RealGM Top 100 List #7

[lorak]

Overall Royals without Robertson during his career there were 22.2 WIN% team (12 wins and 40 loses, so pretty big sample and the biggest single season sample also tells the same story), with him 54.4 WIN%. That's big impact and it's consistent with how much he improved Bucks in 1971 or how Milwaukee played without him (when still was in his prime), so it's not like he only had big impact on weak teams. He also improved good/very good teams to GREAT ones. That's top 10 all time level player and only because of lack of team success in crappy organization so many people don't see how good he was - similar story is with KG and his Wolves years.

Slow down there. Splits and gamr breakdowns on bballref only go back to 1964, so I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from but I'll stick with the actual stats,

My stats are ACTUAL STATS. If you don't believe me, then do your own research or at least check on another website than b-r, for example fpliii's site has a ton of great information, including Oscar's game log.

Here's how it looks year by year:

Code: Select all

YEAR   G w/o   W w/o   L w/o   WL%   W with   L with   WL%               
1961   8         1      7   0,125         32   39   0,451
1962   1         0      1   0,000         43   36   0,544
1963   0         0      0   0,000         42   38   0,525
1964   1         1      0   1,000         54   25   0,684
1965   5         1      4   0,200         47   28   0,627
1966   4         1      3   0,250         44   32   0,579
1967   2         0      2   0,000         39   40   0,494
1968   17        4      13  0,235         35   30   0,538
1969   3         0      3   0,000         41   38   0,519
1970   13        4      9   0,308         32   37   0,464
TOTAL  54        12     42  0,222         409 343   0,544






So it looks like Oscar had great impact (he improved 18W team to 45 wins! Of course he wasn't worth 27 wins, no one in history was, but around 20 is very likely when we do adjustments to properly reflect value added to average team), especially if we consider that in that era it was more difficult for perimeter players than in 80s and later.

That's a big improvement, but it doesn't really quite compare to the top end carry jobs we're looking at for the top 10-15 players.

And how big exactly are those "carry jobs"? Could you explain that based on examples of Duncan, Russell and KAJ? Give me number which would describe their impact (for example wins added to average team) and how you've come to such conclusion. Really, please don't ignore that part!

I don't know what you mean "consistent with how much he improved the Bucks".

I'm going to quote myself (I'm sorry I use wins-loses above, and SRS below, but I don't have data needed to calculate SRS for with/without and don't have time right now to export that data to excel):

Lets look at how Bucks performance was changing during “KAJ’s era”:

Code: Select all

Season   SRS   KAJ MIN   Oscar MIN
1968-69   -5,07   0   0
1969-70   4,25   3534   0
1970-71   11,91   3288   3194
1971-72   10,7   3583   2390
1972-73   7,84   3254   2737
1973-74   7,61   3548   2477
1974-75   0,25   2747   0
1975-76   -1,56   0   0


1. from 1969 to 1970: +9.3 SRS

Really big improvement, but we can’t credit KAJ for all that. Bucks in 1969 were completely new organization, with rookie coach and 6 rookie players (not all of them played significant minutes, thought).
In 1970 they added not only KAJ, but also Dandridge and Crawford, limited minutes of Rodgers (who retired after 1970 season), lost Embry (retired after 1969) and Hetzel, increased minutes of Robinson, Chappell and Abdul-Aziz.

A lot of changes, so it’s difficult to tell what exactly was Alciondor’s impact that year, but considering what was Bucks roster that year (without KAJ it was definitely below average team, but not worse than in 1969) and their SRS it’s very probable KAJ’s impact was around +5.5 SRS (that means he would improve 41 wins team to 57.6 wins) or even +6.

2. from 1970 to 1971: +7.7 SRS

At first glance +7.7 seems like worse than +9.3, but keep in mind that it’s more difficult to make good team great, than bad team good. So in fact +7.7 improvement in 1971 was bigger than +9.3 in 1970.
The biggest change was of course addition of Oscar. Other than that Bucks added Boozer (1800 minutes) and Allen (1200 minutes), while lost Robinson, Abdul-Aziz, Crawford and Chappell.

