RealGM Top 100 List 2017 -- #8

[therealbig3]

Good point. Duncan was hurt throughout the 05 playoffs, that's fair.

(rest snipped.)

So with that established, my question to you is: why did you not even mention it?

I've been around, and this is regular internet practice. As I aforementioned, I commented on this during the Retro Player of the Year Project, and I commented on it again in '06 and this year, when everyone was saying the only reasonable explanation for Harden's performance was that he had to have sustained an injury at some point. People selectively seek to explain a player's performance with injury, but then neglect to mention an injury of another player that was actually documented at the time of play.

I don't care about any arguments, and I don't care about convincing anyone of everything. Since the first project I participated in, I said I post information and everyone can make up their own damn minds. I do care when facts are omitted or misstated, so I'm asking you directly why you explicitly mentioned when one player had an injury, but didn't mention when another player had an injury. I've been talking about people using the same standard across the board since the last project, so I've been consistent in that regard. Speaking for myself, it causes me to wonder what else might someone not choose to mention if it isn't beneficial to do so. 70sFan actually brought it up before I even saw this thread, but as Denzel Washington said in Training Day, "It's not whatcha know. It's what you can prove," and I can provide evidence of everything I choose to speak about.

Because as I said in the rest of my response, his playoff performance was not significantly hampered until the Finals, which suggests to me that it's not the injury but some other factor that caused him to struggle, since he had been dealing with the injury for quite a while up until that point. Based on that, it's much more plausible to point to the elite defensive team he was facing rather than his injury as the reason for his struggles. And that Shaq's injury, on the other hand, had a much more immediate and tangible impact in the 03 series.

I wasn't omitting or ignoring it, I just don't think it's all that relevant to the discussion at hand, because his injury doesn't seem to have been the reason for his struggles in the 05 Finals.

[ThaRegul8r]

Because as I said in the rest of my response, his playoff performance was not significantly hampered until the Finals, which suggests to me that it's not the injury but some other factor that caused him to struggle, since he had been dealing with the injury for quite a while up until that point. Based on that, it's much more plausible to point to the elite defensive team he was facing rather than his injury as the reason for his struggles. And that Shaq's injury, on the other hand, had a much more immediate and tangible impact in the 03 series.

I wasn't omitting or ignoring it, I just don't think it's all that relevant to the discussion at hand, because his injury doesn't seem to have been the reason for his struggles in the 05 Finals.

You still missed it, because you're talking like someone trying to prove a point—despite me saying twice in two posts that I couldn't care less what anyone's trying to argue, whereas I've consistently harped on using the same standard across the board. We're on two completely different wavelengths here.

So it boils down to: I mentioned one but not the other because I didn't think one mattered.

Concise and to the point. (And, of course, it leaves one in no position to get upset with another poster if they in turn didn't mention something they didn't think mattered. But that isn't usually the case.)

By the way, "omit" means to "leave out or exclude." Which you did, which was why I commented in this thread to begin with. It causes my skepticism to grow when, after giving someone the benefit of the doubt to explain themselves, they directly tell me they didn't do something that was the entire reason for me even involving myself in this thread. But as the saying goes, give someone enough rope...

[therealbig3]

Because as I said in the rest of my response, his playoff performance was not significantly hampered until the Finals, which suggests to me that it's not the injury but some other factor that caused him to struggle, since he had been dealing with the injury for quite a while up until that point. Based on that, it's much more plausible to point to the elite defensive team he was facing rather than his injury as the reason for his struggles. And that Shaq's injury, on the other hand, had a much more immediate and tangible impact in the 03 series.

I wasn't omitting or ignoring it, I just don't think it's all that relevant to the discussion at hand, because his injury doesn't seem to have been the reason for his struggles in the 05 Finals.

You still missed it, because you're talking like someone trying to prove a point—despite me saying twice in two posts that I couldn't care less what anyone's trying to argue, whereas I've consistently harped on using the same standard across the board. We're on two completely different wavelengths here.

So it boils down to: I mentioned one but not the other because I didn't think one mattered.

Concise and to the point.

By the way, "omit" means to "leave out or exclude." Which you did, which was why I commented in this thread to begin with. It causes my skepticism to grow when, after giving someone the benefit of the doubt to explain themselves, they directly tell me they didn't do something that was the entire reason for me even involving myself in this thread. But as the saying goes, give someone enough rope...

Yes, the bolded is basically it.

And I mean, regardless of what your intentions are, there are strong implications here that I'm being intellectually dishonest, which I don't appreciate, and is why I'm explaining why I'm not.

[ThaRegul8r]

And I mean, regardless of what your intentions are, there are strong implications here that I'm being intellectually dishonest, which I don't appreciate, and is why I'm explaining why I'm not.

And I've said on numerous occasions, no one needs to imply anything, because I say exactly what I mean. Now I'm saying it again, to you. Anything I have to say to someone, I say directly to them. Just like I directly asked a poster last week if they were baiting Kobe fans by saying he was in consensus 12th place (and I found out that he is also a poster on one of the basketball forums on which posters do what I talked about, so he knew exactly what I meant), I directly asked you why you mentioned one and not the other and gave you the opportunity to say why.

You're the one who immediately jumped to intellectual dishonesty. You could have been ignorant of it. ("ignorant." a. "lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular.") That's a possibility, yet for some reason you've jumped to the assumption you made. So, no, you don't get to read anything into what I say (and tell me it doesn't matter what I meant, to boot) when I make myself quite clear, and you could have omitted that last sentence.

[Winsome Gerbil]

As the continued big men debates go on in the background, I'll go ahead and chip in an out of place post:

The Case for Larry Legend

An earlier poster made the note that Larry is the remaining guy with the most seasons where he was flat considered the best in the league. Not Top 5, not a debate. He was just considered the absolute #1 through his peak years in the mid 1980s, winning three straight MVPs and the votes weren't close. He basically invented the whole 50/40/90 thing, and did it twice. In fact by the end of his peak people had even begun to talk about him as potentially the GOAT, before Jordan fully emerged to make that a moot question. And he was the unquestioned leader of a dynasty, and its #1 weapon for nearly a full decade. On these fronts guys like Shaq or Hakeem just don't quite measure up. Each having their brief moment as the league's best (Hakeem only because Jordan was playing baseball), winning a single MVP, and Shaq hopping from team to team, achieving a mini-dynasty, but always accompanied by great Top 25 type guards who shared the load and sometimes even took the lead.

I do think Shaq has a case here, but I've always felt it was kind of his own fault he didn't in the end surpass Bird's greatness. Shaq was a statistical and physical monster, and yet for much of his career there were distractions (we need to schedule a PC Board Shazaam! viewing) and questions if he could not be doing more. When Phil arrived and gave him the Phil mindgame jedi trick, we briefly saw just what Shaq could maybe have been all along. But soon enough questions of focus, rivalries, weight reemerged, and the GOATness was submerged again. There were never those questions with Bird. People have made cases for this guy or that guy as a leader, well here was a guy who was the unquestioned leader of one of the league's greatest all time teams. And an utter assassin too. If Jordan hadn't come along and taken things to nearly psychotic levels, Bird might have a great case as the most vicious competitor to have ever taken the NBA hardwood. He didn't always win, but he was always convinced he would, and always going to tell you about it. He would rip your heart out and eat it in front of you.

On Longevity
I think the case for Larry Legend depends to some degree on what "greatness" we are looking for here. I have reiterated a number of times the relative lack of importance of longevity for me beyond "greatness longevity", i.e. i care how many years a guy was in prime great, but really don't think tallying up declining years when you're not one of the league's best anymore is terribly relevant to "greatness". "Hey, you were better than me, but I hung around longer!" just doesn't resonate with me, and if Kevin Garnett had blown out his knee in 2012 and retired 4 years earlier than he did, it seems very curious to me that he would somehow be "less great" by virtue of some bad luck that didn't effect us seeing him at his best.

