RealGM Top 100 List #18

Post #61 » by **tsherkin** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:38 am

Hmmm.

This is the first slot where things REALLY open up for me. Most of my major points of consideration are gone.

Left on my radar are Moses, D-Rob and Barkley. Will not consider Mikan in the top 50, not prepared to consider Walton. Don't think Baylor is appropriate yet. McHale isn't quite on my radar yet, nor Hondo, nor Barry. Not Gervin, though probably soon. Not Pippen.

Pettit is an interesting point of conversation, and I rather enjoyed penbeast's post about Walt Frazier, who is often overlooked.

I'm interested to see where this postseason defense things goes, but from what I've seen, the arguments there seem very much team-based, and that's hard to use effectively to undermine a given player. On D, there's only so much you can do; you can fly around and be everywhere and it still doesn't help if your teammates are crapping the bed, or if you're facing sufficiently superior competition. The DRTG differentials seem to show a mixture of really strong and fairly mediocre performances, which tends to skew towards positive effect, not negative effect.

Not quite prepared to vote yet. I see Jim Naismith repeating his post from the previous like 4 threads, still including stuff that was overturned, but still having a few nuggets in there which do positively and accurately portray Moses and it's becoming clear that a player of his caliber can be passed by only so long. His resume is significant. His averages are impressive. His longevity is, in one way or another, impressive. His offensive value is questionable outside of a given prime and his greatest team achievements come with some significant question marks as far as their merit in this discussion, but that was more true against the competition now above him.

Moses/D-Rob.

Moses' longevity means little to me in this conversation. Moses' consequential prime wasn't hugely longer than Robinson's, and D-Rob still gives you an additional few seasons of strong value after his injury. Moses' first 3 or 4 seasons don't much stand out and I don't much care about his longevity as a roleplayer, so that for me invalidates at least everything after 91, and I begin to question his late value to Philly. You're still looking at a key stretch of 6-9 years from Moses and that's not a ton different than D-Rob anyway. Value for him comes in the form of durability, longevity and endurance. He was a minutes horse and he didn't miss a lot of games, and those things do have value. He scored 25.5 ppg on 57.2% TS and 115 ORTG from 79-87, which really should be considered some seriously potent scoring. His team offenses didn't really elevate to greatness on the basis of his offensive usage, but it's also true that even really bad volume shooters are able to bootstrap sufficiently terrible team offenses, and Moses wasn't some Iverson-esque chucker, let alone someone as abysmal as a guy like Ricky Davis. He was a 24.4 ppg scorer on 54.5% TS and 113 ORTG in the PS, tailing off most noticeably from 84 onwards (and keeping in mind that ORB% boosts his ORTG).

Hmmm. Between the two, I generally side with Robinson because I like my centers with a side of really great defense, which the Admiral provided (even if you factor in a postseason tail-off, because Moses was nothing special on D).

Betwixt Robinson and Barkley, though, that becomes more interesting. People talk about Charles' mismatched and poor defense as a 4, but he wasn't really a full-time 4 his whole career. He played a ton at the 3 while in Philly, especially after Erving retired. He played in the post a lot, surely, and the rules are a bit different now compared to then (so if that matters in your projection, he takes a hit), but we're still looking at a guy who was a highly capable rebounder and brutal offensive force while remaining an excellent passer. Better overall than a guy like Dantley, for example. Barkley increased his scoring average in the playoffs with a fairly minimal drop in efficiency (and a drop to a still-outstanding level from his near mythical RS level), which is another point in his favor. Come the PS, he was still a 23 ppg, 58.4%, 118 ORTG player, and those per game averages account for his decline phase and sharing the ball in Houston. He has a stretch of 9 consecutive seasons over which he averaged 25.8 ppg in the postseason along with 13.6 rpg and 4.5 apg in 41.8 mpg (86 G) on 58.8% TS and a 119 ORTG which matches his regular-season ORTG. That's STAGGERING offensive value.

The scoring average beats Robinson's postseason in every year except for his second postseason (bang-on 25.8 ppg), and after his first two postseasons, he peaked at 115 ORTG (unless you count his 03 posteason's 116, which was his final season of play, and was as a low-minute roleplayer).

TL;DR, Barkley OBLITERATES Robinson as a postseason offensive performer.

That sort of domination makes me stop and consider Robinson's defensive value compared to the offensive plus and the difficulties of scheming a D around Barkley's lackadaisical effort and low to negative impact. I find myself leaning towards Barkley because his defensive issues didn't prevent Phoenix from reaching the Finals, didn't prevent Houston from reaching the WCFs (and maybe the Finals if the refs had called Malone's blatant bear hug), and his Sixers squads weren't stunners talent-wise and still made the second round several times. I find myself leaning towards Barkley.

