RealGM Top 100 List: #19

[Dr Positivity]

Havlicek vs Pettit - Havlicek is 7.5 years younger than Pettit and they played against each other and old Pettit was better than young Havlicek. The late 50s may not have been stellar competition but the early 70s competition were also affected by expansion and ABA, enough to potentially make the level of competition not that huge a factor between them, and Pettit was rated as having a more dominant career (2x MVP winner, general superstar status). The argument in favor of Havlicek would have to be that he has an intangible defensive impact on the game that made him underrated in his time. Even though Cousy had more accolades than Havlicek I'm satisfied calling the latter the better player based on Cousy's shooting %. The gap between Cousy and Havlicek time period wise is also bigger

[Doctor MJ]

Well I mean Nash has a pretty good argument for GOAT offensive impact at his best. He was the most impactful offensive player on the best offensive team playing a style he basically invented which made use of team 3s more optimally than anyone who came before.

As I've said I think Stockton has a real case over him for this list, but to me there's basically never a mystery why Nash has a strong argument offensively over anyone. (Arguments exist for a few in the other direction of course, just saying, I don't know how anyone gets said to be his equivalent at his strengths.)


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If you feel pass first PGs have a great value to an offense over and above their stats, Nash is certainly going to be a contender, but so are Magic and Stockton. They are probably the 3 greatest passers in the history of the NBA. Saying Nash is better than Stockton at it is more of a stretch but certainly possible but they are in the same rough tier.

To me that's placing too much inertia resisting the idea that one guy is better than another. "All 3 guys are as good as they come" seems like a very fair perspective, the 3 guys approached their role in very different ways style-wise with Nash being the most aggressive, Magic in the middle, and Stockton being vastly more conservative than the other two. To name them as roughly equals feels like a proper cautious approach to the comparison, but we should not expect them to achieve the exact same results with different approaches. Either Nash was too risk prone, or he wasn't. Either Stockton was too cautious, or he wasn't.

The data tells us that Nash was the top per minute offensive player of his era while playing in an era that made more optimal use of role players, pace, and 3-point shooting. You can personally believe Stockton would have done the same had he played for D'Antoni, and thus negate the actual offensive impact edge Nash may have had in a GOAT list comparison, but to simply assert there was no difference doesn't make sense. These things clearly transformed the NBA because they made major improvements to offense, and while you can try to argue that that's just an era difference to be adjusted for, the fact remains that when Nash did it, many, many people were dismissive of it, and those people have been proven about as wrong as you can every prove anything given that in '16-17 Nash's approach would have actually been conservative compared to new norms and a Stockton-esque approach would have been a non-starter.

[Doctor MJ]

Well I mean Nash has a pretty good argument for GOAT offensive impact at his best. He was the most impactful offensive player on the best offensive team playing a style he basically invented which made use of team 3s more optimally than anyone who came before.

As I've said I think Stockton has a real case over him for this list, but to me there's basically never a mystery why Nash has a strong argument offensively over anyone. (Arguments exist for a few in the other direction of course, just saying, I don't know how anyone gets said to be his equivalent at his strengths.)


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

If you feel pass first PGs have a great value to an offense over and above their stats, Nash is certainly going to be a contender, but so are Magic and Stockton. They are probably the 3 greatest passers in the history of the NBA. Saying Nash is better than Stockton at it is more of a stretch but certainly possible but they are in the same rough tier.

Nash was the more spectacular player, at least after he signed into PG nirvana, but Stockton was the all time technician. He did everything right, controlled the smallest details.

The funny thing is that despite having similar or superior offensive numbers, and playing the other side of the ball too as one of the league's great ball thiefs, Stockton was always very clearly thought of as maybe the GOAT support player. Nash, as the player with the spectacular narrative, and of course fortuitously arriving at a bit of a weak point for the league great-player wise, won 2 MVPs and finished 2nd a third time. Meanwhile Stockton quietly went about his business and had miniscule MVP share numbers (never finished higher than 7th). He was understood to be the help. The best help, but the help. There is, or was, a perception gap with how Nahs was perceived that is not born out by the numbers at all.

Here's the thing:

If there's an issue, it's with how Stockton is perceived (and thus perhaps how Malone is perceived) not with Nash. The Nash narrative you speak of is just clearly right based on on/off stats and subsequent changes to how the game was played.