I also think there is a related question as well that applies to many of the longevity debates: up until about 20 years ago, guys stayed in college, many/most of them for 4 years. And so the straight to high schoolers/one and doners automatically have a huge leg up in longevity because they have 3-4 extra years of youth in the NBA (it should be noted on the other hand the per game averages of one and doners are often depressed versus old school 4 year players because the 4 year guys did their developing in college and entered the league fully ready to put up near prime numbers from the start). Personally, while I cannot ever see pointing to a college career as a reason a lesser NBA player was better than another guy who didn't do as well in college, I do think that great college careers have to be some defense against claims of lack of longevity. Older guys didn't have shorter periods of greatness, they just spent/wasted part of it in college rather than the NBA.

Now all of that stuff applies to the Larry Bird situation, because of course he famously ruined his back at age 31 (a few weeks before his 32nd birthday), putting an end to one of the best GOATish runs the NBA has seen, and because he spent three years in college (and actually was 4 years out of high school, because his first aborted college experience was at Indiana, where he washed out and took the year off).

In the end we get a player with:
3 great college years (averaging 30.3pts 13.3reb 4.6ast for his 3 years, and winning National Player of the Year in 1979)
9 prime NBA years
1 year out with injury
3 pretty good declining but still a star years (last 3 seasons averaged 24.3-9.5-7.5, 19.4-8.5-7.2, 20.2-9.6-6.8)

compare that to a guy like Shaq who had:
3 college years, the last 2 great
11 prime NBA years
3 pretty good declining but still a star years ('03-'06)
5 years of steep decline/dubious impact

and out of that I don't worry about the "greatness" Shaq's final years in Phoenix or Boston add. It's mostly about those extra 2 prime years longevity wise. But here's the thing, Shaq missed 128 games during those 11 prime years, and one of them was a 50 game strike year. End result is that in his 11 prime seasons he played in 742 games. On the other hand Bird rarely missed a game before the back, and missed only 27 games in his first 9 prime seasons, playing in 711 games. So other than Shaq's scruffy final 5 years, just how much more longevity did Shaq actually have? Shaq has 742 prime games, 3 years of still a star decline, and then 5 years of lingering. Bird has 711 prime games, 3 years of star decline, and then retired rather than play through the back and turn in those sad late career seasons.

Impact
We don't have detailed impact stats of course, but the Celtics won 32 and 29 games the two seasons before Bird arrived. They won 61 in his rookie season. They won 57 the year before his back injury, and 42 the year he missed. They bounced back to 52 after his return, even though he wasn't quite the same guy anymore.

And their actually is a "greatness" argument about Bird's impact on the entire league. He and Magic are credited with taking the NBA to heights it had never reached before. Its an argument that has some bite for me when compared to guys like Hakeem or Garnett who were great great players, but not guys who were felt beyond the boundaries of the NBA (unless Hakeem had impact on basketball in Nigeria). Bird helped make NBA basketball bigger than it was, helped the league grow into the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

Winning Rep
The 1980s Celtics did not quite dominate the East as badly as Magic's Lakers dominated the West, but they had a lot more serious competition. At the beginning of the decade they repeatedly clashed with a near dynastic Sixers squad which peaked with one of the GOAT teams in 1982-83. The Bucks were there year after year. By the end of the decade as Bird and the crew were aging, the Bad Boy Pistons were rising, and right on their heels was Jordan and the Bulls and the Price/Daugherty Cavs.

Despite all that, in the 9 years before the back injury not only did Bird never miss the playoffs, his teams never failed to make the 2nd round. 5 times they made the Finals, and 3 of those 5 they were champions. Before the injury they never lost a single series against a team of less than legendary stature. The Dr. J and Moses Sixers, the Showtime Lakers, and at the end of the run finally the Bad Boys.

[therealbig3]

And I mean, regardless of what your intentions are, there are strong implications here that I'm being intellectually dishonest, which I don't appreciate, and is why I'm explaining why I'm not.

And I've said on numerous occasions, no one needs to imply anything, because I say exactly what I mean. Now I'm saying it again, to you. Anything I have to say to someone, I say directly to them. Just like I directly asked a poster last week if they were baiting Kobe fans by saying he was in consensus 12th place (and I found out that he is also a poster on one of the basketball forums on which posters do what I talked about, so he knew exactly what I meant), I directly asked you why you mentioned one and not the other and gave you the opportunity to say why.

You're the one who immediately jumped to intellectual dishonesty. You could have been ignorant of it. ("ignorant." a. "lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular.") That's a possibility, yet for some reason you've jumped to the assumption you made. So, no, you don't get to read anything into what I say (and tell me it doesn't matter what I meant, to boot) when I make myself quite clear, and you could have omitted that last sentence.

After accusing me of being "blatantly hypocritical"...there's really not much reading into that needs to be done there, you're straight up accusing me of having double standards. Instead of assuming that I was being hypocritical, you could have merely pointed out that since I'm mentioning Shaq's injury, it would seem fair to mention Duncan's injury, and then you would have learned why I don't see the two situations as similar, which is why I mentioned one and not the other. But no, you jumped to the conclusion that I was being a hypocrite.

Then you made some (seemingly) sarcastic remarks about how Duncan being injured just didn't matter. What did you mean by those comments? Please clarify for me, because I actually don't think that those comments are all that clear.

[Tesla]

My criteria for ranking players are highly subjective, but I like to say that they are informed by stats. I'm a fan of going beyond basic stats like points, rebounds, and assists to look at true shooting percentage, pace, offensive and defensive rating, and things like that, but the advanced analytics get murky. I'm impressed by the time posters have put into presenting detailed arguments in the threads thus far, and I try to read what others have obviously put so much effort into, but I've arrived at a difficult place.

You have a lot of really good posts and come at this with an open mind, so I'll piggy-back a few thoughts off of you if that's OK. First, for interpreting stats, I recommend these references:

https://elgee35.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/interpreting-advanced-statistics-in-basketball/
https://www.goldenstateofmind.com/2011/12/6/2602153/advanced-stats

So there are two things happening when people argue a GOAT list:

(1) The discussion of how players played
(2) The application of GOAT-ranking criteria

The first is far more valuable to me as a reader. The second acts as a hidden variable, confounding the discussion. Most people don't take the deep dive on balancing peak vs prime, resume vs performance, etc. to realize they arrive at different rankings with the exact same player valuations. There are people who are a 1/4 step removed from having lifetime salary as defining criteria. I mean, why not? That shows popularity, influence on the game, and if you were the first to have a record-setting contract, the economic reverberations were enormous. Nothing "wrong" with valuing that. (It would be "wrong," though, to say salary = player on-court impact, despite the correlation.)

With that said, the discussion about KG is very much the first thing. One group of people, driven almost entirely by Winning Bias are insisting that he really wasn't an MVP-level player for years because of his team record. The other group is responding with "the team result is conflating how well the individual played." To which many still respond with some version of "but what about his team record?" (See Tesla quote below)

Winning Bias

“I understand that he could very well be the same player in those years, showing great impact on the floor but its unfair to just assume that it would have led to great success in different circumstances. I'll use Kobe since we are talking about him, if you take his 01 playoffs and say in 02 he had a garbage team, but performed pretty well”

But the player did have success -- it was his team that didn't. It's a circular, winning-based argument. Follow the logic train with me:

> 2003: Kobe's good bc the Lakers won.
> 2007: We know the Lakers must be bad because of his teammates, because we know Kobe's good!
> 2008: See, we knew Kobe was good.