I'm almost ready to vote for Moses, but not quite yet. The Robinson/Barkley divide is more interesting to me. Don't think I'm quite ready for Frazier or Pettit.

I think I'll vote for Charles Barkley on this one.

colts18 · Post #62 » by **colts18** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:42 am

Stockton impact.

1998:
18 games missed- 1.72 SRS
64 games played- 6.86 SRS
5.14 SRS difference

113.87 (+8.77 LA) O rating with (The +8.77 LA O rating would be 2nd all-time in history behind 04 Mavs)
108.53 (+3.42 LA) O rating without
+5.34 O rating impact

Malone w/Stockton: 27.7 PPG, .601 TS%, 11.5 TOV%, 119 O rating
Malone w/o Stockton: 24.9, .582 TS%, 14.5 TOV%, 111 O rating

1990
5.28 SRS with
-4.46 SRS without
+9.73 SRS difference

110.67 (+2.57 LA) O rating with
102.86 (-5.24 LA)O rating without
+7.81 O O rating impact

DQuinn1575 · Post #63 » by **DQuinn1575** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:45 am

Vote for Moses

People who think his offensive rebounding hurt his team's defense are wrong. Teams can't run without the ball. Moses was such am offensive force teams couldn't run. They would have their guards try and crash the defensive boards. Houston played at a slow pace partly because teams couldn't run against them.

He played jabbar even 78-80 in jabbar's prime.

In 1979 the players picked Moses over jabbar for spoil rating news all-nba and player of year. So did the writers.

In 81 led a lousy team over lakers and gave celtics quite a battle.

In 83 best player on maybe best team in NBA history - I grew up a wilt fan in 72 and am a lifelong Chicagoan who believes in god disguised as Michael Jordan, plus a Larry bird fan since I saw him in college.

Named all-defense twice - had expectations of wilt/Russell/jabbar that he couldn't reach.

Moses dominated league and was the best player in the game over a 5 year period,

Created his own offense by grabbing off boards- didn't need the ball as much as others.

Vote Moses malone

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magicmerl · Post #64 » by **magicmerl** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:58 am

Please bold votes.

ceiling raiser · Post #65 » by **ceiling raiser** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:05 am

Great conversation between Doc, lorak and others on Malone/Stockton here.

I'd intended to vote for Robinson (as I have for the past few threads), but I really need to see the issues raised by a few posters in past threads and mentioned by ThaRegul8r of his teams' defenses dropping off in the playoffs addressed before I'll feel comfortable voting for him. I'd really like to see analysis from someone who watched the Spurs extensively from his rookie season through 96 with theories as to why this occurred.

For those looking for specifics on Moses, D Nice compiled a lot of great stuff from earlier threads on Moses:

viewtopic.php?p=40906985#p40906985

Here's a great post from ronnymac2 on that topic as well:

viewtopic.php?p=40874160#p40874160

colts18 · Post #66 » by **colts18** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:27 am

Comparing John Stockton's numbers to Magic Johnson's numbers through 13 years (doesn't include his 96 season)

Per 100 possessions:
Magic: 25-14-9, 5.0 TOV, 3.0 STL+BLK, .609 TS%, 121 O rating, 24 PER, .226 WS/48
Stockton: 21-17-4, 4.6 TOV, 3.9 STL+BLK, .612 TS%, 121 O rating, 22 PER, .205 WS/48

Really close.

That's up 97 for Stockton. That doesn't even include his last 7 years of his career where he put up monster RAPM numbers and a 22 PER/.208 WS/48.

DQuinn1575 · Post #67 » by **DQuinn1575** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:35 am

magicmerl wrote:Please bold votes.

Sorry don't know how to do that on my phone.
I'm trying to keep up voting at every single slot and apologize I currently can't bold vote.

Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

Post #68 » by **tsherkin** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:43 am

colts18 wrote:Comparing John Stockton's numbers to Magic Johnson's numbers through 13 years (doesn't include his 96 season)

Per 100 possessions:
Magic: 25-14-9, 5.0 TOV, 3.0 STL+BLK, .609 TS%, 121 O rating, 24 PER, .226 WS/48
Stockton: 21-17-4, 4.6 TOV, 3.9 STL+BLK, .612 TS%, 121 O rating, 22 PER, .205 WS/48

Really close.

That's up 97 for Stockton. That doesn't even include his last 7 years of his career where he put up monster RAPM numbers and a 22 PER/.208 WS/48.

