RealGM Top 100 List #17

[DQuinn1575]

Spoiler:

Back after a few days of vacation.


I'm very big on peak, so I am going to have to go with Bill Walton here. Walton's lack of consistency health wise is why I haven't voted for him sooner over some of the other folks from the 10-15 area, but I think here there is a clear gap between him and everyone else left.

Bill Walton is right up there with the top tier centers. He is a lot like Russell in that you cannot see how dominant he is just by looking at his boxscore stats. He is a team player in every sense of the word, high iq, high skill, good motor and he is large on top of all of that.

While he only had maybe 2 seasons that you could say he played the bulk of the season, he was still able to get a championship in that short window. That's pretty impressive. With modern medicine there is still no reason to assume his career would have been much different, but who knows, an extra season of health with that guy can equate to a lot of success.


Karl Malone is the polar opposite, many years of excellence. But I don't rate players based on who has a more valuable career, I rate players based on who I think is the best out there when they're on the court.

For me, Walton is a more reliable offensive player than Malone. Malone kills him in boxscore numbers, but Walton seems like he can fit in more systems while also producing franchise level impact. Perhaps he is a bit like Kevin Garnett in those regards. Walton's isolation/post game is good, I don't know if he is really that much inferior to Malone when it comes to shot creation. Walton can initiate for his offense with his high post game, while Malone is more of a finisher, though he is certainly a very good passer considering his style of play.

Defensively Walton kills Malone. Was a better rebounder, a better player in the post, way better rim protector, good help defender, he was a true anchor, an all time one at that. Malone is a complimentary defensive player, one who is good for guarding other power forwards man to man, but he doesn't seem like he an anchor a great defense.

I think it is saying something that Walton could accomplish more than Malone despite so few opportunities. While it says that it was just a strange turn of events that Malone ended up ringless, or didn't appear in the finals until very late in his career, I think it also says a lot about how dominant Walton has. Even if Walton can barely string together 3 or 4 seasons of 50 games+, I think that is 3 or 4 seasons where you have a significant chance of getting a title, about a tier higher than Malone in those regards, and I think that makes him a better player in general.

My vote goes to Bill Walton.

It's not even 468 games (90 as a reserve) or 5000 minutes for Walton; it's worse than that. He has ONE season in which he stayed healthy enough to make it to the playoffs. That' means everything has to come together in a perfect storm that one time; one injury, one bad break, one labor dispute, and you've lost your entire championship window.

The other factor about Walton is that he was a player that demanded max money from both the Blazers and the Clippers for about 8 years. Except for that one year, that means you've tied up max money in Greg Oden in terms of winning a ring.

It's not even clear that his peak is superior to David Robinson's. Robinson has better numbers and an equivalent defensive rep.

You actually have to give him some. Credit in 86 for playoffs.

I'm not considering money or contracts at all. Is that being considered by others?


Peak Walton definitely > peak Robinson but since I don't think either is a serious candidate here I'll withhold any more commentary


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[penbeast0]

Barkley's prime may have not lasted as long as Malone's, but even a pre-prime and post-prime Chuck was right there with him, and prime Chuck? Flat out better.
...

Flat out better if you just look at the numbers. However, Barkley's defense and negative intangibles make him less valuable than his numbers would indicate; every other person that has been mentioned, even Nash, outperforms him in those less measurable areas.

[Texas Chuck]

drza,

Those are fair questions and Im going to address the 2nd one first simply because i think its easier.

I think Admiral's offensive game is partly responsible for the drop-off. But I feel the same way about KG and Malone. All of them have very predictable offensive skill sets that good coaches and defenses are going to be able to exploit to a degree. KG is a bit different in that he brought more things outside of his scoring offensively. So I would definitely say that speaking solely offensively that KG probably has the best skill set to maintain his level of play, while still thinking Malone to clearly be the best offensive player even taking his predictiblity into account and Admiral is still at least as effective as KG. But how much do we punish any of them for struggling offensively in the PS when they each lacked a dynamic wing to help share the load. And in Admiral's case he didn't have nearly the quality of PG play the other 2 had. Plus unlike the other 2 Admiral was asked to both be the go-to guy and the defensive anchor at the same time. Malone and KG were good defenders, but KG wasn't anchoring defenses in Minny the way he was used in Boston. Again, do I judge Admiral solely against his own standards, or against other players as well? I tend to choose the latter tho I'll admit Admiral is lower on my rankings because of this drop-off

As far as Admiral's defensive impact in the PS, other than the series against Dream, I don't put much stock in the individual matchups. As was already posted itt, he wasn't the primary defender on Malone and when he was, he did just fine. Most of his value, comes as an elite help defender. And even if the defense didn't perform up to expectations based on the RS, the defense would have to completely collapse(and they didn't) to not still be considerably more effective than the KG Wolves defenses. The standard shouldn't be just the Admiral Spurs RS defenses, but also how they compare to other defenses. I do knock him a little for the drop-off, but its hard to knock in comparison with Malone and KG when he and his defenses are still outperforming theirs.

And my main point isn't really to compare Robinson to KG because I myself voted KG in well ahead of David Robinson, but to point out that many of the criticisms being leveled at David were explained away in regards to KG and Im not convinced they are all that dissimilar when we look at results and not just stylistics. Lots of ways to have tremendous impact and I think we have created a narrative around Robinson based primarily around that one series agaisnt peak Dream and are in a way using it to define his career. After looking at his overall matchup against Dream, I am very troubled by this.