I actually think that the implication here is likely partially correct in 2 ways:

1) That people overrated Malone's impact and underrated Stockton's impact
2) That people overrated Malone's potential and underrated Stockton's potential

But the fact remains that it makes little sense to say about anyone "Oh he could have played like Nash if he'd been told to do so." Nash's style is something that he was both the spearhead of, and something that was intrinsic to his personality. For both of those reasons I would consider it inappropriate to try to "cancel it out".

[Dr Positivity]

If there's an issue, it's with how Stockton is perceived (and thus perhaps how Malone is perceived) not with Nash. The Nash narrative you speak of is just clearly right based on on/off stats and subsequent changes to how the game was played.

I actually think that the implication here is likely partially correct in 2 ways:

1) That people overrated Malone's impact and underrated Stockton's impact
2) That people overrated Malone's potential and underrated Stockton's potential

I don't know if I agree with that. How do we know Malone wasn't the driving force behind Utah offense? Malone is the one with the dominant ORAPM in the late 90s (which admittedly is post prime Stockton) and they peaked when Stockton had a smaller role. As for whether Stockton could have been used like Nash, Nash is a better individual scoring talent than Stockton, and as passers Stockton was dropping 14apg seasons so I don't know what more could be gotten out of him. The Jazz offense didn't reach the heights of the Suns but the team make-up, strategy, etc. were different. Was Stockton under-utilized or perfectly utilized for his skills? You could convince me that Stockton's numbers looked better because he played with Malone and Sloan as easily as you could that they looked worse

[Pablo Novi]

A WEAKNESS IN OUR COLLECTIVE GOAT TOP 25
Cousy won't be getting chosen in this GOAT #19 thread; and it seems almost as unlikely that he'll be chosen in the next one either. So in our GOAT Top 25, we'll end up with FIVE Guards; when, just based on the number of positions, proportionally there should be about 10. Depending on if you classify Jerry West as a PG or as a SG, we've picked 2-3 SGs and 3-2 PGs.

I think you mean 5 in the top 20. Which is a little light as 40% would be 8 out of 20, but with Nash, Wade, Paul, Stockton, Isiah, Frazier, Curry, Cousy, Kidd in contention I'm going to say there will probably be more guards that go 21-30 than forwards/bigs

Yes, as soon as I posted that, I realized it should have been "5 in the top 20"; and went back and corrected it.

[Doctor MJ]

After Moses and Barkley, do you guys feel it's too early for Stockton?

Even here it's not too early for Stockton.

The biggest problem I have with the GOAT list we've been building is that, imo, it is definitely unbalanced POSITION-WISE - especially with Centers taking about 1/3 of the spots so far (and Moses & Mikan also on our horizion).

Clearly, bigs generally, and Centers in particular tend to have seriously bigger roles to play on Defense. BUT, the smaller the guy, the more that player TENDS to do tons more of: running, dribbling, cutting, passing, chasing, even "thinking/planning". In my book, that about equalizes the "equation". For this reason, in my GOAT rankings, in each descending set of 5 GOAT spots, I have one player form each position - although I always have the Center within that group as the highest ranked.

Examples:
GOAT #s 1-5: KAJ, Magic, MJ, LBJ, TD (in this order)
GOAT #2 6-10: Wilt, Dr J, Kobe, "O", K. Malone
etc.

We're two spots (this one and the next) from completing our GOAT Top 20, and we only have 2 PGs so far!
So, imo, we should really start trying to balance things out considering such as:
Cousy, Stockton, and the other 11 or so (I just mentioned in a just-previous post).

I actually think it's really dangerous to try to normalize for position.

In today's game we see it when people try to give extra credit for being the Nth best shooting guard, even though in today's game it seems pretty clear that "shooting guard" means "guard who isn't the lead guard", which means the right way to play is almost always as an off-guard, and those bringing this up are as likely to mention DeRozan as anyone else, who quite clearly is not an off-guard.

While I don't consider it a given that bigs would dominate the list nor does it seem unreasonable. A guy who can potentially have major impact on both sides of the ball has a huge advantage, and the reality is, you basically don't get that from a guard.

The main counterpoint that works for me is that many of the so-called two-way bigs throughout history were just guys who were great on defense and wrongly allowed to chuck on offense.

