RealGM Top 100 List 2017 -- #7

[wojoaderge]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

[Outside]

[b]In the "Winning" portion of my formula, Magic is second all-time to Lebron James (he edges MJ by a fraction). He has a comfortable lead over Shaq and a huge lead over Wilt.

Just curious, but why isn't Russell a runaway leader in the winning portion of your formula?

I weight it according to the number of teams in the league. So, a championship in an 8 team league is worth 1/3 as much as one in a 24 team league. However, there's the raw score for winning, which is what I was referencing, and a "truer" score which would factor in the bonus for being the best player on a title team.

If I factor in the bonus (which doesn't show up on my spreadsheet, which is the reason I only referenced the raw total in my OP), a randomly selected list of great winners would look like this:

Jordan - 203.7
Lebron - 172.8
Duncan - 169.8
Magic - 168.7
Russell - 163.8
Shaq - 113.8
Bird - 88.3
Kareem - 87.1
Kobe - 83.9
Mikan - 63
Olajuwon - 53.2
Pippen - 51.5
Erving - 51
Isiah Thomas - 49.4
Curry - 46.8
Wade - 43.2
Wilt - 41.9
West - 36.9
Nowitzki - 33.6
Drexler - 30.6
Havlicek - 29.9
Hayes - 28.4
Kidd - 26.2
M. Malone - 25.8
Tony Parker - 24.9
Walton - 24
Billups - 23.7
K. Malone - 23.2
Durant - 23

While I consider some form of this metric indispensable, it isn't overwhelmingly important. E.g., Karl Malone is 12th on my official list, and Pippen is currently 34th.

Interesting. I don't think I'd agree with devaluing a championship so severely in a smaller league, but I understand the approach and like that it's just a factor. Thanks for explaining.

[Gibson22]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

Who dis dude

[scrabbarista]

Just curious, but why isn't Russell a runaway leader in the winning portion of your formula?

I weight it according to the number of teams in the league. So, a championship in an 8 team league is worth 1/3 as much as one in a 24 team league. However, there's the raw score for winning, which is what I was referencing, and a "truer" score which would factor in the bonus for being the best player on a title team.

If I factor in the bonus (which doesn't show up on my spreadsheet, which is the reason I only referenced the raw total in my OP), a randomly selected list of great winners would look like this:

Jordan - 203.7
Lebron - 172.8
Duncan - 169.8
Magic - 168.7
Russell - 163.8
Shaq - 113.8
Bird - 88.3
Kareem - 87.1
Kobe - 83.9
Mikan - 63
Olajuwon - 53.2
Pippen - 51.5
Erving - 51
Isiah Thomas - 49.4
Curry - 46.8
Wade - 43.2
Wilt - 41.9
West - 36.9
Nowitzki - 33.6
Drexler - 30.6
Havlicek - 29.9
Hayes - 28.4
Kidd - 26.2
M. Malone - 25.8
Tony Parker - 24.9
Walton - 24
Billups - 23.7
K. Malone - 23.2
Durant - 23

While I consider some form of this metric indispensable, it isn't overwhelmingly important. E.g., Karl Malone is 12th on my official list, and Pippen is currently 34th.

Interesting. I don't think I'd agree with devaluing a championship so severely in a smaller league, but I understand the approach and like that it's just a factor. Thanks for explaining.

To be honest, the Best on Champ bonus is applied to a player's entire career score, not just his "Winning" score. The result? I have Russell second on my ATG List.

MJ, Russell, Kareem, Duncan, and Lebron is my current Top 5.

[wojoaderge]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

Who dis dude

I don't wanna get into it

[scrabbarista]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

GOATTNMTP.

[An Unbiased Fan]

To be honest, the Best on Champ bonus is applied to a player's entire career score, not just his "Winning" score. The result? I have Russell second on my ATG List.

MJ, Russell, Kareem, Duncan, and Lebron is my current Top 5.

What's the formula for your stat? There are easy ways to reduce noise from it like Pippen being so high.

[eminence]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

Who dis dude

Borderline allstar type guy (though just from the stats he seems the type to be a bit overrated due to scoring) who somewhat miraculously never made the playoffs despite a decent length career.

[Senior]

Still interested in hearing how Shaq supporters feel about his defense. This isn't something that should be swept under the rug considering that it was a significant reason why his teams were getting eliminated before 00.

Again, big men make a greater impact on defense than perimeter guys do for better...or for worse.

[THKNKG]

This is pretty close to my general feeling on KG as well. Excellent player who can fill a lot of needs, but he doesn't impose himself on the game as effectively as guys like Shaq, or even Kobe/Dirk (which I feel is more his tier).

(translation: he doesn't score as much)

Luckily there are more ways to impact the game other than scoring. Imagine this post...

This is pretty close to my general feeling on Jordan as well. Excellent player who can fill a lot of needs, but he doesn't impose himself on defense as effectively as guys like Russell, or even KG/Duncan (which I feel is more his tier).

Sounds kind of dumb, doesn't it? I mean, why would we penalize Jordan for not being as good a defender as the all-time defenders?
...why do you penalize KG for not being as good a scorer as the all-time scorers?

Spoiler:

Yeah, offensive impact peaks higher than defensive impact. But KG had loads of offensive impact as well, so...

Not to mention

1. Championship teams more often are better defensively than offensively
2. KG was one of the best offensive players of his generation too, RAPM or not
3. Dominance > versatility, but dominant versatility = ???
4. He is a case study in winner's bias
5. He, along with Duncan, was a case study in portability. He maxed out offensively and defensively in a variety of roles and a variety of team strengths
6. Defenders at peak can affect the game as much as peak offensive players
7. Elite defenders are more scarce than elite offensive players

[Gibson22]

Still interested in hearing how Shaq supporters feel about his defense. This isn't something that should be swept under the rug considering that it was a significant reason why his teams were getting eliminated before 00.

