RealGM 2017 Top 100 List: #16

[Winsome Gerbil]

Chuck v. Moses v. Dirk v. Admiral

Worth noting that traditionally this spot, roughly, has belonged to Moses for me. However I think it might be time for me to shake up my normal list a bit:

CBarkley 36.7min 22.1pts (.612) 11.7reb 3.9ast 1.5stl 0.8blk 3.1TO
MMalone 34.0min 20.3pts (.569) 12.3reb 1.3ast 0.8stl 1.3blk 3.1TO
Nowitzki 34.9min 21.7pts (.578) 7.8reb 2.5ast 0.8stl 0.9blk 1.7TO
Robinson 34.7min 21.1pts (.583) 10.6reb 2.5ast 1.4stl 3.0blk 2.4TO

CBarkley 11x All Star, 11x All NBA (5/5/1), 1x MVP, 2.437 MVP Shares
MMalone 12x All Star, 8x All NBA (4/4), 3x MVP, 2.851 MVP Shares, 2x All-Defense (1/1)
Nowitzki 13x All Star, 12x All NBA (4/5/3), 1x MVP, 1.809 MVP Shares
Robinson 10x All Star, 10x All NBA (4/2/4), 1x MVP, 3.123 MVP Shares, 1x DPOY, 8x All-Defense (4/4)

CBarkley 1073gms 39330min 23757pts 12546reb 4215ast 1648stl 888blk
MMalone 1455gms 49444min 29580pts 17834reb 1936ast 1199stl 1889blk
Nowitzki 1394gms 48673min 30260pts 10893reb 3496ast 1158stl 1218blk
Robinson 987gms 34271min 20790pts 10497reb 2441ast 1388stl 2954blk

CBarkley 24.6PER, 177.2WS, .216WS/48, 7.4BPM, 93.5VORP, 119ORTG 105DRTG
MMalone 22.0PER, 179.1WS, .174WS/48, 1.7BPM, 46.7VORP, 114ORTG 104DRTG
Nowitzki 22.9PER, 201.3WS, .198WS/48, 3.4BPM, 66.0VORP, 116ORTG 104DRTG
Robinson 26.2PER, 178.7WS, .250WS/48, 7.4BPM, 80.9VORP, 116ORTG 96DRTG


So what I am seeing is this:

On Barkley
I have always felt that Charles Barkley was the most talented PF I've ever seen. Freaky freaky player. Sloppy? Occasionally. But often utterly dominant and could do virtually everything, except defend guys half a foot taller than he was. I don't think nany player that short has ever been so powerful, and no player so powerful has been so mobile. A lethal combination. If you wanted to find a competitor you might have to go all the way to LBJ. Anyway though, it's there in the numbers. Across the board, in the advanced stats, nearly everywhere. He had the 2nd shortest career of the group, and yet aside from point accumulations he beats everybody in everything except blks, and of course Moses' freaky rebounding totals. And needless to say that efficiency is completely freaky. It's the 4th highest number of all time for players who have scored 15,000 or more points (behind Artis, who barely scorer 15k, Dantley and Miller). The other contenders here are all in the same range and Barkley just dusts them. He also dusts Shaq (.584) and Kareem (.596). People pick and choose when to argue efficiency it seems, well as a 6'5" PF Chuck was one of the all time efficiency kings. Which is amazing.

On Moses
My traditional choice for the spot after Dr. J, but after running through all the numbers above, I think I may be ready to move on from that. I've always respected the 3 MVPs, that is a huge factor, or should be. It means that a guy didn't just have a good year, he was considered right up there with the greatest of the great every year for half a decade or more. Every year in the conversation for who 's the #1 guy in the league. But that said, after you get beyond those MVPs, it's just the rebounding and longevity that stand out. Meanwhile he didn't have Admiral's defensive abilities, although people forget once upon a time he made a few All Defense teams, he was a very unwilling passer, and despite an incredibly long career (21 seasons), I am of the opinion, perhaps reflected in the All NBA teams, that his prime was actually shorter than you might think. Perhaps as few as 8-9 years (78-79 to 86-87). No more than 10 really. A peak era of maybe 5. After he left Philly, he hung on a long time without being a big impact player anymore. And then begins to test my conviction that lingering is not a way to truly judge greatness. And given that in most other ways, and certainly once you hit advanced stats, Barkley looks stronger, and my own personal conviction that Barkley was the more talented player...I think I'm ready to make a swap there.

