RealGM 2017 Top 100 List: #4

[andrewww]

-I think the issue with LeBron's teams falling off is a function of having a ball-dominant offense. LBJ, Nash, Magic, Oscar, Paul -- they all play the same position IMO. And they all seem to create a "vacuum effect" when they are off. To me, it's why these guys aren't as portable as the off-ballers; their value is connected with having the ball.

But they don't scale poorly, a key distinction, because they pass so well and impact 5 guys with the ball instead of 1. Additionally, the diminishing returns on that style of play happen at a fairly high level, which is they all lead such great offenses.

The criticism starts to sound like this: Would you rather have a multipolar 60-win team that doesn't fall off when one guy leaves, or a 65-win unipolar team that goes in the tank without its star? I think, by definition, second is still better, and I'm not sure how much (if any) this should curve a player's impact stats because he singularly creates elite offense and a team rightfully turns to it.

-Duncan's personality is no doubt conducive to great cultures. And there's an inescabliity reality that things like training environment and teaching matter in pretty much all competitive environments. But how MUCH they matter here is up for debate - it's fuzzy, from the outside, to say T-Mac improved because he started watching film with Grant Hill instead of just assuming it was his time to grow.

-WOWY can be unreliable, that's why I include the intervals in the google sheet. But it's not dichotomous. The weaker the signal the less stock we can put it. More data = stronger signal. If further context shows reason to adjust, we should always do that. 10-game sample or 50. Personally, I wouldn't put much stock in a 5 or 10-game sample, but larger corroborative samples (and regressed data) are compelling and important historical signals.

-The bigger "era" question for me, which I'd like to hear takes on, is how to account for differences in longevity? We can't really expect guys in the 60's to play 20 years like Kobe, right? Hard to even start by 21, and then hard to reasonably play beyond 35 (health tech, sneakers, rest, hard floors, etc.). If you buy that, what curving for longevity is done by era for longevity? In other words, if the idea is "impact in era" shouldn't longevity be judged within the era?

I agree with the bolded part, but is the definition of this project the greatest ceiling raiser or floor raiser when doing a top 100 list? Ideally you try to find a balance but there are counter arguments to each perspective.

[trex_8063]

-The bigger "era" question for me, which I'd like to hear takes on, is how to account for differences in longevity? We can't really expect guys in the 60's to play 20 years like Kobe, right? Hard to even start by 21, and then hard to reasonably play beyond 35 (health tech, sneakers, rest, hard floors, etc.). If you buy that, what curving for longevity is done by era for longevity? In other words, if the idea is "impact in era" shouldn't longevity be judged within the era?

I do sort of "grade on the curve" where longevity is concerned. I don't have a specific mathematical model, but more just kind of eye-balling some things. One thing I do is I don't ONLY look at seasons played, or even ONLY games played; I'll also look at minutes played: because players in the 60's and early 70's were routinely playing >40 mpg, which was a relatively sporadic occurrence in the last 30 years (unless you're Allen Iverson), and basically doesn't happen at all in the last 6-7 years.

-My interpretation: franchises are increasingly protecting their assets (players). Obviously that's potentially going to increase their longevity in terms of games or seasons played.

-Medical care, in terms of dealing with certain injuries, has no doubt improved as well; so it needs to be considered.

-Footwear* (as it pertains to ankle protection, arch support and cushion--->relevant in avoiding other chronic injuries such as fasciitis, etc) is substantially better today. Weirdly, this didn't get much better from what it was in Russell's era up to the start of the career's of Bird/Magic. I think we were WELL into the 1980's before there was enough of "shoe market" to where the manufacturing companies had money to dump into development of the "shoe technology" that we have today.

*On the flip-side of this, I think the increased average mass of players, increased horizontal speed of the game, as well as increased verticality in the modern era relative to prior eras also put increased stresses and injury potential on the ankles/knees of modern players.
Ironically, the increased horizontal speeds are in part a result of better shoes and better care/maintenance of court floors seen in more modern eras: these allow greater traction (quick first-steps, quick changes of direction, etc) as well as greater general confidence in the support/stability of the footwear.
The other factors contributing to the more mass/faster speed/increased verticality are: better training (methods, facilities/resources), training that is more focused on explosiveness (as opposed to cardio and flexibility), greater emphasis on strength/weight lifting, larger player pool perhaps made organizations more selective in getting truly elite athletes, looser ball-handling rules (enables people to take off on the dribble quicker).
It's actually perhaps even possible that these factors and game changes have out-paced the benefits of better shoes (obviously debatable, though).