[ShaqAttack3234]

Flat out better if you just look at the numbers. However, Barkley's defense and negative intangibles make him less valuable than his numbers would indicate; every other person that has been mentioned, even Nash, outperforms him in those less measurable areas.

Numbers are the last thing that led me to the conclusion Barkley was flat out better. I mean if you look at a lot of raw numbers, Malone and Barkley aren't far apart anyway. What's causing me to say Barkley is flat out better is the same thing that caused the vast majority to when both were in their primes at the same time, which is that Barkley is in another tier as far as offensive dominance. Malone never looked anywhere near as overpowering or unstoppable in the post as Barkley. And hell, one of the areas Malone was at his best in was the open court, and I wouldn't say he was better than Barkley there either.

If you're talking about the one of the two where numbers are deceptive, I'd say it's more Malone. He had amazing numbers because he was in the perfect system for him feeding off the perfect point guard for him(and I believe you can say similar things about Stockton as well, FWIW), but a lot of those numbers were smoke and mirrors.

To me, it's not so much about numbers, but watching a decent amount of both and asking who I'd least want to have to guard or game plan to stop in the playoffs, and who I'd most want to build around or rely on to carry the team in the playoffs. And to me, both of those are ridiculously easy questions. That is, starting from scratch around either so poor management isn't an issue.

Barkley was just spoken about in a different regard. Barkley and Jordan's primes were at the exact same time, and while I don't agree they were ever in the same class, nobody was saying a word about Barkley finishing ahead of MJ in '90 or '93 MVP voting. Just compare that to Malone's '97 MVP when he got it over a past-prime Jordan and the reaction. There were different qualifiers thrown around. Not the case with Barkley, who many feel was robbed of the MVP when Magic got it in '90 due to media bias, and this is prime Magic we're talking about. Karl's nice, steady game may make you also rans for a long time, but give Barkley a few prime years with a legit contender and I feel much better about my chances.

[ardee]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I would draft him in an all time draft high as I believe in BPA, and you are pretty much passive-aggressively saying that the people who voted for Walton are wrong.

I don't want to offend you, but yeah, pretty much voting for Walton IS wrong.

It makes no sense to consider that you are 100% guaranteed to win a title with him at his peak year.

Even if he was the GOAT peak player, the rest of his career was so bad it'd take him out of contention for my top 50.

As of now, I'd only start considering him in the top 60-65 range.

[Jim Naismith]

I don't get voting Bill Walton here at all. How is he better than David Robinson? I'm not even sure if his 77 season is better than Robinson's 95 season

More reliable offensive player, David Robinson is very one dimensional. It would mean something if Robinson was unstoppable in that one dimension, but he clearly isn't. Walton is a hub for an offense, he can impact the court from both high post and low post, and he's a much better passer than Robinson.

If we weight RealGM PoY votes in 1:0:0:0:0 ratio ("#1 or bust") we get this list.
(Note that Walton ranks #22.)

1 Michael Jordan 8.15
2 Bill Russell 7.49
3 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 7.05
4 LeBron James 4.68
5 Tim Duncan 3.57
6 Wilt Chamberlain 3.32
7 Larry Bird 3.28
8 Shaquille O'Neal 2.96
9 Moses Malone 2.00
10 Magic Johnson 1.93
11 Hakeem Olajuwon 1.82
12 Bob Pettit 1.66
13 Kevin Garnett 1.51
14 Jerry West 1.38
15 Julius Erving 1.07
16 Dwyane Wade 1.00
17 Dirk Nowitzki 0.91
18 Paul Arizin 0.83
19 Kobe Bryant 0.77
20 Dolph Schayes 0.75
21 Rick Barry 0.70
22 Bill Walton 0.51
23 George Gervin 0.45
24 Steve Nash 0.33
25 Bob McAdoo 0.25
26 Walt Frazier 0.24
27 Karl Malone 0.21
28 Oscar Robertson 0.20
29 Neil Johnston 0.17
30 Kevin Durant 0.13
31 Chris Paul 0.11
32 Larry Foust 0.08
33 Bob Cousy 0.08
34 Elvin Hayes 0.07
35 Connie Hawkins 0.06
36 Willis Reed 0.05
37 Artis Gilmore 0.05
38 David Robinson 0.04
39 Tracy McGrady 0.04

[ThaRegul8r]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I would draft him in an all time draft high as I believe in BPA, and you are pretty much passive-aggressively saying that the people who voted for Walton are wrong.

I don't want to offend you, but yeah, pretty much voting for Walton IS wrong.

As I keep saying, it depends on the criteria. Some people rank players by "how good they were at their best," which basically makes the exercise one of arranging players by who had the best peaks. If this is one's criteria, then Walton will have to come up at sone point. At least one is being consistent with one's own criteria.

The thing is, everyone has their own criteria, no one's actually explicitly stated their criteria or referenced it when making a choice, but then they're judging other people's decisions by their own unstated criteria without bothering to consider what criteria the other guy is using or bothering to attempt to understand it.

Sometimes other people make different choices than I would make, but if they're not going by the same criteria as I, it wouldn't make sense for me to say they're "wrong" if we're not going by the same standards.

No one ever says on the internet, "I disagree with your choice, but I respect your right to make that choice." And the irony is, when someone else may disagree with their choice, they then proceed to get emotional over it while having no problem telling someone else their choice is wrong without even knowing the rational behind it.