Those are two players I know too, although I was too young to appreciate Moses's true peak, this was the first basketball poster I can remember hanging on my wall:


On Dirk
I am obviously highly uncomfortable when people start trying to inch Dirk up toward the Top 15, but in this neighborhood I think it starts becoming a reasonable conversation. that said, several threads ago I threw out a post about Dirk v. Barkley stating that I needed to be convinced that Dirk > Barkley, and after again laying out all the numbers, that remains true. When you start running through everything, the ONLY real advantage Dirk has is longevity. Even his greatest strengths as a goto scorer and playoff performer are largely neutralized by Chuck being perhaps even better. And efficiency-wise (although Dirk's efficiency does not stand out in this company) people go wild for a couple of Dirk years in particular, his MVP year and the 2011 season. And not surprisingly, those two seasons were the two best efficiency seasons Dirk ever had at .605TS% and .612TS%. Yet that was an AVERAGE year for Chuck. Dirk's longevity really only clearly trumps in raw WS, and raw points. He stands out there, although Moses is close in points. But if Chuck is my standard here, even with all the extra games Chuck STILL piled up more rebounds, more assists, more steals, a huge advantage in VORP and WS/48, and just in general...I think I am going to take a hard look at Dirk v. Moses, but I don't think either guy should be trumping Chuck just for hanging around a long time. Each in their own way was a more limited player.

On Admiral
And if I were going to rank these 4 players on talent, right there with, or possibly just after Chuck would be Admiral. And of course his defense is head and shoulders above the rest of this group too. But here I think the gap in longevity becomes a bit problematic. You can absolutely see in the advanced stats that Admiral is the other really spectacular talent here. But his career was not only the shortest of them all, but he even included a lengthy period at the end where he was playing second fiddle and then functioning as a roleplayer, which blurs a lot of lines when you're trying to figure out how successful and important guys at this level were. We're starting to talk apples and oranges when we talk about Admiral vs. a Dirk for instance, and given the defense I think if he'd remained a #1 player for longer than a mere 7 years that he would be the guy I'd take here. A huge huge talent. As it is, despite the brevity I might be highly inclined to reorder things as:

Erving
Barkley
Admiral
Dirk/Moses
Moses/Dirk


At the very least for this thread I am going to go with:
#16 Erving
#17 Barkley

[mdonnelly1989]

VOTE #1: Dr. J

I'm sold on the fact that he would probably be more highly touted had he played his entire career in the NBA.

VOTE #2. Moses Malone

What he and Dr. J created on the 1981 76ers was something powerful.

[penbeast0]

IF it was a regular season only list, David Robinson would already be in. My concern about him is how much his playoff performance drops off. The Garnett supporters made a variety of arguments, some I sort of bought into, some I was skeptical of, about how he continued to impact at a MVP candidate level in the playoffs. I haven't seen that for Robinson, even for his defense. I had previously thought his defense was still dominant in the playoffs from watching him, but posters have put up numbers that put that in doubt. Anyone able to convince me? My support for Julius Erving is definitely getting shaky with Robinson the main candidate to move up.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #43 (:sadpanda: at low turn-out already):

Julius Erving - 5 (Winsome Gerbil, scabbarista, Pablo Novi, mdonnelly1989, Dr Positivity)
Dirk Nowitzki - 3 (andrewww, Joao Saraiva, trex_8063)
David Robinson - 2 (2klegend, Doctor MJ)
Moses Malone - 2 (JordansBulls, Outside)
George Mikan - 2 (penbeast0, janmagn)


This thread will be open approximately 6 more hours.