> 2003: We don't know if Garnett's good bc Min hasn't won.
> 2007: See, Garnett's not good. Minn can't win.
> 2008: Since we know Garnett's not good, we know his teammates must be good because they won

This is the way the mind circumnavigates the enormous logical problem of saying Kobe Bryant suddenly sucked in 2005, 2006 and 2007 because his team wasn't competitive. Or Jordan in the 80's. Or Kareem. Or that we're giving them "credit" for assuming they scale up. We know what scales up. We know what doesn't. If people were consistent with this logic, Jordan sucked, then mysteriously became good when Phil and Scottie and Grant came along. If only Dave Corzine could have been so lucky to play with the "good" Jordan.

Scoring Blindness

If you then dig deeper, and say "well, wait a second, what about his box score numbers?" of course we have the idea that the box doesn't represent value equally for different players. But this is overlooked when people say "see, his scoring dropped by 2.3%!" I'll ask a simple question:

Do you think there was a difference between Kevin Durant this year and last year?

Because his efficiency improved from 54% TS to 68% TS in the playoffs. It's not because he was way better. What changed? His circumstance. His improvement was completely predictable. Because box stats are conditional. When KG carries the load, he takes difficult shots bc the team unit can't create easy ones so they dump it to the star. Same for KD.

With all that said, I don't expect anyone to change their minds today. I used to have KG like 13th...and I've hardly changed my impressions of him. I Just learned about longevity, learned about team-building, etc. I found a post I wrote years ago slamming David Robinson in comparison to KG. Now I have Robinson's peak higher than KG's! It takes time -- all I ever ask of myself is to not be married to any one idea. And if you're being shamed by posters for that, I'd say that's their issue, not yours.

Yes, KG had success in those years in the sense that he was still an excellent player that played well individualy. His team didnt have success, he did not suck but I am comparing him to players that had both in their prime years-- leading to
more meaningful and successful years (my interpretation and mvp voters at the time, all nba voters, most contemporaries) Beyond that, what it also means literally if nothing else is they played many more meaningful minutes of playoff basketball, where injuries can occur, where your great regular season play can suffer, etc. many variables to consider.

I cant ignore that, that is actually doing what you are calling for: looking at how players actually played.

KG did not suck in 05-07, but in context playing great on a super bad team doesnt really move the needle for myself and it leaves a lot left to be desired and most importantly leaving a lot left to be assumed. Those teams were terrible, I do not hold it against him, but again I am much more willing to not ignore those that did show me
more years of actual top play in the playoffs and high level basketball in general for a longer
period. Also, Its hard to evaluate performance on crap teams, the entire games even in the regular season have a different vibe/urgency, playing down to competition and its something I cannot = or
> to a player with similar #s on the impact plus doing it longer, more likely against better competition, and in the playoffs.

Also, yes, players do go up and down in their primes that is normal. Kobe for instance did suck in 04-05 for his standards, ya the team circumstances were terrible but he was not resilient enough that year to get it done despite his somewhat similar
on court production. Also, these are all years I have watched and I assume most here have as well. I did see a difference in KG between the years, as I did with Kobe, Shaq, everybody its not
just a linear career path where the player once he hits a level early and a similar level late that all in between is equal, it almost never is.

And yes, many players do gradually develop qualities that make them more effective players, generally in a spiritual sense, in terms their own self evaluation leading to better leadership. You wont see much of a change of ability, x player in x year could run just as fast, shoot the ball just as well, and jump just as high as y year, but there is more to it than that.

As for KD... It is not entirely predictable, only seems that way in hindsight. I give him a great deal of credit in how he played, it isnt a given. I
also give other players on that team credit for how they played with him. Nevertheless, KD the year prior had a great deal of PO games, and played very important basketball for a great deal of the year, I dont think its the best comparison but I can only take year by year, he couldve very well played worse with different circumstances but he did not. Also he couldve gotten injured closer to the playoffs rather than when he did and we would probably be having an entirley different conversation about his year.

[lorak]

Shaq was injured during the 03 series against the Spurs, but not against the 03 Wolves. That makes a difference too.

I couldn't care less about this entire argument, but this is blatantly hypocritical in light of your bringing up Duncan's '05 series against the Pistons. Duncan injured his ankle Mar. 20 against the Pistons, missed 12 games, returned Apr. 13 at Utah to play the last four games of the regular season, and averaged 12.0 points on 43.6 percent shooting and 51.2 percent true shooting, 6.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 2 blocks per game the rest of the way after averaging 21.2 points on 49.9 percent shooting and 54.1 percent true shooting, 11.5 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.72 blocks prior to that.

You are calling therealbig hypocritical, but you are the one, who is intellectually dishonest here, because you are comparing pre injury stats averaged in 34 MPG with last 4 games, when he averaged just 23.5 MPG. You are also ignoring, that in these last 4 games 3 of them were on the road (so lower production is expected), 2 of them vs top 4 defense (MEM) and one vs KG (so GOAT level PF defender).

Besides knowing both Pop and Tim they couldn't care less about last RS games even if they decided about seeding and being ready for playoffs was more important for them. So if you really wanna use stats to see if Duncan was injured/hurt in 2005, you should use playoffs (data is per 36):

Code: Select all

MPG    PPG    TS%    REB    AST   STL   BLK   OPP   OPP DRTG
33,4   23,7   51,3   12,1   3,7   0,0   2,8   DEN   103,9 (8th)
36,5   24,9   54,2   10,2   2,5   0,3   2,5   SEA   109,6 (27th)
39,6   24,9   59,1   12,5   2,9   0,5   1,6   PHO   107,1 (17th)
40,7   18,2   47,1   12,5   1,9   0,4   1,9   DET   101,2 (3rd)


So no surprise here and no sign of injury/being hurt. Duncan just played the worst vs the best defense he faced, he also struggled scoring efficiency wise vs another top 10 defensive team.

PS
And in that one RS game vs DET Duncan scored 18 points (16,2 per36) with 47,7% TS%, so his finals performance wasn't that different from what was expected vs so great defense.

PPS
In 5 RS games from '04 to '06 (not counting that one 2 min game) Duncan vs Detroit averaged just 15,3 PPG per36 with 45,7% TS%. So maybe instead of using that poor injury/hurt-excuse, acknowledge how great was Pistons (Wallaces) defense.

[70sFan]

LOL, I'm a Nets fan. I remember watching that series, hoping the Nets could pull it off.

Their defensive ratings were somewhat overrated because of the conference they played in, and even though they were really good defensively, matchups matter. Duncan was primarily being guarded by Kenyon Martin in that series, who was extremely undersized. I recently rewatched that series, and 2 of his primary defenders were K-Mart and Aaron Williams, both of whom were 6'9". Jason Collins was a 2nd year player, and Dikembe Mutombo barely played.

Context matters there. I don't see KG having a hard time against that front line either.

I'm talking about legitimate twin tower defensive lineups, that could make life hell for opposing big men in the paint, like Malone/Shaq in 04, or Sheed/Sabonis, or Wallace/Wallace. That's usually the caliber of defense KG was facing in the playoffs during his Minnesota years, so it seems a little unfair to simply point to TS% and say he's not Duncan, when Duncan struggled to the same degree against those kinds of teams.

We already saw KG's stats against Dallas. TS% didn't rise. And then you said... oh but if he faced them more times...

Against Denver in 04 KG was at 25.8 PPG on 50.8ts%. His ts% actually didn't rise... neither did his volume.

He also faced the Kings in 04.He was at 23.9 PPG and 51.2 ts%... so again the same scenario.

We saw him in Boston 08 and his ts% didn't rise a lot in a much better team situation and not carrying that much of a big load on offense. He still ended below 55ts% on that playoff run.