That's one reason why I never bothered with lists.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

My opinion of Kevin Garnett went up considerably thanks to this project. I think a rational argument can be made for him as a top-10 player all-time, and if portability is extremely important to you, then KG makes strides towards top-5 (Not that I agree, but I see it). That isn't happening with David Robinson, at least for me, because Garnett and Robinson are wildly different offensive players. They both carried a load too great and often failed scoring wise, but KG always had his superior passing, ball-handling, and spacing effect to fall back on. David Robinson did not. David Robinson's offensive value comes from his scoring production/efficiency, which crumble against better teams and players.

Well, it crumbles if he's the focus on your offense and, still, he it was clearly ahead what Garnett was bringing.
Give him a perimeter top offensive creator and allow him to get most of his points off finishes and open mid range jumpers and that's a 25ppg/.6 ts scorer even in the post season.
I find his quickness at finishing at the rim much more valuable, probably because I'm not really that impressed by Garnett's ball handling and passing.

[ThaRegul8r]

Flat out better if you just look at the numbers. However, Barkley's defense and negative intangibles make him less valuable than his numbers would indicate; every other person that has been mentioned, even Nash, outperforms him in those less measurable areas.

Numbers are the last thing that led me to the conclusion Barkley was flat out better. I mean if you look at a lot of raw numbers, Malone and Barkley aren't far apart anyway. What's causing me to say Barkley is flat out better is the same thing that caused the vast majority to when both were in their primes at the same time, which is that Barkley is in another tier as far as offensive dominance. Malone never looked anywhere near as overpowering or unstoppable in the post as Barkley. And hell, one of the areas Malone was at his best in was the open court, and I wouldn't say he was better than Barkley there either.

If you're talking about the one of the two where numbers are deceptive, I'd say it's more Malone. He had amazing numbers because he was in the perfect system for him feeding off the perfect point guard for him(and I believe you can say similar things about Stockton as well, FWIW), but a lot of those numbers were smoke and mirrors.

To me, it's not so much about numbers, but watching a decent amount of both and asking who I'd least want to have to guard or game plan to stop in the playoffs, and who I'd most want to build around or rely on to carry the team in the playoffs. And to me, both of those are ridiculously easy questions. That is, starting from scratch around either so poor management isn't an issue.

Barkley was just spoken about in a different regard. Barkley and Jordan's primes were at the exact same time, and while I don't agree they were ever in the same class, nobody was saying a word about Barkley finishing ahead of MJ in '90 or '93 MVP voting. Just compare that to Malone's '97 MVP when he got it over a past-prime Jordan and the reaction. There were different qualifiers thrown around. Not the case with Barkley, who many feel was robbed of the MVP when Magic got it in '90 due to media bias, and this is prime Magic we're talking about. Karl's nice, steady game may make you also rans for a long time, but give Barkley a few prime years with a legit contender and I feel much better about my chances.

You look at some other pairs of great players who were contemporaries, Wilt and Russell was an ongoing debate with each side having its supporters, Magic and Bird was an ongoing debate with each side having its supporters. But when Malone and Barkley were contemporaries, there was no equivalent debate. Barkley was regarded as a peer of Magic, Bird and Jordan while they were all actually playing together (I've posted the articles before), while Malone never was considered at that level at any point of his career. There was no debate like Wilt/Russell and Magic/Bird. People only started considering Malone better later after he kept going and going and going. But while they were both there at the same time, Barkley was considered better.

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote for #17 - Karl Malone

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... nka01.html

KARL / MOSES

- 19 yr career / 21 yr career (2 ABA, 19 NBA)
- 14x all NBA (11 1st, 2 2nd, 1 3rd) / 8x all NBA (4 1st, 4 2nd)
- 4x all defensive (3 1st, 1 2nd) / 2x all defensive (1 1st, 1 2nd)
- 2x RS MVP (3 other top 3 finishes, 4 other top 5 finishes) / 3x RS MVP (2 other top 5 finishes)
- 2nd all time in total points / 1x finals MVP

http://bkref.com/tiny/7NnYM

At first glance, karl has the clear regular season edge whereas moses had a better (yet much shorter) post season career. Moses' offensive rebounding is definitely inflated as explained by D Nice:

Careful with Moses's offensive rebounding. It's a valuable skill in that you are creating more possessions for your team, but nobody in history rivals Moses' propensity for playing volleyball with himself and the backboard. What this does is create a statistical trade-off where he is diminishing his TS% in favor of more OReb's, essentially understating his offensive efficacy a bit in exchange for seemingly GOAT offensive rebounding. The problem ends up being people don't really knock him that much for his self-inflicted TS% drop but they weigh his offensive rebounding the same as, say, a Ben Wallace, when it couldn't be further from the truth.

TLDR: He's a more efficient scorer than he seems and a worse offensive rebounder than he seems, but the #s skew his offensive-rebounding impact up to a greater degree than the extra misses skew his offensive efficacy downward.

In a prior thread, I decided to look at karl's first round exits, and how he performed in those series overall as well as elimination games. I left out his rookie year as I don't think it's relevant unless you somehow break the mold and have an effective playoff run as a rookie. Last column is net OFF/DEF rating:



Overall, malone produced well in these first round exits, but his efficiency was average to below average in 3 of the 5 series. Also, he only posted a positive net OFF/DEF rating in 1 of the 5 series, and 1 of the 5 elimination games. There are no major red flags here, but I'd at least point to this as part of the criticism he gets for his overall post season performance.

