RealGM Top 100 List #18

[Quotatious]

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

Moses was definitely a worse defender, and way, way worse passer than Shaq though.

[Jim Naismith]

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

Moses was definitely a worse defender, and way, way worse passer than Shaq though.

I pointed out this particular shortcoming, no?

[lukekarts]

This is an interesting point of discussion because effectively we're looking at one of Robinson, Moses, or Barkley.

All three have significant flaws to their games and I suspect it will come down to whether people prefer offensive output or defensive output (factoring in all 3 players are in the upper tier of rebounders).

There has been some outstanding evidence in support of Robinson so far in this topic, and part of me questions why a guy like Garnett goes several positions above? I also feel Robinson's offensive shortcomings in the playoffs are somewhat overstated? He got worse, but not to the point he was a complete offensive liability or anything, especially given he had a similar level supporting cast to KG.

Anyhow, that's the way I'm leaning, unless anyone wants to convince me otherwise?

[Basketballefan]

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?

I'm baffled at how someone with 3 mvps and FMVP can not even be top 17.

I understad the impact over accolades notion, but the fact is you have to have a really large impact to achieve such accolades. I don't think it should so easily be brushed aside.

[DQuinn1575]

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?

I'm baffled at how someone with 3 mvps and FMVP can not even be top 17.

I understad the impact over accolades notion, but the fact is you have to have a really large impact to achieve such accolades. I don't think it should so easily be brushed aside.

I think people who didn't see him play don't understand how dominant he was on offensive boards and don't realized it neutralized fast breaks.

Also he gets criticized for passing but many of his possessions were off boards when he was 5 feet from the basket- not really the place to pass the ball


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[shutupandjam]

Also [Moses] gets criticized for passing but many of his possessions were off boards when he was 5 feet from the basket- not really the place to pass the ball

If this were really the case (e.g., that he didn't need to pass because the bulk of his possessions were putbacks), wouldn't we expect him to be much more efficient from the field? Instead, he's middle of the pack of the great bigs in ts% despite having extremely poor relative assist rates.

[penbeast0]

Hmmm.

Spoiler:

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

.

Barkley was even more abysmally bad defensively at SF; at least at PF, you could hide him a bit. Moses played a lot of PF too (when he's playing next to Bill Paultz or Clemon Johnson for example); and at an appreciably higher defensive level than Chuck. If you like your centers with defensive ability, why don't you care about the rest of your frontline defense as much?

And do you care about leadership and attitude and how does that affect your vote? Just curious.

[G35]

Spoiler:

This is not what I'm actually talking about.

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.



You object to what I say, but I don't see where you actually rebut it.

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?

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.

Re: Why didn't they give more possessions to Magic/Nash? This is a great general question that weirds me out a bit in this context.

We don't have player tracking numbers on this, but I highly doubt that there was ever a time when when the coach told Magic, "Back off Buck, we need to give some possessions to Coop!" It's just not how it works.

Yes, other guys make plays out there besides the floor general because of how the ball bounces along with the fact that a good offense will perform chains of passes to stay ahead of the defense, but that doesn't mean the floor general is purposefully taking a back seat to another distributor.

You might object to me saying that that's what Stockton was doing, and no I'm not claiming it was quite such a rigid change as I talked about with Coop, but I struggle to see any situation where a player would both score and assist less than before where we couldn't characterize that as a decrease in primacy/control/possessions.

Why was Norm Nixon traded? The Lakers had just won a championship and they had the 2nd best offense in the league in 1982. The reason is because Magic wanted the ball more, the team was fine, he didn't need the ball more.

Also in 2005 Nash played 2573 minutes...that was 5th most on the team. He was not even playing 35 minutes. In 2006 Nash was 4th in minutes played, and in 2007 Barbosa played nearly as many minutes as Nash did 2682 to 2613 and Nash was 4th in minutes played that year.

Malone and Stockton led the team in minutes every year and it really was not even close until the 1998 year when John missed 18 games. It was not as if he missed half the year.....

Really struggling to see what your points are here. I can guess you're looking to rebut me, but I don't really see how your specific points do that.

-Re: Magic & Nixon. The Laker offense absolutely improved as they gave more primacy to Magic. The grand QED of this came in '87 where the Lakers gave it a shot and learned that the team probably would have been better for years before then if they had made the offense revolve around Magic all the more. So yeah, everything pertaining to that only goes along with my argument.

-Re: Nash not playing huge minutes. And? That's an argument for why Nash wasn't as valuable as he could have been, but it says nothing about how valuable he was when he played. Obviously the Suns didn't rest Nash because they thought the team would improve without him.