So basically, nothing suggests Garnett could actually be a better scorer than he was. He did what he did, and that's who he was. But here with KG it's all about the could have done... not what he actually did. If anything Karl Malone deserves more of a pass than KG, since he proved several regular seasons he could score at elite ts% and even in some playoff deep runs. But when it's Karl Malone I don't see the same type of approach.

Yeah, so essentially what we're seeing here is that Duncan tends to score more efficiently against weaker defenses than KG does, but against similar (aka better) opponents, they're about the same.

How important is Duncan scoring more efficiently against lesser defenses compared to KG's advantages everywhere else (and I do mean everywhere else, I don't think Duncan does anything on or better than KG's level other than ISO scoring)?

I think once we get to the stronger defensive teams, and both guys struggle with their shot, KG becomes the more valuable offensive weapon...and that's more important to me at the end of the day than being able to score 30 on 60% TS against a 6th-8th seed.

As someone pointed out, Duncan still scored ~2% TS better against good defenses in playoffs. And it is important to score better against average and weak defenses.

You still say that KG is clearly better in every (other than scoring) aspect of the game. Don't you think that it's a bit too much? As I said before, Duncan has many advantages over KG. Scoring is only one of them. He's clearly better rim protector, better passer out of the post, demands more doubles, comparable ballhandler (though less utilized), better offensive rebounder (which is huge), better at drawing fouls, better finisher, better post defender... I would take this over KG shooting and his ability to run quasi-PG on weak teams. Because KG wouldn't do that with good supporting cast anyway.

Maybe you prefer shooting and perimeter game. I prefer Timmy post dominance and off. rebounding. Don't tell me that KG is better than Duncan in all aspect besides scoring because "it's a fact". It's not and it will never be, no matter how many times you will repeat that.

KG was among best players in 2001-05 period but don't act like he was clearly better than Duncan. KG teams weren't that bad in early 2000s. Later? Of course they were. 2007 is one of the worst ever. But I'm talking about 2001-04 Minny teams, which struggled to be above average defensive teams. Duncan didn't have better supporting cast in terms of offense, definitely not. He didn't have secondary scorer outside of Robinson in 2001. He did stil well. People talk how KG has much larger role on his teams but it's not true. Duncan was all offense for Spurs in 2001-04. And their best defensive player (Robinson regrrssed after 2001).

[ThaRegul8r]

After accusing me of being "blatantly hypocritical"...there's really not much reading into that needs to be done there, you're straight up accusing me of having double standards. Instead of assuming that I was being hypocritical, you could have merely pointed out that since I'm mentioning Shaq's injury, it would seem fair to mention Duncan's injury, and then you would have learned why I don't see the two situations as similar, which is why I mentioned one and not the other. But no, you jumped to the conclusion that I was being a hypocrite.

First of all, divorce the contents of a post from the poster. I said mentioning one player's injury and not another's was hypocritical. The same standard wasn't used across the board. I never once called you a hypocrite. "This [the quoted post] is blatantly hypocritical" are my words. The exact words that I typed. "You're a hypocrite" was not typed by me in anything I posted in this thread. And that's what I mean about people reading into what I say rather than going by my actual words. Considering the common use of ad hominems on the internet (and I can't believe that you've posted on the internet and never encountered it), you might not want to identify with your posts to such a degree that something said about a particular thing that was posted is taken as a personal attack on you the person behind the screen.

I also commented on the past hypocritical practice of posters of saying over and over that Curry was injured in 2016 and Harden was injured in Game 6 of the WCSF against the Spurs last year, but not mentioning other injuries. But bringing it back to this thread, I pointed out that you said another player was injured, which made a difference, while not mentioning another player's injury, and also pointed out that 70sFan mentioned it, but since I keep actual records from the time, I'm able to provide evidence of something being discussed from the time things were going on. Then after you responded, I asked you why you didn't mention it. As I said, mentioning one thing in one case while not also mentioning that same thing in another is common internet practice, but, as I also said, it could be explained by ignorance. But the first thing that came to your mind was intellectual dishonesty.

Then you made some (seemingly) sarcastic remarks about how Duncan being injured just didn't matter. What did you mean by those comments? Please clarify for me, because I actually don't think that those comments are all that clear.

Hmm. So "So it boils down to: I mentioned one but not the other because I didn't think one mattered" is a sarcastic remark now when you replied, quote, "Yes," it was "basically it." What's unclear if you said "Yes [that's] basically it?" Is it common practice to agree that a statement is an accurate summation of one's position while unclear about it? This line of conversation would have been over if not for that last sentence, since thread derailment isn't my thing. My sarcastic remark (not "seemingly," but actual sarcasm) was about you saying you didn't omit it, and providing the definition of "omit," since I wasn't sure what exactly you thought "omit" meant. There is no value judgment attached, it either is or isn't done. But evidently I didn't make it clear enough if it's necessary for me to point out where sarcasm is actually being used. It's like having to explain a joke.

[ThaRegul8r]

Is his game as “complete” as Hakeem’s? No. Nor is it as “complete” as Kevin Garnett’s, or David Robinson’s; or hell, even Rasheed Wallace’s. But he’s so much more dominant in what he was elite at (attacking the rim), and had so much more gravity than any of them…….it trumps “completeness” or versatility, as far as I’m concerned.

This point is why I have this as part of one of my criterion:

The means by which a player helps his team are inconsequential. What is important is the end. The player in question should use whatever skills he brings to the table to help his team win. As different players have different abilities, the means employed will vary. The only thing that matters is results. How well what a player brings to the table translates into victories for his team. No one way of helping one’s team is inherently valued more than another.

What matters (for me) is what a player brings to the table and how said player is able to utilize that to help his team win. I want to eliminate style of play bias. I liked Hakeem more than Shaq, but I don't want that to have anything whatsoever to do with how I might rank them relative to one another. How well did they parlay whatever they had going for them as basketball players?

[70sFan]

BTW, it's interesting why Wilt is always blamed for Warriors weak 1963 RS but KG isn't. Don't you think that it sounds like double standards?

I don't think anyone we're talking about had a cast as bad as that '07 TWolves cast (iirc, someone already posted how 11 out of 13 supporting cast members were out of the league---none due to injury or age (most by age 28 or less)---within 3 seasons of that). Don't think that can be fairly compared to a cast of Guy Rodgers, Meschery, Willie Naulls, quarter season of Tom Gola, etc.

Also, with Wilt having been voted in at #6, and the contention of some being "Garnett doesn't belong in the conversation yet", an argument of "his failure here is equal to Wilt's" wouldn't really prove that point or exclude him from consideration, would it?

21 games of Gola
47 of Naulls
54 of Sears
64 of Meschery

Only Rodgers and Attles played (almost) full season. The rest of the roster is terrible. Sears is old and not close to his prime self. I don't compare this team to 2007 Wolves, but it's far from average team. Rest of the roster are scrubs and didn't play more than 5 seasons in the NBA.

[therealbig3]

As I said, mentioning one thing in one case while not also mentioning that same thing in another is common internet practice, but, as I also said, it could be explained by ignorance. But the first thing that came to your mind was intellectual dishonesty.

Or it could be explained by them not being the same thing, and thus, one thing being relevant to the conversation and the other thing not (and thus not worth mentioning). So neither ignorance nor intellectual dishonesty.

Hmm. So "So it boils down to: I mentioned one but not the other because I didn't think one mattered" is a sarcastic remark now when you replied, quote, "Yes," it was "basically it." What's unclear if you said "Yes [that's] basically it?" Is it common practice to agree that a statement is an accurate summation of one's position while unclear about it? This line of conversation would have been over if not for that last sentence, since thread derailment isn't my thing. My sarcastic remark (not "seemingly," but actual sarcasm) was about you saying you didn't omit it, and providing the definition of "omit," since I wasn't sure what exactly you thought "omit" meant. There is no value judgment attached, it either is or isn't done. But evidently I didn't make it clear enough if it's necessary for me to point out where sarcasm is actually being used. It's like having to explain a joke.

