RealGM Top 100 List #21

[DQuinn1575]

Well, first: Why would exclude West's efficiency when judging Baylor's? West's presence only made it more obvious that Baylor's inefficiency was pointless

To point out that the option should be (1) West first, then it's okay for Elgin to shoot. When West was hurt or not on the court then it wasn't a bad thing for Elgin to shoot.

But that's not how basketball works. The 2nd option doesn't end up shooting more than the 1st option because it's "okay" for him to shoot everything that the 1st option doesn't take. The 2nd option is supposed to adopt a primacy relative to the skills of the players around him. If his efficiency capability is drastically below the 1st option and only comparable to other guys, he shouldn't be among the league leaders in FGA primacy.

Re: West missed time. I've yet to see any indication that Baylor behaved like a normal 2nd option when West was healthy.

With that said, I think you have a good point. He wasn't a black hole. While he clearly was shooting too much, and doing so ineffectively, it's oversimplistic to say that he wasn't passing out. The real solution was to refrain from using him as so much of a hub in the first place, and that was a coaching decision.

I think though it's necessary to ponder the effect of Baylor's stature had on the coaches. If West had joined the Lakers first, so we really think that coaches would have designed an offense that let Baylor shoot more frequently than West for all those years? I can't imagine, maybe someone else would like to try to paint such a picture.

When a player who used to be the best is still given primacy after he's clearly been surpassed, it's probably because no one can figure out a way to get him to change how he's playing without doing something drastic, which is dangerous on many levels. A smart and wise player recognizes what's happened and adjusts smoothly without forcing anything drastic to occur, just as a smart and wise player finds ways to improve his efficiency over time regardless of whether he's been surpassed by a teammate.

And I should be clear with all of this, I'm not saying that Baylor was a moron in a sea of genius basketball players. Most players don't have the type of awareness I'm talking about, just the really smart ones. But while I am holding Baylor's brain against him to some degree here, really what I'm talking about primarily is just judging the man based on what he actually accomplished. Scoring at volume isn't much of an accomplishment if it's done while wasting possessions.

So what was Elgin supposed to do? - West passes him the ball - Elgin passes as much as any forward in the game back to West. He shoots and passes a lot because the offense goes through him.

Does he (1) tell the coach to change the offense?
(2) tell West to quit passing him the ball and shoot more?

Always, how much more could West shoot and keep up the TS%? I'm sure there is some, but how much?
And if Elgin fed West more and became less of a threat to the defense, would West's FG% decline - how much?

If Baylor was really smart, he'd have simply made better decisions out there on the court. No one had to teach Magic Johnson (or Jerry West) that it was bad to take bad shots you can't hit. Top tier BBIQ guys are efficient just because it's obvious to them that that's how you play basketball.

If Baylor were the next tier down of smart, he'd tell the coach that it was clearly West's team and the coach needed to help him (Baylor) find a new role supporting the better star.

He would also tell West, "Hey this is your team now, don't worry about feeding me. Hit me when I'm open, but don't feel like you ever have to defer to me."

Re: If Baylor fed West more, would West's efficiency decline? Well first and foremost, this isn't a question to ask to justify an efficiency imbalance. You assume that putting more volume to a guy will diminish his efficiency, but when he's shooting 5-10% higher than the other guy, there's no worry that that's going to disappear simply because you try to capitalize on it.

Second, West is a perimeter player not a big. The issues of scaling to volume are much bigger to bigs than perimeter guys.

Third, West was known for going off in the playoffs without his efficiency suffering.

So yeah, they should have tried a different approach, and if Baylor were smarter either they would have or it wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

Agreed they should have tried a different approach. And some of that should have been on West.
I guess my point is you're asking a lot from Elgin, something that has been very rarely done, and putting a higher standard on him to adapt then almost anyone ever did.
Saying Elgin is not a basketball genius is not a new concept - he was Mister Lottery

Robinson is the obvious example, bit how many others - Doctor J took more shots than Moses in 83.
Oscar? well he moved to a new team, so it's not quite the same, but okay.


So, what did we learn about Elgin?

high volume - but low efficiency after first 4 years
some great finals play
real good assist man at forward

[Doctor MJ]

I don't think era difference/league norm difference is very explanatory here, for a few reasons. For one, again, we were talking about 7 years of overlap in their 10-year primes. That's a lot of overlap, the majority of their primes, in fact, and I think more than enough to show how they were performing in their primes on the same playing field. Plus, the lower Baylor performance at the back end of his prime that you site is less about league norms and more about Baylor's level dropping after his knee injuries.

If we look only at the common years of prime, there is very little difference between Pettit from 1959 - 65 as opposed to from 1956 - 65. I'm going to post the 59 - 65 numbers for each below, and when I do you can compare Pettit over the shorter time period to the longer time period in the spoiler above. Almost exactly the same. Baylor, on the other hand, looks significantly better if you only look at the 59 - 65 window. The late 60s, where the league norms effect that you point out should have been helping Baylor, in fact is the weakest period of what I included as his 10-year prime so they don't shift the needle in Baylor's favor at all. To whit:

Regular season
Bob Pettit 1959 - 1965: 27.8 pts (52% TS), 16.6 reb, 3.3 ast (TO not kept)
Elgin Baylor 1959 - 1965: 30.2 pts (49.2% TS), 15.4 reb, 4.3 ast (TO not kept)

Playoffs, 10 year primes
Bob Pettit 1959 - 1965 (59 games): 25.8 pts (50.8% TS), 14.8 reb, 3.0 ast (TO not kept)
Elgin Baylor 1959 - 1964 (65 games) : 32.9 pts (50.7% TS), 14.3 reb, 4.0 ast (TO not kept)

If we look only at the common years, the story is almost exactly the same as what I wrote in the spoiler section above, just with larger volumes for Baylor. Pettit still has the efficiency advantage in the regular season that goes away entirely in the postseason, when Baylor matches his efficiency but on much higher volume. Essentially, whether we look at the entire 10 years or just at the in-common 7 years, it still looks to me that they are pretty even in the regular season but that Baylor looks pretty solidly like the better postseason performer.

So first thing I'll say is that I'm not really a Pettit guy. I've talked about why I see Pettit as a respectable talent, but I'm not in love with him. I'm going to try to get away from talking about Baylor because I don't like to be so negative, but Baylor is one of the few guys where I consider it very important for people to understand how flawed his career was.

On to the specific things you mention here:

-The stuff relating to Baylor's injuries is fine if you want to argue Baylor's peak, but to me the glaring issue with Baylor's career is longevity. The second half of his prime is spent not only much weaker than the first half, but attempting to largely play the same role and failing while a better option was available. Pettit doesn't have any issues like this.