-Financial motive to keep healthy and have longer career (obviously much larger motive today than 50 years ago, or especially 60+ years ago, like in Mikan's day).

[THKNKG]

-The bigger "era" question for me, which I'd like to hear takes on, is how to account for differences in longevity? We can't really expect guys in the 60's to play 20 years like Kobe, right? Hard to even start by 21, and then hard to reasonably play beyond 35 (health tech, sneakers, rest, hard floors, etc.). If you buy that, what curving for longevity is done by era for longevity? In other words, if the idea is "impact in era" shouldn't longevity be judged within the era?

Conflicting feelings on this one. I try to limit my era adjustments to the ones I feel are necessary: NBA/ABA talent split, pre-integration ball. Era longevity feels important, but also feels nigh impossible to account for. Interested in others thoughts as well.

It's definitely.a point to consider, but only a few players ever hit that level of longevity (Kareem, Parish, Moses, Karl, Duncan, KG, Kobe, Dirk), and many of them didn't have many years after ~15 or so that were all that significant.

Even still, there was longevity in the 50s/60s - Dolph played 15, Hondo played 16.

It would be helpful to have a Relative longevity rating, but it'd be problematic to implement if the player played in multiple decades.

Let's take Bill Russell, who played 13 years. You could come up with an average for each decade (in his case, only the 50s/60s would be applicable). You divide the player's years by that average. But, since Russell played 4 years in the 50s and 9 in the 60s, it could look something like:

Russ / ((4/13 * 50s avg) + (9/13 * 60s avg))

Has anyone done anything like that? I might do that, and just use all-NBA players as the measure for the average. If we do consider that though, Mikan would need to be really high considering how low longevity was in the early 50s and late 40s.

[THKNKG]

Thinking of Shaq vs Wilt for this spot. Similar peaks and primes. Any opinions on this comparison?

Interesting that you went with the offensive bigs right after I went with the defensive ones. (yes I know that all 4 of them, including Russell are all 2-way players, but speaking in terms of where they provide the most value.)

Wilt is a guy I really struggle with. Statistically what he did is just hard to even wrap my mind around. But how much of that was really added value and how much was it him just cannibalizing his teammates numbers for his own? His greatness team successes came when he cut his shots way down. I just don't know how to put him into a context I am totally happy with.

Meanwhile Shaq's teams thrived when his usage was at its highest. Feeding the big man was absolutely the right strategy and I think there is a real argument that he got under-utilized at times.

On the flip side, Wilt was ridiculously durable and played stupid minutes. Shaq in the RS wasn't nearly so dependable. This has to count for something meaningful. And how much does Wilt suffer that he spent so much of his career being the foil to the superior Russell? And unlike say Durant and Lebron in recent years, they faced each other in the playoffs a ton with Russell and his team getting the upper hand time and again. Is it fair to Wilt if your career lands you competing directly against the highest impact player of all-time?

I lean Shaq over Wilt because I feel like his game lent itself better to team success tho again his ego and inability to coexist with Kobe long-term is a negative for me. If Wade doesn't lose his mind in a year when the rules changed to make a player like Wade even more effective and if Dirk plays just a bit better in the Finals then he doesn't have that title without Kobe and I think his narrative changes considerably.

I've had problems with deciding how Shaq and Wilt should rank relative to each other. Both have issues that disqualify them from GOAT consideration for me, as they both fail important criteria that eliminate them from contention. But in a head-to-head comparison those negatives have to be accounted for, and I'm not sure whose were less problematic. My concerns were ignored in the one Top 100 project I actually was a voter for since everyone's trying to sell whoever they're championing.

Did Wilt cause as many internal issues as Shaq (within the team specifically I mean)?

[eminence]

-The bigger "era" question for me, which I'd like to hear takes on, is how to account for differences in longevity? We can't really expect guys in the 60's to play 20 years like Kobe, right? Hard to even start by 21, and then hard to reasonably play beyond 35 (health tech, sneakers, rest, hard floors, etc.). If you buy that, what curving for longevity is done by era for longevity? In other words, if the idea is "impact in era" shouldn't longevity be judged within the era?

Conflicting feelings on this one. I try to limit my era adjustments to the ones I feel are necessary: NBA/ABA talent split, pre-integration ball. Era longevity feels important, but also feels nigh impossible to account for. Interested in others thoughts as well.

