fpliii wrote:Guessing we're going to have a full-on TMac/Kobe debate now. Good stuff.
Moses is really a tough call for me. The on/off offensive numbers for him are approaching a GOAT level, but it seems there's a good deal of skepticism about a guy whose game (seems to have) relied so much on offensive rebounding. In general, it's tough to make educated guesses for me about where guys stand in terms of relative impact on those pre-salary cap Philly/Boston/LA teams based on how much talent they had stockpiled.
Open question for voters...what's keeping Karl Malone off of your ballots at this point? I don't necessarily feel he should be in contention here, but I feel like he hasn't been mentioned all that much so far.
Re: Moses, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about his on/off numbers. The one thing that's giving me pause is the consistency, although we do see a relative spike in '83 which is something to consider. RebelWithACause directly asked me for my thoughts on the on/off splits at one point, and I didn't have a cogent answer at that point for a few reasons.
Here's where I'm leaning ATM: Moses is the GOAT offensive rebounder, but he's never impressed me as an offensive focal point. His post game is not great in terms of efficacy, he doesn't go to it often, and I think people haven't watched enough film of him if they're insinuating some type of dominant post scorer in Moses. I think his offensive rebounding has potential to make huge impact in precisely the situation it did in real life; surrounded by talented players who can take the load of initiating the offense and allowing Moses to clean up everything else, improving overall team efficiency with him capitalizing on basically every second chance. He also brings a lot of ancillary benefits in that he can exhaust opposing bigs and get them in foul trouble, as well as him being a player you really can't help off.
But portability is limited with this approach. I don't think he does all that much to improve an average team, given that he doesn't stand out against *good* bigs ITO shot creation, let alone great ones.
And frankly if we're going to use on/off numbers to justify Moses, we really have to acknowledge the elephant in the room: Moses looks great, but Mo Cheeks looks far better. My current thinking re this point is that both Moses and Erving had the potential to improve a team's offense immensely, but only if they weren't the primary creators. I think criticisms of Erving's ball handling are very prescient, and I don't buy the counter that "30 PPG wings don't have issues with ball handling" because it's far too categorical a statement for something we have limited evidence for. I think Cheeks was "driving" the offense in the sense that he was creating the opportunities for his cohorts Moses to dominate with his ORB and Dr. J with his cutting and off-ball action. I think this is consistent with Erving's bizarre year to year fluctuations in on/off and Moses' very defined peak in 83., as well as Mo looking like a savant.
I don't know if any of them could've replicated their impact on a more neutral situation, although ironically I think Mo would be the most likely to.
Re: Malone, I just think Barkley was the better player. He should be a candidate if people are taking Kobe seriously IMO.