KAJ definitely improved, but how much it was because of Oscar? IMO a lot. I mean, KAJ wasn’t like typical modern rookies after 1 year of NCAA. He spent 4 years at UCLA and was NBA ready player when he entered the league (similar story to Duncan in 1998). Sure, over time in NBA he improved different aspects of his game, but anyone is able to tell what exactly he improved in the summer of 1970? Because I think he didn’t improve a lot (FT% is one of the main things he did), and his high FG% was in big part result of playing with Oscar - it’s not coincidence that later, when Oscar was limited by injuries and finally retired, KAJ’s FG% was worse and worse until 1977, so when he hit his peak:

Code: Select all

year   FG%   Oscar MIN
1970   51,8   0
1971   57,7   3194
1972   57,4   2390
1973   55,4   2737
1974   53,9   2477
1975   51,3   0
1976   52,9   0


1971 and 1972 are two years, when I think Oscar was still in his prime and was better than KAJ. In 1973 Robertson wasn’t as good anymore (his FG% kind of confirms that as in 1973 he had career low FG% and even worse result in 1974), because of injuries he suffered in 1972 (he missed most of the second half of that season and was injured in the playoffs). So IMO it clearly indicates how much Oscar helped KAJ – without Robertson Jabbar’s FG% was only slightly better than during his rookie year and while injury in 1975 might explain part of it, there’s no injury explanation in 1976. Besides KAJ’s FG% skyrocket in two years, when Oscar was in his prime and then steadily decreased as Oscar was worse and worse and finally was gone.

I credit Oscar for most of Bucks improvement that year (it was ~+9.9 SRS over average team) and that means he was around +7.5 or +8 SRS player that year, while KAJ around +6.5, maybe even +7 (keep in mind that’s basically the same, what people say in Elgee’s project, where 7 posters posted their estimations and on average KAJ was +7 player according to them.

3. from 1971 to 1972: -1.2 SRS

Changes: added Perry (1500 minutes), Block (1500), Jones (1000), lost Boozer (1800 previous year), increased minutes of Allen (to 2300) and decreased McGlocklin (to 2200), Smith (to 700) and of course Oscar, who was injured and played 800 less minutes than previous year.

Robertson’s injury gives us really good information about his impact and it’s consistent with what we have seen in 1971. With him in 1972 Bucks were 11.9 SRS team, without 7.1, so that means he improved average (41 wins) team by about +7.1 SRS. So another year which indicates Oscar was at least +7 SRS player. Jabbar was also close to that value, but IMO slightly worse (Oscar helped KAJ more, than the other way around – for example remember paragraph about KAJ’s FG%). Of course if we want to describe impact in total value then KAJ was better that year (because of Oscar’s injury), but per game value Robertson was still better.

4. 1972 to 1973: -2.9 SRS

No major changes.

First year when KAJ was better than Oscar. After injures in 1972 Robertson never again was as good player as before (and as I said – FG% is one of the indicators of that), but still quite impactfull. Fun facts: KAJ missed 6 games that year and Bucks won them all (and overall were 8-0 without KAJ during Oscar’s time in Milwaukee), while in 9 games Robertson missed they were 7-2 (and 9-3 in 1974).

I think there’s no need to discuss that year in deep or 1974 season, as It was last Oscar’s year and he was shell of his former self. But I will point out one more thing, because maybe some people think I’m underrating KAJ, when I’m saying that he was +6.5 SRS player in 1971.

Jabbar missed 17 games in 1975 and 21 in 1978. If we compare SRS with him ( 4.5 in 1978, 1.4 in 1975) to without (-1.7 in 1978, -4.2 in 1975) and adjust for improvement over average (41 W) team, then his impact was +4.0 in 1975 and +5.5 in 1978 (and when we would do the same for Bucks 1975 with KAJ vs 1976 Bucks, then Jabbar’s impact is +3.3). Just food for though.