97 FINALS

~24 PPG, 10 RPG, 3.5 APG, 1.7 SPG, 2 TOPG
~44% FG, 60% FT, 49% TS, 102/102 OFF/DEF RTG

In the 97 finals, Karl didn't play well by his standards. A sub 50% true shooting % at that volume is rough. Outside of stockton's solid production, though, the jazz really didn't perform well at all:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#CHI-UTA

98 FINALS

~25 PPG, 10.5 RPG, 3.8 APG, 1 SPG, 1 BPG, 3.8 TOPG
~50% FG, 79% FT, 55% TS, 106/103 OFF/DEF RTG

Malone would end up redeeming himself in the 98 finals, but still fell short to Jordan's bulls. Similar to West having to face the celtics in the finals so many years, Jordan's bulls rank right up there with teams that prevented many great players from winning titles. Yes, I somewhat give malone the benefit of the doubt by having to face such a tough team in his 2 finals appearances. As we know, just getting to the finals isn't easy by any means.

While moses had some impressive playoff runs (capped off by his 83 championship and finals MVP), his playoff resume is kinda bare in between those runs. He also played on what's widely considered a top 10 team of all time when he won his championship. [I'm not really holding this against moses… I think it's just worth pointing out.] With the Jazz, Karl had a few conference finals runs and his 2 finals runs at the end of his career, and couldn’t get over the hump.

Both players had solid durability and longevity. Karl is really the poster boy for that category, though. From 86-03, he only missed an absurd 10 games overall. He also played at an elite level into his 30s, winning his 2 MVPs at 33 and 35 respectively. In contrast, moses last made an all NBA team at 31 years old.

Man… still a little bitter that I didn't get to do a writeup for dirk haha

[Owly]

Spoiler:

I'm also getting super-tired of the "this guy's primary value came from offense, this guy's primary value came from defense." There is no point to these distinctions when you need to turn around and aggregate them to come to a conclusion about an individual player's value. It's a complete disservice, for example, to KG to refer to him as a "primarily defense guy" or Jordan as "offense-first guy" when they were absolutely terrific on the other end of the floor as well. It's a way of compartmentalizing, and I get it, but people do it and develop a hyper-focus on the end of the floor they believe a guy derives his "primary value" from when this should already be taken into account and balanced. Instead, people seem to want to throw away one end of the floor entirely unless it's a player like Scottie Pippen or Jason Kidd or Gary Payton, who are perceived as having almost symmetrical value on offense & defense.

Oh I agree with this idea myself. I simply mentioned it in regards KG because its being mentioned in regards to Admiral. I rank guys like Kidd and Pippen considerably higher than almost anyone else here because I don't focus in on them not being a #1 scoring option. My issue also isnt that KG is picked ahead of Dirk or that he's too high(I voted for him myself at the spot he resides). I just have trouble with how much weight seems to be put on Admiral's offensive playoff play when:

1. It's not terrible, and he's hardly alone among bigs with a drop off(see KG and Karl Malone)
2. He was still a better defender than Malone or KG in the playoffs and not by a little either when we take their entire careers into consideration.
3. When Robinson matches up with the best bigs of his generation in the RS and its much large sample size he more than holds his own and in the case of Dream which is the comparison most used to downgrade David, he clearly outplays him. I have a real problem using 1 series to kill David and ignoring everything else.

Now longevity is a serious problem and its why he rightfully isnt on the list yet. But I think some of the other reasons being used against him don't completely pass the smell test.

I have a couple of follow-up questions, if you don't mind. They're about things you've seen me kind of rambling my way through in the last few threads as I try to evaluate my level of Robinson advocacy:

1) The underlined section above (2). What are you using to support that statement? Obviously the Spurs (and Robinson) had excellent defensive results in the postseason during the Duncan years, and I give Robinson a lot of credit for that. But in the pre-Duncan years, we've seen quite a few accounts/statistics to suggest that the Spurs' team defense wasn't necessarily performing as expected (and to some debated extent, Robinson's 1-on-1 defense against his direct rivals has also been questioned). This has actually been one of the reasons I've been somewhat cautious in working this through. I don't doubt that Robinson had a bigger defensive influence in the postseason than Malone, but Garnett actually has a pretty stellar postseason defensive record...outside of that one Dallas series, his defenses usually outperformed expectation and his individual match-up very rarely performed to expectation. So if you could demonstrate that Robinson's postseason defense is better than Garnett's, and by a lot, that would help me finalize my Robinson vote.

2) The bolded section above (1). There's been quite a lot written about offensive styles, and why Robinson's scoring efficiency issues might affect his ability to impact his team's offense more-so than Karl's or KG's. I'm curious your take on this.

Not that I'm saying I would (or wouldn't) go along with the underlined statement (honestly I haven't done the research required) but ...

(1) Have we seen that the (Pre-Duncan Spurs) defense underperformed generally in the playoffs? From what I'd seen the case was more that it did so against good offenses (this is from Lorak's work, and my basic summary/analysis of their unweighted average series performance versus expectations and his response to that).

