1st vote: Kevin JohnsonKJ was, imo, a remarkable offensive talent who didn't get credit for such in many years of his career. I'll throw some stuff at you for why I think so.....
I know these kind of arbitrary thresholds are kinda, well.....arbitrary; but try this on:
If you search for all seasons in NBA history in which a player averaged at least 20 pts, 9 ast, and >59% TS....you get just 8 seasons: one of Chris Paul ('09--->his peak rs to most), '17 James Harden, three seasons of Magic ('87, '89, '90), and THREE seasons of Kevin Johnson.
Can correct for era discrepancies in shooting efficiency----instead of 59% TS, make the threshold >+5.0% rTS----and that adds a whole bunch of Oscar Robertson ('61-'69), one season of Jerry West ('71), and peak Tiny Archibald ('73); and fwiw, KJ comes just 0.2% rTS away from having a fourth season that qualifies by these specs.
Either way, it's a relatively short list of seasons (and fairly rarefied company). You can tweak the requirements slightly in different ways, and you continuously get a relatively short list of [great] players.
And the offensive results [and results in general] were often stellar. Granted, he typically had a pretty nice offensive supporting cast, but no better than Alex English had during his prime in Denver (except probably in the years Barkley was on board).
Kevin Johnson was the clear best player on 2-3 contender-level teams:
'89: 55 wins and +6.84 SRS. Go 7-1 in first two rounds of the playoffs to get to the WCF. Lose 4-0 to a tough Laker team in WCF, though should be noted they didn't lose a single game by more than 8 pts.
'90: 54 wins, +7.09 SRS (best in league). Make it to the WCF, and go 6 games with a very good Trailblazer team, and actually
outscored the Blazers by 34 points in the series: they won their two games by 34 and 12, respectively. They lost their four games by a
combined 12 points. That series was just a few points away from being a 4-0 sweep for the Suns. KJ, fwiw, avg 21.8 ppg and 11.3 apg @ 60.8% TS, 3.7 topg in it.
Those were both contender-level teams to me. '91, perhaps less so, though 55 wins and +6.49 SRS is nothing to sneeze at.
And here are the team rORTG results during KJ's prime (with some notations):
'89: +5.3
'90: +5.0
'91: +4.7
'92: +3.9
'93: +5.3 (Barkley arrives, though KJ misses 33 games: Suns were a +3.6 rORTG and +4.40 SRS in the games he missed; but were a +6.4 rORTG and +7.53 SRS in the games he played, indicating he's more than capable of integrating next to other top-shelf talent).
'94: +5.4 (KJ missed 15 games: they were a +2.4 rORTG and -0.70 SRS in the games he missed; were a +6.1 rORTG and +5.88 SRS in the games he played)
'95: +6.2 (KJ missed 35 games: this season was somewhat an outlier in that they did marginally better without him; but important to note that Barkley missed 14 games this year, too, mostly when KJ was around (but was around for vast majority of the games KJ missed); and Danny Manning missed 36 games, the majority over a stretch where KJ was active)
'96: +2.7 (KJ missed 26 games: Suns were a +1.5 rORTG and -3.81 SRS in the games he missed, +3.3 rORTG and +2.18 SRS in the games he played. DISCLAIMER: Manning again missed a bunch of games, and I haven't investigated to see where they fall).
'97: +2.6 (Barkley is now gone. KJ missed 12 games: Suns were a -7.3 rORTG and -8.18 SRS in the 12 games he missed; were a +4.3 rORTG and +1.65 SRS in the 70 games he played.
AVERAGE effect of having Kevin Johnson vs. not having him.NOT weighted for # of games played or missed per season+7.1 ppg.
+3.0% TS%.
+4.7 ORtg.
+4.01 SRS.
Weighted for # of games played+7.8 ppg
+3.3% TS%
+5.2 ORtg
+4.02 SRS
Weighted for # of games MISSED+4.1 ppg
+1.9% TS%
+2.7 ORtg
+3.98 SRS
79-60 (.568) record w/o, 396-203 (.661) record with: +7.6 wins per 82-game season.
^^^^This sort of summarize how much lift he can provide to teams that are generally already good (
important distinction as it's more difficult to add on to teams that are already good--->redundancy and realistic ceilings, etc). Though the '97 specs above perhaps gives a glimpse of just how much he could lift less stellar casts.
If he had better longevity, he could be a top 50 candidate, imo.
2nd vote: Bob McAdooWill try to provide some arguments later for this one.
penbeast0 wrote:.
btw pen, I'm back
. Thanks for covering.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