Bootom line is:

- Oscar’s high impact is confirmed by how much Bucks improved or how they played when he was injured in 1972 and also by how much he helped Royals (I didn’t talk about it, but I will say just one thing: during his career in Cinny, he missed 54 games and Royals won only 12 of them, so 22.2 WIN%. With him they were 54.4 WIN% team and that includes several games when he was injured or played only 2 minutes because of injury). So there’s no doubt that prime Oscar’s (and his prime was from 1961 to 1972) impact was indeed in +7 to +8 SRS range.

[Baller2014]

20 to 46 is the actual improvement using bballref. So that's 26 wins. Impressive, but not comparable to the guys in play here. Examples:
- Bird improving the Celtics 32 wins as a rookie, despite the support cast arguably being worse (or no better certainly) than the 1979 Celtics.
- Kareem improving the Bucks 29 wins as a rookie. Remember, both Bird and Kareem got better after their rookie season.
- Duncan carrying garbage teams in 01-03 to 58-60 win seasons. I doubt either team would have won 20 games without Duncan, and I covered this extensively in discussion on him.
- I don't doubt at all that the Cavs in 09 and 10 were getting 30 wins out of Lebron.
- Dr J on the 1976 Nets was almost certainly worth 30 wins
- The Rockets dropped 32 wins after trading Moses Malone.
I could go on and on, you get the idea. Now, there are two other considerations holding Oscar's achievements back.
1) His era- extremely mediocre, for reasons I went into on depth in the first few threads on this project.
2) The law of diminishing returns. It is much harder to turn a bad team into a contender than to turn a bad team into a mediocre 46 win team.

So Oscar's achievement helps him, I said I'd take him in the top 25 if not the top 20. But it helps him in relation to much weaker candidates than the sort in play at the moment. It's probably inferior to the impact Steve Nash was having on the Suns tbh, whose win/loss without him was even worse (it's a 30 win gap from 05-11, and that includes the 2009 season where Terry Porter was running the offence through Shaq instead of Nash).

[Gregoire]

My vote goes to Hakeem here. Comparable or better 1, 2, 3year peak with each of guys left in the discussion. Most well-balanced guy left in the discussion considering offense+ defense. Only player left who could be elite offensive and elite defensive anchor. Played in the toughest are along with GOAT and many others superstars. Was very mentally tough, didnt fear anybody. Unique skillset and very portable and versatile player.

[Purch]

Charles Barkley



The only player to win an Mvp over Jordan in his absolute prime.

Also, if we’re making cases for Malone I should probally put a post about the power forward that I rank above both Malone and Garnett. One of the single most efficient and effective scorers in Nba history.

Career Leaders and Records for Offensive Rating

1. Chris Paul 122.44 (G)
2. Reggie Miller 121.48 (SG)
3. Magic Johnson* 120.79 (PG-Point F)
4. John Stockton* 120.55 (PG)
5. Kiki Vandeweghe 119.49 (SF-SG)
6. Sidney Moncrief 119.40 (CG-PG)
7. Charles Barkley* 119.31 (PF)

SHOT MADE/MISS DIFFERENTIAL STAT-
(minimum 15,000 shot attempts)

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: +3,367.5
2. Shaquille O'Neal: +3,200.5
3. Wilt Chamberlain: +1,865
4. Charles Barkley: +1,434

NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Player Efficiency Rating


1. Michael Jordan* 27.91
2. LeBron James 26.91
3. Shaquille O'Neal 26.43
4. David Robinson* 26.18
5. Wilt Chamberlain* 26.13
6. Dwyane Wade 25.65
7. Bob Pettit* 25.35
8. Chris Paul 25.22
9. Tim Duncan 24.84
10. Neil Johnston* 24.63
11. Charles Barkley* 24.63

NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Player Efficiency Rating


1. Michael Jordan* 28.59
2. George Mikan* 28.51
3. LeBron James 26.31
4. Shaquille O'Neal 26.12
5. Hakeem Olajuwon* 25.69
6. Tim Duncan 25.43
7. Dirk Nowitzki 24.75
8. Tracy McGrady 24.66
9. Dwyane Wade 24.56
10. Charles Barkley* 24.18