I should have been clearer, I was not referring to that post. I was referring to comments you made in your first post in response to me. But it's really neither here nor there at this point.

[drza]

I am afraid you will have to do better than this wondrous "invisible impact". As I have said before, the entire conventional top 15 were amazing players and you don't need to dig too deep to realize it. Why are we supposed to just take it for granted that even though it's not visible for Garnett, we're just supposed to take the KG arguers' word for it?

It's the first time in my life I see someone say that Timmy's only advantage over KG offensively is his PS scoring. Now it's like KG is the king of non-boxscore offense but Duncan didn't have much impact outside of scoring?
...
I don't want to touch defense because I also think that Timmy is better here, but that's not my point. My point is that most KG fans assume that Garnett has higher impact in all non-boxscores aspect of offense than any other bigman in NBA history (maybe besides Shaq). He's the only player who is praised for that. Meanwhile, Moses never get enough credit for his gravity factor. Or Robinson for his GOAT faceup game. I don't even say that KG is worse than Moses or Admiral, it's just my way to show the subject.

Actually, I really appreciate that KG fans find these "small things" important. All basketball fans should do that. I'm huge Wes Unseld fan because of that. But KG fans are focused on other players weaknesses a bit too much. Garnett himself wasn't exactly flawless. In 2008 when he was still close to his prime self, he still wasn't stunning scorer in playoffs.

To be it bluntly, Odom was the 2nd best player on LAL while Wally as on MIN. Everyone else on both teams was nothing to right about. KG actually had better scoring around him than Kobe did. So did Kobe's offense do more for LAL than KG's defense did for MIN? The results are the lakers made the playoffs came to within 1 game up 3-2 of upsetting MVP Nash's Suns. KG's team missed the playoffs in consecutive years.

It's interesting. In the 2014 project, there was a big push back against RAPM as a measure. The argument was that, similar to Outsider's post last thread, one shouldn't use a stat/approach that wasn't intuitive to many posters, and that gave results people didn't agree with. Instead, there should be more discussion of scouting, telling WHY a player makes an impact, than just relying on numbers.

I feel like, in this project, for the most part people have tried to do more of the scouting-based arguments, or mixing the scouting more with the numbers. I think this is a step in the right direction, as a whole. But an unintended consequence seems to be the type of push-back quoted above, where people act like the opinions expressed in the scouting-based posts have NO quantitative support. Like, the "KG fans", as they put it, have this strange opinion that his supporting casts were bad or that he was making a huge impact with them...but that there's nothing to back it up.

This, obviously, isn't the case. Side note, but what's ALSO not the case is, most of the KG supporters in this project are NOT KG fans. I am. I believe that Colbini may be? But Doc MJ isn't. Therealbig3 isn't (he was more of a Duncan fan). Not sure about MicahClay...but I think he's also a Duncan fan. The point is, this isn't a group KG love fest with an agenda to get their favorite player in. On the contrary, most of the KG support on this board is more like Doc MJ, that followed their analysis and came to their conclusions, then supports those conclusions even in the face of opposing viewpoints.

And, more focused, there is clearly a lot of data to support the viewpoints (here) that Garnett's casts actually were worse than, for example, 06/07 Kobe's, and it can be shown clearly without relying just on opposing opinions. Similarly, Garnett's impact is not at all invisible or only the word of the "KG fans"...it, too, can be shown very quantitatively.

1) Supporting casts quantified. In an earlier post,I broke down the casts of the 2006 and 2007 Timberwolves, Lakers and Mavericks as a response to someone suggesting that there wasn't all that much difference between what KG, Kobe and Dirk had to work with those seasons since none really had star-studded support. I used 3 different boxscore methods (summed Win Shares, summed Wins Produced, summed VORP among the teammates) and the "off-court" portion of the on/off +/- for all three teams to show the clear quantitative pattern that the 06 and 07 Timberwolves support was on an entirely different level of stink than what Kobe or Dirk was facing.

But, posts can get buried in this type of long project, and as we saw today, people will join the debate at different points and completely ignore things that have been said before. Plus, as Outsiders alluded to, sometimes my posts are wall-of-text and can have lots of numbers. So, thought I'd try something new here as a way to present numbers that are supporting previously stated scouting/qualitative arguments: graphs. They're visual, quick, and can be inserted in a post without having to keep track of all the numbers. So, below, find 2 graphs: 1) the average of total Win Shares and Wins Produced for all Spurs and Timberwolves teams (excluding KG and Duncan) from 1998 - 2007 with data added for 05 - 07 Kobe & 06 - 07 Dirk, 2) the sum of the VORP of all Spurs, Wolves, Lakers and Mavs squads from 1998 - 2007 (Dirk's starts in 2001).





To be clear, these plots come purely from boxscore results. I'm on record that the boxscores emphatically don't cover the whole game, and are particularly bad for defense. So, I consider these estimates to be reasonable ball-parks, but if anything they tend to not do a great job pegging defensive production. Nevertheless, their message is exceedingly clear. And they show, very clearly, that the "Garnett had poor supporting casts" line of reasoning isn't just hand waving, isn't just the subjective opinion on "KG fans", and extends WELL before the 2006 & 2007 crater periods.

No, Garnett's casts were really, quantitatively poor relative to his peers for the entirety of his career in Minnesota.

*Even the famed 2004 cast of Cassell and Sprewell was producing SIGNIFICANTLY less than an average year of support from his peers.

*06 Kobe's Lakers cast (that he led to 45 wins) was NOT comparable to 06 KG's cast...but was instead more comparable to the 2000 - 2002 Wolves casts that KG led to two 50-win seasons and one 47-win season.

*07 Kobe's Lakers cast that he led to 42 wins was, again, was NOT comparable to 07 KG's cast...but was instead more comparable to the 2003 Wolves cast that KG led to 51 wins.

And again...these are purely boxscore-based estimates that don't fully encompass how terrible the defensive talent was on those Wolves, that doesn't capture how much many of those Wolves teams depended on KG's ability to create offense, and that doesn't even TOUCH on the dreaded +/- stats that do help to illustrate these things. In fact, about those +/- numbers...

2) Garnett's very visible impact, quantified. Of course, there have been iterations of +/- studies through the years. And from the days that 82games.com first started publishing on/off +/- publicly, Garnett has consistently dominated each of these studies. And he continues to dominate them, even and especially once the datasets get big enough that the noisy, fluke-type situations wash out.

Again, this is just a numbers reporting post to support previous scouting-based posts. So, I'm not even going to try to put these in super context, or to explain the differences in the studies, or really do anything here besides report publicly available analytics conclusions that were NOT made up by "KG fans":

*DocMJ's spreadsheet of publicly gathered single-year PI-RAPM from 1999 - 2016, normalized/scaled (I modified to include 2013 - 2016, 2002 full-season, dropped off 1998 because of reported error); best 5-years, averaged:

1) LeBron: +11.6
2) Garnett: +10.8
3) O'Neal: +9.5
3b) Duncan: +9.5
5) Nowitzki: +9.3

*02 - 11 RAPM study https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/10-year-rapm
1) LeBron 8.8
2) Garnett 8.0
3) Wade 6.2
4) Manu 6.1
5) Kobe 6.1
6) Paul 5.9
7) Duncan 5.8
8) Nash 5.7
9) Dirk 5.6

*97 - 14 RAPM study https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/97-14-rapm-2
1) LeBron 5.6
2) Duncan 5.1
3) Shaq 5.1
4) Manu 5.1
5) Garnett 4.8
6) Robinson 4.5
7) Wade 4.5
8) Dirk 4.2

15-year RAPM study w/ no age curves: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CA4KxmzjZrTlYqxNU85jkUnCcqvJjsP5LT818LSYjkk/edit#gid=0

1) LeBron 9.3
2) Garnett 9.1
3) Paul 7.6
4) Duncan 7.3
5) Dirk 6.9

I'll stop there. The numbers kind of speak for themselves. No matter who did a particular study, what methodology they used, what time span, Garnett always comes in right at the top, comparable to anyone else that's played in the last 20 years. These numbers didn't come from the imagination of KG fans. Also, those supporting KG in this project didn't just pull the concept of his huge impact on his team's results out of the air.