It's definitely.a point to consider, but only a few players ever hit that level of longevity (Kareem, Parish, Moses, Karl, Duncan, KG, Kobe, Dirk), and many of them didn't have many years after ~15 or so that were all that significant.

Even still, there was longevity in the 50s/60s - Dolph played 15, Hondo played 16

*16 for Schayes actually, he had his rookie season in the NBL in '49

Edit: But I think I agree that the few we've really seen stretch to 15+ effective seasons is rare enough that I'm not willing to give guys from earlier eras the blanket benefit of the doubt. Seen plenty of superstars spend those last couple years as nobodies in the league (effectiveness wise, obviously they still had that big name recognition).

[THKNKG]

Conflicting feelings on this one. I try to limit my era adjustments to the ones I feel are necessary: NBA/ABA talent split, pre-integration ball. Era longevity feels important, but also feels nigh impossible to account for. Interested in others thoughts as well.

It's definitely.a point to consider, but only a few players ever hit that level of longevity (Kareem, Parish, Moses, Karl, Duncan, KG, Kobe, Dirk), and many of them didn't have many years after ~15 or so that were all that significant.

Even still, there was longevity in the 50s/60s - Dolph played 15, Hondo played 16

*16 for Schayes actually, he had his rookie season in the NBL in '49

Ah, thanks. Seems like he was a massive outlier for longevity back in the day. I added an idea for a formula to my response to you/elgee prior to this; let me know what you think.

[trex_8063]

Ah, thanks. Seems like he was a massive outlier for longevity back in the day. I added an idea for a formula to my response to you/elgee prior to this; let me know what you think.

Not to derail, but how do you plan on establishing an era/decade "average" of seasons played? I mean, some players only play a few seasons because they were scrubs who essentially wash out. Others straddle decades, etc.

[THKNKG]

Ah, thanks. Seems like he was a massive outlier for longevity back in the day. I added an idea for a formula to my response to you/elgee prior to this; let me know what you think.

Not to derail, but how do you plan on establishing an era/decade "average" of seasons played? I mean, some players only play a few seasons because they were scrubs who essentially wash out. Others straddle decades, etc.

I think I would just go with all-NBA teams. All players would be too daunting, and we aren't comparing the ceiling to the floor (if that makes sense) anyway, with it just being top 100.

[eminence]

Ah, thanks. Seems like he was a massive outlier for longevity back in the day. I added an idea for a formula to my response to you/elgee prior to this; let me know what you think.

Not to derail, but how do you plan on establishing an era/decade "average" of seasons played? I mean, some players only play a few seasons because they were scrubs who essentially wash out. Others straddle decades, etc.

I think I would just go with all-NBA teams. All players would be too daunting, and we aren't comparing the ceiling to the floor (if that makes sense) anyway, with it just being top 100.

I think the simplest way to do it would be as a percentage of max in era longevity. (Eg Schayes would be the max (100%) in his era and KAJ would be the max in his). Or possibly a percentage of max longevity in eras up until then?

Obviously tough to do, and likely winds up with some arbitrary cut-offs. Also always the question of longevity vs functional longevity.

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: Bill Russell

Alt: Tim Duncan

I'm expecting a battle between Russell & Duncan here so I'll speak to that in a bit, but first I'll speak a bit about Russell & Wilt, and really mostly about Wilt.

It's my opinion that anyone who wants to take basketball analysis seriously needs to think deeply about why it is that Wilt Chamberlain's 76ers became so much better when Wilt stopped looking to be a scorer. It is not something to be brushed aside. It was an incredibly risky move on the part of Wilt's coach, Alex Hannum. Think about it:

You had a team who had the best record in the league the previous year, you had the guy considered the best scorer in history who had just be named the MVP, and you turn him into a guy who shoots less per minute than any of the other starters.

Imagine if it had gone badly?

Put yourself in Hannum's moccasins. You would know you were betting everything on this. That if it failed, the basketball world would consider you a joke (think van Breda Kolff, banished as a fool for history for something far smaller (an wrongly so)).

Hannum only does this because he sees what's happening out there and see's how far below sub-optimal the team's play is. They are winning, but they could win a lot more.

So then what did he see?