Nba all time career leaders in True Shooting %

1. Cedric Maxwell .6294
2. Artis Gilmore .6227
3. Dave Twardzik .6184
4. James Donaldson .6177
5. Adrian Dantley .6166
6. Tyson Chandler .6166
7. Reggie Miler .6139
8. Charles Barkley .6120

Most seasons with a 2 point percentage of 60% or more ( playing at least 60 games)

1 Artis Gilmore 1981 1986 6
2 Charles Barkley 1987 1991 5
3 Tyson Chandler 2007 2013 5
4 Wilt Chamberlain 1967 1973 3


The common theme you see in a lot of these efficiency stats, is that role players who have a lot of baskets created for them are near the top. However, with Barkley you have a player near the top in all these effiency stats, who at the same time was one of the single most double teamed players in nba history.



Charles Barkley playoff games
Charles Barkley – 1 (50 point playoff game)
Charles Barkley- 5 (40 point playoff game)
Charles Barkley- 28 (30 point playoff games)

For comparison Kevin Garnett has only scored 30 points in 9 playoff games.

The more I watch of Barkley and Garnett, the more I'm convinced that the gap between them offensively, is just as substantial as the gap between them defensively. With Barkley you literally have a 6'4 power foward, scoring the ball with Shaq level efficiency during his prime.

For four straight years during his prime he led the league in True shooting percentage.

1986-1987- .660
1987-1988- .665
1988-1989- .653
1989-1990- .661

For comparison sake, Kevin Garnett does not have a single season of 60 TS% or better. Whiles Barkley is ranked #9 in career TS% and has a career TS% of .6120, Kevin Garnett is ranked #193 all time with a TS% of only .5472 for his career.


And he was doing this whiles being one of the most double teamed players in nba history.There's literally less than a handful of players in nba history who have been able to score as much at as high an efficiency against both playoff and regular season defenses as Charles Barkley. The only guys who have, have already been voted in as top 5 players in this project.

Also I forgot to add on, just how good Charles Barkley was on the offensive glass. For three straight seasons he led the league in offensive rebounds

1986-1987- 390 offensive rebounds
1987-1988- 385 offensive rebounds
1988-1989- 403 offensive rebounds

For his career he's ranked 6th all time in offensive rebounds

1. Moses Malone -7382
2. Artis Gilmore - 4816
3. Robert Parish -4598
4. Buck Williams- 4526
5. Dennis Rodman-4329
6. Charles Barkley- 4260

This is even more impressive considering he only played a 15 year career, and a lot of those weren't even in his prime.

[trex_8063]

2000-2003 Kobe is better than 2005-2008 Lebron. 06-10 Kobe is on par with 09-14 Lebron

Wow.

[Senior]

2000-2003 Kobe is better than 2005-2008 Lebron. 06-10 Kobe is on par with 09-14 Lebron

Wow.

The first part of that sentence I agree with, but the second is probably pushing it a little.

[Jaivl]

The common theme you see in a lot of these efficiency stats, is that role players who have a lot of baskets created for them are near the top. However, with Barkley you have a player near the top in all these effiency stats, who at the same time was one of the single most double teamed players in nba history.

The common theme I see in these stats is that they ignore defense, something Barkley was really turrible at. And I mean Iverson-levels of turribleness.

[ThaRegul8r]

Slow down there. Splits and gamr breakdowns on bballref only go back to 1964, so I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from but I'll stick with the actual stats

I had to interject, as far as that goes, I myself have posted stats that can't be found on basketball-reference, and have done so before it came into existence. So I'm not sure where this notion "It's not on basketball-reference, so I don't know where you could have possibly gotten it" comes from. Believe it or not, basketball-reference is not the end-all, be-all when it comes to basketball statistics.

[colts18]

2000 Kobe was not on par with 05-08 LeBron. In fact he is more on par with 2004 Sam Cassell. If you look at their play they are very comparable.