[Doctor MJ]

I know Havlicek isn't getting any traction here, but I'd like to point out why I think he's a valid choice compared to Moses and Barkley.

Havlicek isn't all-time elite in any one area but is a notch below that in almost EVERY area -- offense, defense, transition, PS performance, and longevity, and you could break that down into individual categories. He's one of the most complete players to ever play the game.

Charles is better offensively and as a rebounder, but he's bad defensively and doesn't have Havlicek's postseason resume.

Moses is a better rebounder and perhaps has more impact offensively (but that's debatable -- Havlicek's offensive versatility is a strong point). Moses has significant liabilities as a playmaker and in his postseason resume (a disturbing number of seasons out of the playoffs or one and done).

I'd be interested to know where others have Havlicek on their list.

I think the place where it's easy to overrate Hondo was when he was scoring north of 25 PPG. He achieved that by playing a ton of minutes, at a fast pace, on weak efficiency. The fact that the teams had success doesn't make his PPG numbers a good shorthand for his volume scoring ability.

So long as you're just focusing on Hondo as a great defender who was a savvy playmaker who wasn't afraid to shoot, that's fine. I tend to see him a lot like Pippen, except that Pippen was like an upgraded version.

I don't see it as crazy to have either guy in your top 30, but as an example, I think Rick Barry was a vastly stronger offensive player than Hondo.

[Outside]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on Havlicek. Most people seem to have him in the late 20s range, so I'll probably skip him for a few rounds after this, but I appreciate the discussion.

[Senior]

If there's an argument for him (Stockton) being in the top 20, I would like a very solid reason for why a top 15 player (malone, by voting) and Stockton, both in their statistical primes (88-95), with plenty of roster continuity and good coaching, no injuries to each since both were iron men, were continuously heads of teams which weren't much good either in the regular or the post season, has such a thing happened elsewhere like, ever?

It's really not clear that the Jazz were all that well coached if we compare Sloan's model to what wins in the NBA now.

One of the questions we've long had is what Stockton would have done had he actually been unleashed. He wasn't the creative genius Nash was, but he played in a way that seemed forced by his situation to be more conservative than he'd naturally play. There's an early playoff series where he had several volume scoring games but then through the bulk of his career, he basically just never had big scoring games like you'd expect from the natural variance of a floor general. To give an example of what I mean, if you go and do a search on Stockton and Jason Kidd's 30+ games, Kidd had a ton more despite the fact that his averages were comparable to Stockton. Basically when Kidd had a favorable matchup and was feeling his shot, he had the greenlight to shoot. Stockton on the other hand seems like at a certain point was convinced - by some means, possibly just his sense that Malone was the true star - that it was his job to get others the ball and when a bucket needed to be created, Malone had primacy.

So then what do you do with that for Stockton's place here? Typically in the past I've rated Nash over Stockton on the basis that whatever Stockton was capable of as an alpha, he didn't do it, and thus it's not relevant. Still, the more I look at Stockton, while it seems clear he didn't match Nash's prime offensive impact, he was still quite good on that front, and on defense, for a very, very long time.

I'll also note this: I've smacked Baylor way the hell down on my list because in my opinion his tendency to play alpha with a clearly superior teammate was actively hurting his team for much of his career. Malone's case is not so clear cut, and certainly not so drastic, but I've certainly heard stories of him being frustrated that he wasn't seen as better than Jordan, because he thought he was. Perhaps I'll hear evidence that those stories were total fabrications, but I think it's quite likely that Malone's assumption of primacy had everything to do with why Stockton was so deferential, which then led to playoff situations where Malone struggled to score efficiently, but still kept being the one who shot it.

And so if that's the case you might argue that Stockton is the one who deserves to be seen as a top 20 rather than Malone.

For me personally I've never been able to justify going that far, but thoughts like these make it pretty easy for me to side with guys like Dirk over Malone as I too question whether Malone should have been able to accomplish more.

But getting back to Sloan: The reality is the Jazz had their most success when Stockton's stats went down. There's an implication that Stockton was the problem before then when I say that, but given that Stockton's impact stats are basically free of blemish everywhere I've looked, it's hard to imagine that his decision making was a bottle neck. If there was a bottle neck then, I'd say Sloan's rigidity may have been it. It frankly might have nothing to do with Malone at all (though Malone's impact dipped later on when he didn't adjust to his lessening skills, but even that might have been more about Sloan's rigidity than Malone's decision making).