I don't have words directly from him, but in a nutshell what we're talking about is the fact that when your offense is predictable and stagnant, defenses can easily adjust and then your best option may still not actually be that good. Up until '66-67 you basically knew exactly what you were getting from a game against Wilt's team, and it wasn't actually that dangerous compared to what you'd expect.

I would argue also that the improvement of the 76ers in '66-67 is likely a bit misleading because defenses were so used to Wilt's predictability that he functioned as an incredible decoy. This was probably part of the reason why the '76ers came back down to earth offensively the next year, though there were certainly other reasons too.

Now, consider what it means that Wilt was used so ill-optimally in his most glamorous statistical era:

One, it makes people resistant to considering its flaw.
Two, it makes people want to rationalize away the flaws.

I've heard it said on here many times the equivalent of:

"The fact that he got such big stats while being used the wrong way only makes clear that he could have done things the right way the whole time, so I'll just ignore the team success being lighter than it probably should be."

The problem with that is that they are still using the productivity of his early years as the baseline for their level of respect for him. If it is years like '67 that show Wilt at his most successful, than it is on those terms that we need to consider his capabilities as a player who leads teams to championships.

And that means evaluating Wilt primarily as a pass-first player, and giving him "achievement points" when he does so in alignment with credit others would get with similar achievements. If doing that makes him your GOAT peak guy, okay. If doing that feels like an insult to Wilt, you need to take another step back to distance yourself from your emotions.

For the record, if from '67 on through the mid-70s Wilt was leading the best offenses in the league playing like he did in '67, I expect I'd have him as my GOAT. And this gets into the other big issue:

Wilt was just plain mercurial. A lot like Shaq except that Wilt was more neurotic. More intellectual, but that also meant he was always thinking beyond basketball. Nothing he could do on the court was enough to satisfy his ambition because the game back then was much less prominent than it is now, and the relative unimportance of the NBA thus hurt Wilt's performance out until arguably his last few years.

So no, the guy who never won 2 titles in a row couldn't have won 8 like Russell. He couldn't keep focused on this child's game that intently even if he could keep playing for many years effectively.

Alright then, speaking to Russell & Duncan for a bit:

1) I think people need to understand the qualitative difference between Russell and Duncan as defenders. Duncan was a defensive superstar because he was able to piece enough together between his various skills to have that impact. He was amazingly big and agile by normal standards, but not by NBA standards. This is not to say he wasn't a clear physical talent in the NBA, but there was a reason why he was so much less popular than, say, Kobe Bryant. Duncan supplemented his impact with ever growing IQ, work ethic, and having access to an amazing coach.

Russell by contrast was unlike anything people had ever seen in terms of his combination of length, quickness, and decisive decision making in high risk strategies. He played a style no one thought was possible, and using this style he and his team largely proved unstoppable for more than a decade. And not just any decade, but probably the most transformative decade or so basketball has seen since the game moved out of the peach basket and out of the cage.

That was back then of course, but don't fool yourself. The Russell build remains the optimal build for great defense, not the Duncan build. You can say you'd like Russell to be even longer, and that's true, but he was plenty long. You can claim you want him to have more weight, but with more weight comes the loss in agility. It helps you with man defense, but that was never the most important part of a defensive anchors job, and it never will be.

2) What about the offense? Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with preferring to build around Duncan than Russell in the modern game because the ability to dominate on defense is diminished so you simply have to supplement that with 2-sided impact. In Russell's case, incidentally, this means that he'd probably end up focus a lot more on offensive skills than he did back then when he basically let them erode to focus on defense (Russell's set the March Madness scoring record in college ball, he was never going to be a great shooter, but he could have developed his close touch considerably more if it had been more worthwhile than the areas he focused on cultivating.)

People need to understand though when they focus on Duncan being the offensive anchor of a championship team, that the Spurs were winning with defense back then. This was why the team was able to pivot and come back to life when Duncan aged. The reality was that it was never brilliant offensive strategy to focus on Duncan volume scoring, and that's why Duncan's impact stayed so level as he aged and focused more of his energy on defense: That's where most of the impact was coming from any way.

So I definitely don't see the impacts of these two players as being similar. Duncan is the more balanced played, but a more balanced player wouldn't have achieved what Russell did in the '60s.

[Joao Saraiva]

1st vote - Wilt Chamberlain

Individual stats speak for themselves: this is a guy that set a ton of NBA records. 50 PPG, 100 points in a game, rebounding records...

Accodales - Wilt has them all. Tons of MVP awards, and even a finals MVP award. He has 7 seasons as a top 3 player by MVP voting.

