins/losses. I think it's pretty simple to say when Garnett played, the Celtics were X good. When he didn't play, they were only Y. That's something even casual fans could understand.

Yes, to some degree but it's designed to try and isolate those factors. It can be difficult to do that in some circumstances though like if one player plays a huge portion of his minutes with another player. And just because a player has a good rapm doesn't mean he necessarily would in a different situation. For instance, Matt Bonner might have a good rapm in his role as a stretch 5 off the bench who takes open shots created by his teammates, but if the Spurs asked him to be the primary offensive threat, you'd expect his rapm to drop.

This is a good rabbit hole.

If you asked Shaq to be your point guard and he had to run the offense and didn't post up, his RAPM would plummet. But that doesn't make him a bad player, per se, just misused (Diaw is an example of a guy who was misused early in his career.)

However, value is value. Bonner sometimes has sky-high RAPM marks, but it is meaningful. Kidd didn't shoot often, but he was still very valuable. If we didn't have assists in the box score, he'd be underrated.

One caveat is the situational player who only plays when he's needed. But this is rare in basketball. It's not like baseball. Jason Collins is probably the best example. Near the end of his career, he was starting to be used only for defending big centers. He didn't start every game in Atlanta, for instance. This masked his deficiencies.

But at this point, we're all looking at guys who play heavy minutes and don't cherrypick useful situations. Garnett changed teams and teammates several times and he was consistently rated high.



I've been working on a project I've always wanted to do. When people post stats of a guy versus good defenses, it's not anything ... say, robust. It's just an average versus defenses better than X and an average versus defenses worse than X. But that's not a stable comparison because some guys are lucky and the best defenses they've faced are all rated like -5 to -6. Or maybe the average defense the player has faced is -10 or so.

So I grabbed gamelogs of Olajuwon and Shaq (and Ewing) to see what the marginal change is when an opposing defense, or team strength rating (SRS), improves by a point. It's just simple regression right now.

I guess I'm calling these ... V-ratings? For variable player stat ratings....

Hakeem (1987 to 1997, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef 0.043
PTS/100 -5 def -0.213
GmSc/100 coef -0.053
GmSc/100 5 SRS -0.263
Ortg coef 1.008
Ortg -5 def -5.040
Usage coef -0.102
Usage -5 def 0.512

Shaq (1995 to 2005, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef -0.225
PTS/100 -5 def 1.125
GmSc/100 coef -0.053
GmSc/100 5 SRS 0.263
Ortg coef 0.713
Ortg -5 def -3.567
Usage coef -0.138
Usage -5 def 0.690

(The 100 stands for 100 possessions. It's so minutes or pace are not factors. The coefficient is a regression result should be on average 1, except for usage, because you'd expect a one-to-one relationship with defensive efficiency and, say, points or efficiency. The -5 def rows are for the change you'd see in points, usage, or offensive rating from facing an average team or a great defense rated 5 points below the league average. Positive is good. It means you're, say, adding points versus a great defense.)

One observation and this includes Ewing is that these big men keep up their points production because their usage slightly increases against better defenses. They're all almost the same. However, efficiency is the difference. The coefficient for efficiency should be on average 1.0. Instead for Shaq it's under 1, meaning that his efficiency holds up against good defenses better than average. That's not the same for Olajuwon. His efficiency drops as much as you'd expect. And remember this is for ten years of his career. Shaq's points per possession, however, actually increase when the defense gets better. He's taking on a larger share of his team's offense. Hakeem's slightly decrease.

But the story about Hakeem versus elite defenses is mainly about his prime. So let's be kind and try 1993 to 1995 and compare it to Shaq's best three years.

Hakeem (1993 to 1995, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef -0.266
PTS/100 -5 def 1.332
GmSc coef 0.100
GmSc SRS 0.501
Ortg coef 0.498
Ortg -5 def -2.489
Usage coef -0.171
Usage -5 def 0.857

Shaq (2000 to 2002, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef -0.093
PTS/100 -5 def 0.465
GmSc coef -0.202
GmSc SRS 1.011
Ortg coef 0.970
Ortg -5 def -4.852
Usage coef -0.099
Usage -5 def 0.497

Hakeem scores more against elite defenses because he shoots more often and his efficiency increases less than expected given the opposing defense. His Ortg coefficient was chopped in half. Shaq actually looks a little worse during his peak. On an interesting note, Shaq's coefficient for '95 through '98 is 0.67, meaning his efficiency held up better when he was a young player. Are we underrating him there?