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[wojoaderge]

Not much more to say about George Mikan other than he's my first vote once again. To repeat, no one left on the board was as dominating in his particular time or served as the go-to guy on as championship teams as he did.

Now for my alternate. Moses - I just have no idea why he's so underrated. He's easily more dominating, more overpowering, and more impossible to stop than any of 5s or 4s remaining. 3 MVPs. He led a 65-17 team to the championship as its best player and led a sub-.500 team to the NBA Finals (only the 2nd one to date). If you want to talk longevity, he had at least 16 straight good to awesome seasons. So, I don't know the problem is here.

1-George Mikan
2-Moses Malone

[Winsome Gerbil]

Thru post #43 (:sadpanda: at low turn-out already):

you simply need to post more random shots of girls in bikinis:

Spoiler:

[Hornet Mania]

It seems like the speed from thread to thread has been faster lately, or maybe I've just been busy and don't realize the time. My vote goes to:

16. Julius Erving
2nd vote: David Robinson

The Admiral is a player who was always a favorite of mine. He has real deficiencies as an offensive focal point, and he had notable playoff series where he was clearly outclassed but everyone has their warts at this point (relatively speaking). Robinson was an all-time great defensive player, a very good offensive player, and an absolutely ideal franchise player for a small market team like the Spurs. Robinson deserves tons of credit for gracefully (and willingly) transferring the reins to a younger and better player when Duncan was drafted when a lot of former MVPs in his situation would not allowed it to happen so seamlessly. His intangibles aside, I think his on-court resume is still plenty to spot him in the late teens. It's really a hair difference between him and Barkley, I just prefer the more complete player which is Admira.

Guys I'm considering: Moses, Barkley

[drza]

I've had some long posts describing how Robinson was my vote, and Dirk in consideration, in previous threads. In this thread I've had some long posts about how I can't yet support Dr. J, as much as I want to, and so far I haven't seen enough to change that.

Vote: David Robinson
2nd: Dirk Nowitzki

[trex_8063]

On Barkley
I have always felt that Charles Barkley was the most talented PF I've ever seen. Freaky freaky player. Sloppy? Occasionally. But often utterly dominant and could do virtually everything, except defend guys half a foot taller than he was. I don't think nany player that short has ever been so powerful, and no player so powerful has been so mobile. A lethal combination. If you wanted to find a competitor you might have to go all the way to LBJ. Anyway though, it's there in the numbers. Across the board, in the advanced stats, nearly everywhere. He had the 2nd shortest career of the group, and yet aside from point accumulations he beats everybody in everything except blks, and of course Moses' freaky rebounding totals. And needless to say that efficiency is completely freaky. It's the 4th highest number of all time for players who have scored 15,000 or more points (behind Artis, who barely scorer 15k, Dantley and Miller). The other contenders here are all in the same range and Barkley just dusts them. He also dusts Shaq (.584) and Kareem (.596). People pick and choose when to argue efficiency it seems, well as a 6'5" PF Chuck was one of the all time efficiency kings. Which is amazing.

Mostly agree with the assessment, though I feel he was "sloppy" on the defensive end somewhat more than "occasionally". wrt the bolded portion, I don't agree with the implication there. If you're implying there's a lack of consistency in having Kareem #2 and Shaq #8 and NOT having Charles at least #16-17 (based primarily on respective shooting efficiency), I think that misses a few points. Don't get me wrong, I think you can make a case he was basically as offensively impactful as either of them. However, Charles is the clear weakest defender of the three (by a pretty substantial margin vs Kareem), and has the least longevity of the three (again by a pretty substantial margin vs Kareem).

