RealGM 2017 Top 100 List #51 (Russell Westbrook)

[JordansBulls]

1st Vote: Dominique Wilkins - Led the league in scoring also was one of the most dominant players in his era. A career 25 ppg and 7 rpg. Was top 5 in MVP voting on 3 ocassions, 9x allstar
2nd Vote: Grant Hill

[penbeast0]

Nique's TO efficiency is pretty off the charts and he has some impressive WOWY impact in '92 & '93. English appears to have decent rebounding or elite turnover efficiency - but not both at the same time; so Wilkins appears to have an edge there.

English is a relative unknown to me - didn't get to see him play live & his youtube clips don't wow you. His metrics don't blow you away so I'm trying to learn a little bit more about the case for him.

Think of him as a Paul Pierce type. Quietly efficient, good playmaker, good playoff performer, extremely versatile playing many different roles for Denver, decent defender. Nique didn't commit a lot of turnovers but he rarely passed the ball either. English was the secondary (sometimes even the primary) playmaker of the Denver offense. At various times in the 80s, he took on the point forward role (when Mike Evans was the PG), was the defensive stopper (when playing with Kiki Vandeweghe, they would use English on the bigger threat at forward to hide Vandeweghe), a post up option (alternating with Issel when Kiki was at PF), the primary outside threat (when they had more traditional inside players such as Wayne Cooper or Danny Schayes and were playing Lever and Dunn at guard), and of course was always an extremely good midrange shooter as well. To go with that, he also won the Walter Kennedy citizenship award for his good works and was loved by teammates and coaches. He wasn't a human highlight film like Nique and Denver couldn't get by the Showtime Lakers so Worthy got more attention, but he was the prototype scoring forward of the decade of the SF and I'd rate him behind only Bird and Erving.

[penbeast0]

1st Vote: Dominique Wilkins - Led the league in scoring also was one of the most dominant players in his era. A career 25 ppg and 7 rpg. Was top 5 in MVP voting on 3 ocassions, 9x allstar
2nd Vote: Grant Hill

Guy who led the NBA in scoring for the entire decade of the 80s, more efficiently and with better playmaking while not falling off in the playoffs like Nique . . . was Alex English. Not as flashy, but better player.

[Dr Positivity]

Dantley is one of the hardest players to rank. I understand the argument that if he was scoring that much on that efficiency, it's hard not to have star offensive impact, especially compared to a player like Iverson. But when you look at his career as a whole and the opportunities to be part of a championship core, it looks awful for him:

LA - After his rookie year in Buffalo/Indiana (I don't know much about why he bounced around then), he pairs up with the best player of his generation in Kareem. If he had fit in great with the Lakers, his tenure would carry over to the Magic era and likely lead to multiple titles as the 3rd star. Instead Kareem/Dantley is a bad fit, Dantley is a post up wing who gets in the way of Kareem's spots. The team is seen to have poor chemistry. When they lose Dantley and add Magic it is credited as a massive culture change towards passing and playing as a team. Ftr TrueLAFan who would have been watching the Lakers at the time, was the most anti-Dantley poster on this board in previous versions of this project. I think he said he wouldn't have Dantley in his top 200 or something. That's the type of impression his LA tenure left.

Utah - After Dantley does his one man show during the 80s, the Jazz have rookie Malone and 2nd year Stockton and DPOY Eaton. They don't know what they have yet, but if Dantley had stuck for their primes it would have been the 3rd star Malone/Stockton needed to win a title. Here is an article from 1987 about the trade http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-04-03/sports/8701250754_1_kent-benson-kelly-tripucka-moses-malone-trade

There are those who disagree. Jazz president Dave Checketts is one. He and coach Frank Layden tried for months to trade Dantley after the differences between coach and player became irreconcilable.

"I know Detroit is saying the same thing as Washington, that the trade was decidedly one-sided and that is not the case," Checketts said last week. "The biggest benefit to us in the Adrian Dantley trade was addition by subtraction. We knew we had to get rid of him and we were never so happy to get rid of a guy in the history of the franchise."

