RealGM Top 100 List #15

[SactoKingsFan]

Here's West's WOWY data provided by ElGee.

[E-Balla]

Here's West's WOWY. Very impressive.

I'm voting West. For me its between Moses, Dirk, and West and Moses is great but I don't think he was better than West and Dirk was about as good as West for about as long as West but in the pre 08 era he had a fatal flaw that seriously kept him from winning titles (no post game - any great defensive undersized forward could take him out of games).

[Baller2014]

Maybe I'm reading that table wrong, but where does it tell us what the teams win/loss record was with/without West. I'm not really interested in plus/minus stats.

EDIT- nm, I'll do it myself based on the seasons where West missed a notable number of games (for which we have bbllref records).

1964- West misses 8 games, team goes 41-31 with him and 1-7 without him
1965- West misses 6 games, teams goes 47-27 with him and 2-4 without him
1967- West misses 15 games, team goes 32-34 with him and 4-11 without him
1968- West misses 31 games, team goes 33-18 with him and 19-12 without him
1969- West misses 21 games, team goes 43-18 with him and 12-9 without him.
1971- West misses 25 games, team goes 44-25 with him and 4-9 without him.
1973- West misses 13 games, team goes 53-16 with him and 7-6 without him.

So obviously, as would be expected of a guy I called a top 20 player, West is helping his team win. This is good to confirm, but I wasn't in any doubt about that beforehand. On the other hand, the degree to which West is helping them isn't really jumping out at me compared to some of the guys we've been looking at when we do this sort of analysis. The combined stats over this period tell us the Lakers were a 51 pace win team in games West played, and a 38 win pace team in games West didn't play. That's 13 wins. Oscar theoretically was improving his teams 26-27 wins a season, and I can say the same for a lot of other guys (some still on the board, some not). So, long story short; West is very good, I knew that already, but this sample doesn't tell me he's better than K.Malone. Does anyone seriously think K.Malone wouldn't be worth 13 wins to his team?

[ThaRegul8r]

Did you read my post? I gave 2 examples of plainly superior statistical playoff outings from Malone.

And, since you brought up '65, Malone never had any performance in his era equivalent to what West did against Baltimore in '65 when Baylor went down for the rest of the season before the first game could even finish, and West proceeded to put the team on his back and carry them into the Finals (where they were hopelessly outmatched by the six-time defending NBA champion Boston Celtics and prime Russell) when everyone thought they'd be done.

None.

I don't care about the raw numbers (didn't even mention West's raw numbers or any statistics), I care about the performance.

That was in the post of mine you quoted. And I've said that numerous times in other threads. I could say something, but I won't. Be careful the road you decide to go down.

If you're interested in non-statistical outings though, I'm pretty impressed with how he almost took down the showtime Lakers in 88.

Care to elaborate further? Is it similar to West almost taking out Russell's Celtics in '69?

I called you out on misrepresenting what West did in 1965 (beating a bad Baltimore team without Baylor, which you called "carrying them to the finals), and you've basically ignored my reply.

Don't for a minute flatter yourself.

Spoiler:

1965
G1 v. Baltimore – “The Los Angeles Lakers, playing without Elgin Baylor, whipped the Baltmore Bullets 121-115 […] in the opening game of the best-of-seven Western Division National Basketball Assn. semifinal playoffs. Baylor left the game after only five minutes of action when he re-injured his left knee. Preliminary diagnosis indicated a pulled tendon in the knee cap. Jerry West took up the slack—and led all scorers with 49 points” (Eugene Register-Guard, Apr 4, 1965).
G2 v. Baltimore – “Jerry West rebounded his own missed jump shot and scored with 23 seconds to play […] to spark the Los Angeles Lakers to a 118-115 victory over the Baltimore Bullets. The Lakers thus took a 2-0 lead in the National Basketball Association Western Division playoff finals. Taking it upon himself to make up for the loss of the injured Elgin Baylor, West poured in 52 points as the Lakers swept the two games at the Sports Arena. […] The Bullets, who had trailed by as many as 11 points in the fourth quarter, were in front 115-114 after Wayne Hightower’s bucket with 38 seconds to play. But the lithe West then worked himself to within about 15 feet of the bucket and took a spinaround jumper that hit the rim. West snared the rebound and went up for the basket that put Los Angeles in front to stay” (Lodi-News Sentinel, Apr 6, 1965). “In the last minutes of the game […], the lead shifted 10 times. West, who collected 32 points in the second half, clinched the victory in the final 23 seconds. With Los Angeles trailing 115-114, he sank in a layup, then nailed down the verdict by converting two free throws. West connected with 16 of his 38 shots from the floor, and connected on all but one of his 21 from the foul line” (Toledo Blade, Apr 5, 1965). Baltimore coach Buddy Jeannette said West was “the finest clutch player in the game today” (The Times-News, Apr 5, 1965).
G3 v. Baltimore – “Jerry West scored 44 points for Los Angeles, giving him 145 for the three games, but he didn’t receive quite as much help from his teammates” (Rome News-Tribune, Apr 8, 1965), and Baltimore won it 122-115. “ ‘Baltimore gambled more by concentrating on West and letting our other guard go,’ Laker Coach Fred Schaus said. ‘Usually that won’t hurt us when Dick Barnett and Jim King are hitting, but they didn’t give us the lift like they had been.’ Barnett, who missed most of the last quarter because of an aggravated groin injury, made 18 points but King failed to score. Besides [Bailey] Howell [who scored 29 points and grabbed 17 rebounds], the Bullets got plenty of offensive help from Don Ohl, who had 24 points, and Walt Bellamy, who added 20” (ibid).
G4 v. Baltimore – West scored 48 points, but Baltimore took their second in a row, 114-112, to tie the series. “Don Ohl’s jump shot with 48 seconds remaining gave the Baltimore Bullets a 114-112 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers […] and tied their Western Division series in the National Basketball Association playoffs 2-2. The crippled Lakers, playing without Elgin Baylor and Dick Barnett, missed two shots in the last 30 seconds as they failed to tie the score. Baltimore’s Gus Johnson grabbed the final rebound to insure the victory. Although he scored 48 points to run his four-game total to 193, Jerry West of the Lakers missed four shots in the closing two minutes, which helped pave the way for the Baltimore triumph” (Gadsden Times, Apr 10, 1965).
G5 v. Baltimore – West scored 43 points to led LA to a 120-112 win and a 3-2 series lead.
G6 v. Baltimore – “The Cabin Creek Comet has led the Los Angeles Lakers into the championship playoff final of the National Basketball Assn. for the third time in four years. The Cabin Creek Comet is Jerry West, who gained the moniker from his home town in West Virginia. He scored 42 points as the Lakers defeated the Baltimore Bullets 117-115 […] to win their best-of-7 Western Division final playoff, four games to two. A Baltimore turnout of 8,590 saw the 6-foot-3 West, a former All-America at West Virginia University, complete a sensational series against the Bullets and make good his prophecy that the Lakers would win in six games. ‘West was fantastic throughout the series,’ said Fred Schaus, the Laker coach. ‘When Elgin Baylor was injured everyone in the league wrote us off, but we came through.’ Baylor injured a knee early in the first game and underwent an operation, but West stepped into the breach and more than carried the load. He scored 49 points in the first game of the series on April 3 and followed through with games of 52, 44, 48, 43 and 42 for a total of 278 points. His 42 points […] including six clutch points in the closing minutes as the Lakers held off a Baltimore rally. In addition, he handed out five assists as well as making a vital steal. West’s performance overshadowed the 31 points scored by his teammate, Dick Barnett, and Don Ohl’s 34 for the Bullets. It also eclipsed Philadelphia’s victory over Boston that squared their series at 3-3” (Eugene Register-Guard, Apr 14, 1965).

I didn't "misrepresent" anything. (Query: when did Malone ever play a playoff series—against anyone—without Stockton after losing him to injury, and lead the Jazz to victory? I genuinely don't know off the top of my head, as it's been a while now. Nevermind, I know you won't answer that.)

Spoiler:

Kettle, this is Pot: you're black.

You're voicing frustration against the masses for ignoring your points (which to a large degree they haven't), while doing exactly the same to everyone else.


colts18 replied to the shooting efficiency point noting the difference in league avg TS% (he is NOT the first to do this......you've just repeatedly disregarded it). EDIT: Oops, I see you have responded to this.....although without much credibility--->You've elected to completely disregard how things like 1) a 3-point line, 2) changes in what refs will allow when dribbling ("carries", etc) and how that effects getting to the hole, and 3) a slower pace allowing for increased focus on good shot selection (as apposed to just getting it up in a hurry) can all effect league avg TS%, and instead are chalking it all up to worse shooting. Well played, sir.

And saying the Malone's D "clubs Jerry West mercilessly" is beyond a big stretch, fwiw. This too is not a point that has been ignored; it has been (repeatedly) called out as grossly inaccurate based on available evidence. But this too you have chosen to ignore.

I'm supporting Karl Malone for this spot (have been since the #12 vote). But these kinds of tactics and arguments---the strawmen type or blatantly inaccurate type, followed by completely ignoring valid counter-points---do NOT help. It subtly undermines the credibility of everyone attempting to support K.Malone.

I grow weary of these accusations of bad faith, just because people see things differently.

Funny though, that the guy whining about accusations of bad faith since the beginning has no problem doing so in accusing me of "misrepresentation" when it suits him to do so. And, unlike you, I have no vote and no impact whatsoever upon the results of this project. Since the time that I participated in my first project here, I said I post information and

people can make up their own damn minds. I don't care how people vote, as I get no benefit however someone chooses to vote, and I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.

Or whine about how everyone isn't voting for my guy.

Nor do I think the Lakers team was bad outside of Baylor

You wouldn't. I doubt you would even know who was even left on the team considering you've already written off the era as weak. That'd be those previously aforementioned "pre-conceived views."

I'm tiring of this, though, as it isn't accomplishing anything constructive. I'm not a participant in the project, as I'm here to consider other viewpoints in order aid me to make my own decision—as viewpoints other than my own are valuable, not push anyone else to decide a certain way, and also to contribute qualitative data I have that some may find interesting. As I haven't yet decided where to rank Malone, I don't want to be tainted by this, subsequently affecting my ranking of him. I also don't wish to rip on a player either, as I derive no benefit from doing so. And, frankly, there are also better uses of my time. I'm not trying to convince you to vote for anyone, you're already set in your views and won't change, and so I don't even know what it is I'm doing here.