(2) Is there an adequate tool to note individual defensive impact (especially in small samples like the playoffs)? Versus expectations rewards cruising in the RS and disadvantages consistency of effort (and disadvantages the man better in the regular season), counterpoint/man coverage whilst more fairer (assuming you've got the right man, and assuming there is one man whom the defender primarily covers, and assuming sensible analysis e.g. not punishing a player for their counterpoint vastly exceeding expected ft% or rewarding the opposite) leaves out quite a bit of what a defensive anchor does. For this reason (where it might reasonably be expected to be somewhat close) I'd personally be weary of making clear cut judgements (either way) on these tools, particularly if looking at relatively imperfect (i.e. playoffs being short and matchup impacted) samples (not that I'm confident that there are better ones, short of getting all the game tapes and having someone smarter than me parse out all defensive impact plays).

[Basketballefan]

Other points:

-I often say everyone's free to choose their own peak vs longevity in my book, but I still find my eyebrows raised by seeing Walton mentioned at this stage. I'm not running the show here, I'm not saying anyone is "wrong", but this isn't the High Peak project. Seems to me like in distinguishing your career list from your peak list, there should be some place where the fact that no team would even consider drafting the guy this high on an All-Time Draft comes into play.

I would draft him in an all time draft high as I believe in BPA, and you are pretty much passive-aggressively saying that the people who voted for Walton are wrong.

I don't want to offend you, but yeah, pretty much voting for Walton IS wrong.

It makes no sense to consider that you are 100% guaranteed to win a title with him at his peak year.

Even if he was the GOAT peak player, the rest of his career was so bad it'd take him out of contention for my top 50.

As of now, I'd only start considering him in the top 60-65 range.

Putting Walton even in the 65 range is being generous. I think the case can easily be made that he doesn't belong in the top 100. He's a borderline hall of famer that happened to get in. And it's funny because bballreference's hof odds had him at a very low %.

[Texas Chuck]

I was torn between Mailman and Admiral to start this spot and none of the other candidates being mentioned have swayed me.

I think perhaps even more highly of David Robinson than I did before as my research has shown me that many of the knocks against him are based on that one series against Dream and no one seems willing to acknowledge that overall David clearly gets the better of Hakeem. I think he has the best 5-7 year run of anyone still on the board and better than a number of guys already on the list. And I think at their respective bests he's a noticably better player than Karl Malone.

But I keep looking at how good Malone was for such an incredibly long time. And how he never had the luxury that Robinson, KG, Kareem, etc had of transitioning to more of a supporting role that better fit their post-prime strengths. He had to continue to be the alpha, the go-to guy, play heavy heavy minutes, defend the best big on the other team. And he did it night after night after night. At some point I simply can't ignore how valuable it is to have a player as good as Karl Malone and to be able to count on him every night for nearly 2 decades.

And his teams were always good, and often great. No, he doesnt have any championships, but he certainly positioned his teams to contend for them a number of years.

So my vote is Karl Malone

[penbeast0]

Flat out better if you just look at the numbers. However, Barkley's defense and negative intangibles make him less valuable than his numbers would indicate; every other person that has been mentioned, even Nash, outperforms him in those less measurable areas.

Numbers are the last thing that led me to the conclusion Barkley was flat out better. I mean if you look at a lot of raw numbers, Malone and Barkley aren't far apart anyway. What's causing me to say Barkley is flat out better is the same thing that caused the vast majority to when both were in their primes at the same time, which is that Barkley is in another tier as far as offensive dominance. Malone never looked anywhere near as overpowering or unstoppable in the post as Barkley. And hell, one of the areas Malone was at his best in was the open court, and I wouldn't say he was better than Barkley there either.

If you're talking about the one of the two where numbers are deceptive, I'd say it's more Malone. He had amazing numbers because he was in the perfect system for him feeding off the perfect point guard for him(and I believe you can say similar things about Stockton as well, FWIW), but a lot of those numbers were smoke and mirrors.

To me, it's not so much about numbers, but watching a decent amount of both and asking who I'd least want to have to guard or game plan to stop in the playoffs, and who I'd most want to build around or rely on to carry the team in the playoffs. And to me, both of those are ridiculously easy questions. That is, starting from scratch around either so poor management isn't an issue.

Barkley was just spoken about in a different regard. Barkley and Jordan's primes were at the exact same time, and while I don't agree they were ever in the same class, nobody was saying a word about Barkley finishing ahead of MJ in '90 or '93 MVP voting. Just compare that to Malone's '97 MVP when he got it over a past-prime Jordan and the reaction. There were different qualifiers thrown around. Not the case with Barkley, who many feel was robbed of the MVP when Magic got it in '90 due to media bias, and this is prime Magic we're talking about. Karl's nice, steady game may make you also rans for a long time, but give Barkley a few prime years with a legit contender and I feel much better about my chances.

I have to just plain disagree. I was there watching and talking a lot of basketball then too.

(a) Barkley was more spectacular . . . for good and bad. The eye test for me and many others didn't trust Barkley; he would make critical errors that would lose you key games while Malone was reliable.
(b) If you didn't hear people complaining about Barkley's MVP support, you weren't listening. He's always been controversial and that was no exception. Admittedly so was Karl Malone; when I was up in upstate New York, we had several people that would argue regularly that Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson were better than the Utah pair. Believe me, there were many people arguing that Karl Malone was better than Barkley but the time Malone established his prime.
(c) If there was media bias, it tended to run in favor of Barkley who was one of the most quotable, fun interviews ever and who played in a major market in Philadelphia and against Karl Malone, who was often cliched or surly and who played in Utah.

