RealGM 2017 Top 100 List: #42 (Reggie Miller)

[Dr Positivity]

Thurmond definitely has my attention in next couple spots.

[penbeast0]

We have power again!

And, voting for Reggie Miller; the playoff heroics combined with the scoring efficiency are strong enough to overcome the mediocrity of the rest of his game at this spot.

[Doctor MJ]

On Miller.

We just put Ewing in a few rounds ago. IMO Miller over his career had a significantly better cast around him. Maybe even enough to start ranting about how much better it was. Now we had ewing in already, so the view here is he was better, but I feel Ewing's teams did a LOT better than Millers despite what I'd consider a pretty sure gap in talent around Ewing. Am I crazy here?

Have you heard of Ewing Theory?


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[Doctor MJ]

Well, I get that and I respect that. The issue is it's REALLY hard to win a title with a stockton level guy as your best player, who based on what we see was 29 on his list. You need a guy a tier above to WIN, and that's why I think these types of projections over value good player and under value stars. It is much like why I think WS is a great stat, but horrible for a top 50 list. VORP has some real flaws but at least it is scaled "better" for showing who was great and who was good. It just imo still under values greatness.

The fun of seeing how the 76ers were "rebuilding" is about this whole idea, that you need a franchise player to win, and you should tank until you have that guy to build around.

I don't think Miller or Pierce are guys you stop tanking once you get.

Moving back to that thread, I think the Malone numbers are a good example. Malone was a guy you can win a title with. I think the gap between Malone and Stockton is pretty huge.

Now again all this changes once we clear out those rare players who really moved things and we're getting close imo.

The only issue here imho is that you overrate Reed. Yes, the very top tier guys, even for a short time, can produce more odds of a championship than a Pierce or Allen over their entire career...but Reed really isn't one of those guys. He was a great player, but he was in an unbelievable situation in which there's a very good argument that many of us here believe that he got surpassed as the best player on his team DURING his MVP season.

Remember: Reed was the star who came first, and he played the glamour position of the era (center) as the team rose to prominence. However Frazier then rose up and became the better player by a lot of measurements in '69-70, and in the finals he was objectively the true Finals MVP, yet Reed still got the nod because of his great narrative.

We must also remember how innovative Red Holzmann's Knicks were. They took the game to a new level built around read & react offense and a smart, swarming defense - and of course Frazier has a great case to made for being the MVP on both sides of the ball for the Knicks.

What all of this means is that Reed getting seen as a championship bringer seems more the product of good timing than anything else.

By contrast, someone like Bill Walton really was an earth shaker. The team was far better than anyone else when he played and awful when he didn't. The team played a style that few, if any, players in history could pull off like Walton, and did all this with supporting talent that was solid but not off-the-charts good like Frazier/DeBusschere/Bradley/etc.

With Walton I'm very tempted to vote for him over far inferior players like Reggie & Pierce by the same rationale you use. If he had Reed's longevity it would be an easy choice but of course Walton's is far worse.

Reed though, I honestly don't know if I'd ever rank him ahead of Reggie & Pierce if his longevity was good.

Reed, Cowens, and a few others are all guys I would rank at the very bottom of the game changer list. The thing with that knicks team is I think they had two legit game changers in Frazier and Reed.

Perhaps I have some anti recency bias here, in that I saw most of millers career pretty first hand, well as best anyone with TNT and TBS access could in that era, and I saw a lot of pierce (though I admit there were some years in college at the start of his career...or was it drunk times after college?) through his prime and both guys are just to me in that group of number 2's who couldn't be the best player on a title team, even an 04 pistons style team. I like them both, but they are not at the top of that next tier.

I can understand fully why someone thinks Miller had more impact or that Pierce was a bit better. Sadly unlike some of you, I'm not a great writer. I'm a numbers guy (finance/accounting) but not a real math guy. So it's hard for me to put the difference here into words, a few less bourbons ago maybe I could have done better, but i doubt it.