[ardee]

Maybe I'm reading that table wrong, but where does it tell us what the teams win/loss record was with/without West. I'm not really interested in plus/minus stats.

EDIT- nm, I'll do it myself based on the seasons where West missed a notable number of games (for which we have bbllref records).

1964- West misses 8 games, team goes 41-31 with him and 1-7 without him
1965- West misses 6 games, teams goes 47-27 with him and 2-4 without him
1967- West misses 15 games, team goes 32-34 with him and 4-11 without him
1968- West misses 31 games, team goes 33-18 with him and 19-12 without him
1969- West misses 21 games, team goes 43-18 with him and 12-9 without him.
1971- West misses 25 games, team goes 44-25 with him and 4-9 without him.
1973- West misses 13 games, team goes 53-16 with him and 7-6 without him.

So obviously, as would be expected of a guy I called a top 20 player, West is helping his team win. This is good to confirm, but I wasn't in any doubt about that beforehand. On the other hand, the degree to which West is helping them isn't really jumping out at me compared to some of the guys we've been looking at when we do this sort of analysis. The combined stats over this period tell us the Lakers were a 51 pace win team in games West played, and a 38 win pace team in games West didn't play. That's 13 wins. Oscar theoretically was improving his teams 26-27 wins a season, and I can say the same for a lot of other guys (some still on the board, some not). So, long story short; West is very good, I knew that already, but this sample doesn't tell me he's better than K.Malone. Does anyone seriously think K.Malone wouldn't be worth 13 wins to his team?

that's not +/- that's with-without SRS.

SRS is a much better reflector of team performance than wins-losses.

[ThaRegul8r]

Maybe I'm reading that table wrong, but where does it tell us what the teams win/loss record was with/without West. I'm not really interested in plus/minus stats.

EDIT- nm, I'll do it myself based on the seasons where West missed a notable number of games (for which we have bbllref records).

1964- West misses 8 games, team goes 41-31 with him and 1-7 without him
1965- West misses 6 games, teams goes 47-27 with him and 2-4 without him
1967- West misses 15 games, team goes 32-34 with him and 4-11 without him
1968- West misses 31 games, team goes 33-18 with him and 19-12 without him
1969- West misses 21 games, team goes 43-18 with him and 12-9 without him.
1971- West misses 25 games, team goes 44-25 with him and 4-9 without him.
1973- West misses 13 games, team goes 53-16 with him and 7-6 without him.

So obviously, as would be expected of a guy I called a top 20 player, West is helping his team win. This is good to confirm, but I wasn't in any doubt about that beforehand. On the other hand, the degree to which West is helping them isn't really jumping out at me compared to some of the guys we've been looking at when we do this sort of analysis. The combined stats over this period tell us the Lakers were a 51 pace win team in games West played, and a 38 win pace team in games West didn't play. That's 13 wins. Oscar theoretically was improving his teams 26-27 wins a season, and I can say the same for a lot of other guys (some still on the board, some not). So, long story short; West is very good, I knew that already, but this sample doesn't tell me he's better than K.Malone. Does anyone seriously think K.Malone wouldn't be worth 13 wins to his team?

that's not +/- that's with-without SRS.

SRS is a much better reflector of team performance than wins-losses.

It's what suits the agenda best.

[Owly]

Bluntly, I don't. I part because I think his use of raw stats without acknowledgment of pace influence (and leaving out ts% norms which would favour other candidates) suggests a fine dedication to Moses but is of limited persuasive value for telling the full picture. Likewise he showed us two dominant years in PoTY, but neglected that Erving, Karl Malone, Pettit and West all more PotY shares (and didn't note that in those years the legendary players playing in that period were just entering their prime years (Bird), pre-prime (Magic) or post prime (Jabbar) and the best player who had what might be considered a players peak years (27-29) was George Gervin (for one year).

Moses was MVP in 79,82,83.

First, you don't chose your competition or your peers.

Likewise he showed us two dominant years in PoTY, but neglected that Erving, Karl Malone, Pettit and West all more PotY shares

My post was about dominant single seasons, not cumulative shares over a career.

... (and didn't note that in those years the legendary players playing in that period were just entering their prime years (Bird), pre-prime (Magic) or post prime (Jabbar) and the best player who had what might be considered a players peak years (27-29) was George Gervin (for one year).

Moses has no control over his rivals' timetables. Furthermore, this weak-era criticism can similarly be made against many who have been already voted in, including these winners of both the MVP and FMVP in the same year:

But no one is arguing it is under his control (unless I missed an unusual and very digressionary page). But when you make points about dominance and suggestions of consensus as the best player competition been factored in by literally every voter here, or else Mikan would have to have gone in the top, say, six.

At DQuinn1575, this post is within the context of previous posts about the unanimity of the '82 and '83 RealGM PotY votes. For what it's worth he finished third in '79 in that project, garnering none of the 14 first place votes. If you're not just a "more MVPs = better player" guy (and I don't think you are) then I'd repeat my request to point out why he was good or the right choice in '79 (by MVP voters)

So for '79 you might have to argue why Moses was actually better than Jabbar, rather than it being a case of, "Well Jabbar's clearly significantly worse than last year, and we didn't give it to him then, so we can't possibly give it him this year even if he is the league's best player. Plus his team wasn't great and he's won it enough. Hey Moses broke out, and his team exceeded what we thought they'd do, and he was better than any other [non-KAJ] player and he played big minutes." Which is how a Jabbar or metrics advocates might suggest was what went on there.

BIRD - graduated high school same year as Moses- 1974. Was MVP 84,85,86 - came to league pretty much in prime.

JABBAR- was league MVP in 77 and 80. To be compared to Jabbar 79-81 is pretty darned good.

DOCTOR J- NBA MVP in 81; hard to say he wasn't prime in this time.

MAGIC - In his 4th year as pro in 83.


Top player in the league 1979-1983 -

Vote for Moses

For the sake of clarity does the bolded mean he was the best player for the entireity off the span or just on average over the span? I won't engage on that argument for now (if I do at all), but given one means substantially more than the other (only a small number could hold the former accolade, wheras each time you move forward one year you could have a different best player over that particular 5 year span).

As before addressing the '82 and '83 campaigns in particular because that was the background of the discussion, of those mentioned Bird was in what would typically be early prime years, Erving has one late prime year, Magic and Jabbar are outside the typical primes years.

cf:

Summarizing the data in my previous post.

Number of Years as Dominant #1 Player
Michael Jordan 6
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 4
Bill Russell 4
Larry Bird 2
LeBron James 2
Moses Malone 2
Shaquille O'Neal 2
Hakeem Olajuwon 1
Wilt Chamberlain 1
Kevin Garnett 1
Magic Johnson 1

And assuming all eras are equal (both in terms of absolute league strength and MVP/PoY competition), that the RGMPoY project was infallible (fwiw I haven't been through it like I should, but I wouldn't just take someone else's rankings by themselves), that the degree of consensus is the only factor of importance (not the percieved margin of superiority, which whilst not unrelated to consenus isn't the same thing) and that peak is all that matters, Moses has an excellent case based on the above.

However ...
Despite perception of a 80s golden age the 80s (that is primarily 80s players) consistently brings the second fewest players to top x rankings (50s offering the fewest, 00s perhaps not really having enough lists and still not quite having all primarily 00 based players retired; but I'm confident it has come off well so far and will continue to do so). Whilst Magic and Bird arrived the rosters didn't magically and massively turn over from the apparently drug addled, problematic late 70s.

But I whilst I can live with romanticisation of the 80s whilst not necessarily agreeing with it, the MVP contention is something I will raise (again). I've tried it before here I'll take a different angle with you. When's a players prime? 25-31 (with 28 as the middle)? Here's the guys who should be peaking to compete with Moses in his "dominant" seasons. http://bkref.com/tiny/zBS9M (I've looked at WS/48 leaders too)

Early prime (25,26): Bird, Dantley, Moncrief ('83), Marques Johnson, Sikma ('82)

Peak or near (27, 28, 29): Gervin ('82), Parish (productivity peak, but limited minutes due to foul trouble), English, Gus Williams, Sikma ('83, actually worse than '82)

Late prime (30, 31): Erving ('82), Gervin ('83)

Moses was competing at his peak with guys who were at the start or end of their prime, outside their prime (Magic, KAJ), or of those who were actually peaking, players who aren't top 30 all-time (Gervin might rate the highest, based on the last list and recent published lists around mid-30s though depending on weightings of D, he could drop).

I suspect most participants believe their choice (and speaking for myself, at I'd think at, off the top of my head least the 6 of the following guys) could have collared, or at very least would have warranted, decisive MVP/PoY decisions had their peak came at that point in place of Moses.

His metrics suggest he was the best player in the league in those years but not overwhelmingly so (Erving close in '82, Moncrief, Bird to a lesser degree Magic in '83). Even if that was a particularly difficult era to put up outstanding metrics (and I don't know if it was, and if seemed to be, which it admittedly does somewhat look, how you would distinguish it being difficult from players just not being able to do it) many other candidates stack up favourably in terms of their peak metrics.