Yeah, that's up there with the Elvin Hayes quotes for most damning about a star player in history

So then he goes to Detroit. To be fair to Dantley they come within a hair of winning the title, which proves you can win a title with him, they were just as much a championship caliber team as the Lakers. However he appears to not get along the best with Isiah, so they traded him for Isiah's friend Aguirre. The Pistons are 32-13 before the trade and finish the season 31-6 and win the next two titles. The Mavericks are 26-21 before the trade (and 53 and 55 W team the two seasons prior) and finish 12-23 including a 12 game losing streak with Dantley. He declines after that.

Basically if Dantley had the personality and ability to gel with teammates that say, James Worthy had, he could have won championships with any of Kareem/Magic, Stockton/Malone or on the Bad Boys. Instead he basically butted heads with the stars or coach in all those situations and drove himself out of town.

Iverson is difficult as well, but for me I'm not touching Dantley for many more threads than this. Whether it's his personality, black hole offensive game or defense, in terms of his impact on winning there are too many troubling signs in spite of his ridiculous stats. For me its too early for both, I definitely prefer a player like Carter for example to Dantley/Iverson

[LA Bird]

1. Dikembe Mutombo
One of the greatest defensive players ever and should have won more than 4 DPOYs IMO. Mutombo is the only player beside Russell who is on both of my defensive Mt Rushmore for peak and overall career. He dominated Robinson/Hakeem/Mourning in late 90s DRAPM data which suggests his relative lacking defensive versatility and agility out in the perimeter did not stop from him being a major defensive force. I rate Mutombo as a slight negative offensively due to him not being a good passer but he at least scores at a solid efficiency on low volume and can make FTs. Remained a top tier defensive player into his 40s and the extra longevity puts him ahead of other centers (namely Mourning, Reed, Walton) who peaked higher but had their careers significantly cut short by injuries.

Alternate: Alonzo Mourning

[dhsilv2]

Just a smidge off-topic but relevant to the post - Reed is 179th in Career ABA/NBA WS; a decent barometer of quality longevity. Thurmond is the only other person outside the Top 150 to have gotten any traction.

I think it's going to be a long time before longevity is not part of the argument against Reed.

Westbrook is only 148th in career ABA/NBA WS......not really a heck of a lot better. So I'd still say longevity is not a place where Westbrook holds a significant edge (most other players will though, yes).

Reed has some other things going for him: narratives, accomplishments, intangibles, defensive rep (which is TOTALLY unaccounted for in the box-based metrics we've just cited). I also suspect (from the games I've watched) that Reed's got a low turnover rate; very savvy and quickly decisive with the ball. More complete stat-keeping is only likely to improve his box-based metrics, imo.

Lets not forget a jump shot out to 15 which given this was before the 3 point line, that's significant for offensive spacing. I would expect RAMP for example to be rather favorable for him.

[dhsilv2]

I'm moving my vote to Iverson, I don't think Reed can at this point win in a run off. I'll fill this in tomorrow, but I'd honestly at this point in their careers feel pretty bad being apart of a group that took westbrook here over Iverson.

I'd rather you didn't, at least not for the reasons you're expressing here: voting for someone who is not your actual top pick (because your actual top pick doesn't have any traction) is one thing. But Reed does have traction: obviously, as he's been in the runoff like 3-4 times. And he's not exactly losing these runoffs in landslides. The primary argument against him in runoffs against prior inductees has been lacking longevity.......that argument doesn't have much footing against Westbrook, fwiw.

At any rate, voting in a manner to strategically direct it away from someone you don't want to get in is precisely the kind of strategic manipulation that is not allowed.

I'd appreciate it if you'd stick with Reed as your pick, unless you've genuinely been convinced to switch it to someone else (Iverson or whoever). Otherwise, you put me and the other mods in a difficult position of examining this grey area to determine if your actions represent dishonorable vote manipulation (which could result in temporary suspension from the project).

EDIT: I know it can get frustrating when your candidate keeps losing runoffs (in the last project, I think Iverson lost SIX----or maybe seven----runoffs in a row before finally getting in; as one of his primary supporters in that one, I was getting frustrated). Just be patient, and try to remember the order of the list is not the most pertinent component of this project.
It's not YOUR personal list, so you need not attach any personal dissatisfaction, embarrassment, or other negative feelings to the order itself.

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It would be me literally flipping my pick and alt pick which I've had for some time.