In summary, Olajuwon was not a magical performer against elite defenses for most of his career. He does quite well during his three year peak, although it's nothing too earth-shattering and it's only three years. Plus Shaq, for instance, starts from a higher base as he shoots more often and is more efficient.


edit:
This is fascinating:
http://shutupandjam.net/nba-ncaa-stats/ ... ed-impact/

One critique: when I made my own all-time ranking based on stats alone, I found the David Robinson/Karl Malone problem. They were ranked really high, higher than in reality. But it's because we often just use regular season stats even for things like estimating championship odds. Any way of using playoff stats, or an approximation thereof, for this odds method? Like estimate a player's average drop in impact in the playoffs and apply it to every season. By the way, Kareem led the league in that estimated impact ten straight seasons. I know the 70's were an odd decade, but jeez....

You didn't include 1986 where Olajuwon had one of his best post season performances and played against Boston's defense?

How was this weighted and what teams were used? Only playoffs or regular season?

[Baller2014]

The metric is being used as a substitute for actual analysis though. I pointed to a bunch of indicators that the Wolves support cast was quite decent, and the response is just "advanced stat X says no".

[ceiling raiser]

The metric is being used as a substitute for actual analysis though. I pointed to a bunch of indicators that the Wolves support cast was quite decent, and the response is just "advanced stat X says no".

If it's being used as a substitute for actual analysis, that's perhaps problematic. But if it's being used as evidence/support for claims along with qualitative evidence (again, I must point out drza's post as an example...even if you disagree about the 02 portion, as a whole it's a great template; ElGee, AcrossTheCourt, Doctor MJ, and a score of others on the board also do a tremendous job weaving qualitative with quantitative), then I think it's fine.

[Baller2014]

Don't get me wrong, I look for actual impact too, but I don't think advanced stats are necessarily the best way to get it. I think a much more telling measure is how much weight a star can lift, in other words how many wins they can take a weak support cast to (the weaker the cast, the bigger the props). Sometimes we even get ironclad cases, like Kareem and Bird's rookie years where they arrived on garbage teams and turned them into contenders (like, top 2 team contenders), though even without the before/after test we can usually apply logic and infer the impact (like Lebron leaving the Cavs and watching them just collapse- sure, there were other factors, but the overwhelming one was Lebron leaving).

[therealbig3]

I think a much more telling measure is how much weight a star can lift, in other words how many wins they can take a weak support cast to (the weaker the cast, the bigger the props).

Guys, you won't understand why we value KG so highly unless you can buy-in that evaluating players on bad teams is not an accurate reflection of their value to all teams.

[Baller2014]

A good player can be on a bad team. A top 10 player will make a bad team a good team (or better). If you're going to talk about KG at 12-15, this is a valid argument. Not at #4-6 when he's being compared to the greatest guys of all-time. Sure, maybe it takes a year to gel with the system or something, or there were weird factors that slightly limited them, but a top 10 player should have been able to show that ability (to turn a bad team into a great team) at least once, especially when he had so many opportunities. KG did passably, but what he did can't compare to the guys he's being compared to here. Bird turned a 29 win team into a 61 win team as a freaking rookie (and yes, I saw Elgee's post trying to play it down, needless to say I think it's highly misleading).

[acrossthecourt]

Spoiler:

I'll say this with regard to KG. If you want to convince voters like myself that he's coming up soon, then the pitch needs to be different (for me anyway). Right now the pitch is overwhelmingly "advanced stats, advanced stats, advanced stats!" What about if you're not a big fan of advanced stats? What if they're wrong, as everyone agrees they sometimes are? You need an argument that can be made independently of citing advanced stats (not one that rips on his coach either). Advanced stats are a "tool in the toolbox", but when the impact they claim someone is having doesn't seem to show up in the team results there needs to be more analysis. I made several posts on this in the last few threads, focusing particularly on KG's help in 2002. Nobody made any attempt to seriously reply to them.

I've made arguments outside of advanced stats. If you don't want to believe them, well, I'm not sure you want to be convinced. There are so many role players with uncertain values that it's really hard to pin down what was wrong with those Timberwolves. But even with some pretty basic information you get the sense that he was a monster player.