I don't know, perhaps you're mistaking what I'm writing here as a pro-Nash argument and hence you want to bring up things like minutes played to advocate for Stockton, but this isn't about Nash. Stockon is being discussed here as someone who might deserve to rank higher than Karl Malone, and Nash only comes up pertaining to that to better understand what Stockton was doing relative to Malone.

drza and tSherkin actually did a really good job expanding my point. First any premier player should have the ball in their hands. Is there any other player you would rather have shooting the ball than Michael Jordan? Not really, but that doesn't mean he has to have the ball all the time. In fact the Bulls became a more potent offense (and better team overall) when Jordan trusted his teammates and shared the ball. That doesn't detract from Jordan's greatness.

As an aside, attributing all of the Suns success on offense to Nash is not a brownie point for him. No team should ever rely soley on one person for all of their success on offense; it theoretically makes them easier to gameplan and that's what teams that beat the Suns did. They took away Nash's forays as much as possible. Diversity can be just as or more effective than a single source, the Spurs showed that this past year.

The Lakers offense with Nixon/Magic sharing the ball from 1980-1983

1980 1st
1981 7th
1982 2nd
1983 1st

The year Nixon was traded in 1984

1984 5th

There is nothing to say that the Lakers offense suffered with Nixon being the primary ball handler. Nixon was moved because Magic wanted the ball more, pure and simple he wanted to control the offense. It turned out great but when you have Kareem, Worthy, McAdoo, Scott, Cooper offense is not really going to be an issue. Magic did have many tools to work with, similar to Nash.


Nash not playing that many minutes merits an "and?" when your argument revolves around giving Nash control of the entire offense. Well they didn't fall apart every time Nash left the game. It seems like a similar situation to Stockton that drza explained that when Stockton was playing he had a huge impact. The point is Stockton was still running the offense to a high degree in 1998 at a high level.

I don't think Stockton is ready to be introduced until the 20's but Nash has been mentioned already as a candidate. However, as you mentioned the more we find out about Stockton statistically the better he ranks and I think he is hugely underrated by this board because he is often compared to Nash who played a more aesthetically pleasing style and the recency effect. I don't think Karl Malone would be looked at as the same player if he played his career independently of Stockton. Malone refined his game over the years, developing his elbow jumper but he ran the floor almost in a way like Shawn Marion and Stockton fed him the ball religiously. Malone cannot be discussed independently of Stockton and it's not fair to other players that did not get to play with a great PG like Barkley, KG, Dirk (post Nash), DRob, Hakeem......

[penbeast0]

Voting as of 12:45 Eastern Time

Moses Malone (8) -- Jim Naismith, Ryoga Hibiki, batmana, JordansBulls, GCPantalones, DannyNoonan1221, DQuinn1575, Warspite

David Robinson (6) -- penbeast0, Doctor MJ, Chuck Texas, trex_8063, ardee, magicmer1

Charles Barkley (3) -- ShaqAttack3234, Ray-Ban Sematra, tsherkin

[tsherkin]

Barkley was even more abysmally bad defensively at SF; at least at PF, you could hide him a bit. Moses played a lot of PF too (when he's playing next to Bill Paultz or Clemon Johnson for example); and at an appreciably higher defensive level than Chuck. If you like your centers with defensive ability, why don't you care about the rest of your frontline defense as much?

Defensive value by position, mostly. It's remarkably rare for PFs to be impact defenders; a guy like KG is far less common than the Ho Grants and Karl Malone's of the league. I can live with defensive inadequacy from a wing/forward so dominant on offense. It wasn't actually a major burden on Barkley's ability to compete. It certainly wasn't ideal and you'd have to go defensive around him, but that's not a ton dofferent thantactical considerations of one sort or another for other players.

And do you care about leadership and attitude and how does that affect your vote? Just curious.

Not really. Again, it didn't affect deep playoff runs, so it doesn't bother me, especially at this stage. Top 10, maybe a little more but not here, not with this competition.

[shutupandjam]

Vote David Robinson

Everyone seems to be talking about this like it's offense vs. defense, but David Robinson's offense is quite clearly better than the defense of the others in consideration. This is a guy who led the league in scoring - for reference, neither Barkley nor Moses ever did this - while also leading his team in assists! All while being one of the NBA's premier defenders.