I'm not sure that Sloan game to game was rigid; he was generally willing to adjust his gameplans within playoff series. That's something we could see in his series against Chicago for example - I can post news articles. Where Sloan's rigidity came in was his unwillingness to use the three despite having an elite floor general in Stock and a premier post player in Malone. The Jazz were frequently near the bottom of the league in 3P attempts and percentage, and that really cost them when intelligent defenses such as Chicago, Seattle, and Houston played off the weaker Jazz players and blew up their offense.

Stockton was a bit more on the conservative side in terms of calling his number, and it's something that cost them when teams loaded up on Malone. For example, a team like the title Rockets had horrific PG defense and really could not handle Stockton when he decided to score, but I felt he didn't take advantage of their porous defense until 1997 when he stepped on their throats. It's funny - I think there's an argument that both the Suns and Jazz would be better off switching Nash and Stock because Nash would be able to maintain his PNR synergy with Malone and he would have more aggression scoring late in games where Malone was limited whereas Stock would be able to take advantage of the superior offensive talent on Phoenix and not have his weaker scoring mentality be such an issue.

I do not believe that Stockton was an issue before 1994 when they added Hornacek. I do believe his aggregate assists are overrated in the sense that teams aren't going anywhere with that degree of reliance on one playmaker. The Jazz needed more perimeter firepower to truly contend.

In terms of deciding who takes the shot, I put that on the floor general. I don't believe that Malone's feelings should play into deciding who takes the shots in crunch time, and there were numerous occasions that Stockton's lack of aggression cost his team a game and the playoff series. I don't believe that it was a bottle-neck in the sense it wasn't a fatal flaw and Stockton was excellent apart from this one significant drawback, if that makes sense. Overall, I agree with Nash above Stockton because Nash was far more willing to call his own number when he knew his team needed offense. The role of the PG is to get your team the best shot, and Nash was more willing to exert his scoring skills to get a shot when his team needed one.

To respond to theonlyclutch's question - Malone should not have been voted as highly as he was. I feel that he got too much credit for his RS numbers/averages and his playoff struggles were glossed over because of the two Finals against Chicago.

[trex_8063]

I'd be interested to know where others have Havlicek on their list.

Late 20s

Me too.

[trex_8063]

.

So long as you're just focusing on Hondo as a great defender who was a savvy playmaker who wasn't afraid to shoot, that's fine. I tend to see him a lot like Pippen, except that Pippen was like an upgraded version.

Although Hondo had better longevity. I otherwise agree, which is why I generally have Pippen and Havlicek in very close proximity to each other on my ATL: I think Pippen was a little better, but Havlicek useful for longer.

[trex_8063]

Handful of rambling thoughts and observations to share.....

Have been [re?]watching some game film of Moses, mostly from the '83 Finals, but also a few clips from some rs games from '86, with a special eye toward how he's performing defensively. He's not looking as good defensively as I'd remembered or was anticipating in watching some of this. He makes a couple of fantastic blocks on the help D, a great anticipation steal in one place.......but at other times (especially in G4 of '83 Finals) he's downright soft on the post defense against Kareem: really just letting Kareem get to his spot, and minimally contesting that sky-hook at times. Was one other instance, for example (can see it right here) where he was sort of lackadaisical in getting back in transition; Kareem is running like a step ahead of him the whole way down court (clearly looking back toward Magic and the ball), but Moses just sort of continues at a fast jog that step behind him.....almost as though he's surprised the Showtime Lakers want to run.

The other trend I'm noting (which I'd previously criticized Barkley for here (post #8, since I can't get it to link properly), is that Moses is somewhat inconsistent in boxing out on the defensive glass. He seems to rely more on his quick jump, strength, aggressiveness, and anticipation to secure the board; but at times is giving precious little attention to sealing out the opposing team. Of interest wrt this....

....the Sixers' DREB% does improve upon getting Moses, but the results are not as good as one might hope or expect. In '82 (before Moses) they're an abysmal 22nd/23 in DREB%. In '83 (get Moses, and rookie Iavaroni, fwiw) they improve to 10th/23. But then over the next three seasons (WITH Moses, and getting Barkley beginning in '85) they're 18th/23, 14th/23, and 18th/23, respectively. Not as good as you'd expect with Moses (and Barkley for the latter two). In '87 (Moses has left), they're 17th/23.