And then theres longevity. Whilst in raw career years or minutes played Moses has excellent longevity the standard across those years varies hugely. Whilst all but 4 years of Karl Malones career were all-star years (not counting the lockout year here, because whilst technically there wasn't a game, he was the MVP, he was going to be there) and a further one would have warrented being one in '03 but for conference allignment (Duncan, Nowitzki, Garnett, Marion and Webber the (voted) forwards in the West; Carter (forward?), J O'Neal, Antoine Walker and Jamaal Mashburn were the forwards in the East) actually you'd think Malone would have got in either because he was better than Webber that year anyway or on a career achievement thing, maybe it was put out that he didn't want to go and was left off the ballot. Anyway, massive digression aside, the point is he maintained his high standard, stats wise, accolade wise, however you want to measure it for a very long time. And he's the extreme example but other than Dr J the candidates here generally maintained their peak (and Dr J had 2 strong primes, just oddly seperate). Moses had a 5 year spell as a top 5 guy (admittedly at the top of that 5 for at least a couple of those years) had a peripheral comeback year in '85, then maybe top 10 in '84 and '87 then a whole bunch of not elite player years. He wasn't bad but he wasn't consistently excellent in career Win Shares NBA/ABA combined he's behind K Malone, Stockton, Gilmore, narrowly behind Nowitzki and Erving and narrowly ahead of Robinson and Barkley. Make it NBA only and he "overtakes" Erving and Gilmore, but falls behind Robinson, Barkley and Reggie Miller and is close to West. Use hpanic7342's career Hollinger EWA varient (with defensive adjustments, playoff adjustments and era adjustment - more recent being better; list being made circa 2009) and Moses is behind Robinson, Malone, Erving, Barkley and narrowly behind Nowitzki (and Ewing and Gilmore again) and fairly narrowly ahead of West. Not that any one of these is perfect but we're getting an idea that career value added doesn't necessarily favour Moses.

And as noted by others if you want dominance there's Mikan who gives metrics and 7 championships in 8 years.

None of which is to say Erving, Bird, Magic and Jabbar weren't good at that point, or couldn't be said to have a prime beyond what I'd suggest are broadly typical prime years (especially if your standard for what consitutes prime years is about an absolute standard rather than in comparison with better years). But clearly they were a way off their apexes (Bird somewhat close). How they were producing at that time is more relevent than their name value in terms of the competition for best player at that particular time.

As you will realise with regard to the specific years in question ('82, '83) the Jabbar point is moot as is Dr J.'s (though there would also be limited persuasiveness to the logic that if I considered '82 and '83 to be low MVP competition years, saying Erving got MVP in '81). Magic was drafted as an underclassman and if you're talking about years of experience his second year was substantially lost to injury. So being a "fourth year" player (in the second of the 2 years in question) is putting a substantial gloss on things (picking the second year of the span, counting an injury hit year, using experience instead of age).

As for Bird I've already said he was early prime, but it doesn't help to shift the goalposts between only NBA years counts for Magic, to high school graduation is what counts for Bird.

Hakeem Olajuwon 1994
Criticism: Jordan left the NBA to play baseball, so this peak doesn't really count.

Michael Jordan 1991, 1992
Criticism: True greats, Bird and Magic were exiting primes before retiring early. Barkley, Malone, Drexler, Ewing, Robinson were pretenders, not contenders.

Shaquille O'Neal 2000
Criticism: Positional rivals Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing, Sabonis declining. Dominated the likes of Rik Smits.

LeBron James 2012, 2013
Criticism: Thin competition with Kobe, Dirk, Garnett, Duncan declining and Durant just entering prime.

As Clyde has noted these aren't particularly strong arguments in general. If someone were making a case for these players in a specific position, based on the players' dominance in said years (and specifically the unanimity of their backing for PotY/MVP) these sorts of cases might have some value though they are oddly overstated ("so this peak doesn't really count"). But in some context they might at least warrent a rebuttal (e.g. "Jordan got an MVP and multiple PotY's over Bird and Magic and has remarkable advanced stats that indicate a very high value in the 80s"; "O'Neal's positional rivals were declining at his peak and this warrants mentioning however even when young versus those players at their peak or prime O'Neal did very well cf: http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... =olajuha01 ; http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... =robinda01 ; http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ewingpa01; his metrics also suggest strong value in both the regular season and playoffs prior to his consensus peak years" etc).

But whilst I think the Shaq thing was mentioned, nobody decided to post flimsy cases for Olajuwon based solely whether he had consensus support for MVP/PotY. So it wasn't necessary to put an "MJ wasn't there" caveat (and specifically not "Jordan left the NBA to play baseball, so this peak doesn't really count" which would be a terrible rebuttal, acting as though all that matters is being the best player and if you're not that, the year counts for nothing).


In summary
(1) Accolades/awards by themselves make a poor foundation for arguing a player in a certain position (it's a second hand opinion, it might be a good one, but if it is you'll be able to support it with numbers and or qualatitive analysis and perhaps contemporary reports and rankings as additional info). Official ones like MVP are often driven by context (e.g. narrative, desire not to give it to a multiple-time winner etc).

(2) The probably best (other) guy in at his peak in the MVP years in question was '82 Gervin (who landed in the mid 30s last time). Other guys like Bird and Erving were at the edge of what are typically a players prime years, Magic and KAJ outside the typical primes and clearly less then their peak selves (Erving arguably close in '82 if you don't mind low-ish minutes for an elite player and don't rate his ABA years - at either end of the court). So in this specific instance PotY share dominance

(3) These things don't make Moses a bad player, or not a legitimate candidate here, but it does mean league strength/competition for accolades should be factored in. And then there is plenty more to look at where metric peaks, career metrics, career PotY shares, career MVP shares, WoWY and +/- variants tend to suggest that other players might be better than Moses.

[drza]

Box Scores

Regular season, 10 year primes per100 possessions
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 29.0 pts (56% TS), 6 reb, 6.4 asts (TO not recorded)

Playoffs, 10 year primes per 100 possessions
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 26.9 pts (55.6% TS), 4.7 reb, 5 ast (TO not recorded)

Once again disclaimer: these are West's actual numbers, not per 100 possessions.

drza, thanks for the stats. Could you explain what you mean by "actual numbers"? These aren't his postseason averages over that span.

Excellent catch. I used B-R's click feature to get those 10-year numbers, and it looks like I must have used West's postseason per 36 numbers by mistake. I've gone back and corrected the source post, and I'll put it again here:

Playoffs, 10 year primes
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 31.8 pts (55.6% TS), 5.6 reb, 5.9 ast (TO not recorded)

That said, the arguments that I made in that post didn't materially change with the correction. I still struggle to see where I would pick West over Dirk. The boxscore correction indicates that their postseason scoring volumes are more similar (though Dirk still likely has the per 100 possessions advantage). Dirk also has the scoring efficiency advantage, though if we assume a 3-point line for West this likely evens out as well. And of course West was a playmaker as well as a scorer, which works to his advantage.

But at the end of the day, I feel like Dirk's uniqueness allows him to be the more valuable player than West. He can essentially match West's scoring and efficiency, but as a 7-footer he's able to do it in ways that deform defenses to a larger degree and creates more mismatches for his team than what I believe West could do. I also mentioned durability and health as advantages for Dirk, which they are, but my rating him above West has more to do with what I perceive to be them at their bests than those durability/longevity advantages.

[Owly]

The voting so far
Karl Malone: 3 - Baller2014 (post 2); trex_8063 (39); FJS (54)
David Robinson: 1 - Owly (post 11);
Moses Malone: 2 - DannyNoonan1221 (post 23); DQuinn1575 (30);
Jerry West: 5 - Clyde Frazier (post 33); ShaqAttack3234 (36, 52); Moonbeam (49); Warspite (58); GC Pantalones (62)

Other expressed voting instincts (seeminly not just player comps, but suggestions of voting without quite voting):
90sAllDecade: West leaning
colts18: West leaning
drza: Robinson or Nowitzki leaning

Areas where votes might need further reasoning
trex_8063 (39): States support (assuming this means will vote) for K Malone, but no reasoning
FJS (54): Reasoning, one line “Give me the guy with the awesome and outstanding longetivity.” Plus cited concurrence with Baller2014 (“I couldn’t have put it better” which might be enough).

Short Reasoning but probably okay
ShaqAttack3234 (36): Reasoning is basically see last thread, however post 52 does an abbreviated version of his previous reasoning, so probably okay.
Warspite (58): On holiday, short reasoning, but probably okay.
GC Pantalones (62): Short reasoning, WoWY cited.

Actually my reasoning was probably short as well. Anyway I haven't checked on voting credentials and so welcome any checks.

[drza]

I tend to think that both David Robinson and Dirk Nowitzki should be getting more traction than they're receiving, when compared to West and the Malones. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'll be voting either the Admiral or Dirk this thread, once it all settles out. Let's start with some facts and see where this goes:

Spoiler:

Box Scores

Regular season, 10 year primes per100 possessions
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 29.0 pts (56% TS), 6 reb, 6.4 asts (TO not recorded)
Moses Malone (1979 - 88): 31.5 pts (57.2% TS), 17.4 reb, 2 asts, 4.4 TO
Karl Malone (1990 - 1999): 36.8 pts (59.3% TS), 14.5 reb, 5 ast, 4 TO
David Robinson (90 - 2000): 33.3 pts (58.8% TS), 15.9 reb, 4 ast, 3.9 TO
Dirk Nowitzki (2002 - 2011): 34.5 pts (58.4% TS), 12.3 reb, 4 ast, 2.8 TO

Playoffs, 10 year primes per 100 possessions
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 26.9 pts (55.6% TS), 4.7 reb, 5 ast (TO not recorded)
Moses Malone (1979 - 88): 28.9 pts (54.5%), 16.8 reb, 2 asts, 3.4 TO
Karl Malone (1990 - 1999): 35 pts (52.9%), 15 reb, 4.4 asts, 3.7 TO
David Robinson (90 - 2000): 30 pts (54.6%), 16.1 reb, 3.8 ast, 3.7 TO
Dirk Nowitzki (2002 - 2011): 33.4 pts (58.5%), 13.5 reb, 3.5 ast, 3.0 TO

Once again disclaimer: these are West's actual numbers, not per 100 possessions. The last estimate that I heard was that West's Lakers were playing at about 120 pace, so if you want you could mentally scale his numbers back a bit compared to the others. But really, I think the point comes across anyway. In the box scores, when looked at per 100 possessions West doesn't at all separate himself from his competitors for this spot in the box score. I acknowledge that his relative shooting percentage difference compared to his actual peers was higher than his raw TS% reflects, and also that the 3-point line would likely improve both his volume and scoring efficiency. Even with that said, in the box scores his scoring is less impressive to me than DIrk's, definitely, and the big men are in the discussion with him.

Going more general, I would say that Dirk clearly separates himself as a scorer from all four of the others currently getting consideration. Only Malone can match his volume, but in the postseason Dirk's efficiency blows the mail-man away. Going purely off of the box scores, I would say that Dirk is the most impressive offensive player of these five.