I think I'll give Reed one more go here, but by my count there are enough voters who in nearly any runoff will not take Reed due to longevity. Essentially, he can't win at this point by my count based on the people who have strong aversion to him. I don't see the difference in this or switching a Hayes vote to someone who viable. I don't mind my guy not getting in so much as when we have a 3 way runoff and I know that there's 5-7 people who see Reed as the 3rd choice (which is enough to black ball him) and then I get zero vote between the 2 others in the runoff. Lets say we have a runoff with Miller, Pierce, and Reed. we have them ranked in that order, but I'd rank Pierce over Miller. That view is omitted completely from the voting.

As I said I'll stick with Reed with Iverson alt for this round, but I would rather vote for someone with traction to get in vs trying to pound reed through when it appears there are enough clear no's that he simply can't get past that.

[pandrade83]

Nique's TO efficiency is pretty off the charts and he has some impressive WOWY impact in '92 & '93. English appears to have decent rebounding or elite turnover efficiency - but not both at the same time; so Wilkins appears to have an edge there.

English is a relative unknown to me - didn't get to see him play live & his youtube clips don't wow you. His metrics don't blow you away so I'm trying to learn a little bit more about the case for him.

Think of him as a Paul Pierce type. Quietly efficient, good playmaker, good playoff performer, extremely versatile playing many different roles for Denver, decent defender. Nique didn't commit a lot of turnovers but he rarely passed the ball either. English was the secondary (sometimes even the primary) playmaker of the Denver offense. At various times in the 80s, he took on the point forward role (when Mike Evans was the PG), was the defensive stopper (when playing with Kiki Vandeweghe, they would use English on the bigger threat at forward to hide Vandeweghe), a post up option (alternating with Issel when Kiki was at PF), the primary outside threat (when they had more traditional inside players such as Wayne Cooper or Danny Schayes and were playing Lever and Dunn at guard), and of course was always an extremely good midrange shooter as well. To go with that, he also won the Walter Kennedy citizenship award for his good works and was loved by teammates and coaches. He wasn't a human highlight film like Nique and Denver couldn't get by the Showtime Lakers so Worthy got more attention, but he was the prototype scoring forward of the decade of the SF and I'd rate him behind only Bird and Erving.

Thanks for sharing! The defense is the one piece I'm having a hard time reconciling - what made him strong there?

[pandrade83]

Just a smidge off-topic but relevant to the post - Reed is 179th in Career ABA/NBA WS; a decent barometer of quality longevity. Thurmond is the only other person outside the Top 150 to have gotten any traction.

I think it's going to be a long time before longevity is not part of the argument against Reed.

Westbrook is only 148th in career ABA/NBA WS......not really a heck of a lot better. So I'd still say longevity is not a place where Westbrook holds a significant edge (most other players will though, yes).

Reed has some other things going for him: narratives, accomplishments, intangibles, defensive rep (which is TOTALLY unaccounted for in the box-based metrics we've just cited). I also suspect (from the games I've watched) that Reed's got a low turnover rate; very savvy and quickly decisive with the ball. More complete stat-keeping is only likely to improve his box-based metrics, imo.

Lets not forget a jump shot out to 15 which given this was before the 3 point line, that's significant for offensive spacing. I would expect RAMP for example to be rather favorable for him.

I can definitely get behind the logic of him being strong in non-tracked stats; I've also baked it in to my thoughts regarding him. If you can infer through logic, regression modeling, etc what these guys numbers looked like in the years that stuff wasn't tracked, it builds a more complete - albeit assumption driven (which can always be wrong) picture.

Anyway - I agree and even though I've mentioned a few whose peak I prefer to Reed's, I would take Reed's peak over several already in as well.

[trex_8063]

Just a smidge off-topic but relevant to the post - Reed is 179th in Career ABA/NBA WS; a decent barometer of quality longevity. Thurmond is the only other person outside the Top 150 to have gotten any traction.

I think it's going to be a long time before longevity is not part of the argument against Reed.

Westbrook is only 148th in career ABA/NBA WS......not really a heck of a lot better. So I'd still say longevity is not a place where Westbrook holds a significant edge (most other players will though, yes).