Miller is imo the perfect second guy on a team without being able to be the best player on a title team. I could see having him over Stockton or over McHale for example. But not the legit MVP guys left who I had over the second tier guys I listed and voted against. Pierce is a bit more of guy I could move up, but he still wasn't the game changer.

I stand by we still have a handful of guys who to me moved the needle at the highest level that should get in before the guys who were great for a LONG time. I'm certainly open to arguments that a guy like Reed didn't actually do that, I admit I've lowed my view on him already in these talks. Meanwhile I'm really open on where to move Cowens in. I'm going to go low on walton as I just can't get past 1 or 1 and a half great years...3 years and I'd be singing a different tune.

I'd also add I do value intangibles. Miller and Pierce are ok to very good. I get the impression Reed was a great intangibles guy, just to add to why I think he was in that upper tier despite stats perhaps ranking him a bit lower.

Just to bring up a name here for comparison:

Al Horford

Horford is very nice on both ends of the floor and great on intangibles. He also rates pretty similarly to Reed in PER.

Horford is of course a fringe all-star. While one could argue he's underrated, I don't think anyone thinks he's so underrated he should be rated higher than Miller or Pierce.

What keeps Horford from being more? Well he shouldn't be your first scoring option and he's not a strike-the-fear-of-God type of help defender you'd prefer in your defensive anchor.

I would point out this is the same for Reed. You'd be crazy to let him be your first scoring option and he's not a serious DPOY candidate.

I think people need to project Reed into the current NBA and see how he'd really expect to step up.


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[Winsome Gerbil]

I'm a little nonplussed why Reed came out of nowhere to coalesce as the designated non-longevity fallacy choice of this runoff. Obviously he's in the mix..somewhere. But there's nothing really compelling about his short career that screams out "I am #42!". He played in 650 career games, had a grand total of 5 barely-20pt seasons at a time when that was just expected out of great centers, and a career PER of 18.6. He's The Captain, won an MVP for...well, Captainess, had his legendary moment vs. Wilt, and will always be beloved in New York. But it's really hard to construct a strong argument why hsi overall career would go here rather than any number of others.

So, faced with fairly 3 unworthy objects, I'm going to go ahead and put in Pierce, who at least was well rounded as a second tier guy and would have had a few Top 10 years. And then maybe next thread we can get back to talking about people that have actually dominated the league rather than just played in it.

Runoff: Pierce under protest

[Dr Positivity]

I'm a little nonplussed why Reed came out of nowhere to coalesce as the designated non-longevity fallacy choice of this runoff. Obviously he's in the mix..somewhere. But there's nothing really compelling about his short career that screams out "I am #42!". He played in 650 career games, had a grand total of 5 barely-20pt seasons at a time when that was just expected out of great centers, and a career PER of 18.6. He's The Captain, won an MVP for...well, Captainess, had his legendary moment vs. Wilt, and will always be beloved in New York. But it's really hard to construct a strong argument why hsi overall career would go here rather than any number of others.

Runoff: Pierce under protest

PER was not as high in his era, for example in 69 West leads the league with 22.3, Reed is 4th with 21.4. Iverson for example hasn't finished higher than 7th despite having 25.9 in 06.

WS looks better for Reed where he led the league in 69, but boxscores in general do not capture his whole value as he is a 1st team all-defender in a league where steals/blocks aren't tracked yet and is one of the best floor spacing bigs. So when considering he still has top 5 boxscore without his defense and floor spacing being a part of it, I don't think Reed being MVP worthy is that controversial. He may not have deserved 70 win but he has a pretty good case for 69 over Unseld

[Joao Saraiva]

1st vote - Billups

Great offensive player. Tremendous pace control, good scorer, didn't hide in the most difficult moments. Took over when necessary, made the ball move to give everybody chances on offense when he had to.

Worked really well with the Pistons, achieving tremendous team success (many ECFs in a row, twp finals, 1 ring and one FMVP.