On the flip side, I don't even think I need to make the case that Robinson is by-far the best defensive player in this group. I mean, he laps the field. But even with that, when you look at the boxes from both the regular and the postseason, the Admiral was extremely competitive with both Malones on offense (from scoring volume to scoring efficiency to passing, Robinson holds his own in both seasons). And again, he is on the short list for greatest defenders of all-time in the same package.

Non-box-score individual quantification

We only have full databall data for (just about) the complete career of Dirk. We have +/- data from 1998 on for Robinson and Karl. For the older players, we have WOWY data and/or team transition data for West and Moses. Because of the different scales, we can only get so quantitative with the comparisons of this data. But a few notes:

*West's WOWY data marks him as one of the biggest impact players of his era right along with Russell and Oscar. He measures out as super elite.

*Moses' WOWY and junction numbers weren't nearly as impressive. Mainly from memory from previous projects, but I recall Moses' non-boxscore estimated impacts to be far more pedestrian than West's and not very impressive for a super-duper star.

*Dirk measured out as elite in the +/- studies. In Doc MJ's 1998 - 2012 spreadsheet, he was essentially tied with Tim Duncan for the 4th/5th slots in both 3-year (+10.2) and 5-year (+9.1) peak behind Shaq/LeBron/KG. And Dirk's prime was very long. As I pointed out in the Dirk vs Kobe post, he was posting high +/- scores on pretty much a yearly basis from 2003 on.

*I'll post the Karl and Robinson +/- section from the comparison post I did on them:

Malone
98: 9.0 (+8.8 ORAPM; 0.2 DRAPM)
99: 5.8 (+6.4 ORAPM; -.6 DRAPM)
00: 5.5 (+6.9 ORAPM; -1.4 DRAPM)

Robinson
98:7.4 (+1.2 ORAPM; +6.2 DRAPM)
99: 8.9 (+2.3 ORAPM; +6.6 DRAPM)
00: 8.3 (+2.7 ORAPM; +5.6 DRAPM)

For those that don't know, this data came from Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM spreadsheet from 1998 - 2012. I only did 1998 - 2000 for both players, because we don't have +/- data in 2001 and only partial for 2002, and by 2003 both were on their last legs. I found these numbers revealing for a few reasons. Malone's value in these years was almost all offense, while Robinson's value was primarily defense.

*For those that believe 1998 to be in Karl's peak, it is interesting that his +9.0 normalized RAPM score from 1998 is almost exactly the same as Dirk's 5-year peak (+9.1) but noticeably lower than Dirk's 3-year (+10.2) and single-season (+11.5) peaks.

*Similarly, '98 Karl and '99 Robinson both had almost the exact same overall normalized RAPM score, though as mentioned Karl's was almost all offensive and Robinson's was primarily defensive.

Mini conclusion: to the degree of granularity that this type of approach and data allows, I would say that West, Dirk, Karl and Robinson all demonstrate impact stats on the order of what I would expect from the elite and that they all separate themselves from Moses here.

Stylistics and eliminations

I just don't think that Moses had the impact of the others, so I'm setting him aside as a candidate for now.

I'm also really having trouble seeing how I would vote for West here, because I just don't see where I would choose him over Dirk. On the link that Clyde Frazier posted for pace adjusted numbers ( https://docs.google.com/a/umich.edu/spr ... 2YlE#gid=0 ), they compare West offensively to Ray Allen and defensively to Manu Ginobili. West would be more of a combo guard than Ray, but on the whole I think it's an interesting comp. But offensively, I just can't see West posing the mismatch that Dirk does and Dirk's scoring volume and efficiency (with any kind of pace adjustment) are significantly better than West's. Ginobili actually measures out as one of the better per-minute defenders among perimeter players in the DRAPM study around a solid +3 per year. Generally speaking, the very best defensive wings/perimeter players in that study measure out around +3 - +4 vs the elite bigs getting up more around +7. So if we expect something similar from West, it still doesn't really close the gap with Dirk (who's own 5-year DRAPM peak is also around +3). It's been noted that Dirk is a strong defensive rebounder in the postseason, and that he's a solid man defender with an offensive skillset that allows for defensive role players to slot in around him that scores at such great efficiency that it allows his defenses more opportunities to set up.

And that's not even getting into durability and longevity, which aren't trivial and Dirk has clear advantages there as well.

Thus, just on the whole, I'll be voting Dirk before West. So I'll set West aside as a candidate.

This leaves Karl vs Robinson. And as I mentioned before, Robinson pretty much matches Malone in box score offensive production in both the regular and post seasons. Robinson's own postseason scoring efficiency questions are less harmful in a comp with the Mailman, who shares some of the same issues. But Robinson was still an exceptional defender. As Colts18 has pointed out, his career (nor his prime) really ended with the 1997 injury. In 1999 Robinson was a +9 normalized RAPM player that had clearly the highest defensive impact on the team (on a squad that won with defense first), and so much of the '99 Spurs' blazing finish and romp through the postseason was tied to their stifling defense that Robinson was spear-heading. Duncan was a beast that year, so not minimizing him at all. My point here is that 1999 helped prove that Robinson's skill set allowed him to be an elite-impact player whose impact could translate to the postseason on a team scaled up to championship caliber. Robinson's step-function added value as a rookie and the disaster of the 1997 Spurs without Robinson (even factoring in potential tanking) are further evidence of his huge value.

Malone has the monstrous longevity that's to his advantage (as he has on most players), but I believe that Robinson was just the better player. And as I weigh quantity vs quality, I keep finding myself tipped more towards what I perceive to be the quality.

Bottom line:

Yeah, as I expected when I began this post, the front-runners for me in this slot are either Dirk Nowitzki or David Robinson. So far most of this thread has been about West and the Malones, but hopefully there are some others willing to chime in on Dirk and DRob to help me parse out how to evaluate them vs. each other.

I don't think anybody is disputing that David Robinson has highest-impact prime of the remaining candidates, but your analysis doesn't once mention the fact that prime David Robinson only exists for 7 or 8 seasons where Moses, Dirk, West, and Karl (and Barkely who is curiously being omitted from this discussion) ALL give you at least 11. You do realize that represents a HUGE sticking point in the valuation when you are considering an entire career and not your favorite 5 or 6-year composite, right?

And assuming West's modern-day impact would fall short of his past play based on any "era-transference"-centered argument doesn't hold water when the guy who was his peer and has a game that CLEARLY ports far far worse than his was voted in at #12 in this very project.

I'm with you on Nowitski 110% though, I'm actually shocked at the lack of traction he's gotten, particularly based on board momentum he was riding going into the project. If I were voting here it would be a clear Dirk vs. West discussion, any talks about other guys (Barkley/D-Rob/Karl/Moses) would serve as table-setters for later threads.

I realize that Robinson's longevity is clearly a big sticking point, and of course I see why. I did address this in a huge Robinson vs. Karl Malone post that I put into at least two or three threads. Here's the longevity portion of that post, which works for me but I'd understand if it doesn't work for others:

Longevity

The absolute first thing that has to be mentioned in a Malone vs. Robinson comparison, even before we get to the numbers, is the difference in prime longevity. Malone is the iron man of NBA history, never really missing a game over 20 years and with a graceful decline in his box score numbers. As I pointed out when I first posted the 10-year prime box score data (seen below for Malone and Robinson), Malone has about four more seasons at this exact same level while I had to add an extra year (to make up for the missed '97) and include some years when Robinson was "playing 2nd fiddle" to Duncan in order for the Admiral to get his 10 year prime. And even in one of those seasons (1992), Robinson got hurt and missed the playoffs. When looked at that way, the longevity gap seems insurmountable. And maybe it is. But.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Robinson was actually significantly better than Malone. Suppose, in fact, that Robinson at his best was as good as Larry Bird. If Robinson were that good, would longevity still be an obstacle that couldn't be overcome? Seemingly not, right, since Bird was voted in at #10 and longevity king Malone is still waiting on the call. So before go any further, let's stop for a moment and compare Robinson's longevity to Bird's.

Bird: 9 prime years from 1980 - 1988, one full missed season (1989), 2 lesser but productive seasons (1990 and 91) and a final season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season.

Robinson: 7 prime years from 1990 - 1996, one full missed season (1997), four more "side kick" seasons (1998 - 2001), one productive but lesser season where his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season (2002) and a final season in which he was physically limited but still a strong role player in limited minutes.

Is there really a difference there? The key, for me, is how to characterize those 1998 - 2001 years for Robinson. Because he was only playing 32 mpg over that stretch and Duncan was acknowledged as the star, most (including me) considered these to be post-prime years for Robinson. But while we're here, let's compare Robinson's 1998 - 2001 stretch to the late prime of one player that's already been voted in, and to the early prime of Bird himself:

Regular Season
1998 - 2001 Robinson: 32 mpg, 17.5 ppg (57% TS), 9.7 rpg, 2 apg, 2.1 TO; 25.3 PER, 47 WS
2005 - 2008 Duncan: 34 mpg, 19.5 ppg (55% TS), 11 rpg, 3 apg, 2.4 TO, 25 PER, 46.2 WS
1980 - 1983 Bird: 38 mpg, 22.2 ppg (55% TS), 10.8 rpg, 5.4 apg, 3.3 TO, 21.7 PER, 48.4 WS

Playoffs
98 - 01 Robinson: 35 mpg, 17.4 ppg (53% TS), 11.7 rpg, 2.3 apg, 2.3 TO, 24 PER, 6.9 WS (43 games)
05 - 08 Duncan: 38 mpg, 22.4 ppg (54% TS), 12.3 rpg, 3.1 apg, 2.7 TO, 25.8 PER, 11.1 WS (73 games)
80 - 83 Bird: 42 mpg, 20.5 ppg (51% TS), 12.8 rpg, 5.8 apg, 3.5 TO, 19.9 PER, 6.4 WS (44 games)

Now, the point of this isn't to make this a Robinson vs Duncan or Bird thread. But just take a look at those statlines again. Robinson was only playing a few minutes less than Duncan, and outside of scoring volume (Duncan by a bit) he was contributing very similarly in the box scores in both regular and postseason to Duncan during years universally included in his prime. Bird was playing much heavier minutes than Robinson, and was also the player most helped by pace here (for example, Robinson's rebound rate is higher despite Bird's higher raw boards due to pace). But even with that, Robinson had almost as many win shares (used as a cumulative catch-all stat, as opposed to a rate one) as Bird in the regular season and more in the playoffs with a much higher PER and WS/48. Again, these are years universally included in Bird's "productive prime" years tallies.