Again, big men make a greater impact on defense than perimeter guys do for better...or for worse.

I feel like I felt with stan fletcher. He was a great defender

[RCM88x]

Bringing my same argument over from the last two threads.

Vote: Magic Johnson

One of the most unique player in NBA history, Magic headlined one of the top offensive attacks in NBA history for nearly a decade.

WS/48: 8th
WS: 23rd
BPM: 6th
OBPM: 6th
VORP: 12th
ORTG: 3rd
PER: 14th
MVP Shares: 5th

While not providing insane longevity, his ability to lift a team from his rookie year allowed him to maintain elite level success for his entire career. Not to mention he was also an elite playoff performer.

PS WS/48: 6th
PS WS: 5th
PS BPM: 5th
PS OBPM: 6th
PS VORP: 4th
PS ORTG: 1st

His team lifting ability often maximized his teammates performance and provided a skill-set which was easy to build around and allowed the Lakers to maintain their spot at the top of the NBA for nearly all of Magic's career. Nearly every season of his career Magic was in the MVP race and leading a top team in the NBA.

Two possible arguments against:
1. Played in a weak western conference for nearly his entire career, and benefited from many sub par opponents in the playoffs. While often having the most talented and by far highest payroll team in the NBA. (Magic's salary alone was higher than most team's payroll in some seasons).
2. Played his first 10 seasons with Kareem, who I have ranked #2 on my list. I don't think he would have had near the career he did without Kareem, or if he was somewhere other than LA.

Despite this, I still feel comfortable ranking Magic as my personal #5 due to his insane offensive performance and team leading ability. I don't think any other player could have lifted that LA team higher than Magic did for nearly a decade.

2nd Vote: Shaq

[eminence]

.

Tim Duncan already made it in if you wanted to change your alternate vote

[Outside]

2. KG was one of the best offensive players of his generation too, RAPM or not

Was he really? He had only three seasons were he was in the top 10 in points per game:

1999-00, 22.9 PPG (10th)
2002-03, 23.0 PPG (9th)
2003-04, 24.2 PPG (3rd)

I recall him being primarily a very good mid-range jump shooter who, despite his length, never developed a good post game or was known for taking guys off the dribble. Looking at his percent of FGs by distance (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/garneke01.html#all_shooting), it looks like he took more than half his shots from outside 10 feet in every season. The biggest chunk of his field goal attempts came in the 16 to <3 range.

And for a mid-range jump shooter, he wasn't able to effectively extend his range out to the three-point line. He took very few of them (only 632 out of 21,142 total FGAs) and didn't shoot them well (27.5% for his career, only made 174 of them). That's a profile closer to LaMarcus Aldridge than all-time great.

I'm in the camp that Garnett is a second-tier all-time great. Great defender, great rebounder, fierce competitor, very good but ultimately complementary on offense from an all-time perspective. I've currently got him at 12th on my list. I've got Magic, Bird, Shaq, Olajuwon, and West ahead of him.

[RCM88x]

.

Tim Duncan already made it in if you wanted to change your alternate vote

Right... thanks. My bad.

[Samurai]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

Who dis dude

Twin brother of Dick Van Arsdale. Both were 3-time all stars, although having seen both I always felt that Dick was the better player. Dick was the better shooter, better passer and better defender. Both were 6-5 and could play both the 2 or 3 position; Tom more suited as a 3 (better rebounder than Dick) and Dick more suited for the 2. Neither are in the Hall of Fame and neither are likely to make the RealGM Top 100.

[colts18]

Im going to write a post soon about KG vs Duncan. Spoiler: There was very little difference between KG and Duncan during their primes.

[Tesla]

Im going to write a post soon about KG vs Duncan. Spoiler: There was very little difference between KG and Duncan during their primes.

Not that I don't want to see the post, but I generally don't disagree that there was a huge difference in their level of play most of the time. I do think there is a gigantic accomplishment gap, which for some may not be important. To have KG this high, I feel like your criteria would not put much, if any emphasis in terms of accomplishments/championships/mvp voting/all nba/etc. Anyhow, I don't think a 5-10 spot difference here even between them is weird even though they were contemporaries that were at times regarded equal (or to some always regarded equal in terms of on court play), there are a lot of other players that have done a lot of great things... so to sort them in this pantheon of greats, you can see players that are roughly close ability wise separated quite a few spots due to several factors, one major one is being general accomplishments and two being there is a lot of dang great players from other eras that need to be placed in between. I don't think the ability of player A at say #7 spot and the ability of player B at say #15 spot is going to be much different, but there resume in terms of accomplishments may look different, so I don't think just because people feel like they had similar #s that they have to be rated right next to each other (Duncan, KG).

[Gibson22]

Where do we stand on Tom "never made the playoffs" Arsdale?

Who dis dude

Twin brother of Dick Van Arsdale. Both were 3-time all stars, although having seen both I always felt that Dick was the better player. Dick was the better shooter, better passer and better defender. Both were 6-5 and could play both the 2 or 3 position; Tom more suited as a 3 (better rebounder than Dick) and Dick more suited for the 2. Neither are in the Hall of Fame and neither are likely to make the RealGM Top 100.

Cmon man hahahaah you purposely kept repeating Dick to make me laugh don't be childish

[scrabbarista]

To be honest, the Best on Champ bonus is applied to a player's entire career score, not just his "Winning" score. The result? I have Russell second on my ATG List.

MJ, Russell, Kareem, Duncan, and Lebron is my current Top 5.

What's the formula for your stat? There are easy ways to reduce noise from it like Pippen being so high.

It's not a stat. It's part of an entire formula. Pippen isn't high. He's 34th.