With scouting-based posts, several people in this project have tried to point out the mechanisms for why he makes such a monstrous difference on the court...and why so much of what he does isn't captured by the boxscores. Help defense, pick-and-roll defense, vocally coordinating the defense as a "middle linebacker", team offense initiation/creation, jump-shot spacing, mega gravity...these are all REASONS for why he's such a game changer that aren't in the boxscores. But the results of his contributions, and how they improve his teams...those are very much quantifiable.

This isn't hand waving. It's not a fluky, noisy result. Garnett IS one of the biggest impact players in NBA history, and his non-boxscore contributions ARE that big. You may not choose to value him in that way, but you also can't consign this to the imaginations of "KG fans". His impact is extremely visible, if you care to look.

Vote: Kevin Garnett
2nd: Shaquille O'Neal

[lorak]

So, thought I'd try something new here as a way to present numbers that are supporting previously stated scouting/qualitative arguments: graphs. They're visual, quick, and can be inserted in a post without having to keep track of all the numbers. So, below, find 2 graphs: 1) the average of total Win Shares and Wins Produced for all Spurs and Timberwolves teams (excluding KG and Duncan) from 1998 - 2007 with data added for 05 - 07 Kobe & 06 - 07 Dirk, 2) the sum of the VORP of all Spurs, Wolves, Lakers and Mavs squads from 1998 - 2007 (Dirk's starts in 2001).

Both these stats are significantly depended on team wins, so no surprise Dirk's or Duncan's supports look better. But was team winning/loosing more and thus support looking better/worse, because superstar elevated them/superstar wasn't as good as someone thinks or because support alone was so good/bad? In any case these two metrics don't answer this question.

[BasketballFan7]

I have been busy, but my vote is for Shaquille O'Neal.

I am lower on O'Neal than I am on the other top bigs despite him having comparable career value. His personality is a negative for me. He is likely to become discontent, switch teams, and have conflicts with teammates. He is sensitive to criticism and has an enormous ego, even for an NBA star. He misses a ton of time in the regular season and doesn't set a good example for teammates by consistently being out of shape.

That said... he is too good to deny here. He has better longevity than he is given credit for (although I don't know if he is worth the price of admission if he isn't playing at an elite level) and is an outstanding playoff performer. His metrics, both box score an impact, measure out wonderfully.

2.) Julius Erving

I don't penalize Erving for his ABA years. The NBA was weak as well. Erving gets criticized for falling off due to his numbers dropping after entering the NBA. Then, later, he increases his scoring and wins MVP. Coincidence? No. He was on a team with poor roster fit. Had Erving been on a team more in need of efficient, volume scoring, I think many people would look back at him differently. Additionally, Erving's skill-set was more diverse than he is given credit for in the present day. Now one would come to think he could only run in transition and dunk. He had outstanding durability and longevity, and he gets bonus points for being a true icon. I have him right above Kobe.

[70sFan]

But my point isn't that KG non-boxscores impact is not important. My point is that Duncan has as much non-boxscores impact along with better boxscore stats. He's not worse defender, he's not worse passer, he's better post finisher and worse shooter. People here act like KG is by far better in all non-numbers aspects of the game, that's not true.

[Senior]

My god, I saw this post yesterday, and I don't think I'll be able to respond to everything with this amount of detail. I'll try to bridge the gap, but it looks like it's RS vs playoffs again... (real life is kinda getting in the way)

Hakeem Olajuwon: estimating impact, through eras

So, I decided to start by sampling a heavily scouting-based post I wrote before about Hakeem (in comparison to Robinson, Duncan and Garnett) http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=44640166#p44640166

My impressions of Hakeem (as compared to Robinson, Duncan and/or Garnett)
Physically:

Spoiler:

Hakeem always struck me as athletic, but not in the same way that Robinson was. Robinson was longer, seemed faster, and seemed to jump higher. Olajuwon always seemed to be built like a tall short guy (if that makes sense. In other words, he was so proportioned that he didn't give the overwhelming impression of height that Robinson, Kareem or Sampson gave). I also don't have memories of overwhelming speed from Olajuwon, though he seemed quick enough to get his hand on everything in the paint (be it a block or a steal) so that impression isn't exactly air-tight. His agility and maneuverability were amazing, though, and I remember how whenever this would be noted the announcers would always point out his background as a soccer player

He was definitely one of the quickest guys at his height, and his balance was one of his best traits. It's what allows him to stay in plays - on switches vs perimeter guys, staying in a play to affect shots, etc.

Defense:

Spoiler:

I remember Hakeem coming out on guards if necessary (most famous example being his block against the Knicks) but the vast majority of my impressions of him are at/near the rim. From that, even though he had the ability to go horizontal, I would say I'd expect his "horizontal defense" to be more similar to young Duncan's or Robinson's (and perhaps Russell's) than Garnett's. As someone (Doc MJ?) suggested up-thread, the type of defense that Garnett played wasn't necessarily conducive to the blocked shot. If roles were reversed, Olajuwon and his coach would have to decide what ratio of horizontal vs. vertical he wanted to be as a defender. And of course, that decision wouldn't be trivially made.

In fact, I'd say that Robinson and Hakeem probably had the most similarity in terms of defensive style of that four-some. Both were incredible shot-blockers but also extremely disruptive of the passing lanes.

It was pretty ironic that the lasting images (for me anyway) of that 1995 match-up were Robinson being so badly fooled by Olajwon's feints and head-fakes, because I kind of feel like Olajuwon would have also fallen for those fakes. Both Olajuwon and Robinson tended to look for the block a lot, which sometimes caused them to over-commit. I feel like this is a weakness for both when compared to Tim Duncan, who almost always seemed to play steady post defense without going for the fakes. I think that Garnett also tended to be better at this area, as he relied on being so darned long that I don't remember him often joining the para-troopers club when defending on-ball.

I also feel like that Hakeem's capability to go horizontal was more a product of his era - his era enabled more impact at the rim whereas KG's enabled his perimeter D to shine. I would say that Hakeem's rim protection was more valuable than KG's perimeter D, though.

I do agree that Hakeem was a far more aggressive type than Duncan, but there's no reason he wouldn't have adjusted had he faced a player whose post play was as diverse as his own. His aggression only felt like it was an issue in the 80s. Tim/KG did a better job of preventing shots to begin with, but I don't believe that was significantly more effective than 90s Hakeem's style.

For all 3 of Hakeem, Robinson and Duncan I think their help defense primarily consisted of rim protection. As I mentioned, all had the athletic ability to show or occasionally switch out to a perimeter player if needed, but their primary areas of influence was the paint. Garnett's area of influence is more like the entire area inside the arc, but the trade-off is that he wasn't directly protecting the rim as often. Some believe this meant that the three center-like players were providing a more important service. I tend to feel like Garnett does more to blow up offenses with his extended range and that this was the more important skill, and got more-so with the rule changes in the "modern" NBA.

That's certainly possible, but on the other hand you could argue that Hakeem's superior rim protection/paint defense blew up the closer shots/layups more often, and in his league where teams were taking less than 10 threes a game for the first 7-8 years of his career, that would be insanely valuable.