Accolades:
Kobe: All-star, 2nd team All-NBA, 12th in MVP
Cassell: All-star, 2nd team All-NBA, 10th in MVP

Stats per 75 posssions:
Cassell: 23-8-4, .566 TS%, 113 O rating, 23 PER, .205 WS/48
Kobe: 23-5-6, .546 TS%, 110 O rating, 22 PER, .202 WS/48

Cassell played 81 games compared to Kobe's 66 games so thats a massive advantage.

xRAPM:
Cassell: +2.9
Kobe: +2.3

NPI RAPM:
Cassell: +3.3
Kobe: +2.64

Prior informed RAPM:
Cassell: +3.0
Kobe: +0.11

Playoffs per 75 possessions:
Cassell: 21-6-3, .579 TS%, 107 O rating, 20 PER, .141 WS/48
Kobe: 22-5-5, .506 TS%, 103 O rating, 21 PER, .145 WS/48


For those who called KG's 04 cast bad, are you willing to say the same of Shaq's 2000 cast? 2000 Kobe gets a lot of praise yet those same people are often the ones badmouthing KG's 2004 cast.

[Purch]

The common theme you see in a lot of these efficiency stats, is that role players who have a lot of baskets created for them are near the top. However, with Barkley you have a player near the top in all these effiency stats, who at the same time was one of the single most double teamed players in nba history.

The common theme I see in these stats is that they ignore defense, something Barkley was really turrible at. And I mean Iverson-levels of turribleness.

Well if we're discussing Magic's offensive impact putting him ahead of Lerbon despite his defensive shortcomings, than Barkley's Shaq like effiency and scoring, and dominant offensive rebounding should be discussed. Because there' very few bigs in nba history as effienct or as dominant as Barkley on that end of the floor. Neither Hakeem, Malone, Robinson, Ewing or Garnett come close to being able to maintain such a high level of effienct whiles taking such a high amount of shots and being constantly double teamed. Only Shaq and Wilt come to mind

[Jim Naismith]

Charles Barkley...The only player to win an Mvp over Jordan in his absolute prime.

There are only three stars who lead teams that eliminated the Showtime Lakers before Kareem turned 40 (1987).

Larry Bird did it once.

Hakeem Olajuwon did it once.

Moses Malone did it twice.

Moses also won 3 MVPs in a 5-year span, beating Bird, Kareem, Dr. J, and Magic along the way.

[ardee]

20 to 46 is the actual improvement using bballref. So that's 26 wins. Impressive, but not comparable to the guys in play here. Examples:
- Bird improving the Celtics 32 wins as a rookie, despite the support cast arguably being worse (or no better certainly) than the 1979 Celtics.
- Kareem improving the Bucks 29 wins as a rookie. Remember, both Bird and Kareem got better after their rookie season.
- Duncan carrying garbage teams in 01-03 to 58-60 win seasons. I doubt either team would have won 20 games without Duncan, and I covered this extensively in discussion on him.
- I don't doubt at all that the Cavs in 09 and 10 were getting 30 wins out of Lebron.
- Dr J on the 1976 Nets was almost certainly worth 30 wins
- The Rockets dropped 32 wins after trading Moses Malone.
I could go on and on, you get the idea. Now, there are two other considerations holding Oscar's achievements back.
1) His era- extremely mediocre, for reasons I went into on depth in the first few threads on this project.
2) The law of diminishing returns. It is much harder to turn a bad team into a contender than to turn a bad team into a mediocre 46 win team.

So Oscar's achievement helps him, I said I'd take him in the top 25 if not the top 20. But it helps him in relation to much weaker candidates than the sort in play at the moment. It's probably inferior to the impact Steve Nash was having on the Suns tbh, whose win/loss without him was even worse (it's a 30 win gap from 05-11, and that includes the 2009 season where Terry Porter was running the offence through Shaq instead of Nash).

1. Lorak did his research, and while I disagree with some of his opinions he's a thorough guy and his numbers are correct. Just because you're too **** lazy to do your own research doesn't mean something that's not available on BBallRef.