Plus, because we have RAPM studies starting in 1998, we know that Robinson's RAPM from 1998 - 2000 (using Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM method) was +7.4, +8.9, and +8.3 (with a heavy defensive influence, notching DRAPM's that match the best that we ever saw from Duncan in his career). Those overall RAPMs in the ~8.2 range couldn't quite keep up with the best-of-the-best in the study, but they were right there on average with the average of the highest three career RAPM scores of Nash (+8.2 3-year average) or Kobe (+8.0) and just below 2005 - 08 Duncan (4-year average 9.3 RAPM). Robinson wasn't playing as many minutes as any of them, so they would have had higher volume impacts on game than these years of Robinson, but the point is that Robinson appeared to be still having huge impact on games from 98 - 2001 according to both the box scores AND the +/- data.

Thus, if we return to our Bird longevity comparison, I now see it:

Bird: 9 prime years from 1980 - 1988, one full missed season (1989), 2 lesser but productive seasons (1990 and 91) and a final season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season

Robinson: 7 prime years from 1990 - 1996, one full missed season (1997), four more almost prime seasons on the order of 1980 - 1983 Bird (1998 - 2001), one lesser but productive season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season (2002) and a final season in which he was physically limited but still a strong role player.

Suddenly, Robinson's longevity looks EXACTLY like Bird's to me. And if Bird's career length is the gate-keeper for being ranked this high, suddenly Robinson is eligible. If his prime is strong enough.

[drza]

Thus, just on the whole, I'll be voting Dirk before West. So I'll set West aside as a candidate.

I'm with you on Nowitski 110% though, I'm actually shocked at the lack of traction he's gotten, particularly based on board momentum he was riding going into the project. If I were voting here it would be a clear Dirk vs. West discussion, any talks about other guys (Barkley/D-Rob/Karl/Moses) would serve as table-setters for later threads.

There's a good chance i'll be pushing for dirk once west gets voted in (unless there's an alternative runoff...), and they're very close for me anyway. I'm doing my best not to prop up dirk too early, as i long believed that malone and barkley ranked ahead of him in all time PFs. Dirk's probably one of my top 5 favorite players ever, so i'm going to re-evaluate the 3 one more time (and i'm sure there will be enough discussion here to help) before making a final decision on him.

Interestingly, I'm not much of a Dirk fan. I don't actively dislike him, but he's never been someone that I've pulled for. The funny thing is that I feel like I was pushing for him to be held in a higher regard than he was on these boards before the 2011 title, and I expressed this by comparing him to Charles Barkley as a way to support his strengths. Now, years later, Dirk has gotten some votes while Barkley hasn't.

The 2011 title run is the elephant in the room, because it has the potential to be a "winner's bias" effect on the way Dirk is looked at. As I mentioned, that title in a vacuum didn't force me to re-evaluate Dirk's whole career, because I was already pretty high on him. However, the reality is that the 2011 title run DID show that Dirk could have a larger impact that he had previously displayed. If we use RAPM instead of just looking at the ring, we see this:

DIrk's averaged normalized RAPM:

2003 - 2008: +7.5
2009 - 2010: +5.1
2011 - 2012: +11.2

To put it in perspective when compared to his peers, that +7.5 average that Dirk was rocking through his 2006 Finals run and 2007 MVP would have fit right in the range of the 5-year peaks of Duncan-era David Robinson (+7.2), Kobe (+7.5) and Nash (+7.9). However, that +11 peak (driven by his career-best +11.5 normalized score in 2011) pushed him into super-elite RAPM territory, right at the best 1-year scores for Duncan (+11.4) and Wade (+11.8) and beyond anything that Robinson, Kobe or Nash have on record in this time window.

So for me, Dirk's 2011 run DID elevate him compared to where he was before. But not just because he captured the ring. More-so because he demonstrated a higher level of impact than he ever had before. And part of this impact may have been due to Carlisle figuring out how best to use him and/or Cuban surrounding him with players that fit Dirk's game perfectly to maximize his benefit. But even if true, his ability to reach that level is to his credit regardless of the circumstances.

[Baller2014]

I'll be brief, because I'm also a little tired of arguing this with you on these points, and as you say you're not going to change your mind either.

Care to elaborate further? Is it similar to West almost taking out Russell's Celtics in '69?

West wasn't exactly playing by himself in 1969, and since I rank Magic above Russell (let alone old man Russell) it's pretty clear which of the two I'm likely to find more impressive. Yeh, yeh, West put up X volume stats... and adjusted for pace West's stats in 1969 are worse than years Malone had. I covered this.

I called you out on misrepresenting what West did in 1965 (beating a bad Baltimore team without Baylor, which you called "carrying them to the finals), and you've basically ignored my reply.

Don't for a minute flatter yourself.

I'm sorry, but saying "he carried them to the finals", without clarifying that all they had to do to get to the finals was beat a 37 win -2 SRS team was a bit misleading. Yeh, I get West helped carry them to victory over that 37 win -2 SRS team, but is that something that is entirely unremarkable. Lots of star players can carry bad teams (assuming West's team was especially bad) on their backs, and have done so in the past against much tougher opponents than the 37 win -2 SRS Baltimore team West beat. There's no reason to think there was anything relatively special about this instance. I mean, you say it's not the numbers that are impressing you, just the media praise of his play, but that's the kind of rhetoric I am hesitant to get swept up, while completely disregarding the actual stats. Stats wise, this is West's best playoffs ever, and Karl Malone has multiple playoffs which are clearly more impressive statistically.

I didn't "misrepresent" anything. (Query: when did Malone ever play a playoff series—against anyone—without Stockton after losing him to injury, and lead the Jazz to victory? I genuinely don't know off the top of my head, as it's been a while now. Nevermind, I know you won't answer that.)

It seems ridiculous that we should punish Karl Malone because Stockton (like Malone) never got hurt. Once Stockton finally did get hurt, and played about 35% less minutes (and played worse) in 1998, the Jazz were basically just as good as the previous year when he'd been 100%. Karl Malone wasn't at his peak anymore, but that certainly suggests Malone wasn't relying on Stockton to make his teams good. Again, we don't have enough data to go on because Stockton was never hurt.

Statistically K.Malone's prime playoff years, or peak playoff year, or best 9 playoff years, all come out ahead of West when we factor in pace adjustment of some kind. I think that's important. Especially since playoff supremacy is basically West's only argument, he's getting killed on longevity, regular season play and D.

[penbeast0]

To be fair to Baller and despite his rather one sided refusal to acknowledge any adjustments that don't favor his preferred candidates, I think people do underestimate the role of the high pace in creating some of these monster statistical years in the 60s and 70s.

West's 30 point years adjust down to about 22-24 point years with pace adjustment (using simple ratios and understanding that the narrative is a lot more complex than that) although they are 22-24 points at better than Jordan level relative efficiency. Karl Malone was a more prolific scorer than West for his era; even if not as versatile or as efficient at creating offense for himself or his team (relative to era) . . . I think that should be acknowledged.

I still favor West, but you have to give the Mailman props for his great play as well.

Still haven't seen any good Karl v. Moses Malone comparison in terms of their defense. Without it, I have to favor Karl over Moses offensively. And I don't think Moses stat padded to any great degree by giving himself extra offensive rebounds; the amount would be fairly trivial next to his massive rebound totals . . . nor do I think his efficiency took a major hit by his trying to keep balls alive on the offensive boards even when he couldn't get a good shot. It's a real effect but I find it difficult to see where it is a massive enough number of situations as to skew a comparison with someone like Karl Malone who was also in there banging the offensive boards consistently.

[Jim Naismith]

Hakeem Olajuwon 1994
Criticism: Jordan left the NBA to play baseball, so this peak doesn't really count.

Michael Jordan 1991, 1992
Criticism: True greats, Bird and Magic were exiting primes before retiring early. Barkley, Malone, Drexler, Ewing, Robinson were pretenders, not contenders.

Shaquille O'Neal 2000
Criticism: Positional rivals Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing, Sabonis declining. Dominated the likes of Rik Smits.

LeBron James 2012, 2013
Criticism: Thin competition with Kobe, Dirk, Garnett, Duncan declining and Durant just entering prime.

As Clyde has noted these aren't particularly strong arguments in general.

That's the point of reductio ad absurdum.

But in some context they might at least warrent a rebuttal (e.g. "Jordan got an MVP and multiple PotY's over Bird and Magic and has remarkable advanced stats that indicate a very high value in the 80s";

Likewise, Moses got an MVP over Kareem in 1979.

So it wasn't necessary to put an "MJ wasn't there" caveat (and specifically not "Jordan left the NBA to play baseball, so this peak doesn't really count" which would be a terrible rebuttal, acting as though all that matters is being the best player and if you're not that, the year counts for nothing).

Again, these weak-era arguments are intentionally fallacious.

In summary
(1) Accolades/awards by themselves make a poor foundation for arguing a player in a certain position (it's a second hand opinion, it might be a good one, but if it is you'll be able to support it with numbers and or qualatitive analysis and perhaps contemporary reports and rankings as additional info). Official ones like MVP are often driven by context (e.g. narrative, desire not to give it to a multiple-time winner etc).

Perhaps this aided Moses in 1979, but hurt him in 1983, despite which he still won his third MVP.

(3) These things don't make Moses a bad player, or not a legitimate candidate here, but it does mean league strength/competition for accolades should be factored in.

It's not a formal accolade, but this serves as a counterexample to the weak-competition claims:

In 1981, Moses lead the sub-.500 Rockets to the NBA finals where they lost to Bird's Celtics in 6 games, beating defending champion Lakers (with MVP Kareem and FMVP Magic). Moses did this all without HCA.