For counterpoint, PS PER100:

Code: Select all


Magic    : 
23.9 PTS, 9.4 REB, 15.2 AST, 2.8 STL+BLK, 23.0 PER, 59.5% TS, 122 ORTG, 18.3% TOV

Stockton : 
20.9 PTS, 4.8 REB, 15.7 AST, 3.2 STL+BLK, 20.0 PER, 57.7% TS, 117 ORTG, 19.5% TOV

(Stockton through 97, Magic through 91)

The difference is a lot more pronounced come the postseason. Stockton's WS/48 in the PS through 97 was .163; Magic's was .209, for another angle on the significant gap in Magic's favor come the playoffs.

Post #69 » by **Texas Chuck** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:50 am

Vote: David Robinson

I get some of his playoff drop-off, but it still seems a bit over-stated and my research on how he actually out-played Dream and Ewing and played Shaq to a draw makes me think the issues are sample-size and a reflection of the make-up of the Spurs more than some fatal flaw of Robinson's.

Tremendous 2-way player who was a true anchor at both ends from his rookie year up to the injury, had another 3 really good 2-way years post-injury and then settled into a defensive role player role that he excelled at.

Im not sure what to make of individual drtg, and win shares, but David Robinson just dominates these categories. He also led elite defenses almost every single year of his career.

And while he gets knocked for longevity against some of his elite peers, this is a guy who is top 80 in career minutes, and ranks highly in career numbers in a large number of categories.

And certainly one of the best human beings the league has ever known and a great teammate and instead of getting upset when Duncan arrived and took immediate primacy, he graciously stepped into a supporting role and helped Duncan and the team succeed.

ElGee · Post #70 » by **ElGee** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:03 am

For Stockton, clearly there's a lot to decipher from the time Hornacek joins the team in 1994 to Stockton's missed time in 1998. Here's the thing, though -- I'm not comfortable putting all my eggs in one basket. No one should be. Variance is real.

First, what happens if you control for the 25+ mpg players on Utah for 1998? You see Stockton post a 3.1 WOWY score improving the Jazz from 17 healthy games without him at +2.1 SRS (+2.9 ORtg) to +6.7 SRS (+7.8 ORtg) with him for the other 80 games of the year. There is indeed a correlation with Stockton's reintroduction and the team's performance:

(All numbers below are "healthy" SRS e.g. Malone or Horny missed games are filtered)

December: 3.3 SRS +4.1 ORtg
January: 6.3 SRS + 10.8 ORtg
February: 9.2 SRS +11.2 ORtg
March: 10.0 SRS +11.0 ORtg
April: 5.3 SRS +10.8 ORtg
May: 8.6 SRS +3.6 ORtg

On one hand you could look that and say "they really needed Stockton to get going." Or maybe the whole team needed to get going? Either way, I'm not sure it's worth putting too much Stock in, other than to simply say, "Yeah, John Stockton's a pretty darn good upgrade over Howard Eisley." All of this says good things about Stockton, but no one's saying bad things about Stockton, they are comparing to a 2-time MVP and 13-time all-nba 1st-teamer.

I'm not sure how this says anything about Stockton being better than Malone. And here's where the 29 mpg becomes so crucial. Utah was NOT an ensemble team; Outside of its three best players, Russell is mostly a catch-and-shoot guy, fundamentally sound and smart and a solid defender. They have a 3-headed monster at center: Ostertag bangs but his horrible offensively, Foster spaces on catch and shoot and plays good defense around the rim with some agility, and Carr provides isolation offense in the post.

In the PLAYOFFS, John Stockton played 30 mpg. He was 4th on the team, behind Malone (40 mpg), Russell and even Hornacek. This is strange. It's really strange. Here are the other relatively low-mpg "superstars" people often cite by PLAYOFF mpg:

77 Walton: 40
08 Garnett: 38
05 Nash: 41
06 Nash: 40
07 Nash: 38
13 Paul: 37
98 Robinson: 39
94 Miller: 36
95 Miller: 38
83 Kareem: 39
05 Duncan: 38

Here's how mpg allocation works. When young and healthy, stars will push 43-44 mpg (usually 2 small rests or a first half rest and play the second half). Outside of those rare guys, ~40 minutes (depending on blow-out circumstances or foul trouble) is around "maxed out" -- usually 2 rests, one in each half of ~ 4 minutes. This is 8 minutes out of the ballgame. Stockton sat for 18 minutes in the ball game.

Why did all these players up their minutes to basically capacity, but Stockton kept ~double the rest? Why didn't he play more minutes if was so good? My very strong opinion from watching that team all year on League Pass and watching the entire PS...John Stockton was not capable of playing heavy minutes. Physically. He couldn't do it. He went over 35 mpg twice in the 98 PS. You may say "in 2000 and 2001 he logged over 40 in a few PS games!" and I say that's from desperation, or slightly better physical conditioning. Furthermore, it's irrelevant to the point.