Offense:

Spoiler:

On offense, I feel like all four had distinct styles that produced different types of effects.

Olajuwon had the most artistic post moves of the group, and he used them to maximal effect with more volume-scoring mentality than the others. Robinson peaked higher as a regular season scorer, but Olajuwon had the highest peaks in playoff scoring. Olajuwon was the most natural agile/fluid of the group, and that played out with his post moves. Olajuwon also had an excellent handle for a center, and could attack off the face-up. Olajuwon was never really as efficient a scorer as Robinson in the regular season, and I think in large part that's because he didn't share Robinson's proclivity for getting the "easy" shots (fast breaks, alley-oops) nor did he attack and draw fouls like the Admiral. However, his post moves were the exact opposite on the skill/strength continuum. Olajuwon was also (in this company) an adequate passer that got better as his career progressed. However, since he was more adept at post play than Robinson he was a better choice to be a low-post hub for the offense. Especially when surrounded by four shooters, as was the case during his championship runs. His volume/efficiency could potentially hinder his portability with respect to his peers, as we don't have a positive example of him scaling down his volume for the sake of team success if circumstances dictated the way that we do for the others in the group. But to be fair, I don't know that any of the other three could have taken on the volume scoring responsibility to the degree that he did during the Rockets' repeat years. Olajuwon was the best Iso scorer of the group.

Totally agree here. There's been some thoughts of Hakeem's "ball-dominance" but he did just fine in 1986 with Sampson so I don't really have a reason to think he wouldn't be capable of doing so. Even 1997 with Barkley should be a decent example even though Hakeem was finished the year after. Hakeem's versatility on offense (range/passing from anywhere 18 ft in) should help in a portability case. FWIW, I think that Hakeem's athleticism gave him the edge over Duncan with scoring - able to handle doubles easier, able to scale up his volume in ways that Duncan couldn't, etc.

Garnett: Like on defense, Garnett's offense is stylistically the most different from the other three. He had a good iso scoring and post game, but not nearly on Hakeem's level. His effectiveness as a scorer down low could rival Duncan's, but he didn't spend as much time down there. Whether it was to prevent wear-and-tear or to put defenses off balance/prevent easy doubles, Garnett spent the most time of this group operating from the high-post/elbow. He was able to run perinneal top-5 offenses from his office in the high-post, pulling defenses towards him and opening up passing lanes and shooting space for teammates. Garnett was also the best passer of the group, and the one best suited to be an offensive hub due to his high-post ability. Garnett also had the most shooting range. Garnett was the lowest volume-scorer of the group, though very similar in that respect to Duncan. Conversely, this meant that KG's game was the one least dependent upon scoring to provide impact

.
It may have been the least dependent on scoring but his scoring tended to drop off in the playoffs. Had he maintained his scoring at close to his RS levels I probably wouldn't consider it an issue at all.

Putting some numbers to Hakeem's impact through the years

WOWY Olajuwon missed double-digit games in three time windows during his rough prime window of 1986 - 1996:

*1986: Olajuwon missed 14 games. ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet accounts for 13 of those games. He measured the change in SRS of the Rockets to be +1.9 when Olajuwon was in, vs those 13 games when he was out. The team's ultimate SRS was 2.1.

1991 & 1992: Olajuwon missed 26 games in 1991 and 12 games in 1992. ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet measured the change in SRS of the Rockets to be +3.8 when Olajuwon was in vs those 38 games when he was out, and he calculated that the SRS of the team over those two seasons was 2.0.

1995 & 1996: Olajuwon missed 10 games in 1995 and another 10 in 1996. ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet accounts for eight of the missed games in 95 and all 10 in 96. Unfortunately, he doesn't have them grouped here for one number. In 95, the SRS of the Rockets was +6 higher and in 96 it was +9.4 higher with Olajuwon than in the games that he was out.

*First, someone (I think Blackmill) has performed simulations that he believes shows that WOWY is noisy for this order of 10 - 40 games missed, so take the above with whatever size grain of salt you desire

On/off +/-: We have that data for 1994, 1995 and 1996 (nominally Olajuwon's peak)

1994: Rockets +7 on, -7.5 off --> +14.5 net, 4th in NBA (Robinson 1st, +19.9)

1995: Rockets +5.6 on, -6.3 off --> +11.9 net, 7th in NBA (Robinson 1st, +19.8)

1996: Rockets +4.9 on, -5.4 off --> +10.3 net (unknown rank, Robinson 1st, +16.6, Jordan +15.2)

Quick thoughts on those impact approaches

*It is generally accepted that Olajuwon hit an absurd peak between 93 - 96, a peak that was historic level. The question that a lot of people have, then, is how different was "peak" Olajuwon from "pre-peak" Olajuwon. There is a sentiment, among his supporters, that while he may have improved a bit in 93, that he was similarly impactful before 1993 but had a team that was too poor to show it. Being a Garnett supporter, I'm of course familiar with that argument

*The WOWY data suggests (to the extent that you find WOWY on 10 - 40 games in 1 to 2 year periods useful) that Olajuwon's impact was not as large in his '86 or '91-'92 absence as it was in his '95-96 absences.

*Comparatively speaking, early Olajuwon's impact per WOWY was more similar to 1965 Wilt (when he went from the Warriors to the 76ers mid-season with neither team changing much in SRS).

*However, later Olajuwon (1996), per WOWY, had a much larger impact (on the order of 2001-02 Shaq or 2005 Duncan, even 1978 Walton)

*Olajuwon's 1994 - 1996 on/off +/- scores generally support his 1996 WOWY score...they also support that Olajuwon was having an impact in those mid-90s years that was among the best in the NBA in those seasons.

The 95/96 Rockets both had messes of RS's - Drexler trade in 95, numerous injuries in 96. I'd say those impact numbers would be closer to what he showed in 94 with ideal circumstances.

I do think 1991/92 were kinda down years, although much has been made of 1991 (basically his team played over their heads and played even better after returning) and 1992 he was kinda fighting with his FO. It's fine to dock him for that, but he was the same guy. Re: 1986, his team was fairly talented/he was raw, so I don't know if impact would bear his actual ability - but I do believe that Hakeem's strengths were more conducive for the playoffs whereas Sampson's wasn't. I'm hesitant to extrapolate young Hakeem's impact to his 87-90 years, especially with the enormous talent disparity of those teams.

What may have contributed to Olajuwon's impact pre-1993 not being as large as during his 93 - 96 peak?

Hakeem's boxscore

1986 - 92: 23.2 pts (51% FG, 71% FT), 12.6 reb, 2.3 ast/3.2 TO, 2.1 stl, 3.7 blk

1993 - 96: 27 pts (52% FG, 74% FT), 11.7 reb, 3.6 ast/3.3 TO, 1.7 stl, 3.6 blk

1) More complete offense. There aren't huge differences in the boxscore, a bit each way. Olajuwon was scoring on a bit higher volume, about one rebound less, miniscule differences in steal/block numbers

The one area that stands out to me, though, is the seemingly small difference in assists. See, up until 1993, Olajuwon never had a single season where he had as many assists as he had turnovers. Then, from 93 - 96, he had more assists than TOs every season. Here's why I think that's important:

From the databall era +/- stats (1997 - current), the regressed data suggests strongly that volume scoring (even on good efficiency) is NOT sufficient for strong offense impact. No, for volume scorers, passing/assists correlates more with positive offensive impact than scoring efficiency. There's a growing amount of research indicating this, but here's one article from Andrew Johnson on Nylon Calculus http://fansided.com/2016/11/28/nylon-calculus-shooting-shot-creation-variance/:

"The higher COV on passing efficiency within positions indicates that passing efficiency is a measure with some real separation in talent. Further, the outliers on the upper end tend to line up with the players we think of as stars."