-I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with you condensing the time frame like you do to focus on the true prime-est of primes, but look at the sample size. Baylor only has 2 years with a TS% north of 51 in the playoffs. Pettit has one year ('62-63) that is right in the ballpark of those 2 years, are you really going to say Baylor > Pettit based on a 2 playoffs vs 1 playoffs?

To me they were both basically proven on the same level, except that Pettit had gotten there by adjusting over time to be a smarter player whereas Baylor was there based on youthful athleticism, and then the rest of Baylor career didn't follow suit.

Also, you might be given Baylor extra credit because in those early years he shot at a higher volume, but remember how all the evidence we have says that that wasn't actually working so well. The Laker offense in those years had weak ORtg's, and that didn't change until Jerry West got there. Pettit's Hawks by contrast were running quite healthy offenses with him as the focal point.

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote for #21 - Pettit

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ibo01.html

- 11 year career
- 11x all NBA (10 1st, 1 2nd)
- 2x reg season MVP (top 3 3 other times, top 5 3 other times)
- 1x NBA champion in 58 (finals MVP wasn't implemented til 69)
- 1 of 4 players in NBA history with career averages of 25+ PPG and 10+ RPG in the playoffs

2 things immediately stand out with pettit:

- He paved the way for the "modern" day PF
- He was a consistent top tier player for the majority of his career

Regardless of era, we look at how players performed when it mattered most, and pettit didn't disappoint. In the 58 championship win against BOS, he put up 29 PPG, 17 RPG, 2 APG on 42% FG and 76% FT. It's been noted that russell only played in 4 of the 6 games due to injury. That said, you take the cards you're dealt, and pettit stepped up to seal the victory in game 6 with 50 pts and 18 of the hawks' final 21 to end the game.

Pace adjusted stats from 60-65:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... 2YlE#gid=0

Bob Pettit – I actually called the comparison on Pettit before I even looked. Part of the reason was that Pettit’s age range was shorter than the others, and I knew who I would have to work with in the 27-32 years old range. Patrick Ewing is the guy. A moderately efficient high scoring big man who didn’t pass much and rebounded well but not at an absolutely elite Russell / Wilt level. Defensively I went with the more mobile but less block-happy Kevin McHale.

http://doubledribble.wordpress.com/2012 ... ted-stats/

Interesting that ewing is mentioned in a direct comparison as we may come down to a run off between the 2. I also decided to look at his FG% vs. the league average prior to 1960 (pettit first / league second):

55 (rookie year) - 40.7% / 38.5%
56 - 42.9% / 38.7%
57 - 41.5% / 38%
58 - 41% / 38.3%
59 - 43.8% / 39.5%

If someone has a link to TS% league averages from that era, let me know. As we can see, he consistently shot above the league average, and on that volume he was an efficient player for his era. Not to mention the fact that he got to the line 10 times per game for his career shooting 76% from the line. This is a huge plus when looking at any big man. We can also look at other players who scored 20+ PPG during that period:

http://bkref.com/tiny/jvyJL

Pettit falls right in line efficiency-wise, and is the leading scorer of the bunch.

There is no exact science to comparing players across eras, especially the farther you go back. I think you have to first look at how they performed relative to their era, and then figure how much you weigh that vs other eras. I've covered most of the former above, and all things considered, the guy had a great career. I could certainly make the argument for ewing over pettit, but I think pettit deserves the recognition here.

[trex_8063]

Stockton kind off opens up a can of worms especially this early and so close to Malone. Let's say he was voted at 21 or the next list at 22. The jazz would've had according to realgm the 17th and 21st/22nd best players to ever play this game(and people were trying to get Malone in much earlier) for their entire peaks/primes(and basically their entire careers) but had relatively mediocre postseason success. 1st round exits, multiple upsets, only 2 finals in 20 seasons and of course no titles.

This doesn't make sense. Either one would have to argue either

A. the jazz had historically poor coaching/supporting casts teammates
Or
B. One or both of them is not as good as we think.

What if we for example had other combinations of some players voted in that range for the same amount of time as that jazz duo.


Kobe/Drob
Barkley/Dr J
Dirk/Bird
M. Malone/Oscar

but had the same amount of success in the PS?

This notion that adding all-time rank #xx and #yy together should yield a predictable result…...that any two duos of all-timers whose added rank equals a similar number should have the same degree of success (as measured by titles-only, apparently).......You don't think this is a flawed and over-simplified way of thinking about things? Because I see multiple issues with this kind of "logic", one of which you already mentioned in that it doesn’t account for respective supporting casts; but also:

1) Presuming that the result of combining #xx and #yy should be so predictable and consistent may assume that as long as the number (xx + yy) is roughly equal among duos you’re comparing, that you're getting same-ish component pieces/skill-sets with each compared duo; which obv is not the case.

2) That you're implying they didn't have a noteworthy degree of post-season success could be construed as boiling the measure of success down to a ring-count. I really dislike the "all or nothing" approach to evaluating team success (i.e. no ring=failure).
I'd note that together they went to the playoffs 18 consecutive years (and individually each was in the playoffs all 19 years of their respective careers). I realize merely making the playoffs is a rs achievement (more on that below), however, both of them went at least as far as the 2nd round of the playoffs 10 out of 19 seasons. They went as far as the conference finals 5 times together, as far as the finals twice (and Karl Malone individually has one additional CF and finals appearance).
BOTH Karl Malone and John Stockton have more playoff games played and more playoff wins than any of Kevin Garnett, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Dirk Nowitzki, Moses Malone, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, or Patrick Ewing. Karl Malone also has more playoff wins than Dwyane Wade. (And fwiw, if we want to compare vs. some guys already voted in from the pre-merger era: BOTH have more playoff games and playoff wins than Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Walt Frazier; and Karl has more wins than West and Baylor, too)
BOTH have a higher career playoff win% than Steve Nash. Karl Malone also has a higher career playoff win% than Kevin Garnett, Charles Barkley, Dirk Nowitzki, and Jason Kidd.
I know a ring is the ultimate goal, but I sincerely disagree with it being the sole measure of success.

3) “Playoff success” being the only measure you mention above, it should be noted that there is no set standard of criteria for this project. As such, not everyone considers ONLY playoff success for their ATL’s. For some, rs performance and success is just as important as the post-season for evaluating players. Not game-for-game, obv, but comes out to comparable importance simply because the post-season sample size (even for the most consistent and prolific of playoff participants, of which Malone and Stockton are both undoubtedly mentionables) is so tiny relative to the rs sample.
This being the case, it’s worth taking stock of the fact that were we to evaluate regular season ONLY (literally disregard post-season entirely)…..Karl Malone would pretty easily be a top 10 player (and Stockton likely top 20).