And then there is plenty more to look at where metric peaks, career metrics, career PotY shares, career MVP shares, WoWY and +/- variants tend to suggest that other players might be better than Moses.

In terms of career stats, Moses is no slouch and I've post some data on this before.

Most of the focus has been on peaks, because that's where great player's value lies: leading a team to a championship.

I believe peak Moses has shown more determination and domination than any candidate remaining.

[Clyde Frazier]

West wasn't exactly playing by himself in 1969, and since I rank Magic above Russell (let alone old man Russell) it's pretty clear which of the two I'm likely to find more impressive. Yeh, yeh, West put up X volume stats... and adjusted for pace West's stats in 1969 are worse than years Malone had. I covered this.

I already posted west's pace adjusted stats from 61-69 earlier in this thread (post 33), and as noted they're still quite impressive. If you want to do a very rough estimate of some of the monster games he had, he still comes out looking good. For example, he had 51 pts and 10 assists in game 1 of the 69 finals.

Lakers avg pace that season was 112.6. If we look at the jazz avg pace in malone's 9th season, it was 93.1. So just for perspective, west's equivalent stats at that pace would be 42 pts and 8 assists. Like I said, these are very rough calculations, but I think it at least suggests that you exaggerate the impact pace had on his production.

And if you still want to play the weaker era card, he did this against the best defensive team in the league in the finals. This is significant any way you slice it.

[Doctor MJ]

So obviously, as would be expected of a guy I called a top 20 player, West is helping his team win. This is good to confirm, but I wasn't in any doubt about that beforehand. On the other hand, the degree to which West is helping them isn't really jumping out at me compared to some of the guys we've been looking at when we do this sort of analysis. The combined stats over this period tell us the Lakers were a 51 pace win team in games West played, and a 38 win pace team in games West didn't play. That's 13 wins. Oscar theoretically was improving his teams 26-27 wins a season, and I can say the same for a lot of other guys (some still on the board, some not). So, long story short; West is very good, I knew that already, but this sample doesn't tell me he's better than K.Malone. Does anyone seriously think K.Malone wouldn't be worth 13 wins to his team?

Honestly, it's very strange to have to spell this out for you. I have no doubt you could figure it out for yourself:

People bring up West in this regard because it's an outlier. If you feel he's simply meeting your expectation, then that means everyone else is falling short of your expectation, because West is coming off phenomenal with a detailed look at how much his team was hurt when he was out.

Your assessment that Oscar was having 26-27 wins per season is just bizarre. I would assume you gleaned that from ElGee's own data, and ElGee's not saying anything like this. You clearly just took numbers from the biggest season values you saw from Oscar and ignored the rest, and then it would put the "26-27" range on there as a confidence interval that there was more to it than that.

Frankly I would completely understand if you said "Look, I don't get ElGee's WOWY score, I'm just going to go with the raw stuff he did.", but you weren't doing that for West. That's either an attempt at rhetorical manipulation or just complete confusion. The former won't work on this group though, and the latter should signal to you you need help.

Last thing I'll say: Looking at the raw stuff it's understandable to think Oscar looks better...but Oscar's already voted in. Oscar happens to be one of the other clear cut standouts in this regard, more so than West's actual competition here.

[shutupandjam]

Nothing has really changed my mind at this point, so I'm sticking with my vote. Here's my post from a few threads ago with some minor changes:

Vote: David Robinson

I think Robinson is the best remaining player, and I'd take him over anyone else who's still around. He's the only elite two way big left, capable of anchoring both his team's offense and its defense. He's probably a top 5 defensive player of all time and one of the game's best offensive bigs ever as well. He never had much help until Duncan came along, at which point he collected two titles in 6 years despite never playing with a great wing. His numbers suggest he's one of the very best in the history of the game, and here's a breakdown:


Elite Box Score numbers
Robinson was absolutely dominant in the box score. In his first NBA game, he had 23 pts, 17 reb, and 3 blk, and he went on to capture the following box score "accolades":

Regular Season
#3 all time in career estimated impact (after LeBron and Jordan)
#2 all time in career ws/48 (after Jordan)
#4 all time in career PER (after Jordan, LeBron, and Shaq)
#7 all time in career ASPM (after LeBron, Jordan, Barkley, Bird, Magic,and Paul)

Playoffs
#10 all time in career estimated impact (after Jordan, LeBron, Hakeem, Magic, Duncan, Shaq, Durant, Bird, and Wilt)
#7 all time in career ws/48 (after Jordan, Mikan, LeBron, Magic, West, and Wilt)
#15 all time in career PER

His playoff failures are clearly overstated - though he wasn't the incredible force he is in the regular season, he was still an elite playoff performer, and probably better than anyone else still on the board. It's also worth noting that the small playoff sample size make the drop less significant than you might think.

Elite On/Off numbers
Though we don't have RAPM for Robinson's prime, he was comparatively dominant in his later years. In fact, he has the second best average "30s" npi rapm (ie average of every year played at ages 30-39). Here's the top 5:

1. Stockton, +4.3
2. Robinson, +3.8
3. Garnett, +3.8
4. Ginobili, +3.5
5. Dirk, +3.5
(Shaq, Duncan, and Nash come next)


Additionally, Robinson missed significant time in 2 separate seasons in his prime, 1992 and 1997, so we can look at the effect his absence had on his teams in those years.

In 1992, Robinson missed the final 14 games of the season. With him the Spurs had a +4.5 adjusted net rating (for comparison, the 2014 Heat were a +4.7). Without him, the Spurs plummeted to -5.1 (the 2014 Lakers were -5.2). That's a (huge!) swing of 9.6, and according to ElGee's WOWY charts, the Spurs were on pace to win 24 fewer games without him.

In 1997, Robinson played only 7 games. In those 7 games,the Spurs were a -0.8. In the 75 games without him, they were -8.4, a swing of 7.8. Robinson's absence in 1997 also helps explain how the Spurs went from a 59 win team in 1996 to a 20 win team in 1997.

It's also worth mentioning that in 1989, the year before Robinson's arrival, the Spurs won only 21 games, then won 56 in his rookie year.

This all suggests that Robinson can lift a bottom feeder to contender level. It's a shame we never got to see what he could do with a great wing.

Concluding Points
David Robinson gets beat down all the time for "failing" in the playoffs and getting embarrassed in his matchup with Hakeem. But the truth is he was an absolute force. He was capable of protecting the rim as good as anyone ever, his superb quickness allowed him guard the pick and roll at a very high level and be all over the floor on defense. His offense was terrific as well - he averaged over 25 four times, and in 1994 he averaged 29.8 pts and 4.8 ast. He got to the line at a rate higher than all but four players in NBA history.

Similar to Garnett, he gets knocked quite a bit for not winning in his prime, but no one would have won a title with his teammates, and he still managed to lead his team to at least 49 wins every healthy year he had before Duncan. And when he finally got a great teammate - even though the guy played the same position as him - it only took a year before he won a championship. His years with Duncan have always been very underrated, and I looked at them a bit last thread:

Spoiler:

A few people have been asking about post-injury (1997) David Robinson. Lots of evidence suggests that from 1998-2001 he was a clear top 10 (and likely top 5) player in the NBA and neck and neck with Duncan (I think there's an argument to be had that he was just as important as Duncan to the 1999 championship run, though it seems like he never gets due credit there). After 2001, Robinson's age started showing and Duncan hit his absolute peak, but it's clear that Robinson was still a productive player, particularly on defense.

Here are some numbers for post injury Robinson:

1998
npi rapm
Robinson: +3.6 (#15 in the nba)
Duncan: +4.0 (#9)

estimated impact
Regular season:
Robinson: +5.7 (#3)
Duncan: +3.4 (#8)

Playoffs:
Robinson: +4.7 (#4)
Duncan: +3.1 (#8)

ws/48
Regular season:
Robinson: 0.269 (#1)
Duncan: 0.192 (#9)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 0.183 (#9)
Duncan: 0.155 (#18)

PER
Regular Season:
Robinson: 27.8 (#3)
Duncan: 22.6 (#5)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 24.1 (#6)
Duncan: 20.4 (#13)


1999:
npi rapm
Robinson: +6.6 (#1)
Duncan: +3.1 (#15)

estimated impact
Regular Season:
Robinson: +5.0 (#2)
Duncan: +4.4 (#6)

Playoffs:
Robinson: +4.9 (#2)
Duncan: +5.1 (#1)


ws/48
Regular Season:
Robinson: 0.261 (#1)
Duncan: 0.213 (#7)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 0.243 (#3)
Duncan: 0.243 (#2)

PER
Regular Season:
Robinson: 24.9 (#3)
Duncan: 23.2 (#7)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 23.3 (#8)
Duncan: 25.1 (#5)


2000
npi rapm
Robinson: +3.4 (#17)
Duncan: +3.8 (#11)

estimated impact
Regular Season:
Robinson: +4.4 (#4)
Duncan: +4.8 (#3)

Playoffs:
Robinson: +4.1 (#3)
Duncan: DNP

ws/48
Regular Season:
Robinson: 0.238 (#3)
Duncan: 0.218 (#6)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 0.220 (#2)
Duncan: DNP

PER
Regular Season:
Robinson: 24.6 (#5)
Duncan: 24.8 (#4)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 25.6 (#4)
Duncan: DNP



2001
npi rapm
Robinson: +4.1 (#9)
Duncan: +6.6 (#1)

estimated impact
Regular Season:
Robinson: +4.2 (#5)
Duncan: +5.0 (#2)

Playoffs:
Robinson: +3.2 (#12)
Duncan: +4.6 (#3)

ws/48
Regular Season:
Robinson: 0.246 (#1)
Duncan: 0.200 (#9)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 0.207 (#7)
Duncan: 0.173 (#15)

PER
Regular Season:
Robinson: 23.7 (#10)
Duncan: 23.8 (#9)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 24.6 (#7)
Duncan: 25.4 (#3)


2002
npi rapm
Robinson: +3.2 (#17)
Duncan:+5.3 (#2)

estimated impact
Regular Season:
Robinson: +2.9 (#16)
Duncan: +5.9 (#2)

Playoffs:
Robinson: +0.6 (#46 - low MP)
Duncan: +7.9 (#1)

ws/48
Regular Season:
Robinson: 0.211 (#5)
Duncan: 0.257 (#2)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 0.102 (DNQ, 82 MP)
Duncan: 0.247 (#2)

PER
Regular Season:
Robinson: 20.3 (#20)
Duncan: 27.0 (#2)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 12.6 (DNQ, 82 MP)
Duncan: 31.8 (#1)


2003
npi rapm
Robinson: +3.2 (#14)
Duncan: +6.2 (#1)

estimated impact
Regular Season:
Robinson: +1.5 (#46)
Duncan: +5.9 (#1)

Playoffs:
Robinson: +1.9 (#25)
Duncan: +7.3 (#1)

ws/48
Regular Season:
Robinson: 0.172 (#23)
Duncan: 0.249 (#4)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 0.204 (#4)
Duncan: 0.279 (#1)

PER
Regular Season:
Robinson: 17.8 (#47)
Duncan: 26.9 (#3)

Playoffs:
Robinson: 17.7 (#28)
Duncan: 28.4 (#2)

I know he's not the most popular, but if I'm trying to build a championship team there's no way I pass up on David Robinson in favor of anyone who's left.