And one other aspect of offensive efficiency (aside from just shooting efficiency) I want to make mention of: turnover economy. Charles has the worst turnover rate of the three (even if we factor in the play-making).

On Moses
My traditional choice for the spot after Dr. J, but after running through all the numbers above, I think I may be ready to move on from that. I've always respected the 3 MVPs, that is a huge factor, or should be. It means that a guy didn't just have a good year, he was considered right up there with the greatest of the great every year for half a decade or more. Every year in the conversation for who 's the #1 guy in the league. But that said, after you get beyond those MVPs, it's just the rebounding and longevity that stand out. Meanwhile he didn't have Admiral's defensive abilities, although people forget once upon a time he made a few All Defense teams, he was a very unwilling passer, and despite an incredibly long career (21 seasons), I am of the opinion, perhaps reflected in the All NBA teams, that his prime was actually shorter than you might think. Perhaps as few as 8-9 years (78-79 to 86-87). No more than 10 really. A peak era of maybe 5. After he left Philly, he hung on a long time without being a big impact player anymore. And then begins to test my conviction that lingering is not a way to truly judge greatness. And given that in most other ways, and certainly once you hit advanced stats, Barkley looks stronger, and my own personal conviction that Barkley was the more talented player...I think I'm ready to make a swap there.

Agree his longevity is a lot lesser than his 21 seasons would indicate. Generously, I think we can perhaps say his prime was 11 seasons (beginning in '79, ending with his first season with Atlanta in '89--->was still a 21.2 PER, .178 WS/48, +2.1 BPM, +11 efficiency differential while playing 35.5 mpg that season.....that seems more or less consistent with his prime).

Doctor MJ raised some question marks about how he meshes with teammates/coaching systems/etc, given he was traded three times in his prime (in an era where many players stayed with the same franchise their entire careers), fwiw.

On Dirk
I am obviously highly uncomfortable when people start trying to inch Dirk up toward the Top 15, but in this neighborhood I think it starts becoming a reasonable conversation. that said, several threads ago I threw out a post about Dirk v. Barkley stating that I needed to be convinced that Dirk > Barkley, and after again laying out all the numbers, that remains true. When you start running through everything, the ONLY real advantage Dirk has is longevity. Even his greatest strengths as a goto scorer and playoff performer are largely neutralized by Chuck being perhaps even better. And efficiency-wise (although Dirk's efficiency does not stand out in this company) people go wild for a couple of Dirk years in particular, his MVP year and the 2011 season. And not surprisingly, those two seasons were the two best efficiency seasons Dirk ever had at .605TS% and .612TS%. Yet that was an AVERAGE year for Chuck. Dirk's longevity really only clearly trumps in raw WS, and raw points. He stands out there, although Moses is close in points. But if Chuck is my standard here, even with all the extra games Chuck STILL piled up more rebounds, more assists, more steals, a huge advantage in VORP and WS/48, and just in general...I think I am going to take a hard look at Dirk v. Moses, but I don't think either guy should be trumping Chuck just for hanging around a long time. Each in their own way was a more limited player.

I'm again going to bring up two things that are different wrt Dirk, though:
1) Spacing. Yeah, you're probably tired of hearing it, but it's valid, and he's the best of all the big man candidates wrt this (and not open for debate).
2) Turnovers, the forgotten component of offensive efficiency.
Modified turnover%: TO / [TSA + (Ast * 2) + (Reb * 0.04) + TO]

Career rs Mod TOV%
Moses: 12.90%
Charles: 10.64%
Hakeem: 10.57%
Erving (minus '77): 10.00%
Shaq: 9.65%
Karl: 9.50%
Robinson: 9.46%
Duncan: 9.26%
Garnett: 8.25%
Dirk: 6.73%

There are two standouts among these guys: Moses (in a bad way), and Dirk (in a good way).

Again, of all the players I've run thru the formula for Modified TOV%, only Chris Paul rates better (at 6.30%). Dirk is phenomenally elite as a scoring offensive centerpiece where turnovers are concerned.