Reed has some other things going for him: narratives, accomplishments, intangibles, defensive rep (which is TOTALLY unaccounted for in the box-based metrics we've just cited). I also suspect (from the games I've watched) that Reed's got a low turnover rate; very savvy and quickly decisive with the ball. More complete stat-keeping is only likely to improve his box-based metrics, imo.

Lets not forget a jump shot out to 15 which given this was before the 3 point line, that's significant for offensive spacing. I would expect RAMP for example to be rather favorable for him.

I would say even out to 18-19 ft, which is pretty relevant if you're forcing guys like Russell or Wilt out of the paint to guard you. I agree RAPM would likely regard him favorably vs his peers.

[trex_8063]

It would be me literally flipping my pick and alt pick which I've had for some time.

I think I'll give Reed one more go here, but by my count there are enough voters who in nearly any runoff will not take Reed due to longevity. Essentially, he can't win at this point by my count based on the people who have strong aversion to him. I don't see the difference in this or switching a Hayes vote to someone who viable. I don't mind my guy not getting in so much as when we have a 3 way runoff and I know that there's 5-7 people who see Reed as the 3rd choice (which is enough to black ball him) and then I get zero vote between the 2 others in the runoff. Lets say we have a runoff with Miller, Pierce, and Reed. we have them ranked in that order, but I'd rank Pierce over Miller. That view is omitted completely from the voting.

As I said I'll stick with Reed with Iverson alt for this round, but I would rather vote for someone with traction to get in vs trying to pound reed through when it appears there are enough clear no's that he simply can't get past that.

I see. I'd forgotten Iverson had been your alternate pick this whole time. It's a bit of a grey area, though I suppose I don't object greatly in that instance. I'll leave it up to you, whatever you decide. Iverson is a bit of a polarizing figure here, too, though. I honestly can't say whether I think he'll garner more support or not.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #51 (just 8 votes so far):

Russell Westbrook - 3 (trex_8063, iggymcfrack, pandrade83)
Elvin Hayes - 1 (scabbarista)
Bob Lanier - 1 (Dr Positivity)
Alex English - 1 (penbeast0)
Dominique Wilkins - 1 (JordansBulls)
Dikembe Mutombo - 1 (LABird)

This thread will go to runoff in ~11-12 hours. Please get your picks and arguments in by then.

Spoiler:

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[Lou Fan]

Vote: T-Mac
ATG peak, Unparalleled skillset, ok longevity 7-8 year prime. In a nutshell the ideal point forward.
2nd Vote: Nique

[penbeast0]

Thanks for sharing! The defense is the one piece I'm having a hard time reconciling - what made him strong there?

Effort more than anything else. He actually played defense (admittedly at that Nuggets fast break pace); King/Aguirre/Nique/Bird would rest on that end much more frequently. He wasn't as good as Worthy defensively, more like Philly era Dr. J without the incredible athleticism.

[Clyde Frazier]

I'm moving my vote to Iverson, I don't think Reed can at this point win in a run off. I'll fill this in tomorrow, but I'd honestly at this point in their careers feel pretty bad being apart of a group that took westbrook here over Iverson.

don't give up hope man

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote: T-Mac
ATG peak, Unparalleled skillset, ok longevity 7-8 year prime. In a nutshell the ideal point forward.
2nd Vote: Nique

You will likely need to give a little more reasoning for your 1st vote to count. Also, remember to bold your votes so they aren't missed.

[trex_8063]

Vote: T-Mac
ATG peak, Unparalleled skillset, ok longevity 7-8 year prime. In a nutshell the ideal point forward.
2nd Vote: Nique

You will likely need to give a little more reasoning for your 1st vote to count. Also, remember to bold your votes so they aren't missed.

Hard to miss them in a post so short! But generally yes, please bold, and please provide more than one line. I don't want to encourage such minimum-effort participation. Even copy/paste or quoting yourself from prior threads is sufficient.

[penbeast0]

It would be me literally flipping my pick and alt pick which I've had for some time.

I think I'll give Reed one more go here, but by my count there are enough voters who in nearly any runoff will not take Reed due to longevity. Essentially, he can't win at this point by my count based on the people who have strong aversion to him. I don't see the difference in this or switching a Hayes vote to someone who viable. I don't mind my guy not getting in so much as when we have a 3 way runoff and I know that there's 5-7 people who see Reed as the 3rd choice (which is enough to black ball him) and then I get zero vote between the 2 others in the runoff. Lets say we have a runoff with Miller, Pierce, and Reed. we have them ranked in that order, but I'd rank Pierce over Miller. That view is omitted completely from the voting.