Did very well in Denver too and was probably the best combo Carmelo ever had.

Good defensive PG, had size. Good on switching even against bigger guys. Good PnR defender. Good at moving his feet.

I really don't know what Billups can have against him to not be voted right now.

2nd vote - Paul Pierce.

Haven't really given a ton of thought on Dwight vs Pierce vs Thurmond vs Ray Allen vs Reggie... Definitely an interesting part of the list.

[dhsilv2]

On Miller.

We just put Ewing in a few rounds ago. IMO Miller over his career had a significantly better cast around him. Maybe even enough to start ranting about how much better it was. Now we had ewing in already, so the view here is he was better, but I feel Ewing's teams did a LOT better than Millers despite what I'd consider a pretty sure gap in talent around Ewing. Am I crazy here?

Have you heard of Ewing Theory?


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Sure.....not sure how it applies here.

[Winsome Gerbil]

I'm a little nonplussed why Reed came out of nowhere to coalesce as the designated non-longevity fallacy choice of this runoff. Obviously he's in the mix..somewhere. But there's nothing really compelling about his short career that screams out "I am #42!". He played in 650 career games, had a grand total of 5 barely-20pt seasons at a time when that was just expected out of great centers, and a career PER of 18.6. He's The Captain, won an MVP for...well, Captainess, had his legendary moment vs. Wilt, and will always be beloved in New York. But it's really hard to construct a strong argument why hsi overall career would go here rather than any number of others.

Runoff: Pierce under protest

PER was not as high in his era, for example in 69 West leads the league with 22.3, Reed is 4th with 21.4. Iverson for example hasn't finished higher than 7th despite having 25.9 in 06.

WS looks better for Reed where he led the league in 69, but boxscores in general do not capture his whole value as he is a 1st team all-defender in a league where steals/blocks aren't tracked yet and is one of the best floor spacing bigs. So when considering he still has top 5 boxscore without his defense and floor spacing being a part of it, I don't think Reed being MVP worthy is that controversial. He may not have deserved 70 win but he has a pretty good case for 69 over Unseld

I'm willing to accept that he was a potential MVP winner in that brief hole between Wilt and the arrival of Lew/Kareem. But i'm sure most would admit it's one of those weaker/mysterious 70s types of MVPs whichever year it might have come in.

Regardless, I think the weakness of his case is not his MVP (obviously), but that he had such a short career around it. His was a very short moment, and MVP or no, he didn't peak spectacularly high in it. Just for comparison, people are still shying away from the obvious with Russell Westbrook, well:

WillisReed 650gms 23073min
Westbrook 668gms 22786min

And Westbrook is an MVP too, and his MVP was NOT weak.

I mean we think of guys like McGrady, Webber, Mourning as guys who only had partial, foreshortened careers, yet:

WillisReed 650gms 23073min
TMcGrady 938gms 30658min
ChWebber 831gms 30847min
Mourning 838gms 25975min

So I mean the MVP is nice, but his career as a whole is in range for basically everybody:

Career Totals:
WillisReed 12183pts 8414reb 1186ast
Westbrook 15156pts 4149reb 5393ast
TMcGrady 18381pts 5276reb 4161ast
ChWebber 17182pts 8124reb 3526ast
Mourning 14311pts 7137reb 946ast
Howard 16652pts 12089reb 1426ast
Lanier 19248pts 9698reb 3007ast
Iverson 24368pts 3394reb 5624ast
Wilkins 26668pts 7169reb 2167ast

[dhsilv2]

The only issue here imho is that you overrate Reed. Yes, the very top tier guys, even for a short time, can produce more odds of a championship than a Pierce or Allen over their entire career...but Reed really isn't one of those guys. He was a great player, but he was in an unbelievable situation in which there's a very good argument that many of us here believe that he got surpassed as the best player on his team DURING his MVP season.