And look at the defensive gap:

Career Blocks per 100:
Robinson: 4.4
Moses: 1.8
Barkley: 1.1

Career Steals per 100:
Robinson: 2.1
Barkley: 2.1
Moses: 1.2

Career DReb per 100:
Robinson: 11.2
Barkley: 10.5
Moses: 10.1

Avg Team Defense:
Robinson: +3.9
Moses: -0.9
Barkley: -1.0

[shutupandjam]

I've seen lots and lots of assertions on here that wing defense isn't as important as big defense. A study I did a while ago suggests this is not the case. Specifically, while I found that bigs are better on average on defense and worse on average on offense, the spread on each side of the ball is consistent for each position. That is, a bad wing defender hurts you just as much as a bad big man defender. And the same goes for the other side of the ball.

http://shutupandjam.net/2013/03/27/the-importance-of-positions-on-offense-and-defense/

[Narigo]

Vote: Charles Barkley

Outside of 92 and 94-96, Barkley has been better than David Robinson. Barkley imo has peaked higher than Robinson as well. In 1990, Barkley was right there with Jordan and Magic. Barkley has also has better longevity, a longer prime and is a better playoff performer

[Jim Naismith]

He scored 25.5 ppg on 57.2% TS and 115 ORTG from 79-87, which really should be considered some seriously potent scoring.

Moses was a formidable scorer.

Moses was #2 scorer for 2 years, top 5 scorer for 5 years, top 10 scorer for 8 years.

Best-year PPG
Moses 31.1
DRob 29.8
Barkley 28.3

Top 3 year PPG
Moses 28.2
DRob 27.5
Barkley 27.2

Best playoff run PPG
Moses 26.8
DRob 25.3
Barkley 26.6

Career points
Moses #7 (higher than Shaq, Hakeem, Dirk, Oscar, Gervin)
Barkley #28
DRob #40

Peak and prime: Moses is as good as (if not better than) Robinson and Barkley

Career: Moses clearly dominates.

[Texas Chuck]

I'm baffled at how someone with 3 mvps and FMVP can not even be top 17.

I understad the impact over accolades notion, but the fact is you have to have a really large impact to achieve such accolades. I don't think it should so easily be brushed aside.

Look at the guys 1-17. That's how. Moses Malone was a great player and belongs in the top 20 imo and maybe higher, but every guy already in plus David Robinson all have really strong cases to be above him. No one is brushing aside Moses' MVPs.

I hope this doesnt become another Kobe deal where people are all wrapped up in where a particular guy goes.

[G35]

I'm baffled at how someone with 3 mvps and FMVP can not even be top 17.

I understad the impact over accolades notion, but the fact is you have to have a really large impact to achieve such accolades. I don't think it should so easily be brushed aside.

Look at the guys 1-17. That's how. Moses Malone was a great player and belongs in the top 20 imo and maybe higher, but every guy already in plus David Robinson all have really strong cases to be above him. No one is brushing aside Moses' MVPs.

I hope this doesnt become another Kobe deal where people are all wrapped up in where a particular guy goes.

Well Chuck, to be fair, isn't that the whole point of a a list ranking players? Who is slotted where. It's not tier-based and nonchalantly put together. This is a very nuanced, detailed, nit picky list. When there is a summary of this at the end, you can guarantee people are going to question where players landed.

The thing about Kobe is one of the more polarizing/popular/loved/hated players and those types are going to get much more scrutiny...I doubt if anyone gets up in arms at where Bob Petit or Wes Unseld lands on the list......

[Doctor MJ]

drza and tSherkin actually did a really good job expanding my point. First any premier player should have the ball in their hands. Is there any other player you would rather have shooting the ball than Michael Jordan? Not really, but that doesn't mean he has to have the ball all the time. In fact the Bulls became a more potent offense (and better team overall) when Jordan trusted his teammates and shared the ball. That doesn't detract from Jordan's greatness.

As an aside, attributing all of the Suns success on offense to Nash is not a brownie point for him. No team should ever rely soley on one person for all of their success on offense; it theoretically makes them easier to gameplan and that's what teams that beat the Suns did. They took away Nash's forays as much as possible. Diversity can be just as or more effective than a single source, the Spurs showed that this past year.

With Jordan you absolutely want to keep him from being too ball dominant, and that's a knock on him. It has everything to do with why I don't consider him the greatest offensive player (that would be Magic).

With Nash first, I most certainly did not attribute all Suns success on offense and frankly it's frustrating you would say that. It's not some benign mistake. You know full well that I've made clear that I recognize Nash didn't do it all by himself.

Re: "easier to gameplan and that's how opponents beat the Suns". Huh? No it wasn't. We've been over this a million times. The Suns didn't lose because their offense was revealed to be stoppable in the post-season, the offense recorded some of the most insanely impressive playoff runs in history. They lost because the other team scored more.