If Stock himself were something like +5 for the Jazz, and that was somehow at least equal to Malone, then if we presume both of them have the same total game impact, we'd see the following per-minute impact:

You'd have to be left believing that Stockton is about 25% better than Malone per-minute if you believe that he was as valuable per-game while playing 75% of the minutes. We have acrossthecourt's 98 NPI RAPM that has Malone at +4.6 and Stock +4.7 per 100...a far cry from Stockton being 25% better per-minute.

So even if I didn't buy the idea that it's easier to excel on a per-minute basis by playing in more selective situations where you're also always on the court with much fresher legs, I'd still be very stuck on the fact that Stockton's total value function is limited by the fact that he could not handle heavy minutes. In the simplest form, that's why it's problematic that Utah was so good despite Stockton sitting for so much of the game. You'd have to believe that not only was he better than Malone, but that he was better than prior versions of himself to make up for the gap in minutes played.

ElGee · Post #71 » by **ElGee** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:14 am

lorak wrote:There's a reason why the best offenses ever not only have great playmaker, but also second perimeter player who was doing part of the playmaking work. DAL 2004 - Walker and even Finley, PHO 2005 - JJ, LAL 1987 - Cooper and so on. Why they didn't give more possessions to Magic or Nash? Their roles were "limited" the same way Stockton's role was limited on those '95-'97 teams...

Here's a list of the best offenses since 1985 in my WOWY runs -- these are the only 32 offenses in that sample that played +6 offense (or better) for at least a 50-game sample:

85 Lakers
86 Lakers
87 Celtics
87 Hawks
88 Celtics
91 Celtics
92 Cavs
93 Bulls
94 Suns
96 Bulls
97 Bulls
98 Jazz
01 Lakers
02 Lakers
02 Mavs
03 Lakers
03 Mavs
05 Mavs
05 Suns
07 Mavs
07 Suns
09 Lakers
09 Nuggets
09 Suns
11 Heat
12 Heat
13 Clippers
13 Heat
13 Knicks
14 Blazers
14 Clippers
14 Spurs

That's not a comprehensive list -- there are some all-time offensive seasons missing. But it's a pretty good sample.

colts18 · Post #72 » by **colts18** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:30 am

ElGee wrote:
Spoiler:
For Stockton, clearly there's a lot to decipher from the time Hornacek joins the team in 1994 to Stockton's missed time in 1998. Here's the thing, though -- I'm not comfortable putting all my eggs in one basket. No one should be. Variance is real.

First, what happens if you control for the 25+ mpg players on Utah for 1998? You see Stockton post a 3.1 WOWY score improving the Jazz from 17 healthy games without him at +2.1 SRS (+2.9 ORtg) to +6.7 SRS (+7.8 ORtg) with him for the other 80 games of the year. There is indeed a correlation with Stockton's reintroduction and the team's performance:

(All numbers below are "healthy" SRS e.g. Malone or Horny missed games are filtered)

December: 3.3 SRS +4.1 ORtg
January: 6.3 SRS + 10.8 ORtg
February: 9.2 SRS +11.2 ORtg
March: 10.0 SRS +11.0 ORtg
April: 5.3 SRS +10.8 ORtg
May: 8.6 SRS +3.6 ORtg

On one hand you could look that and say "they really needed Stockton to get going." Or maybe the whole team needed to get going? Either way, I'm not sure it's worth putting too much Stock in, other than to simply say, "Yeah, John Stockton's a pretty darn good upgrade over Howard Eisley." All of this says good things about Stockton, but no one's saying bad things about Stockton, they are comparing to a 2-time MVP and 13-time all-nba 1st-teamer.

I'm not sure how this says anything about Stockton being better than Malone. And here's where the 29 mpg becomes so crucial. Utah was NOT an ensemble team; Outside of its three best players, Russell is mostly a catch-and-shoot guy, fundamentally sound and smart and a solid defender. They have a 3-headed monster at center: Ostertag bangs but his horrible offensively, Foster spaces on catch and shoot and plays good defense around the rim with some agility, and Carr provides isolation offense in the post.

In the PLAYOFFS, John Stockton played 30 mpg. He was 4th on the team, behind Malone (40 mpg), Russell and even Hornacek. This is strange. It's really strange. Here are the other relatively low-mpg "superstars" people often cite by PLAYOFF mpg:

77 Walton: 40
08 Garnett: 38
05 Nash: 41
06 Nash: 40
07 Nash: 38
13 Paul: 37
98 Robinson: 39
94 Miller: 36
95 Miller: 38
83 Kareem: 39
05 Duncan: 38

Here's how mpg allocation works. When young and healthy, stars will push 43-44 mpg (usually 2 small rests or a first half rest and play the second half). Outside of those rare guys, ~40 minutes (depending on blow-out circumstances or foul trouble) is around "maxed out" -- usually 2 rests, one in each half of ~ 4 minutes. This is 8 minutes out of the ballgame. Stockton sat for 18 minutes in the ball game.