You give me someone who gets you 20/10 with excellent defense every night and I'll take him over someone who averages the same 20/10 but runs hot and cold with more 30/15 nights but balanced by more 10/5 nights . . . especially when that same inconsistency manifests itself even more at the defensive end.

I stand by the statement that Barkley and Karl both are heavily about the stats (Chuck's super efficiency and boards; Karl's consistency over the years at a high pt/reb level) but Barkley's stats are far more likely to overstate his impact due to his lazy defense and poor leadership.

[SactoKingsFan]

Looks like the Malone's are leading the pack, so I'll focus on Karl vs Moses.

Good cases can be made for Karl Malone having early (90-93) and late (97-98) peaks.

90-93 K. Malone was a more physically imposing force and was scoring at all-time great efficiency (.544 eFG%, .608 TS%)

90-93 K. Malone RS Per 100: 37.5 PTS, 14.8 TRB, 4.2 AST, 2.9 STL+BLK
90-93 K. Malone RS: 25.9 PER, .544 eFG%, .608 TS%, .565 FTr, .236 WS/48

92 stands out as K. Malone’s early 90s peak due to his stellar 92 playoffs:

92 Karl PS Per 100: 36.1 PTS, 14.0 TRB, 3.3 AST, 3.2 STL+BLK
92 Karl PS: 25.0 PER, .521 eFG%, .618 TS%, .739 FTr, .220 WS/48

97-98 K. Malone was less physically impressive, but had a more diverse offensive skillset than early 90s Malone.

97-98 Karl RS Per 100: 39.5 PTS, 14.6 TRB, 6.1 AST, 2.9 STL+BLK
97-98 Karl RS: 28.4 PER, .541 eFG%, .598 TS%, .498 FTr, 3.4 STL+BLK, .263 WS/48

That it’s even debatable whether the Mailman peaked in the early or late 90s speaks to his ridiculous longevity and durability.

Peak Estimated Impact
Karl 90-93 EI: 4.9 (6th), 4.2 (12th), 4.6 (6th), 4.9 (5th)
Karl 97-98 EI: 6.7 (1st), 6.2 (1st)

Moses 82-83 EI: 3.1 (7th), 3.9 (3rd)

Win Shares
Karl 97-98 (WS, WS/48): 16.7, .268; 16.4, .259
Karl 89-03 (WS, WS/48): 211.4, .226

Moses 82-83 (WS, WS/48): 15.4, .218; 15.1; .248
Moses 79-89 (WS, WS/48): 129.8, .192
Moses 78-92 (WS, WS/48): 156.9, .181

Passing
K. Malone clearly improved as a passer during the mid 90s and was a vastly superior passer than Moses, who looks like a black hole on offense (79-89: 6.3 AST%, 2.0 AST Per 100) when compared to the Mailman (89-03: 18.8 AST%, 5.2 AST Per 100).

Karl Malone passing skills video:

Spoiler:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0oKnAsn2oA[/youtube]

Peak Karl (97-98): 22.8 AST%, 6.1 AST Per 100
Extended Prime Karl (89-03): 18.8 AST%, 5.2 AST Per 100

Peak Moses (82-83): 6.0 AST%, 1.8 AST Per 100
Prime Moses (79-89): 6.3 AST%, 2.0 AST Per 100

Rebounding
Peak Karl (97-98): 8.4 ORB%, 24.5 DRB%, 17.0 TRB%; Per 100: 3.4 ORB, 11.2 DRB, 14.6 TRB
Extended Prime Karl (89-03) 7.7 ORB%, 23.6 DRB%, 16.0 TRB%; Per 100: 3.2 ORB, 10.7 DRB, 13.9 TRB

Peak Moses (82-83) 17.2 ORB%, 23.4 DRB%, 20.4 TRB%; Per 100: 7.6 ORB, 10.5 DRB, 18.1 TRB
Prime Moses (79-89): 16.3 ORB%, 23.4 DRB%, 19.9 TRB%; Per 100: 7.1 ORB, 10.2 DRB, 17.3 TRB

Free Throws
Peak Karl (97-98): .498 FTr, 13.5 FTA Per 100, .758 FT%
Extended Prime Karl (89-03): .517 FTr, 13.0 FTA Per 100, .761 FT%

Peak Moses (82-83) .516 FTr, 12.3 FTA Per 100, .762 FT%
Prime Moses (79-89) .581 FTr, 12.6 FTA Per 100, .772 FT%

Conclusion

IMO, Moses comes out looking less impressive than Karl in this comparison. Although Moses was very physically imposing, a prolific scorer and an elite rebounder, his skill-set was pretty limited, was a black hole on offense due to lack of passing/playmaking ability, was a very limited shooter and his propensity to crash the offensive glass came at the expense of transition defense. Karl has all-time great longevity and GOAT durability. He also became a better defender and very good passer during the mid 90s and developed a more consistent post game and mid-range shot.

Moses has the clear edge in the following categories:

(1) rebounding, (2) rim protection

Karl has the clear edge in the following categories:

(1) peak/prime (2) durability (3) passing, (4) defensive impact

Due the aforementioned reasons, I think Karl Malone has a clear overall edge over Moses Malone.

Vote: Karl Malone

[penbeast0]

...
You actually have to give (Walton) some credit in 86 for playoffs.
...