Someone else made a great case based on an evolution of his defense and how he was used.

ElGee made a post about how they were a 9 SRS team with Garnett on those Celtics. Is that too advanced? He could have cited wins/losses. I think it's pretty simple to say when Garnett played, the Celtics were X good. When he didn't play, they were only Y. That's something even casual fans could understand.

Yes, to some degree but it's designed to try and isolate those factors. It can be difficult to do that in some circumstances though like if one player plays a huge portion of his minutes with another player. And just because a player has a good rapm doesn't mean he necessarily would in a different situation. For instance, Matt Bonner might have a good rapm in his role as a stretch 5 off the bench who takes open shots created by his teammates, but if the Spurs asked him to be the primary offensive threat, you'd expect his rapm to drop.

This is a good rabbit hole.

If you asked Shaq to be your point guard and he had to run the offense and didn't post up, his RAPM would plummet. But that doesn't make him a bad player, per se, just misused (Diaw is an example of a guy who was misused early in his career.)

However, value is value. Bonner sometimes has sky-high RAPM marks, but it is meaningful. Kidd didn't shoot often, but he was still very valuable. If we didn't have assists in the box score, he'd be underrated.

One caveat is the situational player who only plays when he's needed. But this is rare in basketball. It's not like baseball. Jason Collins is probably the best example. Near the end of his career, he was starting to be used only for defending big centers. He didn't start every game in Atlanta, for instance. This masked his deficiencies.

But at this point, we're all looking at guys who play heavy minutes and don't cherrypick useful situations. Garnett changed teams and teammates several times and he was consistently rated high.



I've been working on a project I've always wanted to do. When people post stats of a guy versus good defenses, it's not anything ... say, robust. It's just an average versus defenses better than X and an average versus defenses worse than X. But that's not a stable comparison because some guys are lucky and the best defenses they've faced are all rated like -5 to -6. Or maybe the average defense the player has faced is -10 or so.

So I grabbed gamelogs of Olajuwon and Shaq (and Ewing) to see what the marginal change is when an opposing defense, or team strength rating (SRS), improves by a point. It's just simple regression right now.

I guess I'm calling these ... V-ratings? For variable player stat ratings....

Hakeem (1987 to 1997, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef 0.043
PTS/100 -5 def -0.213
GmSc/100 coef -0.053
GmSc/100 5 SRS -0.263
Ortg coef 1.008
Ortg -5 def -5.040
Usage coef -0.102
Usage -5 def 0.512

Shaq (1995 to 2005, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef -0.225
PTS/100 -5 def 1.125
GmSc/100 coef -0.053
GmSc/100 5 SRS 0.263
Ortg coef 0.713
Ortg -5 def -3.567
Usage coef -0.138
Usage -5 def 0.690

(The 100 stands for 100 possessions. It's so minutes or pace are not factors. The coefficient is a regression result should be on average 1, except for usage, because you'd expect a one-to-one relationship with defensive efficiency and, say, points or efficiency. The -5 def rows are for the change you'd see in points, usage, or offensive rating from facing an average team or a great defense rated 5 points below the league average. Positive is good. It means you're, say, adding points versus a great defense.)

One observation and this includes Ewing is that these big men keep up their points production because their usage slightly increases against better defenses. They're all almost the same. However, efficiency is the difference. The coefficient for efficiency should be on average 1.0. Instead for Shaq it's under 1, meaning that his efficiency holds up against good defenses better than average. That's not the same for Olajuwon. His efficiency drops as much as you'd expect. And remember this is for ten years of his career. Shaq's points per possession, however, actually increase when the defense gets better. He's taking on a larger share of his team's offense. Hakeem's slightly decrease.

But the story about Hakeem versus elite defenses is mainly about his prime. So let's be kind and try 1993 to 1995 and compare it to Shaq's best three years.

Hakeem (1993 to 1995, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef -0.266
PTS/100 -5 def 1.332
GmSc coef 0.100
GmSc SRS 0.501
Ortg coef 0.498
Ortg -5 def -2.489
Usage coef -0.171
Usage -5 def 0.857

Shaq (2000 to 2002, playoffs included):
PTS/100 coef -0.093
PTS/100 -5 def 0.465
GmSc coef -0.202
GmSc SRS 1.011
Ortg coef 0.970
Ortg -5 def -4.852
Usage coef -0.099
Usage -5 def 0.497

Hakeem scores more against elite defenses because he shoots more often and his efficiency increases less than expected given the opposing defense. His Ortg coefficient was chopped in half. Shaq actually looks a little worse during his peak. On an interesting note, Shaq's coefficient for '95 through '98 is 0.67, meaning his efficiency held up better when he was a young player. Are we underrating him there?