"In fact, Justin Willard’s research found that there is an interactive quality between scoring and passing proficiency; being a superior passer increases the impact of a player’s scoring and vice versa.

For a center, getting up near 4 assists per game vs the just over 2 assists pre-peak pushes Olajuwon out towards the "position outliers" that Johnson describes.

In some of my own research, it seems that for bigs, getting to that assist/TO ratio over 1 is almost like a Magic number. It's not published, but it's very clear when you go through the RAPM studies for the last 20 years. It's clear even when you go through the subjectively decided offensive peaks of the great big man scorers...Kareem, Shaq, Robinson, Dirk, Duncan...look at the seasons that you believe to be their best offensive seasons, and universally they're the ones with assist/TO ratios over 1.

Olajuwon became a more intelligent player at his peak, he became a better passer, and it allowed the Rockets to play that 1 star with 4 shooters offense, which devastated the league. I believe that this helps to explain why Olajuwon's impact at his peak was just better than previously

This is all fair criticism. For all the stuff I mentioned about Hakeem's individual offenses never suffering in the playoffs, his TEAM offenses over the RS weren't amazing. The thing is, I don't believe this was as much of an issue as what I dock KG for.

2) Smarter defense. This one I'm handwaving, which hopefully can be somewhat forgiven at the end of this marathon post. General consensus is that Hakeem's defensive peak came just before his overall peak, and that 1993 may have been the last of his true "defensive peak" years. That's reasonable. By his offensive peak, he was no longer at his athletic peak, and we did see a small dip in his rebounds and steals (not much in his blocks). But, I would also say that, in general, players become smarter defenders (and players in general) as they get older. And while Hakeem was no longer at his athletic peak in the mid-90s, he was still at the upper end of the elite as far as athleticism for a center. Plus, and this shouldn't be overlooked, but the Rockets had intelligent 4s like Otis Thorpe and young Robert Horry, which maybe allowed Olajuwon to emphasize his strengths (e.g. post-defense and rim protection) without having to cover quite as much land as he had to previously.

Somewhat like Wilt, Duncan, Robinson and Garnett...they may have lost some athleticism off their defensive fast ball, but smarts seemed to allow them to either maintain or even perhaps have larger measure impacts as old guys. I'm going to postulate that maybe peak Hakeem had some of that as well

I agree with all this, although I'd say he was at his defensive peak at around 1990. His defenses in his prime were elite most of the time, and that's a year he really shouldn't have lost a DPOY to Rodman. 1993 was more his overall peak since he took that huge jump in O as you said and still retained most of his defensive fastball.

Conclusions

*Whew. If you're still reading, thanks and congratulations. Some of my cliffnote walk-off thoughts:

*Hakeem was an athletic freak that could score in a dominant way and fill up the defensive boxscores for almost his entire career

*Hakeem didn't measure out with elite WOWY scores in his absences in 1986 or 1991-92.

*Hakeem DID measure out with elite WOWY scores, as well as elite on/off +/- scores during his 1994 - 96 peak years

*Hakeem clearly became a better passer and better overall offensive hub in his peak years than he was previously, both by the eye test and it can somewhat be seen in the boxscore. I contend that offense creation/passing is a MUCH more important factor in offensive impact than general consensus or the boxscore composite stats account for, and that this marked an important increase in Olajuwon's offensive impact

*The consensus is that Hakeem's defensive peak was just prior to his offensive peak, and I can see that. However, experience breeds defensive intelligence and often leads to extended (maybe even increased) defensive impact even as the athletic ability starts to wane. This seems to be especially true for the elite bigs that maintained strong physical advantages even when they lost top athletic ability, and I contend that it could be true for Hakeem as well

Bottom line: it DOES appear that a) peak Hakeem (1993 - 96) was a distinctly bigger impact player than pre-1993 Hakeem. Of course, this also argues that b) Hakeem's peak years may have been closer to a simultaneous offensive/defensive peak than he is often credited for. I think I'm fine with both of the previous stances, as I try to evaluate his career

Overall, I really can't just overlook Hakeem's scoring edge. I know we've been harping on it the entire time, but it's not that Hakeem scored more+more efficiently, it's that his scoring methods always, always, ALWAYS held up in the playoffs against tougher defenses - in a way that KG's didn't. Over his prime both his volume/efficiency INCREASED in the playoffs from the RS whereas KG's went the opposite way in both metrics. Had KG's scoring methods been as resilient as Hakeem's I could see the passing edge being the difference, but they weren't.

KG's passing edge was significant until 93, but Hakeem eventually became a championship-anchor level passer and it immediately led to titles...KG never became that championship-level scorer. His passing edge showed more in the RS and impact stats, but Hakeem's teams always seemed to push their opponents in ways KG's teams couldn't. Not that I hold all those 1st round exits against either guy, but I always felt like Hakeem's teams had to be killed whereas KG's went a little more easily. Look at Game 6 vs 87 Sonics, the 88 Mavs series, the 86 Lakers/Celtics series...the Rockets just never folded. Sometimes you just gotta say " **** you, I'm scoring" when everything's falling apart and none of your teammates can do anything.

I don't mean to come off as dismissive of the impact metrics because I do believe they're valuable, but Hakeem's edge to me in this comparison has nothing to do with the regular season. For that reason, I don't see Hakeem's pre-93 years as significantly less impactful than KG's despite the weaker passing. His scoring edge was something that would really only come out in the playoffs, and the other stuff is close enough for me to take Hakeem. The post passing is definitely something a championship level anchor would require, but he became that guy after 93.

The reality is that by advanced stats, Garnett is arguably ahead of Hakeem in the regular season. And by "advanced stats" I means box score based stuff, the stuff that underrates Garnett's actual impact

For me personally a lot of this debate comes from whether or not I should presume Hakeem's impact was well above his stats indicate. I'm uncomfortable with this to be honest, and not just with Hakeem.

I don't know about well above, but I don't know if it has to be that amount to pass KG. Hakeem is a playoff warrior so a lot of the stuff that made him great wouldn't show over an entire RS - but over a playoff body of work? His playoff series almost always involve him ramping up his scoring and pushing the opponent more than expected.

[Senior]

nvm we good

[janmagn]

Vote: Hakeem Olajuwon
2nd vote: Shaquille O'Neal

For me, Hakeem was MUCH more dominant than any other candidate. Yes, he won only two championships, but just look at his supporting casts. The guys he had in '94, namely Otis Thorpe, Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell and Mario Elie, were decent NBA players, but they weren't guys who could be the #2 guy for a championship winning team. Hakeem dominated his opposition, and if it wasn't for other superstars having better teammates, he could have multiple championships. We saw his pure dominance in '95. When David Robinson stole MVP from him, Hakeem just KILLED DRob in the playoffs. Olajuwon averaged 35/13/5 AGAINST THE MVP. Just dominant. He had one of the best moves of basketball, The Dream Shake. He was able to get great looks, because he always got the defender to doubt and off balance. His dominance continued to defense. He leads the NBA in career blocks. He averaged 3.1 blocks and 1.7 steals per game. Hakeem also stepped up his game in the playoffs, a fact that can be seen in his regural season stats versus playoffs.

A quote from Michael Jordan in 2005 interview:
"But if I had to pick a center, I would take Olajuwon. That leaves out Shaq, Patrick Ewing. It leaves out Wilt Chamberlain. It leaves out a lot of people. And the reason I would take Olajuwon is very simple: he is so versatile because of what he can give you from that position. It's not just his scoring, not just his rebounding or not just his blocked shots. People don't realize he was in the top seven in steals. He always made great decisions on the court. For all facets of the game, I have to give it to him."

Here's the link if someone wants to read the whole interview
http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatures/show/id/One-on-One-with-Michael-Jordan_6189/p/2

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