Durability - his MPG tell the story. This is a guy that didn't even go the bench. Of course that's good to add raw totals, but doing that on so many minutes is not an easy task, especially at good efficiency like Wilt did. (constantly among top 5 in ts% - that's amazing considering the scoring load).

Thoughts on what people say against Wilt

He didn't play the right game for his team, giving more importance to his individual stats and scoring
1. While there might be some truth in this, it's not like Wilt was constantly surrounded by teammates who allowed him to differ the load he carried. At some point he might have given some importance to stats, but even his scoring outbursts are justified. Let's look at the 50 PPG season - Wilt did it at 53.6ts%. So he was the 5th best at ts% during that season. Consdering the supreme load he carried, that was actually excellent.

His team was the 4th best ORTG and 3rd best DRTG team in the league. His team was 2nd by SRS only behind the Boston Celtics (gigantic edge for the Celtics, but I don't think there's much more Wilt could have done. The Celtics were just better). Given all that, I wouldn't say the stats of Wilt are empty.

Wilt was not a winner
1. Sure he had moments when he didn't play as well in the playoffs as in the RS. But most times he delivered. Maybe the reason why Wilt didn't win has more to do with some other teams having superior casts, not exactly because he wasn't the best player of his own era.

Wilt's godly stats don't translate into all time team effect:
1. Wilt can only do so much. There are other teammates and coach;

2. If you think he should have had other roles, it's on the coaching staff. It's not like he was uncoachable or unwilling to listen, since he proved later in his career he could adapt to other roles. If he listened to outside criticism, I'm sure he'd listen to his coaches too.

Pace inflates his stats:
1. Yes but only to some degree. Come on, even for his own era this dude is an absolute outlier. Nobody else comes even close.



On top of that I think Wilt was sometimes a bit unlucky in title hunts. I also think he showed adaptability to other roles.

Longevity might seem to go against him against Duncan for example, but his large minutes played in every single season certainly shorten that gap a ton. This guy has a case for best peak and prime ever in the NBA.

Another thing I'd like to tell is that Wilt's impact was so big that he was the focal point on rule changes at some point. Surely the game had more to change than nowadays, but it's still really impressive.

His defense was definitely a big plus and not a liability. So he's definitely a great impact player on both ends of the court.

2nd vote - Tim Duncan

[trex_8063]

Vote: Bill Russell

Alt: Tim Duncan

I'm expecting a battle between Russell & Duncan here so I'll speak to that in a bit,

fwiw, I actually expect Russell to either run away with it in this thread; or if there's a major battle for the spot, I'll not be surprised to see it's Wilt who comes out of no where to contest Bill.
Duncan's become a fairly polarizing figure on this forum, with some people ranking him #1 or 2 while others rank him outside the top 10. Although he's had some support since the first thread, I'll wager there are still many people on our panel here who are not willing to give him even an alternate/2nd choice pick. I don't agree, but I'll not be surprised to see Duncan only gets like 7-8 1st place votes this round.

[Joao Saraiva]

Vote: Bill Russell

Alt: Tim Duncan

I'm expecting a battle between Russell & Duncan here so I'll speak to that in a bit,

fwiw, I actually expect Russell to either run away with it in this thread; or if there's a major battle for the spot, I'll not be surprised to see it's Wilt who comes out of no where to contest Bill.
Duncan's become a fairly polarizing figure on this forum, with some people ranking him #1 or 2 while others rank him outside the top 10. Although he's had some support since the first thread, I'll wager there are still many people on our panel here who are still not willing to give him even an alternate/2nd choice pick. I don't agree, but I'll not be surprised to see Duncan only gets like 7-8 1st place votes this round.

On the Duncan subject... I don't those many people ranking him outside the top 10.

I don't think he has a good case for #1 or #2 of all time, but top 5 looks good to me. I'll vote for him on the next spot if Wilt is chosen at #4.

[trex_8063]

On the Duncan subject... I don't those many people ranking him outside the top 10.

I think there's a word missing from that sentence: You don't "????" those people ranking him outside the top 10.....

[Winsome Gerbil]

Hopefully this can serve as my explanatory post for 4) Wilt, 5) Russel:

So no, the guy who never won 2 titles in a row couldn't have won 8 like Russell. He couldn't keep focused on this child's game that intently even if he could keep playing for many years effectively.

.