In summary, Olajuwon was not a magical performer against elite defenses for most of his career. He does quite well during his three year peak, although it's nothing too earth-shattering and it's only three years. Plus Shaq, for instance, starts from a higher base as he shoots more often and is more efficient.


edit:
This is fascinating:
http://shutupandjam.net/nba-ncaa-stats/ ... ed-impact/

One critique: when I made my own all-time ranking based on stats alone, I found the David Robinson/Karl Malone problem. They were ranked really high, higher than in reality. But it's because we often just use regular season stats even for things like estimating championship odds. Any way of using playoff stats, or an approximation thereof, for this odds method? Like estimate a player's average drop in impact in the playoffs and apply it to every season. By the way, Kareem led the league in that estimated impact ten straight seasons. I know the 70's were an odd decade, but jeez....

You didn't include 1986 where Olajuwon had one of his best post season performances and played against Boston's defense?

How was this weighted and what teams were used? Only playoffs or regular season?

I didn't include 1986 because I wanted it to be used for nefarious purposes and discredit Olajuwon. No, I originally used this for Ewing and picked 11 seasons for him, and I went with 11 for Olajuwon for a fair comparison. I didn't want to use seasons when the guys were too old or too young, but it's trickier with guys who have interesting careers like Shaq or Olajuwon. Maybe I'll include careers with different years.

I already added in the season and analyzed it quickly.

1986 was one of his best seasons by this metric and it's on par with Shaq's 11 year average. However, his usage doesn't climb as he faces better defenses. Adding in 1986, his coefficient for ORtg is now 0.98. So it's still almost exactly 0.1, which is the average you'd expect.

No weighing. Right now it's only a simple linear regression. When I get more data I'll dump it into R and mess around with it more. I could weigh the playoffs more. I said above it's playoffs included, so it's every regular season game and every playoff game.

What teams were used? Maybe this wasn't clear but it's everything. I'm taking his complete gamelogs and linking his performances to the opponent's defensive rating. It's every team.

Some residual analysis will be useful soon, but it's still a lot better to treat this as a continuous variable rather than the simple summaries people use.

[acrossthecourt]

A good player can be on a bad team. A top 10 player will make a bad team a good team (or better). If you're going to talk about KG at 12-15, this is a valid argument. Not at #4-6 when he's being compared to the greatest guys of all-time. Sure, maybe it takes a year to gel with the system or something, or there were weird factors that slightly limited them, but a top 10 player should have been able to show that ability (to turn a bad team into a great team) at least once, especially when he had so many opportunities. KG did passably, but what he did can't compare to the guys he's being compared to here. Bird turned a 29 win team into a 61 win team as a freaking rookie (and yes, I saw Elgee's post trying to play it down, needless to say I think it's highly misleading).

Then why did we rank Kareem 2nd when he missed the playoffs twice in a row in a smaller league when the ABA stole some of the best players?

[Baller2014]

A good player can be on a bad team. A top 10 player will make a bad team a good team (or better). If you're going to talk about KG at 12-15, this is a valid argument. Not at #4-6 when he's being compared to the greatest guys of all-time. Sure, maybe it takes a year to gel with the system or something, or there were weird factors that slightly limited them, but a top 10 player should have been able to show that ability (to turn a bad team into a great team) at least once, especially when he had so many opportunities. KG did passably, but what he did can't compare to the guys he's being compared to here. Bird turned a 29 win team into a 61 win team as a freaking rookie (and yes, I saw Elgee's post trying to play it down, needless to say I think it's highly misleading).

Then why did we rank Kareem 2nd when he missed the playoffs twice in a row in a smaller league when the ABA stole some of the best players?

