RealGM Top 100 List #46

[JordansBulls]

Vote: Dominique Wilkins

Finished 2nd in MVP to a prime Bird, Magic, Kareem, Moses, Hakeem and also led the league in scoring and played peak Bird to a standstill in a playoff series. Dude was clutch and took his teams as far as he could.

[penbeast0]

Vote: Dominique Wilkins

Finished 2nd in MVP to a prime Bird, Magic, Kareem, Moses, Hakeem and also led the league in scoring and played peak Bird to a standstill in a playoff series. Dude was clutch and took his teams as far as he could.

When you say "Dude was clutch," do you mean dropping 2.7 points of PER, .026 pts of TS% (From an already low number), and dropping in points, rebounds, and assists per 48 . . . that kind of clutch?

The drop for Wilkins in the playoffs is a little bit higher than for the average star.

[Owly]

...

I'm looking seriously at Parish, one problem (one which I think may be a bigger problem for other voters are those playoff numbers.

PER 16.6, .121 WS/48, 109 ORtg/105 DRtg (+4) in 33.6 mpg

Okay but that's his career numbers. And he had crazy longevity, maybe it's brought down by the Hornets and Bulls years ... except his prime numbers are slightly worse.

PER 16.5, .121 WS/48 in 34.9 mpg

Still leaning Parish but not confident in it. Any thoughts this?

Fwiw he does have 15,000 RS minutes on McHale, and RS boxscore wise the time they were both of very similar value http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... m:advanced

Here's the playoff numbers of the present candidates recieving votes
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... nced::none

As ever this comes with huge caveats about not each playoff career being the same (e.g. some will have more playoff experience away from their peak, such as Allen; some will play in a decidedly tougher conference e.g. Parish in 80s Boston; some will play on crummy teams which might mean WS stats underrate them, which arguably happens with McGrady etc).

[trex_8063]

Yeah, the slumps during the playoffs within his prime is the weakest point of his case: he basically had five reasonably strong playoff years in his prime (vs. six that were a little disappointing). Although to a small degree he made up for part of it by bringing it pretty strong in the playoffs of three of his NON-prime seasons (which is why his career playoff PER is actually +0.1 to his prime playoff PER, WS/48 the same).

With me being a total career value guy (the "whole area under the curve", as it were).....although the height of the curve isn't quite as high as we'd like, that's still an awfully long curve. Which still makes for a considerable amount of total career value (again: #32 all-time in playoff WS, despite slumped performances).

And then there's his rs performance, which was pretty consistently excellent.

Or, looked at another way, I'll say this for Robert Parish: although I don't have a peaks list, I'd estimate he's easily a top 100 peak all-time (arguably 75??). Combined to that, he's almost assuredly top 5 in longevity (one of the true iron men the game has seen). That puts him squarely in the top 50 debate for me.

[DQuinn1575]

I'll vote for Sam Jones (again).

His individual resume individually is on par with English and Parish, probably behind Dominique and McGrady.
His playoff and team success is much much much greater.

[Doctor MJ]

Okay so, jumping in with at least something, here are the next 5 guys on my pre-project list:

Mutombo
Cowens
Reed
Ginobili
KJ

All of these guys except Mutombo have some kind of longevity or durability issue, and of course Mutombo isn't absolutely amazing on that front either.

So, I'm particularly interested in hearing arguments for big longevity guys.

Also I haven't heard discussion about Ginobili yet at all, so I'd encourage that.

Also also, I like Moonbeam's analysis of Dantley, who to my mind is by far the best statistical player left. There's a part of me that really wants to be convinced I've seriously underrated him, so I'm pondering what Moonbeam's said.

[SactoKingsFan]

I initially had McGrady as my top candidate, but I've decided to move him down at least a few spots due to significant durability/ longevity issues. With that said, I think Ray Allen is the best candidate for this spot since he has great longevity to go along with a very valuable and extremely portable skillset.

Vote: Ray Allen

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[penbeast0]

Alex English - penbeast0

Tracy McGrady - ronnymac2

Ray Allen - john248, SactoKingsFan, tsherkin

Robert Parish - trex_8063

Dominique Wilkins – JordansBulls

Sam Jones – Dquinn1575



no real favorites emerging, Ray Allen leading with only 2 votes. I will get back to this and count when I get home tonight.

[tsherkin]

Vote: Ray Allen

I'd actually forgotten he wasn't in when I was voting English (slash brain-farted, because I think I even mentioned him in one of my lists).

Ray is a proven scoring commodity, much more well-rounded than many realize, and generally an awesome player, so he's got my vote over a guy like Nique. Certainly better than Sam Jones, whose only real claim at this stage is, I think, rings with the dynasty Celtics (not to undersell him, since he was a really good player, but still, Ray was obviously better at Jones' best deal, which was scoring).

That leaves me with the Ray/T-Mac debate, and I think McGrady's longevity of prime is terrible, and his primary trait was scoring, which wasn't actually all that hot outside of 2003. Very good playmaker, of course, but not so much better than Ray that I feel it a significant strength. Tight, very tight, but I go Ray.

[penbeast0]

Well, didn't have a strong opinion originally and don't have one now but will vote strategically to get the runoff started. Because the numbers are the best, his coaches and teammates in Detroit raved about his defense of all things, and because I always liked him, I will switch my vote to Adrian Dantley setting up a Dantley/Allen runoff.

[b] ADRIAN DANTLEY [/b}

[SactoKingsFan]

Do we have two official votes for Dantley?

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[RSCD3_]

Vote Ray Allen

Better longevity and portability, more of a spacing affect on teams, underrated as a scorer and a pretty good defender for much of his prime




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[trex_8063]

Ray Allen over Nique??? I don't see how?? Ray never had to carry a franchise like Nique did.

The last statement is somewhat revisionist. He "carried" some of those Bucks and Sonics teams more or less as much as Nique "carried" the Hawks.

As to "how???"....

I'd rate Allen a roughly equal (if not marginally better??) scorer. He mercilessly clubs Nique in efficiency (and I'm not even among the efficiency-obsessed) while being at least in the same neighborhood in volume. Not as good an isolation scorer as Nique, but certainly not bad at it in his prime. Superior off-ball scorer, and the fact that he is able to function so well as an elite off-ball scoring threat makes him more portable between teams of varied talent-loads: he's not someone who is going to be redundant alongside other stars.

Rebounding (relative to position played), Nique has a bit of an edge; but then Allen has the clear edge as a play-maker. Allen's basically a mediocre defender, but so is Dominique.

And then there's longevity, and Allen quite clearly wins out there. Both have roughly 10-year primes......but then where Nique then had only four seasons of any relevance on top of that, Allen had EIGHT. As recently as his 18th season he was still an important role player on a team that went to the finals, and he never in 18 years avg less than 25.8 mpg.

Not saying it's by a big margin, but if you truly can't see Allen's case over Wilkins at this point, you're not seeing things objectively, imo.

Run-off vote: Ray Allen.

[trex_8063]

Well, didn't have a strong opinion originally and don't have one now but will vote strategically to get the runoff started. Because the numbers are the best, his coaches and teammates in Detroit raved about his defense of all things, and because I always liked him, I will switch my vote to Adrian Dantley setting up a Dantley/Allen runoff.

[b] ADRIAN DANTLEY [/b}

Do we have two official votes for Dantley?

Yeah, actually I'm seeing you as the only Dantley vote here, penbeast0.

[penbeast0]

Do we have two official votes for Dantley?

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Dang, you are right!

In that case, I'll change to Ray Allen instead and end this one here. Hopefully we can get some better discussion for the next one.