And fwiw, I'd rate Dirk's defense marginally ahead of Barkley's. Longevity is obviously none too shabby either.

On Admiral
And if I were going to rank these 4 players on talent, right there with, or possibly just after Chuck would be Admiral. And of course his defense is head and shoulders above the rest of this group too. But here I think the gap in longevity becomes a bit problematic. You can absolutely see in the advanced stats that Admiral is the other really spectacular talent here. But his career was not only the shortest of them all, but he even included a lengthy period at the end where he was playing second fiddle and then functioning as a roleplayer, which blurs a lot of lines when you're trying to figure out how successful and important guys at this level were. We're starting to talk apples and oranges when we talk about Admiral vs. a Dirk for instance, and given the defense I think if he'd remained a #1 player for longer than a mere 7 years that he would be the guy I'd take here. A huge huge talent.

On peak or average prime-level of play, I think Robinson is the most talented of the candidates left. His downfall (for me, if he has one) is his longevity (which is clearly the poorest of all the candidates on the table, unless one is considering Dwyane Wade, I guess; Mikan being a little more difficult to assess from the longevity standpoint due to era-circumstance). But even as late as '02, he was still a 20.3 PER, .211 WS/48, +3.9 BPM, +19 efficiency differential while playing an only slightly limited 29.5 mpg.
And he's not just the best among them defensively.....he's the best defensively by such a massive margin that it's rather difficult to overstate it. And he's obviously far from mediocre offensively; this is a guy that won a scoring title, for example. He's the best finisher at the rim outside of probably Charles and maybe Erving. He's a better mid-range shooter and passer than Moses (might be better at the latter than Dirk too, actually). He's the best screen-setter of all of them (underappreciated talent, except when Wes Unseld is being discussed, and Robinson I think would rank in my top 5 all-time for this skill), and had a decent face-up game, too.

imo, he gets overly penalized for coming up short when being asked to be Michael Jordan on offense and Bill Russell on defense (at the same time).

[RCM88x]

My computer is down and I don't really have the desire to type long posts out on my phone, so I probably won't be as active. However...

1st vote: Julius Erving

Mostly because I think his longevity and playoffs performance is just enough to push him over the Malone's, Dirk and Robinson. He was certainly the most dominate perimeter player of the 70s and still was quite a good player in the 80s and able to adjust his role to maintain elite team performance.

2nd Vote: Karl Malone

[THKNKG]

I'm again going to bring up two things that are different wrt Dirk, though:
1) Spacing. Yeah, you're probably tired of hearing it, but it's valid, and he's the best of all the big man candidates wrt this (and not open for debate).
2) Turnovers, the forgotten component of offensive efficiency.
Modified turnover%: TO / [TSA + (Ast * 2) + (Reb * 0.04) + TO]

Career rs Mod TOV%
Moses: 12.90%
Charles: 10.64%
Hakeem: 10.57%
Erving (minus '77): 10.00%
Karl: 9.50%
Shaq: 9.65%
Robinson: 9.46%
Duncan: 9.26%
Garnett: 8.25%
Dirk: 6.73%

There are two standouts among these guys: Moses (in a bad way), and Dirk (in a good way).

Again, of all the players I've run thru the formula for Modified TOV%, only Chris Paul rates better (at 6.30%). Dirk is phenomenally elite as a scoring offensive centerpiece where turnovers are concerned.