Several easy answers:
1) If a guy has this demonstratable impact every year, that is ideal, but that doesn't mean if he has it 9/10 times we don't give him credit for it. We just say "well, that year was a crappy anomaly, I wonder why, can't credit him for that though". The test is still whether he can do it once at least (see above), though doing it more than once (like he did) sure helps your case. Duncan only had 3 bad teams out of 10 in his prime, so he only had 3 chances to really show us what his impact was on weak support casts, but in each case the team was a legit contender (winning 58-60 games, and a title, and if the Lakers don't exist in 01 they win two titles). If KG wants to be compared to Duncan there should be an explanation as to why on the many, many comparably weak support casts he could never lead his team to anything like as many wins (and frankly, some of his support casts are better, like the 02 team).
2) One of the years Kareem missed the playoffs he got hurt, and the team sucked without him- there's your explanation. That, and the fact that he was phoning it in that year because he wanted the Bucks to trade him. I discussed this in the Kareem threads and said "I hold it against him a little bit, in the sense he gets little credit for that year, but I stop short of calling him a malcontent because back then there was no free agency, and doing this was literally the only way to leave your team". The situation with the Lakers I also discussed, and talked about how he should get slapped on the wrist for that a little bit. I speculate part of it was him getting lost in the LA lifestyle, and not focusing as much on basketball the first few years there. TrueLAFan has a long post explaining why he thinks the Laker playoff miss wasn't Kareem's fault, and he cites numerous problems with the team, etc. I don't credit Kareem for it, but that's the explanation for why it happened. In KG's case he never proved he could do it even once, and the excuses are just weaksauce (e.g. "the other teams adapted" or "his coach was bad", which btw isn't even true).
3) Kareem proved he could do it though, in his rookie year he took a team that had won 27 games the previous year and made them a 56 win giant (good for the 2nd best record in the NBA), and the Bucks only improved the next 2 years as Kareem did (even in games Oscar missed, they were on a 60 win pace).

[Baller2014]

For anyone curious I believe the current vote is Shaq 11, Magic 7, Hakeem 3, and 1 each for Lebron, KG and Bird.

[acrossthecourt]

A good player can be on a bad team. A top 10 player will make a bad team a good team (or better). If you're going to talk about KG at 12-15, this is a valid argument. Not at #4-6 when he's being compared to the greatest guys of all-time. Sure, maybe it takes a year to gel with the system or something, or there were weird factors that slightly limited them, but a top 10 player should have been able to show that ability (to turn a bad team into a great team) at least once, especially when he had so many opportunities. KG did passably, but what he did can't compare to the guys he's being compared to here. Bird turned a 29 win team into a 61 win team as a freaking rookie (and yes, I saw Elgee's post trying to play it down, needless to say I think it's highly misleading).

Then why did we rank Kareem 2nd when he missed the playoffs twice in a row in a smaller league when the ABA stole some of the best players?

Several easy answers:
1) If a guy has this demonstratable impact every year, that is ideal, but that doesn't mean if he has it 9/10 times we don't give him credit for it. We just say "well, that year was a crappy anomaly, I wonder why, can't credit him for that though". The test is still whether he can do it once at least (see above), though doing it more than once (like he did) sure helps your case.
2) One of the years Kareem missed the playoffs he got hurt, and the team sucked without him- there's your explanation. That, and the fact that he was phoning it in that year because he wanted the Bucks to trade him. I discussed this in the Kareem threads and said "I hold it against him a little bit, in the sense he gets little credit for that year, but I stop short of calling him a malcontent because back then there was no free agency, and doing this was literally the only way to leave your team". The situation with the Lakers I also discussed, and talked about how he should get slapped on the wrist for that a little bit. I speculate part of it was him getting lost in the LA lifestyle, and not focusing as much on basketball the first few years there. TrueLAFan has a long post explaining why he thinks the Laker playoff miss wasn't Kareem's fault, and he cites numerous problems with the team, etc. I don't credit him for it, but that's the explanation.
3) Kareem proved he could do it though, in his rookie year he took a team that had won 27 games the previous year and made them a 56 win giant (good for the 2nd best record in the NBA), and the Bucks only improved the next 2 years as Kareem did (even in games Oscar missed, they were on a 60 win pace).

Yeah and I could make similar arguments for Garnett. Minnesota got a lot worse in 2008 even though they got back players in the trade. Boston had one of the biggest turnarounds in league history (who has the largest? was it Boston?) Boston outperformed predictions by a huge amount.

They performed a lot better when Kareem was healthy, and Minnesota played like a playoff team when Garnett was on the court. Their bench was awful. Similar seasons.