2. The Bird/Kareem examples are stuff you've been saying since your GilmoreFan days and frankly it's getting old. That team had a completely new coach, got 12 more games of Tiny Archibald, had Maxwell improve considerably, and more importantly lost Marvin "Bad News" Barnes and Pete Maravich, two guys who were locker room and on court liabilities respectively.

Lorak already spoke about Kareem in '70.

If you think win improvement is the only thing KG is more impressive in that respect than your boy Duncan, given 2008.

And you just pulling numbers out of your ass for LeBron and Doc, well who's to say 1964 Oscar wasn't worth 30 wins to the Royals? He put up 31/10/11 on a 55 win team.

3. Your BS about era I'm going to ignore.

If you're so desperate to denigrate earlier players, then please stop posting on this project and make your own: the top 100 players after 1980. It would surely improve the quality of posting here because some of the crap you've been posting is directly affecting the quality of discussion in what is supposed to be our PC Board's flagship project.

[ardee]

2000 Kobe was not on par with 05-08 LeBron. In fact he is more on par with 2004 Sam Cassell. If you look at their play they are very comparable.


Accolades:
Kobe: All-star, 2nd team All-NBA, 12th in MVP
Cassell: All-star, 2nd team All-NBA, 10th in MVP

Stats per 75 posssions:
Cassell: 23-8-4, .566 TS%, 113 O rating, 23 PER, .205 WS/48
Kobe: 23-5-6, .546 TS%, 110 O rating, 22 PER, .202 WS/48

Cassell played 81 games compared to Kobe's 66 games so thats a massive advantage.

xRAPM:
Cassell: +2.9
Kobe: +2.3

NPI RAPM:
Cassell: +3.3
Kobe: +2.64

Prior informed RAPM:
Cassell: +3.0
Kobe: +0.11

Playoffs per 75 possessions:
Cassell: 21-6-3, .579 TS%, 107 O rating, 20 PER, .141 WS/48
Kobe: 22-5-5, .506 TS%, 103 O rating, 21 PER, .145 WS/48


For those who called KG's 04 cast bad, are you willing to say the same of Shaq's 2000 cast? 2000 Kobe gets a lot of praise yet those same people are often the ones badmouthing KG's 2004 cast.

Funny, ever heard of a thing called defense?

2000 Kobe was the best perimeter defender in the league. Cassell was well below average.

[Purch]

Also I forgot to add on, just how good Charles Barkley was on the offensive glass. For three straight seasons he led the league in offensive rebounds

1986-1987- 390 offensive rebounds
1987-1988- 385 offensive rebounds
1988-1989- 403 offensive rebounds

For his career he's ranked 6th all time in offensive rebounds

1. Moses Malone -7382
2. Artis Gilmore - 4816
3. Robert Parish -4598
4. Buck Williams- 4526
5. Dennis Rodman-4329
6. Charles Barkley- 4260

This is even more impressive considering he only played a 15 year career, and a lot of those weren't even in his prime.

Will add this to the original post.

[colts18]

2000 Kobe was not on par with 05-08 LeBron. In fact he is more on par with 2004 Sam Cassell. If you look at their play they are very comparable.


Accolades:
Kobe: All-star, 2nd team All-NBA, 12th in MVP
Cassell: All-star, 2nd team All-NBA, 10th in MVP

Stats per 75 posssions:
Cassell: 23-8-4, .566 TS%, 113 O rating, 23 PER, .205 WS/48
Kobe: 23-5-6, .546 TS%, 110 O rating, 22 PER, .202 WS/48

Cassell played 81 games compared to Kobe's 66 games so thats a massive advantage.

xRAPM:
Cassell: +2.9
Kobe: +2.3

NPI RAPM:
Cassell: +3.3
Kobe: +2.64

Prior informed RAPM:
Cassell: +3.0
Kobe: +0.11

Playoffs per 75 possessions:
Cassell: 21-6-3, .579 TS%, 107 O rating, 20 PER, .141 WS/48
Kobe: 22-5-5, .506 TS%, 103 O rating, 21 PER, .145 WS/48


For those who called KG's 04 cast bad, are you willing to say the same of Shaq's 2000 cast? 2000 Kobe gets a lot of praise yet those same people are often the ones badmouthing KG's 2004 cast.