4) This method of concluding one or both must be overrated because a #17 + a #21-ish should be good enough to win a title attempts to ignore what is really the elephant in the room for Stockton and Malone: longevity and durability. Stockton and Malone ultimately might not have a height of peak that is roughly even with the guys immediately surrounding them on an ATL; but they can nonetheless still credibly hold those positions because their longevity and durability is pretty exclusive regardless of who you’re comparing them too. Quite literally: they ARE the gold standard (along with Kareem). So the combined height of their respective peaks might not be as high as what we might get by “adding” the peaks of #18 and #20 together…...which obviously will have an effect on their ability to compete with their ATL peer duos if measured by ringz-only.

5) Lastly, if despite all of these considerations you nonetheless want to stick to your above method for determining how high they can “correctly” be ranked, I’d at least point out that they would not be the only ones who look “fishy” by this method: West was voted in at #15 and Elgin Baylor is likely to be voted in somewhere in the 24-28 range…...they played ELEVEN years together (including some overlapping prime), AND had four of those seasons with a fringe top 100 guy in Gail Goodrich, and three other seasons with #4 Wilt Chamberlain (and fwiw, I’m intentionally not giving a minus 1 to ‘71 which Baylor missed almost entirely with injury because it underscores the importance of the durability I cited above wrt Stockton/Malone). And how many titles did they win in those 11 years? ZERO. So did we screw up drastically on West? On Chamberlain? Do we need to put Baylor outside the top 40?

Philly in the ‘85 and ‘86 had the guy at #14, #19, #20, as well as TWO guys who are fringe top 100 players (Mo Cheeks and Bobby Jones). Admittedly we don’t have much for overlapping primes, but nor is anybody really far off their primes; so how could THREE top 20 players with nice supporting cast around them for two years not make it to the finals?

Walton (who might not make the top 50 due to the flip-side of the longevity/durability coin) with no other top 100 player beside him beat a team that had the #14 ranked player and a top 75-ish player (McGinnis) who were both in their prime. How does that fit into this method?

Disclaimer: I am NOT criticizing Dr. J, West, Baylor, Chamberlain, Moses Malone, etc., nor implying that the PC board made big era in where we’ve ranked some of these guys. I’m citing these examples to further illustrate why I think the statement (paraphrasing) “Stockton can’t be anywhere near 21 because he didn’t win a title with the guy ranked at #17” doesn’t have much reasonable grounding.

[90sAllDecade]

Pettit vs Ewing's ten year primes adjusted for pace in the playoffs was posted last page and anyway you look at it, Ewing is better offensively, tied or better as a rebounder and much better defensively in the postseason.

The big difference in Pettit's favor was the 29 ppg/17 reb in the finals to lead his team to victory versus
Ewing's finals performance

Now, if we look at who was better in their era again that has to do with competition. This board has Jordan, Olajuwon, Malone, Barkley, Robinson, Magic all as better players than Pettit already voted in. Imo, Pettit wouldn't have been top 8 in Ewing's era.

Agreed - I have (or would have) voted each of those players before Pettit.

This is why best player in era isn't comparing apples to apples either (especially "regarded" imo), because all those players weren't in the league in the 50s/60s, in their primes/peaks, with comparable rules, team support and competition as Pettit. Ex: Pettit isn't the league's best player competing against peak Jordan, Hakeem, Malone or Magic etc. imo. Pettit also had no all time great PF challenging him at his position. Ewing had the greatest collection of center talent in one era all time to compete against. If Pettit stayed at center he would get much less All NBA teams (or none certain years), with Wilt and Russell routinely beating him for that accolade.

Agreed again - each player's circumstance, environment, etc. is unique.

Also, Pettit stopped being the best player when Russell entered the league in 57-58 imo and it's questionable if he was better than Neil Johnston in 54-55. So that is a two year window, one of which (again I don't hold stock in accolades) Bob Cousy was regarded as MVP over him, which may or may not be correct individually.

Remember the players voted for MVP back then - and most of them voted Pettit MVP in 59.
As a matter of fact, it was the biggest margin in the 1st ten years of MVP voting, with the largest share
and the 3rd largest ever, behind Wilt in 1967 and Lewis Kareem in 1971.

In 58, Russell was first, but you can point to Pettit's championship -


So you have a 2 year period (58-59) where you have a good case that Pettit was equal to the 3rd best player of all-time.
Debatable, but how many people are in a debate with Russell? Wilt and Pettit.

And then a different 3 year period (61-63) where he is pretty equal with Oscar.

And go 62-64 pretty even with West.

It's hard to compare eras- I just think Pettit was better in his than Ewing's in his, and enough so t vote for Pettit.

You're right and I do value playoff performance, I have to give Pettit his due on that series.

I don't know my stance about the players voting for MVP yet. I wonder why they stopped?

I'm not a fan of accolades in general for ranking players, but it's something I have to research.

Honestly, until I analyzed how anemic Ewing's team support was I was perhaps ready to vote others in. But with the help he had, the historic defenses he anchored for a long time, and his offensive abilities I felt his individual impact on teams without talent was better than Pettit or Wade, even Barkley and Moses.

I think Ewing would have made Moses' Rockets teams' better with his defense and I think if you switch Moses with Ewing in Philadelphia, there is a strong change the Sixers still win a ring during those three years. If Jordan or Hakeem had gotten hurt like Russell did during Pettit's run, I think Patrick has a ring and the perspective changes.

I have a lot of respect for Pettit and I think his game might translate as one of the best of the 60s players. He's basically a modern PF decades early. But I think his era was weaker and even adjusting for pace Ewing is better in the playoffs imo, despite his drop-off. I can understand your perspective though.

Out of curiosity, what sources do you have for Pettit's defense for future reference?

[Doctor MJ]

Agreed they should have tried a different approach. And some of that should have been on West.
I guess my point is you're asking a lot from Elgin, something that has been very rarely done, and putting a higher standard on him to adapt then almost anyone ever did.
Saying Elgin is not a basketball genius is not a new concept - he was Mister Lottery

Robinson is the obvious example, bit how many others - Doctor J took more shots than Moses in 83.
Oscar? well he moved to a new team, so it's not quite the same, but okay.


So, what did we learn about Elgin?

high volume - but low efficiency after first 4 years
some great finals play
real good assist man at forward

I guess I'd say it's about the scale of the crime.

I don't consider Jordan a basketball genius. He was too focus on his own individual game, and this caused problems at time (Washington for example), but on the whole he had a game that was healthy enough that he was contributing great value.

Let's say it was blind luck - that he had no concept of what was working out there and what wasn't. What does that change? He was still effective, hence his team was successful and he's a GOAT candidate. Had he not been effective. Had he been chucking shots far less effectively than another volume scorer on his team, we'd knock him.