Superstars aren't worth 40 wins. I think most people are in agreement that at the most, players are around 20 wins or something like that. So if you're a superstar worth 20 wins and you have a bad supporting cast, it's entirely conceivable your team wins 35 times. I guess we just disagree on how his supporting casts were, but look at how awful they were when he left. Unless you want to debate the merits of Ricky Davis or something.

He's also one of a select group of players who have led their teams in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. That's a rare group. Just another indication that yes, he was doing enough in Minnesota.

[Baller2014]

Yeah and I could make similar arguments for Garnett.

Then make them, but it's going to be a tough sell given he had a tonne of years in Minny to do it, and never did it once. At a certain point the excuses get old.

Minnesota got a lot worse in 2008 even though they got back players in the trade. Boston had one of the biggest turnarounds in league history (who has the largest? was it Boston?) Boston outperformed predictions by a huge amount.

Boston's turnaround is a silly response, because obviously many, many things about the team changed, not just KG arriving. Boston outperformed expectations, which is nice, but that's a different thing to outperforming what your expectations should have been. For instance, Duncan's 2001 Spurs team "met expectations", based on what the media expected, but when you look at that Spurs team in hindsight it's clear they had no business being the 2nd best team in the NBA that year. The reason they were was because Duncan was amazing. Boston's expectations were a little lower than they should have been because the media didn't know who guys like Rondo, Perkins or Tony Allen were, and were sceptical how much vets like PJ Brown and Posey had left in the tank. They thought maybe the Celtics needed a year to get it together. Obviously though a lot of these role players were actually really good. In contrast the 01 and 02 Duncan Spurs didn't suddenly grow wings and fly after those seasons. A lot of them more or less fell out of the NBA after that point (or took on smaller roles on worse teams, e.g. A.Daniels)

Did the Wolves get much worse? Not really. They dropped from 32 to 22 wins, despite giving a lot of young players minutes all of a sudden. They were obviously worse, but it's not like the floor fell out (like when Moses left the Rockets).

They performed a lot better when Kareem was healthy, and Minnesota played like a playoff team when Garnett was on the court. Their bench was awful. Similar seasons.

They're not similar excuses at all. Kareem's team was a 27 win team before he arrived. He made them 29 wins better... as a rookie. I don't see the evidence the Wolves would be 29 wins worse off without him (Boston sure wouldn't have been, as we saw when KG got hurt, a fatal blow to his MVP narrative that year). Benches are overrated. Duncan didn't have a bench on his carry jobs, usually his bench were his starters, and their bench weren't even fit to be in the NBA. Kareem had nobody coming off his bench in 1970. The whole definition of a carry job is that you're carrying an inadequate team. Complaining about a weak 6th man misses the point.

[GSP]

Something ive never heard answered from Shaq supporters in a debate with Hakeem is that Shaq always had big wing players that were great post entry passers in his prime (Penny, Kobe, Wade). That helps a ton with ur own offense as well as the team a luxury Hakeem didnt have for most of his career and he had to start plays from further out and use his skills like dribbles more to get into better spots to use his post game

[magicmerl]

Something ive never heard answered from Shaq supporters in a debate with Hakeem is that Shaq always had big wing players that were great post entry passers in his prime (Penny, Kobe, Wade). That helps a ton with ur own offense as well as the team a luxury Hakeem didnt have for most of his career and he had to start plays from further out and use his skills like dribbles more to get into better spots to use his post game

Robert Horry?

[GSP]

Something ive never heard answered from Shaq supporters in a debate with Hakeem is that Shaq always had big wing players that were great post entry passers in his prime (Penny, Kobe, Wade). That helps a ton with ur own offense as well as the team a luxury Hakeem didnt have for most of his career and he had to start plays from further out and use his skills like dribbles more to get into better spots to use his post game

Robert Horry?

Depends on the set and lineups i mean Horry could bring the ball up but its a different format with how they used the 3pt shooting with their guards. Just for a consistent creating guard who could bring the ball up he never had a Penny, Kobe or Wade until past prime Drexler (and its almost unanimous that 95 is Hakeems offensive peak). There were series even at his peak like in Portland where it was much easier to deny the ball against Shaq since he didnt have the skills or midrange game to do what Hakeem did than I remember series with Hakeem he just never had that consistent perimeter player for situations like that outside 95