RUSSELL v. WILT
The point about Russell v. Wilt is that Wilt would not HAVE to keep focused if he benefitted from being in the 60s Celtics cocoon.

Basically Russell, like any cog in a great team with a great coach, had it easy comparatively. They all do, not just Russell. When your coach is great, when your teammates are all great, your individual responsibility is lesser. The pressure on you every game is lesser. You can have an off game. You don't face the same amount of defensive attention. You don't have to take shots when you're not feeling it. You can, in the modern setting, take a few rest days off to freshen your legs or nurse injuries without it completely finishing your team's chances.

If "casual" Wilt could just b-slap the game around and drop 40 while stifling a yawn and picking the three women he was was going to be with that night out of the crowd, he could certainly play a role much more like he did after he got old and his knees went. That does not require nearly the game to game and play to play discipline. You can be off and your team can still win. You can score without the whole team jumping you.

WILT'S MISUSE
Regarding Wilt being misused: Wilt led the league in FG% 9 times in his 14 seasons. He led the league in FG% while averaging 44.8pts a game one season. That's insane.

Even taking into account his poor FT shooting, he was annually one of the very best in the league at TS%. He was 5th in 1961, 4th in 1962, 5th in 1963, 8th in 1964, 12th in 1965, 4th in 1966.

Here are his PPG, FG% and TS% ranks through those the first 7 years in which he led the league in scoring each season:
59-60 37.6pts -- FG%: 6th, TS%: 16th
60-61 38.4pts -- FG%: 1st, TS%: 5th
61-62 50.4pts -- FG%: 2nd, TS%: 4th
62-63 44.8pts -- FG%: 1st, TS%: 5th
63-64 36.9pts -- FG%: 3rd, TS%: 8th
64-65 34.7pts -- FG%: 1st, TS%: 12th
65-66 33.5pts -- FG%: 1st, TS%: 4th

So basically you get past his rookie season, and not only is Wilt the most prolific scorer in the NBA (and indeed in NBA history) for the next 7 years, he's just about the most efficient scorer too. And none of the handful of guys more efficient in a given year played for Wilt's teams. So how exactly is giving the ball to the most prolific and most efficient scorer, not only on your team, but even in the league, misuse? Who exactly would you rather have shooting those shots?

[trex_8063]

How come you're not considering Wilt here? He has as good a peak as any of them, maybe better. And it's not like he's Walton with his longevity.

Essentially: why no Wilt, Russell, Bird and Magic?

Russell first: Agreed that he's by far the GOAT when we don't account for era (and as stated before - my stance on era is in flux), and fair enough on the point about his culture. I do think you can only beat who was in front of you, that saying "basketball was a different game then" is a dangerous game to play (otherwise, you'd have to adjust for every era), but that it was sufficiently different then that using our normal comparative logic is just going to result in Russell, by far the GOAT conclusions no matter how you slice it (although lorak's analysis is interesting - suggesting that Russell wasn't as impactful as we thought he was.)

So then when I decide to account for era - I realize that ties into Wilt as well - I either have to leave him out or proclaim him such an outlier that he's essentially like top 0 - inarguably the best, so let's just see who's playing for second. So for now, unless someone proposes a fair way of comparing across eras, Russell is out because he's way better than anyone else ever, and Wilt, while not on that same level, can't be evaluated as well, so I can't rank him.

As penbeast stated, I'm going to ask that you [quickly] find some way to come to terms with considering these individuals. I specifically stated in the OP of the sign-up/metathinking thread for this project that this is to be best of "all of BAA/NBA/ABA history", and further even asked that IF you are NOT comfortable ranking players from certain eras, that you be up front about that and abstain from joining the voter panel.

While I'm not dictating criteria to participants, I did/do ask that we at least have the internal consistency of everyone voting for the players of the same eras.

[An Unbiased Fan]

What I also think is worth discussing..those who value Duncan citing his "impact" for the culture they have in the Spurs, was it really him or Pop who had the bigger hand in that? Does being the consumate professional outweigh a player like Hakeem who is the closest direct comparison to Duncan, but was by all measures a better offensive AND defensive player. Are Duncan's intangibles legitimate, or is it a case of voter bias where the criteria isn't consistent since many don't attribute Kobe's team success to his contributions like they do for Russell/Duncan?