In a discussion of good reserves sure; he was a valuable reserve center in the 1986 playoffs. In terms of being one of the top 20 or even top 100 players in NBA history, almost none . . .

He played 291 minutes in the 1986 playoffs (18 minutes a game and he didn't even play all 18 games). Boston's big 3 all played over 700. I don't think that Walton was so great in his short stretches of coming in for Parish or McHale as to be considered at THIS level of greatness. He isn't even on the horizon if you are looking at 1986. It's 77 or nothing.

[ShaqAttack3234]

You look at some other pairs of great players who were contemporaries, Wilt and Russell was an ongoing debate with each side having its supporters, Magic and Bird was an ongoing debate with each side having its supporters. But when Malone and Barkley were contemporaries, there was no equivalent debate. Barkley was regarded as a peer of Magic, Bird and Jordan while they were all actually playing together (I've posted the articles before), while Malone never was considered at that level at any point of his career. There was no debate like Wilt/Russell and Magic/Bird. People only started considering Malone better later after he kept going and going and going. But while they were both there at the same time, Barkley was considered better.

Yeah, and this is why I don't get it when I see people say things to the effect of "Malone was the GOAT PF and it's only now that people are turning against Malone" or something to that effect. I know penbeast, who I most recently quoted wasn't the one saying that, or basing his case on longevity to avoid any misunderstandings. His case was more disputing the notion that Barkley was in my words, "flat out better" because of defense and intangibles. Though the idea that Barkley is perceived as better is primarily based on numbers or originated from that is false as well. As you said, it wasn't an active debate late 80's/early 90's, at least not a popular one like those you mentioned in any games or articles I've seen, but if it had been, I couldn't have seen that case being made on numbers back then anyway because a lot of the types of numbers that favor Barkley like TS% ect. weren't around back then, and even though Barkley's FG% was significantly higher as well, efficiency wasn't brought up as often as points, rebounds ect. when statistics were brought up. Malone was usually scoring more than Barkley, and after Barkley's early rebounding peak with 14.6 rpg, Barkley's rpg came down to the point it was similar to Malone's. Assists would be the major category people would have looked at during that time that would have significantly favored Barkley, and it'd be silly to think that was what the perception was based on.

I'd also think that those who favor Malone over Barkley based on longevity, would also favor Kareem over Jordan if that were applied consistently because due to Jordan's retirement, the longevity gap between those 2 is bigger in Kareem's favor than Malone vs Barkley.

I also wouldn't put much stock into the "Malone is the GOAT PF" talk because Barkley wasn't viewed as much as one position as Malone was because he didn't just play one. I think many thought of Barkley as a very versatile forward, while Malone was called the prototypical PF.

Actually, that brings me to another point about Barkley and defense. Barkley didn't even have to play PF so he doesn't necessarily compromise your interior defense as I think some are thinking. Barkley arguably peaked playing alongside big men Mike Gminski and Rick Mahorn.

As far as negatives and intangibles, I think another side to this has to be argued. Malone's work ethic is beyond reproach, and Barkley was criticized for his conditioning and effort defensively, so there's that, but those aren't the only intangibles. Malone himself has been called selfish by some. I remember, some thought Malone's pursuit of the all-time scoring record was selfish and before finally signing with LA, some thought he was hanging around as "the man" in Utah longer to take a shot at that as opposed to win a title.

More importantly, I'll point to a quote I've seen you post in the past after Malone's disastrous series vs Portland where he talked about how much better he felt to get the MVP as a consolation prize, or something to that effect. And that's not the only time Malone has placed such importance on individual awards such as MVP. Everyone knows about '97. Do these things not factor into intangibles?

And the '99 series vs Portland brings me to another point. You weren't shutting down Barkley in or near his prime the way teams did with Malone in that series, '97 when Stockton bailed him out, '90 vs Phoenix ect. The closest I remember was when Barkley was injured in the Houston series, and neither was comparable to Malone's worst like that '99 series.

There's a reason Malone got the reputation in big games.

I have to just plain disagree. I was there watching and talking a lot of basketball then too.

(a) Barkley was more spectacular . . . for good and bad. The eye test for me and many others didn't trust Barkley; he would make critical errors that would lose you key games while Malone was reliable.
(b) If you didn't hear people complaining about Barkley's MVP support, you weren't listening. He's always been controversial and that was no exception. Admittedly so was Karl Malone; when I was up in upstate New York, we had several people that would argue regularly that Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson were better than the Utah pair. Believe me, there were many people arguing that Karl Malone was better than Barkley but the time Malone established his prime.
(c) If there was media bias, it tended to run in favor of Barkley who was one of the most quotable, fun interviews ever and who played in a major market in Philadelphia and against Karl Malone, who was often cliched or surly and who played in Utah.

You give me someone who gets you 20/10 with excellent defense every night and I'll take him over someone who averages the same 20/10 but runs hot and cold with more 30/15 nights but balanced by more 10/5 nights . . . especially when that same inconsistency manifests itself even more at the defensive end.

I stand by the statement that Barkley and Karl both are heavily about the stats (Chuck's super efficiency and boards; Karl's consistency over the years at a high pt/reb level) but Barkley's stats are far more likely to overstate his impact due to his lazy defense and poor leadership.

I shouldn't say or didn't mean "no talk", but the reaction to Chuck's MVP and near-MVP in the early 90's with Jordan in his own prime and for the first, Magic in his prime, was definitely different than Malone and a past-prime Jordan in '97.