Don't get me wrong, he still looks better defensively than Charles, but it's just not as impressive as the impression I'd had in my head.


His offensive rebounding is still hugely effective on that end, and is supported by the correlation studies I'd done relating to rOREB% and rORTG. Those also indicated that thru much of Moses' prime, increased rOREB% did NOT worsen rDRTG (as one might expect thru worse transition defense).

otoh, I do have some question marks regarding the portability of this style of play. That same study indicated that in more modern/recent eras, increased rOREB% doesn't have much correlation with improving rORTG, and meanwhile DOES have a correlation with worsening rDRTG.

The gist of that study is outlined here (quoted from prior thread):

Spoiler:

I looked at rOREB% and rORTG/rDRTG for each and every team for the years '74-'85 (that's 256 data points over 12 seasons, covering most of Moses' prime/career), as well as each team for the years '04-'07 and '11-'12 (that's 179 data points over 6 seasons of Dirk's prime). That's as far as I've got so far; will try to go further, but there is other stuff I want to move on to, so I'm going to share what I've got so far. Anyway, I made plot-point graphs (with a trend line) of those data sets, and calculated the Correlation Coefficients for each set.

Of interest, the league avg OREB% of Dirk's career (at least the years I've investigated) run ~5% lower than that of the '74-'85 sample (~27.5% vs ~32.5%), and obviously there have been a lot of other game trend shifts. And the correlations seen between the two eras are very very different.

For the '74-'85 sample, there definitely appears to be a fair correlation between increasing rOREB% and increasing rORtg. The correlation coefficient is 0.3729.

I can explain correlation coefficients to the best of my limited ability if anyone needs (I've only somewhat recently had it explained to me and have begun using it in a few of my studies). But suffice to say this indicates significant correlation. Not super-high, but it wouldn't be reasonable to expect a really high correlation coefficient (say 0.6-0.7 or higher) because we, after all, are ignoring all of the other offensive factors that influence offensive efficiency (namely: eFG%, FTr, and TOV%). tbh, 0.3729 was perhaps slightly higher than I was expecting.

The other interesting thing in this '74-'85 sample is that there appeared to be basically zero correlation between an increasing rOREB% and an increasing (worsening) rDRtg; the trend line is almost exactly flat along the x-axis. The correlation coefficient was 0.0093.
Obviously, there are a number of confounding factors not included in this study, so this is not "proof" that a strategy of banging the offensive glass didn't hurt transition defense; but for whatever it's worth, there was no correlation between the two for that sample of years.


With the 6-year sample from Dirk's prime, the correlations are VASTLY different. It would seem that during Dirk's career (based on these six years, at least) there is almost negligible correlation between OREB% and ORtg. The correlation coefficient was just 0.0879 (which is really not even statistically significant).

But interestingly, there DID appear to be correlation between a rising rOREB% and a rising (worsening) rDRTG in this set of years. The CC there is 0.2021, which is not high, but is high enough to suggest that there is a relationship between the two (and is likely why there has been a shift away from offensive rebounding to focus on getting back on D).

Dunno if this sort of exonerates Dirk wrt criticisms of his low OREB% or not; I leave that to each of you to ponder. But it was an interesting finding.

I'm just not seeing a ton of versatility in Moses' game to show he'd adapt really well to other circumstances. Now, era portability is not a major factor in my criteria [at all]; however, with this particular comparison being so close for me, THAT might be the tie-breaker.
So tentatively [VERY tentatively, and I reserve right to swap this order at some point], I'll go with:

1st vote: Charles Barkley
2nd vote: Moses Malone

....unless someone can convince me otherwise. Moses shows some not quite Robinson-like explosiveness in his face-up game at times, as well as some occasional bulldog tenacity in the low-post......at this point I could almost be swayed by a well put-together video montage .

[trex_8063]

Because I don't consider it an equal league to the NBA and it wouldn't be fair to use ABA career vs full NBA player. That's like I have to count D-Rob navy career or college career. We should stick mainly to NBA discussion and that's where GOAT career should be the focal point. This is NBA GOAT list after all.