[ardee]

Well I was looking forward to making my case for Dirk, but whatever...

Vote: Jerry West

A guy, who I think was ahead of his time.

Out of all the 60s players, there's no one I'm sure would translate better than West, even Wilt. His game looks like something you'd use as an instructional video for kids. He could shoot. Period. He just went further and further back, but as soon as he pulled up, you knew you were ****. Perfect dribbling. And I think his passing was underrated, averaged 8 apg over his last 7 seasons. He was effectively playing the unipolar Wade/Cleveland LeBron role, but on elite offenses.

1968 is the best example. It really takes a special player to be the keynote of a +8 offense at the time. He picked his spots perfectly, always made the correct pass, he had efficient offensive basketball down to a science. In a way it's a little reminiscent of Stockton with efficient volume scoring. Always make the correct decision, no fuss, no flair, just get the job done. He's like the Tim Duncan of SGs to me.

And then, not to say he couldn't go absolutely nuclear and sieze a game by the scruff of its neck if he needed to. People don't talk about his 1965 Playoffs enough... As soon as Baylor got injured, he averaged 46.3 ppg against Baltimore in the series, depending on Rudy LaRusso and Dick Barnett for support. He had 40+ in 8 of 11 games that Playoffs.

I just don't think the guy gets enough credit overall. He belongs more in the Kobe/Bird/Hakeem tier than in the Oscar/Dirk/KG one. On my next list he'll probably supplant Hakeem at no. 11 on my list.

Just a bad, bad man. Always brought it in the Playoffs, did everything on offense for elite Laker teams, spearheaded one of the GOAT teams in 1972, underrated defender... Yeah, I think 11 would be a good spot for him on my list.

Also, Reg made some posts on his defense that I think everyone should read. He was the Wilt Chamberlain of steals, very highly regarded for his defense at the time, and the limited video backs it up.

The Logo shouldn't fall out of the top 15. I would normally say its absurd that the guy who symbolizes the NBA to the entire world isn't in the top 10 but I think there are enough great players in history to make it reasonable.

Reg's posts in particular have sort of made me comfortable with the idea of West being greater than Hakeem. At some point I'll be having personal debates of West vs. Bird, Shaq and Kobe as well. There's so much to suggest he was Nash-level on offense, and combined with what we're learning about his defense, I think he's far too underrated.

[Doctor MJ]

A note on Moses' dominance.

People are using RPOY to hammer home that he had dominance in specific years of voting most all-timers did not. But of course, such dominance is based on competition. His years of dominance come after Kareem fades and before Bird & Magic are done rising. So what do people really think?

Well, in 2012 we did the High Peak project. It was a bit of a flop to be honest. I knew it would be tougher than the Top 100 so I only intended to go to 50, but I ended up cutting it short after 33. The basic issue is just that people actually find it harder to rate a player's peak than rate his career, myself included. If this seems absurd to you, I agree. It tells us that the confidence we feel about rating a player's career is due to the fact that there's more data to hide behind and we can thus use it to brush away the matter of us struggling to actually directly rate how good a player was playing at any given moment.

Anyway, here's the list:
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1197732

And here's how our current competitors finished on the list, along with Kareem, Bird, and Magic.
6. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
7. Larry Bird
8. Magic Johnson
16. David Robinson
18. Dirk Nowitzki
21. jerry West
24. Moses Malone
26. Karl Malone

I don't mean to imply I endorse these placements, this is just what came, and I think with Moses in particular it's worth pointing out. The perception here was clearly that Moses peaked at a time of weak competition.

Getting more into details, as others mentioned:
Moses is a big who isn't a great shooter or passer and who can't defend in the way you typically want a 5 to defend (Barkley used to joke that they'd start running to defend before the jump ball because you knew Moses would lose it). He's a guy who had a very simple game, and it worked quite well. He's clearly a Hall of Famer. However if you just look at raw PPG and RPG numbers with him, you're going to overestimate his impact.

[D Nice]

Spoiler:

I tend to think that both David Robinson and Dirk Nowitzki should be getting more traction than they're receiving, when compared to West and the Malones. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'll be voting either the Admiral or Dirk this thread, once it all settles out. Let's start with some facts and see where this goes:
[spoiler]Box Scores

Regular season, 10 year primes per100 possessions
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 29.0 pts (56% TS), 6 reb, 6.4 asts (TO not recorded)
Moses Malone (1979 - 88): 31.5 pts (57.2% TS), 17.4 reb, 2 asts, 4.4 TO
Karl Malone (1990 - 1999): 36.8 pts (59.3% TS), 14.5 reb, 5 ast, 4 TO
David Robinson (90 - 2000): 33.3 pts (58.8% TS), 15.9 reb, 4 ast, 3.9 TO
Dirk Nowitzki (2002 - 2011): 34.5 pts (58.4% TS), 12.3 reb, 4 ast, 2.8 TO

Playoffs, 10 year primes per 100 possessions
Jerry West (1962 - 1971): 26.9 pts (55.6% TS), 4.7 reb, 5 ast (TO not recorded)
Moses Malone (1979 - 88): 28.9 pts (54.5%), 16.8 reb, 2 asts, 3.4 TO
Karl Malone (1990 - 1999): 35 pts (52.9%), 15 reb, 4.4 asts, 3.7 TO
David Robinson (90 - 2000): 30 pts (54.6%), 16.1 reb, 3.8 ast, 3.7 TO
Dirk Nowitzki (2002 - 2011): 33.4 pts (58.5%), 13.5 reb, 3.5 ast, 3.0 TO

Once again disclaimer: these are West's actual numbers, not per 100 possessions. The last estimate that I heard was that West's Lakers were playing at about 120 pace, so if you want you could mentally scale his numbers back a bit compared to the others. But really, I think the point comes across anyway. In the box scores, when looked at per 100 possessions West doesn't at all separate himself from his competitors for this spot in the box score. I acknowledge that his relative shooting percentage difference compared to his actual peers was higher than his raw TS% reflects, and also that the 3-point line would likely improve both his volume and scoring efficiency. Even with that said, in the box scores his scoring is less impressive to me than DIrk's, definitely, and the big men are in the discussion with him.

Going more general, I would say that Dirk clearly separates himself as a scorer from all four of the others currently getting consideration. Only Malone can match his volume, but in the postseason Dirk's efficiency blows the mail-man away. Going purely off of the box scores, I would say that Dirk is the most impressive offensive player of these five.

On the flip side, I don't even think I need to make the case that Robinson is by-far the best defensive player in this group. I mean, he laps the field. But even with that, when you look at the boxes from both the regular and the postseason, the Admiral was extremely competitive with both Malones on offense (from scoring volume to scoring efficiency to passing, Robinson holds his own in both seasons). And again, he is on the short list for greatest defenders of all-time in the same package.

Non-box-score individual quantification

We only have full databall data for (just about) the complete career of Dirk. We have +/- data from 1998 on for Robinson and Karl. For the older players, we have WOWY data and/or team transition data for West and Moses. Because of the different scales, we can only get so quantitative with the comparisons of this data. But a few notes:

*West's WOWY data marks him as one of the biggest impact players of his era right along with Russell and Oscar. He measures out as super elite.

*Moses' WOWY and junction numbers weren't nearly as impressive. Mainly from memory from previous projects, but I recall Moses' non-boxscore estimated impacts to be far more pedestrian than West's and not very impressive for a super-duper star.

*Dirk measured out as elite in the +/- studies. In Doc MJ's 1998 - 2012 spreadsheet, he was essentially tied with Tim Duncan for the 4th/5th slots in both 3-year (+10.2) and 5-year (+9.1) peak behind Shaq/LeBron/KG. And Dirk's prime was very long. As I pointed out in the Dirk vs Kobe post, he was posting high +/- scores on pretty much a yearly basis from 2003 on.

*I'll post the Karl and Robinson +/- section from the comparison post I did on them:

Malone
98: 9.0 (+8.8 ORAPM; 0.2 DRAPM)
99: 5.8 (+6.4 ORAPM; -.6 DRAPM)
00: 5.5 (+6.9 ORAPM; -1.4 DRAPM)

Robinson
98:7.4 (+1.2 ORAPM; +6.2 DRAPM)
99: 8.9 (+2.3 ORAPM; +6.6 DRAPM)
00: 8.3 (+2.7 ORAPM; +5.6 DRAPM)

For those that don't know, this data came from Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM spreadsheet from 1998 - 2012. I only did 1998 - 2000 for both players, because we don't have +/- data in 2001 and only partial for 2002, and by 2003 both were on their last legs. I found these numbers revealing for a few reasons. Malone's value in these years was almost all offense, while Robinson's value was primarily defense.

*For those that believe 1998 to be in Karl's peak, it is interesting that his +9.0 normalized RAPM score from 1998 is almost exactly the same as Dirk's 5-year peak (+9.1) but noticeably lower than Dirk's 3-year (+10.2) and single-season (+11.5) peaks.