We've been at this long enough that I know that you don't consider that "good enough". If you needed to score more points and you didn't, from your perspective that's an offensive problem. As wrong as I think you are about that, you making such claims is far more reasonable than you now arguing that teams beat the Suns by some tactic that left Nash exposed and helpless. It's just absurd.

The Lakers offense with Nixon/Magic sharing the ball from 1980-1983

1980 1st
1981 7th
1982 2nd
1983 1st

The year Nixon was traded in 1984

1984 5th

There is nothing to say that the Lakers offense suffered with Nixon being the primary ball handler. Nixon was moved because Magic wanted the ball more, pure and simple he wanted to control the offense. It turned out great but when you have Kareem, Worthy, McAdoo, Scott, Cooper offense is not really going to be an issue. Magic did have many tools to work with, similar to Nash.

So, this is one of your trademark data-based arguments in which I sigh, go over to basketball-reference, and then see all the ways you cherry-picked the data toward you're prejudiced beliefs rather than actually using them to inform you.

So, I go over there.

First thing I see: The Lakers ORtg improved a little from 1983 to 1984.
Second thing: Magic missed significant time in 1984.

What that tells us is that the Lakers weren't actually less effective with Magic in the new role. Your ranking data is true, but that's based on what other teams did, and even if we accept that as relevant there's the injury to consider. There's basically no way to look at that one year like it was a mistake to let Magic take on more.

Then I go over to my own spreadsheet where I look at how various offenses performed in the playoffs after adjusting defensive difficulty, and wouldn't you know, the 1984 Lakers were the best offensive playoff performers that the Showtime era team had ever had at that point...though they were about to get better.

For the record, here's a list of the best playoff offenses of the Showtime Lakers, along the two years in question:

1. '87 +10.5 above league expectation.
2. '85 +10.0
3. '89 +9.1
4. '88 +7.8
5. '90 +7.7

'84 +7.5
'83 +3.9

I reiterate my original statement: The Laker offense got better as they put more control in Magic's hands, and yes, that probably necessitated trading Norm Nixon despite the fact that Nixon was a great player. When you've got a master decision maker, it's just pointless to do otherwise.

Nash not playing that many minutes merits an "and?" when your argument revolves around giving Nash control of the entire offense. Well they didn't fall apart every time Nash left the game. It seems like a similar situation to Stockton that drza explained that when Stockton was playing he had a huge impact. The point is Stockton was still running the offense to a high degree in 1998 at a high level.

If you want to take issue with hyperbole then fine, "fall apart" is an overly dramatic way of saying it, but c'mon, everyone knows the team was clearly less effective when Nash went to the bench. People saw this without stats, and frankly that's probably why he won the MVP, but for those of us who really wanted to nail down a precise way of talking about all this, well that's where RAPM and other things come in. Guess who the most impressive offensive RAPM guy is? Nash.

All that is a digression though. We're talking about Stockton here, and your talk of Nash's minutes surely had to be related to my talk of Stockton's minutes. Were it a debate between the two it would be fine to bring that up as part of a pro-Stockton argument, but that's not what we're talking about right now.

We're talking about Stockton's candidacy, and the fact that he played less as the Jazz peaked is a relevant thing.

I don't think Stockton is ready to be introduced until the 20's but Nash has been mentioned already as a candidate.

Nash has been mentioned as a candidate, but not by me. You don't see me making any case at all for Nash over the guys we've voted in at this point, yet you respond to me the moment I mention Nash's name at all.

I think these years of debates between the two of us involving Nash have led you to fixate here on something you shouldn't be focusing on. We're talking Stockton at the #18 spot, and you agree with me that he shouldn't be in yet, and yet here we are, arguing.

However, as you mentioned the more we find out about Stockton statistically the better he ranks and I think he is hugely underrated by this board because he is often compared to Nash who played a more aesthetically pleasing style and the recency effect. I don't think Karl Malone would be looked at as the same player if he played his career independently of Stockton. Malone refined his game over the years, developing his elbow jumper but he ran the floor almost in a way like Shawn Marion and Stockton fed him the ball religiously. Malone cannot be discussed independently of Stockton and it's not fair to other players that did not get to play with a great PG like Barkley, KG, Dirk (post Nash), DRob, Hakeem......

I would agree with you that the data is going to have an effect. Frankly I think it already has. Malone fell 5 spots from the last Top 100, and I won't be surprised if we a similar rise in Stockton's ranking. I know the data we see has me re-thinking Stockton, and while I'm discussing my hesitance to make too big of a change in my estimation of him on a few years of data, that doesn't mean it's having no effect at all.