You are incorrect. As stated in the rules for this project, it specifically includes late NBL, 1950s NBA, and ABA seasons as well as NBA seasons. It does not include European, Olympic, college, or playground basketball (or the ABL). For what it's worth, by 1975, the ABA was pretty much equal to the NBA and with a more modern style of basketball.

If we are to count the ABA, then Moses may come ahead of Barkley. I may have to flip flop between crediting Moses for 18 quality (above average, productive player) or 16 seasons (based on NBA only). So if someone can help me explain Moses longevity, that would be appreciated. How many seasons did he really play above average?

Please work it out and let me know. As penbeast0 has stated (and as is stated clearly in sign-up thread), this is to be the best of NBA/ABA/BAA/(NBL) history. ABA seasons are [required] to be considered; it's important that you follow that stipulation if you want to proceed with the project. If you have any doubts that even token consideration of those seasons could swing your decision back to Moses, I would actually prefer you revert back to your initial vote (i.e. 1-Moses, 2-Barkley).

[THKNKG]

How do you guys view Nash vs Barkley offensively?

[Winsome Gerbil]

How do you guys view Nash vs Barkley offensively?

I've never entirely bought the Nash hype.

Great PG of course, but put in a perfect situation for the ultimate modern PG coach. The same coach who turned James Harden into an MVP level (and higher level than Nash actually) PG, that created Linsanity etc.. And Nash walked into a WILDLY offensively talented Suns team. Playing in a free flowing fast breaking PG-centric mode? PG nirvana.

And the thing is, I think PGs, at least passing PGs, are in some ways like rim protecting centers. The rim protecting center is ALWAYS the defensive keystone. And on the flipside, a great passing PG is going to always be the offensive keystone. What Nash did was very high level PG stuff, but Magic would have thrived in that system. JKidd would have thrived. Curry would have thrived. I'm not going to say Stockton would have simply because Nash wanted to run n gun, and Stockton and his ilk are more comfortable as halfcourt masters, but for a PG, Nash's situations were incredibly enviable. He thrived, but he should have thrived.

What Charles did on the other hand was truly remarkable. I've been saying this for several threads.

There have been 119 players in NBA history to score 15000 or more career points. Of all those guys Charles Barkley has the highest career ORTG of any non-guard. In fact he's the only guy in the Top 9 who wasn't a part time guard (Dantley and Vandeweghe were swingmen). The next highest non-guard is Kevin McHale at #10. Barkley has a higher career ORTG than Lebron. Than Dirk, Admiral, Kareem.

Top 5 Career ORTG
1) Chris Paul
2) Magic Johnson
3) Reggie Miller
4) John Stockton
5) Charles Barkley

Michael Jordan was #9.

Nash is very high as well, #11, but its a list he's supposed to be on as a top PG. But Barkley was the ultimate round mound of offensive party crashing.

full list 15000+pts sorted by career ORTG:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&match=combined&type=totals&per_minute_base=36&per_poss_base=100&lg_id=NBA&is_playoffs=N&year_min=&year_max=&franch_id=&season_start=1&season_end=-1&age_min=0&age_max=99&shoot_hand=&height_min=0&height_max=99&birth_country_is=Y&birth_country=&birth_state=&college_id=&draft_year=&is_active=&debut_yr_nba_start=&debut_yr_nba_end=&is_hof=&is_as=&as_comp=gt&as_val=0&award=&pos_is_g=Y&pos_is_gf=Y&pos_is_f=Y&pos_is_fg=Y&pos_is_fc=Y&pos_is_c=Y&pos_is_cf=Y&qual=&c1stat=off_rtg&c1comp=gt&c1val=1&c2stat=pts&c2comp=gt&c2val=15000&c3stat=&c3comp=&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=&c4val=&c5stat=&c5comp=&c6mult=&c6stat=&order_by=off_rtg&order_by_asc=&offset=0

[penbeast0]

To me that's placing too much inertia resisting the idea that one guy is better than another. "All 3 guys are as good as they come" seems like a very fair perspective, the 3 guys approached their role in very different ways style-wise with Nash being the most aggressive, Magic in the middle, and Stockton being vastly more conservative than the other two. To name them as roughly equals feels like a proper cautious approach to the comparison, but we should not expect them to achieve the exact same results with different approaches. Either Nash was too risk prone, or he wasn't. Either Stockton was too cautious, or he wasn't.