Malone was reliable in some regards, but he was turnover prone himself during the earlier part of his prime, and less reliable at being able to get his own shot, or do things many, including myself would prefer a superstar to be able to, regardless of the opponent or time of year. I'd be more inclined to factor in secondary qualities over individual superiority if we were talking about a lower tier.

I believe Malone's stats overstate his impact/level of play more despite solid defense because Karl really has some exceptional stats, especially scoring, but he was never THAT good, imo, and I think his struggles in the playoffs when you faced the same opponent and defenses got tougher proved that.

As for media bias, it helped with Barkley's exposure, but hurt in other ways as well. It's not common for someone to get the most 1st place MVP votes and then be left off other ballots.

[Owly]

I don't get voting Bill Walton here at all. How is he better than David Robinson? I'm not even sure if his 77 season is better than Robinson's 95 season

More reliable offensive player, David Robinson is very one dimensional. It would mean something if Robinson was unstoppable in that one dimension, but he clearly isn't. Walton is a hub for an offense, he can impact the court from both high post and low post, and he's a much better passer than Robinson.

If we weight RealGM PoY votes in 1:0:0:0:0 ratio ("#1 or bust") we get this list.
(Note that Walton ranks #22.)

1 Michael Jordan 8.15
2 Bill Russell 7.49
3 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 7.05
4 LeBron James 4.68
5 Tim Duncan 3.57
6 Wilt Chamberlain 3.32
7 Larry Bird 3.28
8 Shaquille O'Neal 2.96
9 Moses Malone 2.00
10 Magic Johnson 1.93
11 Hakeem Olajuwon 1.82
12 Bob Pettit 1.66
13 Kevin Garnett 1.51
14 Jerry West 1.38
15 Julius Erving 1.07
16 Dwyane Wade 1.00
17 Dirk Nowitzki 0.91
18 Paul Arizin 0.83
19 Kobe Bryant 0.77
20 Dolph Schayes 0.75
21 Rick Barry 0.70
22 Bill Walton 0.51
23 George Gervin 0.45
24 Steve Nash 0.33
25 Bob McAdoo 0.25
26 Walt Frazier 0.24
27 Karl Malone 0.21
28 Oscar Robertson 0.20
29 Neil Johnston 0.17
30 Kevin Durant 0.13
31 Chris Paul 0.11
32 Larry Foust 0.08
33 Bob Cousy 0.08
34 Elvin Hayes 0.07
35 Connie Hawkins 0.06
36 Willis Reed 0.05
37 Artis Gilmore 0.05
38 David Robinson 0.04
39 Tracy McGrady 0.04

If this is the measure (or indeed any of your other variants which place a huge premium on being number one in the league at some point, regardless of competition) then Mikan is the easy and clearcut choice. Indeed Mikan also backs up his much longer dominant spell (which would see him right up there with the top 3) with titles (7 in 8 years) and metrics.

[Jim Naismith]

If this is the measure (or indeed any of your other variants which place a huge premium on being number one in the league at some point, regardless of competition) then Mikan is the easy and clearcut choice. Indeed Mikan also backs up his much longer dominant spell (which would see him right up there with the top 3) with titles (7 in 8 years) and metrics.

Here are rankings that put only a small premium on being #1. The weights are in the ratio 10:8:7:6:5, which I don't actually agree with. Karl does well here.

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 12.91
2. Bill Russell 12.25
3. Michael Jordan 10.36
4. Wilt Chamberlain 10.33
5. Magic Johnson 9.44
6. Karl Malone 8.21
7. Shaquille O'Neal 8.19
8. Tim Duncan 8.17
9. LeBron James 8.01
10. Larry Bird 7.88
11. Julius Erving 7.75
12. Oscar Robertson 7.68
13. Bob Pettit 7.58
14. Kobe Bryant 7.20
15. Hakeem Olajuwon 6.68
16. Jerry West 6.54
17. Kevin Garnett 5.57
18. David Robinson 4.81
19. Moses Malone 4.67
20. Charles Barkley 4.36
21. Elgin Baylor 4.17
22. Dirk Nowitzki 4.06
23. Dwyane Wade 3.98
24. Dolph Schayes 3.67
25. Chris Paul 3.66
26. Walt Frazier 3.65
27. Kevin Durant 3.26
28. Patrick Ewing 3.03
29. George Gervin 2.56
30. Steve Nash 2.47
31. Bob McAdoo 2.39
32. Bob Cousy 2.37
33. Dwight Howard 2.29
34. Neil Johnston 2.16
35. Rick Barry 2.15
36. Gary Payton 1.93
37. Artis Gilmore 1.89
38. John Havlicek 1.86
39. Cliff Hagan 1.68
40. Bill Walton 1.66
41. Sidney Moncrief 1.63
42. Scottie Pippen 1.62
43. Dave Cowens 1.45
44. Alonzo Mourning 1.44
45. Sam Jones 1.40
46. Paul Arizin 1.36
47. Tracy McGrady 1.35
48. Willis Reed 1.30
49. Bob Lanier 1.25
50. Dominique Wilkins 1.08

[Texas Chuck]

Someone is still going to have to explain to me what we learn from relative rankings like MVP shares or RPOY results. How would it make player X better or worse if the top 5 players of his era never existed or if the 5 best players from outside their era actually played in their era?