To me it just seems really dang simple. Like "Sure Elgin chopped down the wrong tree and it fell and destroyed a house, but do we really know that X was paying attention to houses when he chopped down his tree?" as if it matters what that someone else might have accidentally done the right thing when Elgin was doing the wrong thing.

As far as what we learned, I feel like you're trivializing things. People look at Baylor and see him as someone "who was so good" (literally the words used here) that he made 10 All-NBA 1st teams, spoken in a way that implies he was a Top 5 player for a decade even though injuries knocked him down a half-decade earlier. What I'm saying is that he was nothing like that. That his actual impact in the last half of that run had major negatives going through it, and and that also implies that we can't "round up" his efficiency to modern levels because he never was able to adjust as others did.

I end up see him as a guy with longevity issues who wasn't even playing up to modern standards at his best.

[E-Balla]

So 3 things:

1) If Baylor played stupid basketball and thus didn't help his team, even if it was only because coaches demanded it of him, isn't that what actually matters?

Well the guy you're saying should've gotten more shots was the point guard - aka the main guy distributing shots. Baylor had high assist numbers and we don't really know the way he was getting those shots or if it was detrimental to the team. Those Lakers teams won and had some great offenses. Hard to say the coaches, Baylor, or West weren't doing a good job distributing shots.

2) If you're one of the people who essentially tries to make a function rating a guy based on how valuable his scoring volume SHOULD have been, essentially blaming the fact that wasn't reality on the coach, what about the fact that he only scored that much because he took all those shots? Frankly how are you even imagining it went down differently. Are you pretending he took as many shots, but instead took shots he could make instead of ones he could miss? Are you pretending that every bad shot he took he just chose instead to not take?

I'm not saying its on the coach or even that it was an issue. For example 60 years from now someone could be saying LaMarcus Aldridge shouldn't have taken all those fga this past season because he was way less efficient than the team. In context we know they were only that efficient because they had him to take all the tough shots. If you can point me to old articles with people criticizing Baylor the way you are I'll rethink my stance but it's hard for me to believe all those people didn't understand what they were seeing and they randomly gave Baylor all those accolades.

3) What is it exactly you think coaches told Baylor to do? I think it's crucial to remember that this is a game where the game largely happens with the coach just standing their on the sidelines powerless. When we see other players from the same era move toward greater shooting efficiency, do you honestly think it's because a coach took them by the shoulders and fixed them and that coaches simply refused to do that with Baylor? In the end players know that no one wants them to take shots they aren't likely to hit, and that they are supposed to pass when someone else has a better opportunity. The only time it's remotely plausible that this isn't the case is when you have one volume scorer who you think is being told that he's the "loss leader" for his team sucking defenders away from teammates...but that absolutely wasn't the case with Baylor and the Lakers.

This is a good point. As everyone else got more efficient Baylor didn't. Is like to see the efficiency of players that played 56-59 compared to their efficiency in the 60s. Maybe he was behind the pack or maybe new and better players came in.

Re: let slide Hakeem & Duncan. I don't know what you're talking about. Those guys are defensive anchors who had nowhere near the efficiency issues Baylor did. They are basically superior to Baylor in every conceivable way despite their imperfections.

I'm saying when it came to scoring so these guys weren't really efficient in the regular season but they saw postseason efficiency and volume spikes. I have issues taking points off for efficiency when the player is efficient when it matters most.

As I read all of this to me the thing I keep thinking on is HOW you credit Baylor for what he was doing.

Look at him for what he is, a good volume scorer (great in the playoffs), great rebounder, very good passer, not a bad defender. He was seen as great in his day and looking back I see no reason to disagree.

The thing I tend to see sometimes is that people have a tendency to start from the raw stats and interpolate from there. Say, they look and see he scored 30 PPG, and then they look at efficiency, and then they seem to try to find reasons to excuse the efficiency and thus leaving them with an assessment of the player that's essentially based on scoring volume. To me it's largely a way of rationalizing an opinion that's in agreement with what's held by those who don't even look at anything but the coarsest of stats when making judgments, and it's not the way to go.

I originally start with how the people that saw him play felt. They thought he was (along with Russell, Pettit, Wilt, Oscar, and West) elite. I look at his numbers and they basically say he was elite for a solid 5 years followed by a lot of still good years.

What I'm advocating is that scoring volume shouldn't occupy that place as the starting point for what a guy did. Baylor missed a lot shots that the Lakers would have been better off if he hadn't. That's something real that shouldn't be seen as something to be brushed aside with "they must know what they are doing".

He did volume score well in the postseason. And either way he volume scored at an above average level (outside of a few years) so because he's no Jerry West we're going to act like he wasn't great?

There's also the matter that it's not like this is the only piece of evidence we have here.

We've seen ElGee's WOWY stuff. West is literally the most impressive person in that entire analysis, Baylor is nothing like that, and that doesn't even include the matter of how the Lakers quite literally exploded once Baylor was gone.

Common sense would tell you that it was a problem letting Baylor shoot like he did, and then the only tests we actually have to see if that's the case confirm that the team was basically fine without him.

So basically West was great so we downgrade Baylor? Baylor was an MVP candidate and great player before West. My thoughts on his career don't have anything to do with Jerry West. It seems like you can't get past him somehow holding West back (even though West was a PG and we have no proof that Baylor was a cancer of sorts and against a role change).

Re: Aldridge. So what you're basically saying here is, "Hey, sometimes inefficient guys do good things". Absolutely, but Aldridge's efficiency isn't helping Portland. Obviously they'd be better if he either shot more successfully or distributed a little more wisely. He helps them overall, but it's in spite of that efficiency issue.

"But he could've been better!" Come on this isn't a good argument. Of course if he made more shots he would've been better. If anyone made more shots they would've been better.

If you want to point out that sometimes a hub ends up stuck with the hot potato that's cool, but recognize the difference here between Aldridge and Baylor. Aldridge has the reputation he does because of the combination of his okay scoring, good passing, and nice rebounding & defense, and he's experiencing a wave of appreciation because of how well his team did last year, which interestingly was NOT based on offensive attack despite the ORtg, but rather the low turnovers and rebounding that allowed them to not be wasteful.

And we have no idea if Baylor kept turnovers low but we do know he was a great rebounder and passer unlike Aldridge.

Aldridge also probably won't even get mentioned in this project again after this unless it's too defend some other inefficient scorer.

Being the most recent example and one of the more extreme examples he's easy to use to get this point across. His level as a player does not affect the argument.

Baylor is a legend largely because of how much he scored. Yes he got rebounds too, but Dennis Rodman isn't being talked about here despite being a better rebounder and a much better defender. Baylor's volume of scoring is his calling card, and a look at the details of that scoring raises tons of red flags. And as I've said, I think an approach that starts with the volume as what's "real" followed by a skeptical take at everything else is a pretty awful way to do analysis.