The data tells us that Nash was the top per minute offensive player of his era while playing in an era that made more optimal use of role players, pace, and 3-point shooting. You can personally believe Stockton would have done the same had he played for D'Antoni, and thus negate the actual offensive impact edge Nash may have had in a GOAT list comparison, but to simply assert there was no difference doesn't make sense. These things clearly transformed the NBA because they made major improvements to offense, and while you can try to argue that that's just an era difference to be adjusted for, the fact remains that when Nash did it, many, many people were dismissive of it, and those people have been proven about as wrong as you can every prove anything given that in '16-17 Nash's approach would have actually been conservative compared to new norms and a Stockton-esque approach would have been a non-starter.

I don't think that's accurate. They played in different eras and Stockton's PnR based offense was as successful relative to his time (for 4 years v. 6) as Nash's D'Antoni based offense . . . it was just a decade earlier so certain things (3 point shooting, etc.) were not as widely accepted. That's like saying Lenny Wilkens's handles couldn't compare to those of half the PGs in the modern league. He (arguably) had the best handles of his day but the rules and the way those rules were implemented and enforced were different. Stockton in his day ran as successful an offense as Nash in his . . . and in my belief, with less offensive talent around him (despite Karl Malone).

The norms of what is conservative in their day were different; Stockton's offense was a drastic change from the standard offense of his day too. He made Sloan's PnR offense work just as Nash was the engine driving D'Antoni's Suns. I don't see Nash as superior offensively to Stockton in terms of running an offense. Maybe in terms of being more willing to call his own number but that's the only offensive edge I see with him.

[Outside]

How do you guys view Nash vs Barkley offensively?

Such different skillsets and strengths, yet both with great positive impact. Kinda shows the range of what qualifies as an impactful player.

I have Charles over Nash because of a longer sustained peak. Nash was good in Dallas but didn't really blossom until he got to Phoenix with D'Antoni, while Barkley was great wherever he was until the injury bug arrived. I love Nash's style, but it concerns me that a certain part of his excellence is due to the system in Phoenix. He was so efficient offensively, yet he seemed pathologically averse to shooting more, which made no sense to me. I think he hurt his team a bit with his unselfishness. But he was an all-time great in the passing, vision, and floor generalship department.

Being too unselfish wasn't a problem for Charles, yet he was also a very good playmaker with surprising assist numbers. The dude was really, really good on that side of the ball.

I would've loved to have seen them play together. I think they would've meshed wonderfully.

[70sFan]

I'd like to quickly add that Havlicek at his best (1970-74) was quite efficient scorer. Of course not even close to guys like Barkley or Durant but always above average with pretty high volume. He would be much more efficient nowadays, he had 3 point range and used it quite often. Then of course he was extremely good passer and tough defender.

Although I don't think Hondo deserves to be voted higher than Moses, Barkley or Pettit, he has an excellent case for top 25.

[Senior]

After reading trex's post, looking at Houston's perimeter defenders and their DRTGs, and seeing that Moses' rebounding didn't help the Sixers as much as I thought after 83, I think I'll take Chuck over Moses because the defensive edge just isn't there and Barkley's offense was more suited to lead his team to the title. Moses matchup vs Kareem was beating him up for boards, not necessarily that he was doing much to stop him on offense. You'll notice that Kareem's scoring doesn't actually dip in the series vs Moses - 27 ppg in 81, 24 ppg on 56% FG in 83. Kareem gets whatever shots he wants vs Moses.

It's odd, because although you have to protect Chuck and Moses defensively and the Sixers actually did do it (whereas the Suns did not), the Sixers defensive cast around Moses in 1983 was legitimately elite. They did a fantastic job covering up for Moses, and I can't help but feel that if Barkley had the same kind of protection around him he could've led a title winner. Erving, Jones, Cheeks, Richardson/Iavaroni (iirc Cureton was solid too), that's pretty damn good. Put equal defenders around Chuck and they'd win too.

What do we think of the younger guys? Wade, Curry, KD? Nash too. Maybe even CP3?

Looking forward on Curry because his longevity is essentially 5 years but his peak over the last 3 years is arguably top 10. Is that peak enough to overcome someone like Stockton?

[penbeast0]

. . .

Looking forward on Curry because his longevity is essentially 5 years but his peak over the last 3 years is arguably top 10. Is that peak enough to overcome someone like Stockton?

No, is it enough to overcome Wade?