As I said I'll stick with Reed with Iverson alt for this round, but I would rather vote for someone with traction to get in vs trying to pound reed through when it appears there are enough clear no's that he simply can't get past that.

I'd vote Reed in a runoff with Iverson.

[dhsilv2]

Vote Reed - Reed remains the best career of an MVP here, slightly pushing out Cowen and Iverson. A big man who was an above average defender, had a solid jump shot, and was considered a high intangibles guy on two title teams. Sure you only get 6 maybe 7 stand out seasons from him, but his career carried with it some rather iconic moments.

Alt Iverson Of the volume scorers that are getting traction, the best season/playoff run imo is strongly in favor of Iverson. Iverson was given a rather odd career, it wasn't until he was older that he had his first legit "star" level co player in Melo, but Melo as we all know was hardly the right mix for Iverson. Iverson gave his body to the game, he was wearing what looked like battle armor by the end. I tend to think Iverson was also a better play maker than he's given credit for. If influence on the game matters to you, Iverson would have been in ages ago. For all the coach issue he had, I have to pause and point out Larry Brown was known as a tough coach to play for, and yet somehow they had a pretty good run together.

HM - Manu Ginobili. 992 games played, longevity is there without much debate despite joining the league well over the normal rookie age and being held back by pop. The burn here is that he's averaged 25.8 minutes a game for his career, by far the lowest here. His 349 starts however is fairly comparable to McHale who we already put in and Manu has him beat in titles and tied in all nba selections. And with this we begin the Manu playoff story.

Manu is one of the greatest playoff performers in NBA history.

Games played 213 (9th)
Minutes played 5968 (27th)
Field Goal 941 (35th)
Free Throws 809 (17th)
TRB 859 (66th)
AST 811 (24th)
STL 285 (11th)
PTS 3009 (25th)
PER 19.4 (62nd)
WS 20.6 (20th)
WS/48 .1657 (44th)
BPM 5.24 (25th)
VORP 10.87 (17th)

I get that the playoffs are longer and that a lot of this is a function of playing with Duncan and being in the Spurs system, we don't need to go there, but there are very few players who weren't with other great players and who didn't have strong coaches who we rank this highly. I want to however point out how darn good those playoff stats are, and in a 213 game sample. That's nearly 3 seasons for those who miss games and still 2.6 82 game seasons. Manu averaged 28 minutes a game in the playoffs and during the title era (03-13) he was just a hair under 30 a game.

For those who are fans of RAPM, well Manu he was the top guy in 05, 3rd in 06, 3rd in 07, and 2nd in 08. But he doesn't start? Well during that 4 year span he started 189 out of 288 regular season games and played 29 minutes a game in the regular season.

His 10 year RAPM from 02-11 (he didn't play in 02) ranks 4th.

He is a 7 time top 10 BPM guy, with 4 3rd place finishes. He was top 10 in VORP 4 times (peaking at 4th). 5 top 10 WS/48 seasons peaking at 2nd. 75th all time in WS and 35th all time in VORP.

For every reason that Manu is too high here (other MVP's on the board, bench player, minutes played, etc) there is a reason he should be here. Manu has flat out been one of the most impactful players in the NBA for over decade. There is zero negative baggage on him as a locker room guy. He has had injury issue, even in the playoffs, but has more than made up for that.

If you're skeptical of the 70's MVPs left, not a fan of the 80's and 90's volume scorers, or aren't ready for defensive only big men. I present you Manu. Manu truly needs to be somewhere in the 50's. I don't expect him to get traction for a bit, but he absolutely needs to be somewhere in the 50's. For me manu is perhaps the best player, I'm pretty sure couldn't have been the number 1 guy on a team, but as a number 2 he was just so special.

[iggymcfrack]

If you're just looking for which player will gain more traction, I think Reed has a much better chance than Iverson. I don't see Iverson going remotely soon. I think Reed will probably end up going somewhere in the 50s.

The one player you mentioned I actually like though is Ginobili. I'd give him very strong consideration once Westbrook and Zo go.