So because his calling card is scoring we are going to ignore possibly his GOAT SF rebounding, and his very high assist numbers? Is it not possible for a part of someone's game to be underrated or am I missing something?

Re: Hakeem & Duncan efficiency. Yeah again, the reason it didn't matter as much for those guys is that it literally was far less severe relative to their argument. Let me focus on Duncan because obviously Hakeem's playoff narrative is unique. Duncan was a defensive anchor scoring 20 PPG on roughly okay efficiency in the regular season. What of that is problematic? You want to say he wasn't an offensive superstar? Well good, he wasn't really. Not top tier at least. He warrants being considered ranked where he was because he was still good enough when you factor everything else in.

The Baylor issue is that it hits right at the heart of why he was special at all, and hits it much harder. If it had been Duncan who was truly poor in his efficiency, that would merely be a knock on a secondary part of his game. For Baylor it's literally "Hey you know that thing he was truly great at, actually there was a real problem there."

It's similar to what I've talked about with Wilt except much more transparent in this case. If a player's reputation is built on a particular statistic that quite literally when you look at you see signs that his team would have been better off if he had NOT put up, the right thing to do is to completely reconsider how we think of the guy. And this is necessary specifically because it's the rare circumstance where we can realistically say most people from the time probably didn't fully understand what was going on when they built the narrative that was carried forward through history and thus represented our own individual starting points when first started looking into him.

I know some people are thinking "There Doc goes again", and are probably shaking their head at how I seem to have such love or hate responses to guys from early basketball eras, but the fact of the matter is that when people are operating largely based on their own intuition in the absence of good data, some guys go in the right direction, and some go in the wrong direction. Happens even now, but it was more dramatic back then.

Now that leaves open the argument of "Well I'm judging them based on how I think they'd do now?", and I get that, but that's why I ask: How are you estimating that? Because it's not at all realistic to start from a pseudo-accomplishment from the '60s and extrapolate from their like it's something real. If Baylor in those years in fact should have been scoring at 20 points per 100 possessions, then you should be extrapolating from there, not from some big inefficient volume.

Wilt is actually a great example because we can say a few things true about both him and Baylor:

They are known mostly for their rebounding and scoring.
Their scoring is not as good as most assume.
Due to the love of their scoring other parts of their games have been completely underrated for example both were great passers.

Now Wilt is already in and I have no doubt that no one ranks him over 20. Baylor is about to be in soon too and I have no doubt he's in most top 30s. But they both impact the game outside of their scoring. Baylor is both a better rebounder and passer than Pettit. Should we ignore that because both are mainly scorers?

[Jim Naismith]

Now Wilt is already in and I have no doubt that no one ranks him over 20. Baylor is about to be in soon too and I have no doubt he's in most top 30s. But they both impact the game outside of their scoring. Baylor is both a better rebounder and passer than Pettit. Should we ignore that because both are mainly scorers?

The data suggest that Pettit is the better rebounder:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... op_10.html

Rebounds Per Game

1959 B. Pettit (16.42) > E. Baylor (15.00)

1960 B. Pettit (16.96) > E. Baylor (16.43)

1961 B. Pettit (20.26) > E. Baylor (19.82)

1962 B. Pettit (18.71) > E. Baylor (18.58)

1963 B. Pettit (15.08) > E. Baylor (14.32)

1964 B. Pettit (15.30) > E. Baylor (12.00)

1965 B. Pettit (12.40) < E. Baylor (12.84)

[magicmerl]

Based on the arguements I've seen here I'm going to vote for Patrick Ewing.

He may have had the misfortune of peaking during the MJ era, thus winning no championships, but he carried an enormous load offensively for his team and defensively was a standout. I put him dead last compared to his 'peers' in the golden age of centers in the 90s, but really, how bad does that make him?

If we were to timeshift him back to play in Pettit's era I can absoutely see him destroying the league in a Mikanesque fashion.

[magicmerl]

Looks like a runoff between Pettit and Ewing is brewing.

7 Pettit – penbeast0, Jim Naismith, DQuinn1575, Warspite (62), trex_8063 (67), Ryoga Hibiki (84), Clyde Frazier (143)
7 Ewing – ronnymac2, ShaqAttack3234, tsherkin (99), SactoKingsFan (100), drza (138), 90sAllDecade (139), magicmerl (149)
2 Frazier – GC Pantalones, Moonbeam
1 Baylor – DannyNoonan1221 (113 - change from Pettit)
1 Wade – Basketballefan
1 MIkan – Owly (57)

Through to #149

[penbeast0]

Starting with DQuinn's post number 136
7 Pettit – penbeast0, Jim Naismith, DQuinn1575, Warspite (62), trex_8063 (67), Ryoga Hibiki (84), Clyde Frazier
6 Ewing – ronnymac2, ShaqAttack3234, tsherkin (99), SactoKingsFan (100), 90sAllDecade, drza


2 Frazier -- GC Pantalones, Moonbeam
1 Baylor -DannyNoonan1221 (113 - change from Pettit)
1 Wade – Basketballefan
1 MIkan -- Owly (57)

It looks like a runoff!

[DQuinn1575]

STOCKTON

My point is not that he didn't win a title; many at this level did not .

My point is that when there is a playoff series and one team starts with the 2 best players you should expect that team to win. Now if you are 2 and 3 or even 1 and 3 that might not be expected.

I showed every combo of top guys voted so far, when they were at least all-pro level and found they lost only 3 tries in 24 years to teams without a top 20 player. Two of those losses were to champions.

Malone and Stockton frequently lost to teams with players all-time set to be below Stockton. And these teams didn't win titles.

It wasn't magic Michael and Hakeem every year.

How many passes do you get?
A team with two top 25 guys should be the second best team more than twice.
Well, that's because Stockton was consistently real good but not great is the basic response.

So Stockton never was higher than 7 in mvp voting. There are many players not yet selected who were top 6 three years or more.

Stockton is going to be voted in way before I vote for him

I'll argue him more when it appears he is a viable candidate.




Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[E-Balla]

I'm taking Ewing in the runoff. Defensively the man is top 5 and offensively he was very good. He carried some terrible offensive teams and without him to build around once he left LA Pat Riley probably wouldn't have the great defensive reputation he has today.

[ccameron]

Still don't think wade belongs here. 11 seasons is certainly a big enough sample size to reflect on his career, but at 32 years old he was on a serious "maintenance plan" just to be able to perform "well" in the playoffs and then fizzle in the finals. He clearly has longevity issues, and that should be considered.