Funny, ever heard of a thing called defense?

2000 Kobe was the best perimeter defender in the league. Cassell was well below average.

RAPM takes into account defense. Kobe wasn't the best perimeter defender that year. The Lakers were just as good defensively when Kobe missed his 16 games. For the whole season, the Lakers actually played better defense when Kobe was on the bench than when he was on.

[Purch]

Charles Barkley...The only player to win an Mvp over Jordan in his absolute prime.

There are only three stars who lead teams that eliminated the Showtime Lakers before Kareem turned 40 (1987).

Larry Bird did it once.

Hakeem Olajuwon did it once.

Moses Malone did it twice.

Moses also won 3 MVPs in a 5-year span, beating Bird, Kareem, Dr. J, and Magic along the way.

Funny thing is I have all three of those guys above Barkley in my rankings. It's simply the fact that all of these guys were already nominated or being discussed around this time last project, but both Malones, Barkley, and Dr J haven't gotten that same traction this time. Yet for some reason KG has been discussed since number 4. So I'm going to push Malone and Barkley's names out there.

Since there seems to be a big man bias so far in this project

[ardee]

Vote: Earvin Magic Johnson

My reasoning from the last thread:

This was between him and Duncan to me. I basically go with Magic here because I think from '85 to '91 he put up a consistent stretch of GOAT level basketball that Duncan never matched. As much as Duncan supporters rave about his '01 to '07 prime, he doesn't really have a consistent prime stretch. He was injured in 2005 and arguably outplayed by his own teammate in the Playoffs. 2006 he was a shadow of himself in the regular season.

Really, Duncan IMO has three, maybe four seasons that are on the same level as a prime Magic: 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007.

Now Duncan obviously has a bunch of other solid old man years, but going off rico's post earlier: longevity is great but to me the prime gap is more important. Having 6-7 years of a prime Magic who is the best offensive player in the league gives you a better chance of winning titles than a few years of prime Duncan, along with a series of lesser years where he gives you a few percent chance of winning the title.

It's close, it's not as if Duncan's longevity doesn't matter. These guys are even in a lot of ways, including ability to lift lesser supporting casts: check Magic's teams from '89 to '91. Those are nice names but you have to watch the games to see how much guys like Scott and Cooper depended on Magic to help them score. Magic's post-Kareem work more than matches '01-'03 Duncan on a bad team.

So yeah, I could go either way here, and probably will vote for Duncan in a runoff against Shaq. But for now, this is my vote.

Now it seems like Shaq is the pain competitor here so I'll include an analysis of why I prefer Magic:

Shaq has two years better than anything Magic ever produced, '00 and '01. But Magic measures up quite well after that. '87 is probably no. 3 on the list of best years between them, and after that, I think '89, '90 and '91 measure up pretty well compared to Shaq's other top years '98 and '02. I'm not too high on too many others of Shaq's 90s years given the massive amounts of games he missed.

I can let it go in '01 and '02, I mean 10-12 games is one thing... But an average of 27 games a year from '96-'98 is a real problem. If Magic missed 27 games on one of his late 80s Lakers teams when Kareem had declined, they'd probably not have HCA in any round.

And other than '00 and '01 Playoffs, Shaq is one of the few ATGs who doesn't have the defense argument on Magic. I also think Magic's defense is brought down by Bird fans, when in reality I think the two were similarly impactful on that end in a team sense... Magic was a key to Riley's trapping schemes in the early 80s and remained great in the passing lanes in his later years.

I also explained why I take him over LeBron, whom I'll be voting for next if Magic makes it.