Remember: Reed was the star who came first, and he played the glamour position of the era (center) as the team rose to prominence. However Frazier then rose up and became the better player by a lot of measurements in '69-70, and in the finals he was objectively the true Finals MVP, yet Reed still got the nod because of his great narrative.

We must also remember how innovative Red Holzmann's Knicks were. They took the game to a new level built around read & react offense and a smart, swarming defense - and of course Frazier has a great case to made for being the MVP on both sides of the ball for the Knicks.

What all of this means is that Reed getting seen as a championship bringer seems more the product of good timing than anything else.

By contrast, someone like Bill Walton really was an earth shaker. The team was far better than anyone else when he played and awful when he didn't. The team played a style that few, if any, players in history could pull off like Walton, and did all this with supporting talent that was solid but not off-the-charts good like Frazier/DeBusschere/Bradley/etc.

With Walton I'm very tempted to vote for him over far inferior players like Reggie & Pierce by the same rationale you use. If he had Reed's longevity it would be an easy choice but of course Walton's is far worse.

Reed though, I honestly don't know if I'd ever rank him ahead of Reggie & Pierce if his longevity was good.

Reed, Cowens, and a few others are all guys I would rank at the very bottom of the game changer list. The thing with that knicks team is I think they had two legit game changers in Frazier and Reed.

Perhaps I have some anti recency bias here, in that I saw most of millers career pretty first hand, well as best anyone with TNT and TBS access could in that era, and I saw a lot of pierce (though I admit there were some years in college at the start of his career...or was it drunk times after college?) through his prime and both guys are just to me in that group of number 2's who couldn't be the best player on a title team, even an 04 pistons style team. I like them both, but they are not at the top of that next tier.

I can understand fully why someone thinks Miller had more impact or that Pierce was a bit better. Sadly unlike some of you, I'm not a great writer. I'm a numbers guy (finance/accounting) but not a real math guy. So it's hard for me to put the difference here into words, a few less bourbons ago maybe I could have done better, but i doubt it.

Miller is imo the perfect second guy on a team without being able to be the best player on a title team. I could see having him over Stockton or over McHale for example. But not the legit MVP guys left who I had over the second tier guys I listed and voted against. Pierce is a bit more of guy I could move up, but he still wasn't the game changer.

I stand by we still have a handful of guys who to me moved the needle at the highest level that should get in before the guys who were great for a LONG time. I'm certainly open to arguments that a guy like Reed didn't actually do that, I admit I've lowed my view on him already in these talks. Meanwhile I'm really open on where to move Cowens in. I'm going to go low on walton as I just can't get past 1 or 1 and a half great years...3 years and I'd be singing a different tune.

I'd also add I do value intangibles. Miller and Pierce are ok to very good. I get the impression Reed was a great intangibles guy, just to add to why I think he was in that upper tier despite stats perhaps ranking him a bit lower.

Just to bring up a name here for comparison:

Al Horford

Horford is very nice on both ends of the floor and great on intangibles. He also rates pretty similarly to Reed in PER.

Horford is of course a fringe all-star. While one could argue he's underrated, I don't think anyone thinks he's so underrated he should be rated higher than Miller or Pierce.

What keeps Horford from being more? Well he shouldn't be your first scoring option and he's not a strike-the-fear-of-God type of help defender you'd prefer in your defensive anchor.

I would point out this is the same for Reed. You'd be crazy to let him be your first scoring option and he's not a serious DPOY candidate.

I think people need to project Reed into the current NBA and see how he'd really expect to step up.


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I dont project anyone into another era as a basis for this voting. I would have to change every vote to date.

[Dr Positivity]

That's also why I'm not voting for him

[SactoKingsFan]

1st vote - Billups

Great offensive player. Tremendous pace control, good scorer, didn't hide in the most difficult moments. Took over when necessary, made the ball move to give everybody chances on offense when he had to.