I think we'd have a better idea of where to consider him a few years down the line to see if he sticks in the league. Was he a factor in the heat winning the 2012 and 2013 championships? Sure, but to what extent? He was really in a great situation over the last few seasons.

I feel like this is a common opinion, but it's not looking at the reality of his situation. Personally, I feel that he was in quite a mixed bag of a position. If you look at Wade's stats with Lebron on/off the court per 36 minutes, they are way higher without Lebron, even last year (with not a big drop in efficiency, I might add). Lebron occupying the same space left Wade to try and reinvent himself, and then also added hesitancy to his game making him second guess whether he should take over or not -- which I think contributed to his recent decline just as much as injuries. Also, although he missed games last year, it was always stated that it was part of a recovery from Ossatron treatment (a procedure that a lot of players who weren't hunting for titles would have just taken more time off, as in fact he did in 2008). It wasn't simply a maintenance plan, or at least the Heat consistently denied that. Keep in mind that with 4 straight title runs, he's probably played more basketball than a lot of other guys that didn't "miss games" last year.

Also, saying he was "a factor" in 2012 is a huge understatement. There is no way the Heat get past the Pacers when Bosh went down without Wade going god-mode. Also, in the ECF that year, the Celtics actually paid more defensive attention to Wade than to Lebron, and he still played extremely well. The media at the time tried to spin that as Wade was an easier target, but regardless of how much truth there is to that, there are not many players I can think of that could command more attention than Lebron at his absolute prime.

I agree though that we will have a better idea in a couple years. I personally feel he has a couple more good seasons left, and without Lebron there, we'll see what effect that has on the way he plays.

[ceiling raiser]

My vote in the runoff is for Ewing.

So, I've been in favor of Ewing the past couple of rounds (though I don't believe I've casted actual votes). Pettit wasn't a defensive liability, but Pat is one of the all-time greats in that regard (lorak had a great breakdown here: viewtopic.php?p=40970379#p40970379). Pettit was the superior rebounder, but I don't feel at this time that his range or post game were superior to Ewing's to offset the defensive advantage. Again, I don't want to make it a bigger issue than it is, but the racial composition of the league when Pettit played is still a major concern for me.

There's been some quality discussion of Baylor, and I really liked this post by Doc: viewtopic.php?p=40981128#p40981128. He raises some interesting points:

It's similar to what I've talked about with Wilt except much more transparent in this case. If a player's reputation is built on a particular statistic that quite literally when you look at you see signs that his team would have been better off if he had NOT put up, the right thing to do is to completely reconsider how we think of the guy. And this is necessary specifically because it's the rare circumstance where we can realistically say most people from the time probably didn't fully understand what was going on when they built the narrative that was carried forward through history and thus represented our own individual starting points when first started looking into him.

I know some people are thinking "There Doc goes again", and are probably shaking their head at how I seem to have such love or hate responses to guys from early basketball eras, but the fact of the matter is that when people are operating largely based on their own intuition in the absence of good data, some guys go in the right direction, and some go in the wrong direction. Happens even now, but it was more dramatic back then.

Now that leaves open the argument of "Well I'm judging them based on how I think they'd do now?", and I get that, but that's why I ask: How are you estimating that? Because it's not at all realistic to start from a pseudo-accomplishment from the '60s and extrapolate from their like it's something real. If Baylor in those years in fact should have been scoring at 20 points per 100 possessions, then you should be extrapolating from there, not from some big inefficient volume.

Some thoughts of mine...

When looking at players who played before I started watching, it's really, really difficult to separate reputation from quality. Obviously you can watch as much tape as possible, but as the selection of tape to watch is likely going to be informed by popular perception, sample(/visibility, since the further back you go, the less tape is available) bias and winning bias are going to be very real concerns. Hell, I don't trust my own opinions from watching live in the pre-databall era (92-93 through 95-96 for me), so going back further, scouting from watching tape and looking at team ORtg/DRtg trends and available WOWY data (available to us thanks to ElGee's of course ), without having lived through those eras and experiencing the league at the time, is a very inexact science.

I do think some accounts are trustworthy. If we have a large enough volume of qualitative data to sort through, one would think there's a reasonable probability that we can parse out high quality information from first hand accounts. Things such as media accolades, comments effusing random praise, and the like aren't going to help us that much, but if we get specific, detailed descriptions of how these guys played, it can really help us paint a more complete picture. Unfortunately, sources are quite limited even for these accounts the further back one looks. There seems to be a reasonable wealth of information spanning the late 60s, 70s, and 80s (as well as tape becoming increasingly available as you move forward), but that doesn't really help us all that much when discussing Pettit and his contemporaries. Yes, if you do the legwork there is some good stuff out there (I admittedly haven't done as much research on Pettit in particular, so I may be understating the material, but I don't know that enough exists on his contemporaries (particularly earlier in his career) to draw conclusions about him in which I'd be reasonably confident (Samurai and johnlac1, as well as others, are tremendous assets since they seem to know a ton about pretty much every significant player thereafter).

Anyhow, what's my point? I do trust the team ORtg/DRtg trends and WOWY numbers a ton, but what I perceive them as telling us—namely how much players were impacting the game at the time, given the leaguewide trends/rules/competition etc. in place—isn't necessarily telling me everything I'm trying to learn, since a large part (perhaps the largest) portion of my evaluation is determining how a player would translate into today's game. The closer we get to the present era (need it be the last 5, 10, or 15 years), the closer the aforementioned data (+ RAPM) comes to answering these questions. Doc (and ElGee as well in the past, in addition to some other great posters on this board) in his post above, in the bolded portions, really forces me to question how I'm coming to the conclusions I'm reaching. While I stand by my criteria for evaluating players, I do admit that there is subjectivity/guesswork involved. If I can learn more about guys I can limit those elements (though naturally they can't be eliminated), but it's not as easy (or perhaps possible at all, if the resources don't exist).

With Wilt, while I'm not absolutely certain about he he'd play today, there are enough datapoints that I'm comfortable enough with the written accounts we have of him to project his game into today's league. As for Baylor (#17 on my pre-project list) and Pettit (outside the top 25 in my initial list, though he probably wouldn't be too far off)? Not so much. Again, a large portion of the burden is on me to investigate both guys to the best of my abilities, and I can't honestly say I've done all that can be done. A big part of this is asking the right questions, and asking others or finding reliable primary sources for myself to answer them.

I do think Doc has raised enough doubt about Baylor to force me to reevaluate slotting him so early on my initial list. If so much of his reputation is due to his ability to score (positionally, he was a very good passer, a plus rebounder, and not an abysmal defender from my understanding...but I think we'd need to see something more in the WOWY data if the non-scoring elements of his game were valuable enough to consider him here), even if he had more room today in which to operate with better spacing, I think it's a stretch to pick him here. Especially considering apparent issues with him adapting his game (I believe not figuring out a solution with West, not taking a lesser role when Wilt arrived, among other examples have been cited here). Since he played later than Pettit, the racial composition of the league isn't as huge an issue for me, but I do have to admit that it is perhaps something to consider. I'm not sure how to feel about his injuries, so I can't comment on whether they would've been more preventable/treatable in today's league (maybe someone more familiar with his injury history can comment on this).