Why did all these players up their minutes to basically capacity, but Stockton kept ~double the rest? Why didn't he play more minutes if was so good? My very strong opinion from watching that team all year on League Pass and watching the entire PS...John Stockton was not capable of playing heavy minutes. Physically. He couldn't do it. He went over 35 mpg twice in the 98 PS. You may say "in 2000 and 2001 he logged over 40 in a few PS games!" and I say that's from desperation, or slightly better physical conditioning. Furthermore, it's irrelevant to the point.

If Stock himself were something like +5 for the Jazz, and that was somehow at least equal to Malone, then if we presume both of them have the same total game impact, we'd see the following per-minute impact:

-Stockton per-36 impact = +6.0
-Malone per-36 impact = +4.7

You'd have to be left believing that Stockton is about 25% better than Malone per-minute if you believe that he was as valuable per-game while playing 75% of the minutes. We have acrossthecourt's 98 NPI RAPM that has Malone at +4.6 and Stock +4.7 per 100...a far cry from Stockton being 25% better per-minute.

So even if I didn't buy the idea that it's easier to excel on a per-minute basis by playing in more selective situations where you're also always on the court with much fresher legs, I'd still be very stuck on the fact that Stockton's total value function is limited by the fact that he could not handle heavy minutes. In the simplest form, that's why it's problematic that Utah was so good despite Stockton sitting for so much of the game. You'd have to believe that not only was he better than Malone, but that he was better than prior versions of himself to make up for the gap in minutes played.

Elgee, Stockton played less MPG in 98 because of his injury. It's not a coincidence that fell from 35 MPG in 97 to 29 MPG in 98. If you look at Stockton's playoff MPG from 99-02, its at 34 MPG (more than 98). I'm not saying he was capable of playing big minutes, but he was still capable of playing 33-35 MPG which is impressive for his age.

Elgee, you have to adjust those MPG values of the players listed by age. Most of them were younger and in their prime. For example, at age 35 Steve Nash played just 34 MPG in the playoffs despite averaging 39 MPG from 01-08. That's right in line with Stocton's numbers from 99-02 (age 36-39). Since age 35, Tim Duncan has played 34 MPG. Right in line with Stockton. KG averaged 32 MPG in the playoffs since age 35. Kareem averaged 34 MPG in the playoffs from age 36-39. Reggie Miller averaged 33 MPG from age 35-39. Stockton is not the outlier. He can't handle big minutes because most players in history can't handle big minutes at that age.

magicmerl · Post #73 » by **magicmerl** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:42 am

DQuinn1575 wrote:
magicmerl wrote:Please bold votes.

Sorry don't know how to do that on my phone.
I'm trying to keep up voting at every single slot and apologize I currently can't bold vote.

Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

Do you see how when you quote me and the quote has 'quote' and '/quote' inside square brackets? Well, to bold it you just use 'b' and '/b' inside square brackets.

It's just really easy to miss a vote when you're scrolling through and people miss it. If bold is still inaccessible, maybe do something like

*** this makes my vote for Honey Badger stand out ***

Post #74 » by **trex_8063** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 5:52 am

Haven't had a chance to read many posts yet; life has been a bit hectic and sadistic of late, so now I console myself with whiskey. That should help my analytic prowess, right? :beer:

Anyway, for me #18-20 has to come down to some variation of Robinson, Barkley, and Moses. My ranking of the three relative to each other has very much been in flux of late. As of 2 years ago, I ranked them:
Moses
Charles
David

As of Doc's Pre-Lists projects, I ranked them:
Charles
David
Moses

More recent personal evaluations and evaluations voiced within this project have persuaded me to still another order. I'll start with some individual observations, followed by some direct comparisons.....

David Robinson
I'd have to echo the opinion stated by one or two other guys in this and other threads (drza I believe was one): he's the highest peak left out there. imo, he has been since KG got voted in at #11. More on the statistical backing later.
The limited data-ball era stats we have on him are pretty impressive (using shutupandjam and ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt as sources for PI RAPM, fwiw, whose numbers tend to be a little lower than the ones Doc cites):
'98 (post-injury, 32 years old)---->+0.73 ORAPM, + 3.64 DRAPM = +4.37
'99--->+1.83 ORAPM, +5.18 DRAPM = +7.00 (3rd in league, behind---barely---only peak Mourning and prime Shaq, and ahead of 2nd-year Duncan)
'00--->+1.96 ORAPM, +4.53 DRAPM = +6.49 (4th in league)
'02--->-0.3 ORAPM, +2.1 DRAPM = +1.8
'03--->-0.1 ORAPM, +3.4 DRAPM = +3.3

This is post-injury and post-prime/twilight year DRob, too.
Combine this with the Spurs amazing jump in '90 upon his arrival, and their drop off a cliff in '97 when he got injured, and one must wonder if he didn't have near GOAT-level impact in his prime.