Worked really well with the Pistons, achieving tremendous team success (many ECFs in a row, twp finals, 1 ring and one FMVP.

Did very well in Denver too and was probably the best combo Carmelo ever had.

Good defensive PG, had size. Good on switching even against bigger guys. Good PnR defender. Good at moving his feet.

I really don't know what Billups can have against him to not be voted right now.

2nd vote - Paul Pierce.

Haven't really given a ton of thought on Dwight vs Pierce vs Thurmond vs Ray Allen vs Reggie... Definitely an interesting part of the list.

We're in a run-off between Miller, Pierce and Reed.

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[Outside]

I actually don't think Thurmond is one of the forgotten stars, at least not on the PC board. Maybe underappreciated but not forgotten. He's usually mentioned as one of the all-time great defensive bigs and arguably the GOAT low post defender. I'll vote for him before top 50 is finished if I have time.

I see you don't think much of Unseld's defense. Why are you so low on him as a defender? I'm much higher on Unseld's defense even though he wasn't a shot blocker and see much of his impact coming from defense.

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You're right that underappreciated is a better word choice than forgotten as far as the PC board goes, and I could've separated that into two points -- that (in my view) Thurmond is underappreciated among the PC board, but also that, among the fan base as a whole, only those few big names from that era are remembered and other great players like Thurmond are largely forgotten.

Regarding Unseld's defense, he obviously used his strength and bulk to his advantage, and being a good defensive rebounder is an essential element of any good post defender's arsenal. But he was a generally floor-bound player who didn't challenge shots -- although blocks weren't kept as a stat for the first five years of his career, he averaged a paltry 0.6 blocks his last eight seasons, with 0.9 BPG being the high water mark. He also didn't have lateral quickness. He was the world's most massive traffic cone with the upgrade of good hands and a high BBIQ.

As I mentioned on another thread, Unseld was very productive during the 1975 finals:

12.3 points, 16.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.0 steals, 0.8 blocks, 52.6 FG%, 56.3 FT%

But he was outplayed by the Warriors' center combo of Clifford Ray and George Johnson:

13.5 points, 17.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 1.6 steals, 1.8 blocks, 63.2 FG%, 50.0 FT%

The FG% is particularly telling, as Ray and Johnson together averaged 50.6% (451/892) during the regular season. Clifford Ray and George Johnson were hardly all-stars, but they were mobile, athletic, and could jump, which was the type of player Unseld had trouble guarding. If you were immobile, then Unseld could use his strength and those great hands to control you, but most players learned to go over or around him.

[Outside]

Runoff vote: Miller

Of the three choices, Reggie and Pierce have the advantage in almost every category over Reed.

Edge for Reggie (regular season): longevity (slightly in minutes), TS% (an excellent 61.4 vs 56.8 for Pierce), WS/48, TOV (an excellent 1.7 per game vs 2.6 for Pierce)

Edge for Reggie (postseason): PPG (slightly, 20.6 vs 18.7 of Pierce), TS% (60.1 vs 55.4 for Pierce), TOV

Edge for Pierce (regular season): rebounds, PPG (slightly, 19.7 vs 18.2 for Reggie). WS/48

Edge for Pierce (postseason): rebounds, assists (3.4 vs 2.5 for Reggie)

Both showed themselves to be clutch playoff performers. Pierce has a title, but that was a far better team than any that Reggie had.

[Doctor MJ]

On Miller.

We just put Ewing in a few rounds ago. IMO Miller over his career had a significantly better cast around him. Maybe even enough to start ranting about how much better it was. Now we had ewing in already, so the view here is he was better, but I feel Ewing's teams did a LOT better than Millers despite what I'd consider a pretty sure gap in talent around Ewing. Am I crazy here?

Have you heard of Ewing Theory?


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

Sure.....not sure how it applies here.

The year before Miller went to the finals with the Pacers, the Knicks went to the finals without Ewing despite being built entirely around Ewing. They were an 8 seed that should have fallen apart, instead they beat everyone in the east.