I really like Duncan's game as it is extremely portable, but for those who cite "best in their generation" argument, I don't think Duncan was the clear best player in the 2000s (this vote is generally split amongst Shaq/Kobe/Duncan and now KG here). For the record, I don't think you have to be the clear best player of your generation to have a stronger argument than anther because the top players could all come from one era theoretically and not era strength can be drastically different.

These are great questions. Duncan has always seemed to benefit from 2003, much like Hakeem benefited from 1994(far too much so for both players). That 2003 roster included, TP, Manu, DRob, Bowen, but gets labelled as "bad", which is wasn't. It was young yes, but talented, and the Spurs were expected to do well http://www.espn.com/magazine/vol5no23spurs.html . So by proxy, TD gets elevated largely on that one season. Here's the problem with that. Someone like Wilt or Shaq gets dissected left and right. The Spurs getting swept with HCA to LA in 2001 is overlooked. The Spurs losing in 5 to LA in 2002 is overlooked. The Spurs failing again to repeat in 2004 is overlooked. The 06 Spurs not repeating. In fact, if you bring up the 2008 Spurs getting run off the court by LA, people say TD was past-prime...but then what's his longevity? If team success is brought up for 60-win seasons or a 03 title, then team shortcomings should factor in as well, and for TD its pretty numerous for his era. If TD's prime counts as 99-07, what value to we place on the 08-16 seasons. Shaq gives you a prime from 95-04, Kobe goes 01-10, Dirk 05-12, KG 00-08. Don't really seem a special prime from Duncan length-wise.

TD is an all-time great defensive anchor, and great locker room influence. I tend to rank him higher than most, but hard-pressed to see detailed reasoning for him over others of his era so far. The Kobe/Shaq comparisons are obvious, but usually there's nice debate about TD vs KG vs Dirk and really haven't even seen that either. Step out of the post-lockout era and then you have guys like Magic/Wilt.

[Texas Chuck]

You don't "????" those people ranking him outside the top 10???

Defense isn't sexy and you can't quantify it nearly as easily as people believe they can quantify offense. It shouldn't come at a surprise with regards to Duncan or Russell that there are those who simply won't consider them at a certain level because they aren't offensive superstars.

Just like later we will watch guys like Deke and Ben Wallace face ridicule when they come into consideration because its just impossible for people to believe that a defensive player can have that much impact while offering very little at the other end. Strangely the reverse doesn't trouble them and there will be guys getting votes in this project who weren't even very good players, but they scored a bunch of points so....

End my minor rant about how underappreciated defense is. Even with this current Warriors team all the talk is about offense, yet their defense has been elite as well and is a big part of their success.

[trex_8063]

CHOICE: Bill Russell
2nd: Wilt Chamberlain (though open to changing to Mikan or even Tim Duncan if strong arguments convince me, I can't see Shaq, Hakeem, Magic, or Bird having the consistent decade long impact that Wilt did.)

I'm somewhat curious as to your thinking on Wilt > Duncan, considering Russell is your top pick (and has been since the first thread).

What I mean is, if Bill Russell is your GOAT, you [presumably] must value defense, leadership, intangibles, +/- good big man passing (as these are the things Russell excelled at). They happen to all be things Duncan excelled at as well. I would argue Duncan is actually the GOAT team leader, and he's (imo) probably a little better passing big man, too. While defensively he's likely not as good as Russell, I think the gap as scorers (in Duncan's favor) might be larger than the defensive gap, for whatever that's worth.

Longevity is probably [arguably] slightly in Duncan's favor, too.

And both have fantastic records of strong impact throughout their careers (from start to finish), and fantastic records of general success.

idk.....it just seems that all the things by which you could validly label Russell "great/greatest" are also the things that Duncan easily qualifies in, too.

Wilt, otoh, is somewhat a horse of a different color.

[trex_8063]

You don't "????" those people ranking him outside the top 10???

Defense isn't sexy and you can't quantify it nearly as easily as people believe they can quantify offense. It shouldn't come at a surprise with regards to Duncan or Russell that there are those who simply won't consider them at a certain level because they aren't offensive superstars.

You miss my meaning. I know why people tend not to rank Duncan as high as he likely deserves. I just don't understand what Joao meant. I mean I literally don't understand what he meant to say there, as there's clearly a typo or word missing or possible a "lost in translation" issue (I believe English is a second language for Joao).

"I don't those many people ranking him outside the top 10" is not a functional sentence. I think possibly there is a word he meant to type (but didn't) to be placed between the words "don't" and "those"; just not sure what it was.