DRob represented a near-elite offensive center who lacked only the hyper-elite iso scorer's game that could allow him to be consistently dominant in the playoffs. But he was still an outstanding scorer, a decent passing big-man, excellent rebounder, and a near GOAT-level defensive big.

While his longevity falls short of the other two candidates, it's not by as big a margin as may be inferred from the difference in seasons played, because he didn't really have any years in faded obscurity.
He does have some playoff "failings" that I can't answer for more than acknowledging his lacking a true hyper-elite iso game.

Charles Barkley
The only guy who can legitimately rival Dirk as the greatest offensive PF in NBA history (and tbh, I'm somewhat inclined to give the slim edge to Barkley). Outstanding rebounder, excellent passing/ball-handling/play-making big, too. Defense is his obv short-coming, but clearly the BEST offensive player of my three candidates. This is relevant, too, because while we sometimes use the rhetoric of "hey, 50% of the game is played on defense" as means of arguing against players with defensive weakness, I don't think that is always an argument with much traction. The reason being that no matter how good a defender a player may be, he simply cannot be everywhere at once. So he cannot utterly dominate that end play after play.
On offense, otoh, given there's only one ball in play......well, the super-elite offensive players CAN dominate the game play after play on that end.

Moses Malone
So what is his claim to this spot? Well, duh: 3x MVP (was 2x PoY in the RealGM RPoY project), #14 all-time in MVP Award shares, clear MVP on a title team (one of the greatest teams in NBA history, even), 12x NBA AS (1x ABA, too)......so he's got enough of the accolades/milestones/measuring sticks to warrant the spot; wins the longevity battle among the above three players, too.
Looking at him, I often wonder exactly how he was able to exert his perceived level of dominance. He's really an interesting study......what was he elite at? Did he have a wide array of offensive post moves/weapons? No; not at all, really. He was great at using his lower body strength to clear space under the rim, and thus obtaining deep low-post position. Other than that......
Was he a good passing big? No; not at all, really. Was he an elite defensive big? No, not particularly (at least not on a consistent basis); certainly not remotely close to DRob, or close to any other center who's yet come up in this project (with the possible exception of Shaq).
So what the heck was he good at (other than the clearing space)? Well, offensive rebounding. He was absolutely singular as an offensive rebounder: he led the league in ORebs 8 times, and led the league in OREB% 8 times; he's #1 all-time in offensive rebounds (by more than 2,000 over the next closest contender). How could he possibly have achieved all that he did (all those accolades, etc listed above) while having just one elite skill or aspect of his game? idk, that's what makes him such an interesting player study. However, it does make me a bit of a skeptic these days when comparing him to my other two candidates.

A look at their respective primes; I'll even be a bit expansive with DRob's prime: I used '90-'98 for Robinson (636 rs games), '87-'97 for Barkley (781 rs games), and '78-'89 for Malone (919 rs games). They all had nearly identical mpg averages over those spans, fwiw.......

Per 100 Possessions
Robinson: 34.0 PTS, 4.7 OREB+11.1 DREB(=15.8 TREB), 4.1 AST, 2.1 STL, 4.7 BLK, 3.9 TOV on .590 TS%.
Barkley: 32.0 PTS, 5.3 OREB+10.3 DREB(=15.7 TREB), 5.5 AST, 2.1 STL, 1.1 BLK, 4.3 TOV on .619 TS%
Malone: 30.8 PTS, 7.2 OREB+10.3 DREB(=17.4 TREB), 1.9 AST, 1.2 STL, 1.8 BLK, 4.4 TOV on .572 TS%

Robinson's production is better than Malone nearly across the board: points, defensive rebounds, assists (by more than double), steals, blocks (also by more than double), and on better shooting efficiency and with fewer turnovers. The only category by which Malone rates better is the OReb category.

Barkley rates better in points, assists (by nearly TRIPLE!), steals, shooting efficiency, and with marginally fewer turnovers and equal defensive rebounds. The only things Malone rates higher in are again the offensive rebounds and blocks.

Advanced Metrics
Robinson: 27.8 PER, .261 WS/48, 118 ORtg, 97 DRtg. 10.7% OREB%, 23.6% DREB%, 17.4% TREB%.
Barkley: 25.8 PER, .229 WS/48, 121 ORtg, 105 DRtg. 12.3% OREB%, 23.3% DREB%, 17.9% TREB%.
Malone: 23.2 PER, .189 WS/48, 114 ORtg, 104 DRtg. 16.4% OREB%, 23.6% DREB%, 20.0% TREB%.