[Clyde Frazier]

Still don't think wade belongs here. 11 seasons is certainly a big enough sample size to reflect on his career, but at 32 years old he was on a serious "maintenance plan" just to be able to perform "well" in the playoffs and then fizzle in the finals. He clearly has longevity issues, and that should be considered.

I think we'd have a better idea of where to consider him a few years down the line to see if he sticks in the league. Was he a factor in the heat winning the 2012 and 2013 championships? Sure, but to what extent? He was really in a great situation over the last few seasons.

I feel like this is a common opinion, but it's not looking at the reality of his situation. Personally, I feel that he was in quite a mixed bag of a position. If you look at Wade's stats with Lebron on/off the court per 36 minutes, they are way higher without Lebron, even last year (with not a big drop in efficiency, I might add). Lebron occupying the same space left Wade to try and reinvent himself, and then also added hesitancy to his game making him second guess whether he should take over or not -- which I think contributed to his recent decline just as much as injuries. Also, although he missed games last year, it was always stated that it was part of a recovery from Ossatron treatment (a procedure that a lot of players who weren't hunting for titles would have just taken more time off, as in fact he did in 2008). It wasn't simply a maintenance plan, or at least the Heat consistently denied that. Keep in mind that with 4 straight title runs, he's probably played more basketball than a lot of other guys that didn't "miss games" last year.

Also, saying he was "a factor" in 2012 is a huge understatement. There is no way the Heat get past the Pacers when Bosh went down without Wade going god-mode. Also, in the ECF that year, the Celtics actually paid more defensive attention to Wade than to Lebron, and he still played extremely well. The media at the time tried to spin that as Wade was an easier target, but regardless of how much truth there is to that, there are not many players I can think of that could command more attention than Lebron at his absolute prime.

I agree though that we will have a better idea in a couple years. I personally feel he has a couple more good seasons left, and without Lebron there, we'll see what effect that has on the way he plays.

I'll be more specific about my "great situation" comment:

Wade has been relatively injury prone throughout his career. When he missed time or struggled on the court due to injury pre-lebron, the heat suffered mightily as he didn’t have a great supporting cast. When you bring in the best player on the planet, that changes things. Wade was now afforded the ability to miss time during the regular season (or later on just “rest”) and still have a chance to contribute in the playoffs.

I’m aware that i made a generalization about how much he was a factor in the heat’s success since lebron and bosh arrived. No doubt was he a major factor in the 2012 playoffs when bosh went down, and they don’t win the title without his stellar play. That said, as it relates to what I noted above, wade missed the equivalent of 22 games in 2012 (if it was an 82 game season). If the heat didn’t have such a great team around him, he doesn’t get that opportunity to make that contribution later in the playoffs.

As for your comment about him performing better per 36 min when lebron was off the court, I have a few questions: are you looking at total min each season from 2011-2014, and then extrapolating per 36 min per season? If so, how many total minutes each season are we talking about? From 2011-2014, lebron played 38 MPG, and only missed a total of 18 games in those 4 seasons. I don’t think that allows for an overly significant sample size.

If you want to argue narratives as a reason for wade’s decline, you’re entitled to that opinion. I think it’s pretty clear that the point of those 3 coming together was to push individual production aside for the goal of winning championships, though. I mean, most of us realize that bosh never really declined, he just moved into a different role that didn’t allow him to be a 20/10 guy anymore (although his lack of rebounding did become questionable at times).

If wade was putting up better stats with a few more 1st round exits over the last few seasons, i’m not sure what we’d be saying about the guy here right now…

[90sAllDecade]

I want to share some info about how great some of those Ewing & Riley Knicks defenses were.



http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=6205


[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K-qGWkiKvQ[/youtube]

Ewing's help defense, switching lateral movement and positioning is pretty impressive for all the knee injuries he dealt with.

To be fair, it was a total team effort created by Riley with Ewing as the anchor to help protect the rim and erase mistakes. Jordan the GOAT won out and dominated, but the Knicks defense was beautiful in pressuring him as much as could be expected.

The 93 series went 6 games to the eventual champion Bulls, Jordan had awesome numbers as usual but with .400 FG% and .522 TS% which would be about as well as you can do against peak Jordan.

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

Ewing also had one of his best playoff series going for 25.8 pts 11.2 rebs 2.5 ast 1.7 stl 1.8 blks with .530 FG% and .569 TS%.

[trex_8063]

I'm taking Ewing in the runoff. Defensively the man is top 5

Bill Russell
Hakeem Olajuwon
Dikembe Mutombo
David Robinson
Kevin Garnett

(not even mentioning other potentials: Tim Duncan, Dennis Rodman)

and offensively he was very good. He carried some terrible offensive teams and without him to build around once he left LA Pat Riley probably wouldn't have the great defensive reputation he has today.

I guess I don't necessarily disagree, but why isn't he being heavily criticized for some of the very same things that Karl Malone and to a lesser degree David Robinson were being crucified for?: low/poor offensive efficiency, slumped performance in the playoffs.

Prime Ewing ('86-'97)
Per 100 rs: 32.5 pts, 14.3 reb, 3.0 ast, 1.5 stl, 3.8 blk, 4.5 tov on .561 TS%
22.0 PER, .161 WS/48, *107 ORtg/99 DRtg in 36.6 mpg

Per 100 ps: 30.6 pts, 14.8 reb, 3.3 ast, 1.2 stl, 3.4 blk, 3.8 tov on *.528 TS%
20.4 PER, .138 WS/48, *106 ORtg/101 DRtg in 39.6 mpg

*below league average; Karl Malone took serious heat for "bad" playoff scoring efficiency, but his playoff TS% and ORtg during his prime are not below league average (David Robinson either). jsia...
fwiw, Ewing's PER, WS/48, and ORtg-DRtg gap (for both rs and playoffs) are ALL worse than that of John Stockton's prime (except for playoff PER, which is tied).


Anyway, I'm just surprised that Ewing is gaining this much traction this early, particularly in light of these things. His playoff offensive efficiency is worse than Malone's or Robinson's (and again, Malone was raked over the coals for his offensive playoff "inefficiencies", DRob criticized to a lesser degree), yet Ewing appears immune to criticism for these things. And obv Ewing's regular season output and efficiency really aren't even in the same league as Malone or Robinson. And imo he's also at least a marginally lesser defender than Robinson, and his longevity (while good) doesn't really compare to Malone. So it's just very curious to see him garner so much consideration this close to those guys (especially with multiple other worthy candidates not yet voted in).