I think 6 is too low for Magic in any case, hope he doesn't drop. Let's reward the greatest offensive player of all time, and the greatest player of the greatest franchise in NBA history.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n1-KIcoIzU[/youtube]

[penbeast0]

I don't know what your notion of "transcendent" player is based on

This wasn't addressed to me, but my qualifier for guys in earlier eras is whether they did something absolutely amazing, potentially GOAT.

Years ago, before I knew this board existed, I had Oscar in my top 5. However, as I've become more aware of how pace affects different eras, I've adjusted my appreciation of mind-boggling stats achieved in a high-pace era. Robertson had those crazy 'triple double' seasons. And thats amazing and all, but on a per 36 minute basis his first 5 seasons played out as 24PTS, 8.4REB, 8.6AST. Which is good, but those were his standout years and he played another 9 years and got steadily worse each year. Compare that with LeBron, who had the typical slow start to his career (most players peak a few years into their career, not on their rookie contract). LeBron had 23.9PTS, 6.3AST and 5.8AST on a per 36 minute basis over the first 5 years of his career.

However, although Oscar looks better, that's comparing Oscar's best stretch with LeBron's worst. And even then, LeBron had a .497fg% vs .486fg% for Oscar, which is a win for LeBron even though it's penalising him for all the 3s he is shooting.

I get tired of the one way pace adjustment Oscar gets.
1. He shot 48.6% fg when guys were playing at a break neck pace - that's better than 49.7% fg today
2. In the early 60s scorers only awarded assists on 50% of baskets - today it is about 20% higher (60%) - so you should multiply his assists by 1.2, plus whatever fg% increase you want to give for 1.
3. The per 46 minutes-Those guys played more than 36 minutes - and probably coasted a little to do so. It's unfair to compare 45 minutes of Oscar against 36 minutes of LeBron unless you add 9 minutes of replacement/sub to LBJ's numbers.

Especially for numbers before 1952, I try to use pace adjusted figures but also efficiency relative to league average -- when the league is shooting 40% in the 50s, and you are shooting 48% as a center, that's great. Today, it's weak. The game was different.

[Colbinii]

Funny, ever heard of a thing called defense?

2000 Kobe was the best perimeter defender in the league. Cassell was well below average.

I wouldn't call Kobe the best perimeter defender in the league that year. He was certainly top 3, but I thought both Payton (arguable) and Eddie Jones (no doubt in my mind) were better than Kobe.

He was 4th on his team in dRTG behind 3 good defenders in Shaq, Harper, and Horry.

In the post-season, he had a 26.7% usage rate with only a 19.3 PER, .517 TS%, and a 107 oRTG/dRTG.

How do you

think that this season was better than 08?

You also state that "LeBron in 08 didn't play defense", well the same argument can be said about Kobe's offense in 00.

LeBron posted 30.0/7.9/7.2 with 1.8 Steals, 29.1 PER, 57 TS%, 116 oRTG, 37.3 AST%, 11.4 TOV%, 33.5% Usage (Led the league) with .242 WS/48.

Yes, some how this Kobe Bryant is comparable? C'Mon man. I know you can't actually believe this.

Kobe posted 22.5/6.3/4.9 with 1.6 Steals, 21.7 PER, 54.6 TS%, 110 oRTG, 22.4 AST%, 11.8 TOV%, 26.8 USG%, with .202 WS/48.

I mean, Colts hit this right on the head. Kobe was closer to Kobe Bryant than he was LeBron James in this year. LeBron carried a team an awful team to 45 wins and the second round of the playoffs. He also was 2nd in the post-season for the Cavs posting a 99 dRTG while leading the team in scoring (Kobe didn't), Rebounding (Kobe didn't), and assists.

I really don't see how they are even in the same universe in terms of players in these respective years.

[kayess]

2000-2003 Kobe is better than 2005-2008 Lebron. 06-10 Kobe is on par with 09-14 Lebron

Wow.

I agree with the first part though. I suppose 2001/2003 are comparable to 2006/2008, but Kobe's playoff run in 2001 is probably the tiebreaker.

The second part though...