Again, Moses seems to take a back-seat to the other two, OReb's being his one area of dominance.

fwiw, I've recently gone thru trying to find the best ever 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, 10-year, and 12-year stretches for rs PER, rs WS/48, and rs ORtg-DRtg gap. For the sake of simplicity, I used only contiguous year samples. ORtg-DRtg gap appears to strongly favor low-volume/high-efficiency defensive bigs, and should also be noted that we don't have ORtg and DRtg data for NBA players before the '78 season (or before the '74 season for the ABA). And fwiw, I didn't bother finding exact decimal places. But anyway, here are the top 25-ish to 40-ish results for each:

Best 3-year stretch rs PER

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Best 5-Year Stretch PER (rs)

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Best 7-Year Stretch PER (rs)

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Best 10-Year Stretch PER (rs)

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Best 12-Year Stretch PER (rs)

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Best 3-Year WS/48 (rs)

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Best 5-Year WS/48 (rs)

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Best 7-Year WS/48 (rs)

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Best 10-Year WS/48 (rs)

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Best 12-Year WS/48 (rs)

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Best 3-Year ORtg/DRtg Gap

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Best 5-Year ORtg/DRtg Gap

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Best 7-Year Stretch (rs)

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Best 10-Year ORtg/DRtg Gap

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Best 12-Year ORtg/DRtg Gap

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Anyway, after all of this, my vote goes to David Robinson. (fwiw, I rank these three Robinson, Barkley, Malone at this point).

EDIT: and Honey Badger's so bad-***; Honey Badger don't give a ****

(damn....whiskey.....)

ushvinder88 · Post #75 » by **ushvinder88** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:18 am

Another interesting aspect of Moses Malone is that the 1983 playoffs isnt the only time he outplayed kareem. From 1978-1982, he was either playing 50/50 with kareem or outplaying him. Moses has always done very well against kareem in head to head matchups. While kareem on the other hand was scoring at will against olajuwon as a 38-39 year old.

Another thing, moses took a 41-41 team all the way to the nba finals and made it competitve. Put d-rob on that team and the lakers take them out in the 1st round.

ardee · Post #76 » by **ardee** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:20 am

Vote: David Robinson

Didn’t get to vote in the earlier thread but he'd have been my pick in that one too.

Overall, I see Robinson as a slightly rich man's Kevin Garnett and basically have them neck and neck, slight edge to Robinson.

D-Rob is what I like to call a 90-10 guy. He brings 90% of the good things you want in a basketball player to the table. Phenomenal finisher, great face up game, could create for his teammates with his high post passing, and was arguably the only guy besides Russell and Olajuwon to combine the vertical and horizontal aspects of defense. However, he didn't have a successful back to the basket game, and because this one thing limited him in certain Playoff series, it tends to get magnified and people forget about the 90%.

Which I think is absolutely unfair. I feel other than a few posters, this project as a whole has been more about picking apart player's flaws rather than also taking a look at what they were good at.

Robinson is arguably a top 5 regular season performer as well, which cannot be underestimated. I think he's underestimated as a PO performer too, I habe a big post about that and I'll dig it up and add it here.

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magicmerl · Post #77 » by **magicmerl** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 7:52 am

I'm going to vote for David Robinson here.

Put simply, I think that the gap between him and Kevin Garnett isn't very large at all (in the same way that proponents of Garnett argued for him being very close to Duncan).

He had phenomenal regular season numbers, and while he dropped off a bit in the playoffs and was a quite different player post injury, he was still magnificent as a first option and more than capable of sublimating his game so that another better player could be the focus of the team.

Warspite · Post #78 » by **Warspite** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 8:09 am

Moses Malone

He was the best bigman of his decade and dominated for 3MVPs.

Trying to figure out how someone can vote for Moses at #8 but not #18?

lorak · Post #79 » by **lorak** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:10 am

Doctor MJ wrote:
I keep hammering in health and missed time, because if you take the Jazz when healthy they look a lot more likely what the '97 team looked like. Is it enough to say the '98 team was better? I won't go that far, but the notion that the '98 Jazz when healthy were glaringly inferior to their '97 version is hard to justify imho.

Well, I don't want to argue about semantics, so lets for a moment assume that it doesn’t matter by how much one team was better. What's important is that that 1997 Jazz were indeed better than even healthy 1998 team and thus your claim that 1998 was Utah's peak is not true. That's what I'm arguing in first place.