*Similarly, '98 Karl and '99 Robinson both had almost the exact same overall normalized RAPM score, though as mentioned Karl's was almost all offensive and Robinson's was primarily defensive.

Mini conclusion: to the degree of granularity that this type of approach and data allows, I would say that West, Dirk, Karl and Robinson all demonstrate impact stats on the order of what I would expect from the elite and that they all separate themselves from Moses here.

Stylistics and eliminations

I just don't think that Moses had the impact of the others, so I'm setting him aside as a candidate for now.

I'm also really having trouble seeing how I would vote for West here, because I just don't see where I would choose him over Dirk. On the link that Clyde Frazier posted for pace adjusted numbers ( https://docs.google.com/a/umich.edu/spr ... 2YlE#gid=0 ), they compare West offensively to Ray Allen and defensively to Manu Ginobili. West would be more of a combo guard than Ray, but on the whole I think it's an interesting comp. But offensively, I just can't see West posing the mismatch that Dirk does and Dirk's scoring volume and efficiency (with any kind of pace adjustment) are significantly better than West's. Ginobili actually measures out as one of the better per-minute defenders among perimeter players in the DRAPM study around a solid +3 per year. Generally speaking, the very best defensive wings/perimeter players in that study measure out around +3 - +4 vs the elite bigs getting up more around +7. So if we expect something similar from West, it still doesn't really close the gap with Dirk (who's own 5-year DRAPM peak is also around +3). It's been noted that Dirk is a strong defensive rebounder in the postseason, and that he's a solid man defender with an offensive skillset that allows for defensive role players to slot in around him that scores at such great efficiency that it allows his defenses more opportunities to set up.

And that's not even getting into durability and longevity, which aren't trivial and Dirk has clear advantages there as well.

Thus, just on the whole, I'll be voting Dirk before West. So I'll set West aside as a candidate.

This leaves Karl vs Robinson. And as I mentioned before, Robinson pretty much matches Malone in box score offensive production in both the regular and post seasons. Robinson's own postseason scoring efficiency questions are less harmful in a comp with the Mailman, who shares some of the same issues. But Robinson was still an exceptional defender. As Colts18 has pointed out, his career (nor his prime) really ended with the 1997 injury. In 1999 Robinson was a +9 normalized RAPM player that had clearly the highest defensive impact on the team (on a squad that won with defense first), and so much of the '99 Spurs' blazing finish and romp through the postseason was tied to their stifling defense that Robinson was spear-heading. Duncan was a beast that year, so not minimizing him at all. My point here is that 1999 helped prove that Robinson's skill set allowed him to be an elite-impact player whose impact could translate to the postseason on a team scaled up to championship caliber. Robinson's step-function added value as a rookie and the disaster of the 1997 Spurs without Robinson (even factoring in potential tanking) are further evidence of his huge value.

Malone has the monstrous longevity that's to his advantage (as he has on most players), but I believe that Robinson was just the better player. And as I weigh quantity vs quality, I keep finding myself tipped more towards what I perceive to be the quality.

Bottom line:

Yeah, as I expected when I began this post, the front-runners for me in this slot are either Dirk Nowitzki or David Robinson. So far most of this thread has been about West and the Malones, but hopefully there are some others willing to chime in on Dirk and DRob to help me parse out how to evaluate them vs. each other.

I don't think anybody is disputing that David Robinson has highest-impact prime of the remaining candidates, but your analysis doesn't once mention the fact that prime David Robinson only exists for 7 or 8 seasons where Moses, Dirk, West, and Karl (and Barkely who is curiously being omitted from this discussion) ALL give you at least 11. You do realize that represents a HUGE sticking point in the valuation when you are considering an entire career and not your favorite 5 or 6-year composite, right?

And assuming West's modern-day impact would fall short of his past play based on any "era-transference"-centered argument doesn't hold water when the guy who was his peer and has a game that CLEARLY ports far far worse than his was voted in at #12 in this very project.

I'm with you on Nowitski 110% though, I'm actually shocked at the lack of traction he's gotten, particularly based on board momentum he was riding going into the project. If I were voting here it would be a clear Dirk vs. West discussion, any talks about other guys (Barkley/D-Rob/Karl/Moses) would serve as table-setters for later threads.

Spoiler:

I realize that Robinson's longevity is clearly a big sticking point, and of course I see why. I did address this in a huge Robinson vs. Karl Malone post that I put into at least two or three threads. Here's the longevity portion of that post, which works for me but I'd understand if it doesn't work for others:

Longevity

The absolute first thing that has to be mentioned in a Malone vs. Robinson comparison, even before we get to the numbers, is the difference in prime longevity. Malone is the iron man of NBA history, never really missing a game over 20 years and with a graceful decline in his box score numbers. As I pointed out when I first posted the 10-year prime box score data (seen below for Malone and Robinson), Malone has about four more seasons at this exact same level while I had to add an extra year (to make up for the missed '97) and include some years when Robinson was "playing 2nd fiddle" to Duncan in order for the Admiral to get his 10 year prime. And even in one of those seasons (1992), Robinson got hurt and missed the playoffs. When looked at that way, the longevity gap seems insurmountable. And maybe it is. But.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Robinson was actually significantly better than Malone. Suppose, in fact, that Robinson at his best was as good as Larry Bird. If Robinson were that good, would longevity still be an obstacle that couldn't be overcome? Seemingly not, right, since Bird was voted in at #10 and longevity king Malone is still waiting on the call. So before go any further, let's stop for a moment and compare Robinson's longevity to Bird's.

Bird: 9 prime years from 1980 - 1988, one full missed season (1989), 2 lesser but productive seasons (1990 and 91) and a final season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season.

Robinson: 7 prime years from 1990 - 1996, one full missed season (1997), four more "side kick" seasons (1998 - 2001), one productive but lesser season where his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season (2002) and a final season in which he was physically limited but still a strong role player in limited minutes.

Is there really a difference there? The key, for me, is how to characterize those 1998 - 2001 years for Robinson. Because he was only playing 32 mpg over that stretch and Duncan was acknowledged as the star, most (including me) considered these to be post-prime years for Robinson. But while we're here, let's compare Robinson's 1998 - 2001 stretch to the late prime of one player that's already been voted in, and to the early prime of Bird himself:

Regular Season
1998 - 2001 Robinson: 32 mpg, 17.5 ppg (57% TS), 9.7 rpg, 2 apg, 2.1 TO; 25.3 PER, 47 WS
2005 - 2008 Duncan: 34 mpg, 19.5 ppg (55% TS), 11 rpg, 3 apg, 2.4 TO, 25 PER, 46.2 WS
1980 - 1983 Bird: 38 mpg, 22.2 ppg (55% TS), 10.8 rpg, 5.4 apg, 3.3 TO, 21.7 PER, 48.4 WS

Playoffs
98 - 01 Robinson: 35 mpg, 17.4 ppg (53% TS), 11.7 rpg, 2.3 apg, 2.3 TO, 24 PER, 6.9 WS (43 games)
05 - 08 Duncan: 38 mpg, 22.4 ppg (54% TS), 12.3 rpg, 3.1 apg, 2.7 TO, 25.8 PER, 11.1 WS (73 games)
80 - 83 Bird: 42 mpg, 20.5 ppg (51% TS), 12.8 rpg, 5.8 apg, 3.5 TO, 19.9 PER, 6.4 WS (44 games)

Now, the point of this isn't to make this a Robinson vs Duncan or Bird thread. But just take a look at those statlines again. Robinson was only playing a few minutes less than Duncan, and outside of scoring volume (Duncan by a bit) he was contributing very similarly in the box scores in both regular and postseason to Duncan during years universally included in his prime. Bird was playing much heavier minutes than Robinson, and was also the player most helped by pace here (for example, Robinson's rebound rate is higher despite Bird's higher raw boards due to pace). But even with that, Robinson had almost as many win shares (used as a cumulative catch-all stat, as opposed to a rate one) as Bird in the regular season and more in the playoffs with a much higher PER and WS/48. Again, these are years universally included in Bird's "productive prime" years tallies.

Plus, because we have RAPM studies starting in 1998, we know that Robinson's RAPM from 1998 - 2000 (using Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM method) was +7.4, +8.9, and +8.3 (with a heavy defensive influence, notching DRAPM's that match the best that we ever saw from Duncan in his career). Those overall RAPMs in the ~8.2 range couldn't quite keep up with the best-of-the-best in the study, but they were right there on average with the average of the highest three career RAPM scores of Nash (+8.2 3-year average) or Kobe (+8.0) and just below 2005 - 08 Duncan (4-year average 9.3 RAPM). Robinson wasn't playing as many minutes as any of them, so they would have had higher volume impacts on game than these years of Robinson, but the point is that Robinson appeared to be still having huge impact on games from 98 - 2001 according to both the box scores AND the +/- data.

Thus, if we return to our Bird longevity comparison, I now see it:

Bird: 9 prime years from 1980 - 1988, one full missed season (1989), 2 lesser but productive seasons (1990 and 91) and a final season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season

Robinson: 7 prime years from 1990 - 1996, one full missed season (1997), four more almost prime seasons on the order of 1980 - 1983 Bird (1998 - 2001), one lesser but productive season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season (2002) and a final season in which he was physically limited but still a strong role player.

Suddenly, Robinson's longevity looks EXACTLY like Bird's to me. And if Bird's career length is the gate-keeper for being ranked this high, suddenly Robinson is eligible. If his prime is strong enough.

I'm actually of the exact same opinion as you are re: Bird's and D-Rob's longevity, which is why I have Bird ranked outside my top 10 (albeit at #11), and have brought up the same issues in Bird v. Kobe discussions in the past.

If I shared your confidence in Robinson's ability to not choke as the lead guy come winning time I'd probably rank him around 14-15, but my qualms with him as an offensive hub in the post-season are well-documented. And personally I have him as the #3 defensive player of all time, but on several occasions his defensive impact seemed to wane considerably in certain PS matchups.

The latter argument I don't really weigh very heavily (as this could simply be a function of some matchup-related issues), the former I do, which is why he's my gatekeeper for the top 20 (I see a clear gap between whomever you rank last of Oscar/D-Rob/Moses/Karl/Chuck/Dirk and the Ewing/Nash/Wade group).