Now, that's not fair to Ewing really. He was a good player...but he was not remotely known for overachieving with his supporting cast.

Part of the issue was that there was only a brief window where it made any sense to have him as your #1 offensive option...but the Knicks spent far longer than that with him as the focal point of their offense. So in many years, Ewing was really only having major defensive impact, and thus it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that they were capable of scoring with him gone.

[Doctor MJ]

I dont project anyone into another era as a basis for this voting. I would have to change every vote to date.

Alright, not my project, not for me to dictate criteria.

[trex_8063]

I'm about 3 hours early, but not many votes pouring in, and it appears clear that the top two are Miller and Pierce, and that no one is likely to get a majority.....

Pierce - 7 (trex_8063, Dr Positivity, SactoKingsFan, pandrade83, Pablo Novi, Winsome Gerbil, Joao Saraiva)
Miller - 6 (Doctor MJ, LABird, JordansBulls, twolves97, penbeast0, Outside)
Reed - 3 (oldschooled, dhsilv, Clyde Frazier)


.....so I'm eliminating Reed. New runoff (Miller vs Pierce) begins now. If you're one of the thirteen people listed above who already voted for one of them, you do not need to repeat your vote. Everyone else, please state your choice between Miller and Pierce, with brief reasons why.

fwiw, if it goes this way on a regular basis, I may alter the protocol such that the initial runoff is between the top 2 only (to save time)......unless there are major objections. I'll keep you posted.

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[dhsilv2]

second run off.

Vote Pierce - stronger peak, more individual and playoff success.

[dhsilv2]

Have you heard of Ewing Theory?


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Sure.....not sure how it applies here.

The year before Miller went to the finals with the Pacers, the Knicks went to the finals without Ewing despite being built entirely around Ewing. They were an 8 seed that should have fallen apart, instead they beat everyone in the east.

Now, that's not fair to Ewing really. He was a good player...but he was not remotely known for overachieving with his supporting cast.

Part of the issue was that there was only a brief window where it made any sense to have him as your #1 offensive option...but the Knicks spent far longer than that with him as the focal point of their offense. So in many years, Ewing was really only having major defensive impact, and thus it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that they were capable of scoring with him gone.

I'm struggling to agree with the idea that the 99 knicks were built entirely around Ewing.

The point I was getting at is that over their career Miller had a better cast and Ewing had a lot more success. I suppose where one ranks Ewing is a factor here, if one thinks Ewing was a top 25 guy then this is a poor comparison, but I think he's seen only about 10 or so spots ahead of this spot.

[pandrade83]

Have you heard of Ewing Theory?


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Sure.....not sure how it applies here.

The year before Miller went to the finals with the Pacers, the Knicks went to the finals without Ewing despite being built entirely around Ewing. They were an 8 seed that should have fallen apart, instead they beat everyone in the east.

Now, that's not fair to Ewing really. He was a good player...but he was not remotely known for overachieving with his supporting cast.

Part of the issue was that there was only a brief window where it made any sense to have him as your #1 offensive option...but the Knicks spent far longer than that with him as the focal point of their offense. So in many years, Ewing was really only having major defensive impact, and thus it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that they were capable of scoring with him gone.

By 99, Ewing was a clear drag offensively and injuries had really taken a toll. Camby was a better player by then and got a lot of those minutes when Ewing went down.

Ewing was in clear post prime status at that point and had too large of a role in general. This is sort of logical - a post prime star carrying too large of a role going down can be replaced kind of efficiently and the team may get better - there's no real insight there because it should be sort ofobvious.

Some Knicks fans think we would've beaten the Spurs with him but that's a pipe dream grounded in fantasy. You'd need him to hop into a time machine first. To improve our odds, you'd have to go back to 97 - for me to think we'd actually win, you'd need his peak.

The whole Ewing theory thing pisses me off and yes, I'm a Knicks fan.