Secondly, of course question about how much 1997 version was better, is interesting one. Pure numbers say that:
1997 UTA +8 SRS
1998 UTA w/o Stockton +1.7
1998 UTA with Stockton + 6.9

So seems like 1998 team was worse by about 1 SRS. Is that big difference or small? Well, 1 SRS difference between 0 SRS and 1 SRS team is not equal to difference between 7 SRS and 8 SRS team, because it’s much harder to improve already very good team. So IMO that 1 SRS difference in this case is pretty significant.

And since we are here, we can look deeper into that using nba.com data. Just one note: they are using slightly different (and worse

)formula for possessions, so we can’t directly compare their numbers with b-r’s.
Utah with Stockton on and off the floor:

Code: Select all

Stockton on      
YEAR   ORTG   DRTG   NET
1997   112,4   101,1   11,3
1998   114,0   100,6   13,4
         
         
         
Stockton off      
YEAR   ORTG   DRTG   NET
1997   106,1   102,8   3,3
1998   105,1   103,8   1,3

So “off” also suggests that 1998 team was simply worse than in 1997. On the other hand “on” shows that Stockton’s impact in 1998 was just as great (actually even greater) as in 1997 – but that’s what we basically already know from RAPM.

Fundamentally here: Stockton was getting less points and assists than before. Typically this would mean the player has less control compared to what he used to have. Why is it different in this case?

Because “less points and assists” is exaggeration in this case. First of all we are talking about less than 1 point and about 1.5 assist difference ((I’m comparing ’95-’97 to ’92-’94) and a player who still averaged a liitle bit over 35 MPG and 11 assists with almost 15 ppg when he allegedly had “less control”.

Secondly, assists and points don’t describe whole player’s production (I know you know that). Stockton was one of these rare PGs, who were very good on defense, so who knows – maybe with Hornacek arrival he could focus more on D, or on setting more screens (that was also something he was good at) and so on?

Anyway, still imperfect, but better than only AST+PTS method to look at whole production is to look at WS. And there’s basically no difference between John’s production from ’95-’97 (40.5 WS, 35.3 MPG) and ’92-’94 (37.2 WS, 35.9 MPG). And BTW, Nash during his three (’05-’07) peak years: 35.8 WS and 35.0 MPG – did he also had less control then? (And once again – I’m not arguing that Stockton > Nash, I rank Steve higher, because of playoffs, but I just wanted to point out that similarity.)

And this is where I can't help but point out that the Jazz had the best offense in the league in '98 with Stockton playing less than 2000 minutes instead of flirting with 3000 as he had typically done before. Very clearly this meant taking control out of Stockton's hands, and yet the team's offense was basically fine.

Well, without Stockton in 1998 Jazz offense was about +3.4 R_ORTG, while with him +8.8. So they did ok without him, but were on GOAT level offensively with him. Really big difference.

Chuck Texas wrote:How is it silly to prefer w/l over SRS? How can SRS be a better predictor on how good a team actually is than how good a team actually is?

Run tests using W-L and SRS, then you would see why SRS is better predictor.

The Infamous1 wrote:
What year would you say johns prime started

It’s a tricky question?

Of course in ’88.

ElGee wrote:

I'm not sure how this says anything about Stockton being better than Malone.

That’s straw man ElGee, because no one is arguing that in total value Stockton was better than Malone in 1998.

Why did all these players up their minutes to basically capacity, but Stockton kept ~double the rest? Why didn't he play more minutes if was so good? My very strong opinion from watching that team all year on League Pass and watching the entire PS...John Stockton was not capable of playing heavy minutes. Physically. He couldn't do it.

Maybe because he was still affected by injury? The thing is 1998 playoffs is the only year with such low MPG. Next for postseasons (from 1999 to 2002) he averaged 34.3 MPG, so definitely was capable of playing such minutes even when he was older. 1998 is the only exception and it’s also the only year when he was seriously injured. I don’t think it’s coincidence.

tsherkin,
very good point about shorter 3P line and how it affected Jazz offense.

Jim Naismith · Post #80 » by **Jim Naismith** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:59 pm

ardee wrote:Overall, I see Robinson as a slightly rich man's Kevin Garnett and basically have them neck and neck, slight edge to Robinson.

trex_8063 wrote:Moses Malone
Looking at him, I often wonder exactly how he was able to exert his perceived level of dominance. He's really an interesting study......what was he elite at? Did he have a wide array of offensive post moves/weapons? No; not at all, really. He was great at using his lower body strength to clear space under the rim, and thus obtaining deep low-post position. Other than that......
Was he a good passing big? No; not at all, really. Was he an elite defensive big? No, not particularly (at least not on a consistent basis); certainly not remotely close to DRob, or close to any other center who's yet come up in this project (with the possible exception of Shaq).

I see Moses Malone as a middle-class man's Shaq with worse passing, better rebounding, and better free-throw shooting.