[Owly]

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?

I'm baffled at how someone with 3 mvps and FMVP can not even be top 17.

I understad the impact over accolades notion, but the fact is you have to have a really large impact to achieve such accolades. I don't think it should so easily be brushed aside.

If you understand impact over accolades then you understand why the three MVP argument (presented by itself) would be brushed aside.

You do have to have a large impact to collar 3 MVPs. But that should lead easily to actual on court stuff that can be pointed to. And from that point you argue your man's case based on what they did on the court. You can use it to support or reinforce a point but it isn't a point in and of itself.

Insofar as the argument is "3 MVPs", like the "rings" argument, it should be brushed aside. Because there's no analysis there and there's nothing directly from on court performance there's just recycled opinion (and something that participants are no doubt already well aware of). Note that brushing aside the argument isn't the same thing as brushing aside the calibre of play in those seasons.

[Doctor MJ]

I've seen lots and lots of assertions on here that wing defense isn't as important as big defense. A study I did a while ago suggests this is not the case. Specifically, while I found that bigs are better on average on defense and worse on average on offense, the spread on each side of the ball is consistent for each position. That is, a bad wing defender hurts you just as much as a bad big man defender. And the same goes for the other side of the ball.

http://shutupandjam.net/2013/03/27/the-importance-of-positions-on-offense-and-defense/

I'm struggling to understand this.

You're judging based on where 95% of players fall, but why wouldn't you also use actual variance? I look at the defensive graph, and it just seems clear that the variance of centers is greater than the variance of other positions.

There's a second issue for me as well, one which I won't say rebuts your findings but I struggle to reconcile it with your graphs:

If we're in an ideal basketball analysis for this type of analysis, only 5's play the 5, 4's the 4, etc. If that is the case then everything we say about a player's impact is what he can do relative to his position, and a position's importance whether measured by the top stars separation from 0 or by variance should be the same whichever approach you use. Or am I wrong?

Clearly in this real world data, you sometimes play a 4 at the 5, and that would mess with the data some, but I feel like there's more going on here.

What I'll say though regardless is this: I just don't think it makes sense to say that a +4 small forward on defense is as important as a +8 center.

[G35]

So, this is one of your trademark data-based arguments in which I sigh, go over to basketball-reference, and then see all the ways you cherry-picked the data toward you're prejudiced beliefs rather than actually using them to inform you.

So, I go over there.

First thing I see: The Lakers ORtg improved a little from 1983 to 1984.
Second thing: Magic missed significant time in 1984.

What that tells us is that the Lakers weren't actually less effective with Magic in the new role. Your ranking data is true, but that's based on what other teams did, and even if we accept that as relevant there's the injury to consider. There's basically no way to look at that one year like it was a mistake to let Magic take on more.

Then I go over to my own spreadsheet where I look at how various offenses performed in the playoffs after adjusting defensive difficulty, and wouldn't you know, the 1984 Lakers were the best offensive playoff performers that the Showtime era team had ever had at that point...though they were about to get better.

For the record, here's a list of the best playoff offenses of the Showtime Lakers, along the two years in question:

1. '87 +10.5 above league expectation.
2. '85 +10.0
3. '89 +9.1
4. '88 +7.8
5. '90 +7.7

'84 +7.5
'83 +3.9

I reiterate my original statement: The Laker offense got better as they put more control in Magic's hands, and yes, that probably necessitated trading Norm Nixon despite the fact that Nixon was a great player. When you've got a master decision maker, it's just pointless to do otherwise.

I could have told you all that without having to use BRB but you aren't capable of having a conversation without having to use some form of quantification to back you up.

I'm not debating you whether or not Magic should/could have the ball in his hands more. I'm saying that just because the ball was not in his hands was not a detriment to the Lakers. You are so fixated on "more offense equals better results!" and can't see anything beyond. I see that as "If I pour more water on this rock it will get wetter!"; when the Lakers won the titles in 1980 and 1982 they were going up against a team without equal firepower. The Sixers could not match Kareem, so they went and got Moses and swept the league as well as the Lakers. The Lakers did not need more offense, this is you looking at a result and making a conclusion on what should happen.

Also I said the Lakers led the league in offense in 1980 with Nixon being the lead PG. You also cherry pick by only using the playoff's...when did you start doing that? Because that leads into the question of you cherry picking 1983 as a down year but not mentioning in the playoffs that Worthy broke his leg the last week of the regular season and missed the entire playoff's. All of this is besides my point that when the Lakers had Nixon and Magic running the show they did not miss a beat on offense and they won two titles......