[drza]

Spoiler:

I don't think era difference/league norm difference is very explanatory here, for a few reasons. For one, again, we were talking about 7 years of overlap in their 10-year primes. That's a lot of overlap, the majority of their primes, in fact, and I think more than enough to show how they were performing in their primes on the same playing field. Plus, the lower Baylor performance at the back end of his prime that you site is less about league norms and more about Baylor's level dropping after his knee injuries.

If we look only at the common years of prime, there is very little difference between Pettit from 1959 - 65 as opposed to from 1956 - 65. I'm going to post the 59 - 65 numbers for each below, and when I do you can compare Pettit over the shorter time period to the longer time period in the spoiler above. Almost exactly the same. Baylor, on the other hand, looks significantly better if you only look at the 59 - 65 window. The late 60s, where the league norms effect that you point out should have been helping Baylor, in fact is the weakest period of what I included as his 10-year prime so they don't shift the needle in Baylor's favor at all. To whit:

Regular season
Bob Pettit 1959 - 1965: 27.8 pts (52% TS), 16.6 reb, 3.3 ast (TO not kept)
Elgin Baylor 1959 - 1965: 30.2 pts (49.2% TS), 15.4 reb, 4.3 ast (TO not kept)

Playoffs, 10 year primes
Bob Pettit 1959 - 1965 (59 games): 25.8 pts (50.8% TS), 14.8 reb, 3.0 ast (TO not kept)
Elgin Baylor 1959 - 1964 (65 games) : 32.9 pts (50.7% TS), 14.3 reb, 4.0 ast (TO not kept)

If we look only at the common years, the story is almost exactly the same as what I wrote in the spoiler section above, just with larger volumes for Baylor. Pettit still has the efficiency advantage in the regular season that goes away entirely in the postseason, when Baylor matches his efficiency but on much higher volume. Essentially, whether we look at the entire 10 years or just at the in-common 7 years, it still looks to me that they are pretty even in the regular season but that Baylor looks pretty solidly like the better postseason performer.

So first thing I'll say is that I'm not really a Pettit guy. I've talked about why I see Pettit as a respectable talent, but I'm not in love with him. I'm going to try to get away from talking about Baylor because I don't like to be so negative, but Baylor is one of the few guys where I consider it very important for people to understand how flawed his career was.

On to the specific things you mention here:

-The stuff relating to Baylor's injuries is fine if you want to argue Baylor's peak, but to me the glaring issue with Baylor's career is longevity. The second half of his prime is spent not only much weaker than the first half, but attempting to largely play the same role and failing while a better option was available. Pettit doesn't have any issues like this.

-I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with you condensing the time frame like you do to focus on the true prime-est of primes, but look at the sample size. Baylor only has 2 years with a TS% north of 51 in the playoffs. Pettit has one year ('62-63) that is right in the ballpark of those 2 years, are you really going to say Baylor > Pettit based on a 2 playoffs vs 1 playoffs?

To me they were both basically proven on the same level, except that Pettit had gotten there by adjusting over time to be a smarter player whereas Baylor was there based on youthful athleticism, and then the rest of Baylor career didn't follow suit.

Also, you might be given Baylor extra credit because in those early years he shot at a higher volume, but remember how all the evidence we have says that that wasn't actually working so well. The Laker offense in those years had weak ORtg's, and that didn't change until Jerry West got there. Pettit's Hawks by contrast were running quite healthy offenses with him as the focal point.

A few things I need to say before I get to the nitty gritty. First, I don't have a dog in this fight. As you put it, I'm not much of a Baylor guy or a Pettit guy, and as I pointed out in my vote thread, I'm not really ready to vote for either one of them. Secondly, I'm sure you know that you're one of my favorite posters and we often agree. On the other hand, we also often disagree. That's what makes for good conversation. I say this as preface because I don't want my next sentence to come out too harsh but I'm not sure how to sugarcoat it in text.

I really feel like you've gotten too caught up in the "West" side of the West or Baylor comparison, and that it's coloring the way you're viewing the data here. Or if that's too strong, I guess I can just say that I don't think you have nearly enough support to make the kinds of statements that you make in this thread.

Pretty much all of your arguments, to me, fit better in a comparison of West vs Baylor than one of Pettit vs Baylor. It's fine that West is more efficient than Baylor, and maybe that means that West could/should have been a bigger part of the offense. Maybe. On the other hand, West was a HUGE usage player as was, but that's neither here nor there to my point. The point is, you've repeatedly questioned Baylor's intelligence in this thread for playing the way that he did and directly give Pettit a pass, when Pettit was playing the EXACT same way in the EXACT same era. I think it's beyond way too far to do this, especially based on the available evidence. You went as far as to say that Pettit was playing with intelligence while Baylor was only getting by on his athleticism. I'll admit, it kind of touched a nerve with me. I'm never one trying to be oversensitive about race, and I feel like we "know" each other on here well enough that I'd never accuse you of anything like that, but this is a publicly viewed thread that's going to get a LOT of viewing from people besides us. And historically, there's been a lot of racial code in the athletic commentary lexicon about the "intelligent" white player vs the black player that only succeeds because he's an athletic beast. Sometimes that shoe fits, but unless there's a lot more evidence here than I've ever seen I think you should be careful of toeing that particular ledge too vehemently.

Back to the data, I see nothing to support your stance that Baylor was some kind of net negative player. ElGee has several WOWY runs for him through the years, and Baylor consistently put up very positive marks throughout his career. Marks that put him firmly among top 10% of the 777 player years that ElGee has on the spreadsheet. This means, to the extent of non-boxscore data that we have, Baylor in all his inefficiency was still a VERY positive impact player in his prime years.

The longevity issue is valid. Baylor wasn't the same player after his injury, which cut his prime short. However, I was posting 10-year averages which included Baylor's injured seasons. So if he looked a bit better than Pettit over their decades, including the years when Baylor wasn't as good, well...you know how averages work. At the least, I don't see a huge longevity edge either way. Just like I don't see a big efficiency edge either way.

Which ultimately, was the point of my Baylor vs Pettit conclusions. Both were very inefficient by modern times. But they were extremely similar when compared to each other. I don't see any way to look at what the two of them did in majorly overlapping eras, side-by-side, and conclude that Pettit was clearly better. Again, all of this is caveated as "with what I've seen presented thus far". I'm still perfectly willing to have someone frame their careers in a different light and change my mind. But so far, to date, I haven't seen it.

[colts18]

How much of the great 93 and 94 Knicks defense should be credited to Ewing? Was he having Duncan impact on defense?