On peak or average prime-level of play, I think Robinson is the most talented of the candidates left. His downfall (for me, if he has one) is his longevity (which is clearly the poorest of all the candidates on the table, unless one is considering Dwyane Wade, I guess; Mikan being a little more difficult to assess from the longevity standpoint due to era-circumstance). But even as late as '02, he was still a 20.3 PER, .211 WS/48, +3.9 BPM, +19 efficiency differential while playing an only slightly limited 29.5 mpg.
And he's not just the best among them defensively.....he's the best defensively by such a massive margin that it's rather difficult to overstate it. And he's obviously far from mediocre offensively; this is a guy that won a scoring title, for example. He's the best finisher at the rim outside of probably Charles and maybe Erving. He's a better mid-range shooter and passer than Moses (might be better at the latter than Dirk too, actually). He's the best screen-setter of all of them (underappreciated talent, except when Wes Unseld is being discussed, and Robinson I think would rank in my top 5 all-time for this skill), and had a decent face-up game, too.

imo, he gets overly penalized for coming up short when being asked to be Michael Jordan on offense and Bill Russell on defense (at the same time).

FTR, my vote is these two players you mentioned:

1. David Robinson
2. Dirk Nowitzki

I want to piggy-back on the "MJ on offense, Russell on defense" idea - he literally was having to do this. During his 94-96 peak, he ranked 1, 5, and 6 in usage. The players who finished above him during those times: Shaq/Hakeem/Ewing/Malone/Jordan - either guys who were much more offensively talented, or who shouldn't have been shooting that much in all likelihood (Ewing). He wasn't as offensively gifted as Shaq/Malone/Jordan/Hakeem, so he definitely couldn't sustain his peak offensive carrying (sidenote - he definitely had the least offensive help of the lot, as well). However, he was the best defender of all of them. Point is, no player has ever done both max O and D load carrying, yet DRob did it for roughly 1-2 RS; it should be self-explanatory why he couldn't always sustain it. He was playing a role that he had to play, instead of the one that was best for him.

[trex_8063]

My computer is down and I don't really have the desire to type long posts out on my phone, so I probably won't be as active. However...

1st vote: Julius Erving

Mostly because I think his longevity and playoffs performance is just enough to push him over the Malone's, Dirk and Robinson. He was certainly the most dominate perimeter player of the 70s and still was quite a good player in the 80s and able to adjust his role to maintain elite team performance.

2nd Vote: Karl Malone

Karl Malone was voted in two places ago.

[RCM88x]

My computer is down and I don't really have the desire to type long posts out on my phone, so I probably won't be as active. However...

1st vote: Julius Erving

Mostly because I think his longevity and playoffs performance is just enough to push him over the Malone's, Dirk and Robinson. He was certainly the most dominate perimeter player of the 70s and still was quite a good player in the 80s and able to adjust his role to maintain elite team performance.

2nd Vote: Karl Malone

Karl Malone was voted in two places ago.

Right, my mistake. Meant to type Moses instead of Karl.

2nd vote should be Moses Malone.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #53 (19 votes, requiring 10 for a majority):

Julius Erving - 7 (Winsome Gerbil, Hornet Mania, RCM88x, scabbarista, Pablo Novi, mdonnelly1989, Dr Positivity)
David Robinson - 4 (2klegend, Doctor MJ, drza, micahclay)
Dirk Nowitzki - 3 (andrewww, Joao Saraiva, trex_8063)
George Mikan - 2 (penbeast0, janmagn, wojoaderge)
Moses Malone - 2 (JordansBulls, Outside)


Moses is eliminated; one vote transfers to Dr. J, the other (for DWade) is now a "ghost vote".....

Erving - 8
Robinson - 4
Dirk and Mikan - 3 each

So the standard rule would be that both Dirk and Mikan are eliminated from contention, which I feel a little strange about given A LOT of people had Dirk as their second pick (including one of the Mikan voters), while Mikan is nobody's second pick). But that's the standard we've set (and it wouldn't change the result anyway).
The Mikan votes transfer to one to Erving, one to Dirk ("ghost vote") and one to Moses (ghost vote).
The Dirk votes transfer two to Robinson, one to Erving, bringing count to:

Erving - 10
Robinson - 6

Calling it for Julius. Will have the next thread up shortly.

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[Clyde Frazier]

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