Peaks project update: #14

[DatAsh]

So, 3 of the best 14 seasons of all time come from '60s. Is not strange for you? Golden era...

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I guess you're assuming that Oscar gets voted in here? Steph is in the running too, though.

By my count, we have
60s: 2
70s: 3
80s: 2
90s: 2
00s: 3
10s: 1

Actually seems pretty well balanced. Which decades do you think are under/over represented?

[Gregoire]

1. 2016 Curry. GOAT RS + stellar playoffs. One of the best offensive players in a vacuum.
2. 1990 Barkley. GOAT offensive bigmen + neutral defense.
3. 1995 Robinson. Very good bigmen offense + great defense.

[E-Balla]

So, 3 of the best 14 seasons of all time come from '60s. Is not strange for you? Golden era...

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We have 3 players in 76 and 77 alone on this list, what point are you even attempting to make here?

[LA Bird]

Chiming in on the era discussion, I would say the last decade or so is slightly under represented on the current list. Oscar has a comfortable lead right now so assuming he wins this round, the number of voted peaks in each moving 15 year period would look like this:



Is the GOAT peak talent really weaker today even though the league is the most popular it's ever been on an international scale? Personally, I think it is more likely that the talent is still around the same level but fans are just more critical of players because everything is put under a microscope nowadays.

[No-more-rings]

1. 2011 Dirk - I rank him over some other players because of having a truly special playoff level. His spacing impact is significant and he was playing at MVP level in the regular season

For the sake of argument here.

Dirk 11' playoffs: 27.7/8.1/2.5, 3.1 tov 25.2 PER 60.9 ts%(+6.8 relative) 3.8 BPM +16.8 on/off

Wade 06 playoffs: 28.4/5.9/5.7 3.9 tov 26.9 PER 59.3 ts%(+5.7 relative) 8.9 BPM +22.2 on/off

I don't disagree that Dirk's playoff run was special, but what's the case for it being better than Wade's? Aside from his magical spacing that i always hear about, or that you just like him more or something like that.

[HHera187]

The point is: there was 8 teams, so the chance of having an all timer is much lower than in a 30 teams league, but for you Big O is better than Paul only because of Era.

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[HHera187]

I said Paul because is the same Archetype

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[E-Balla]

Chiming in on the era discussion, I would say the last decade or so is slightly under represented on the current list. Oscar has a comfortable lead right now so assuming he wins this round, the number of voted peaks in each moving 15 year period would look like this:



Is the GOAT peak talent really weaker today even though the league is the most popular it's ever been on an international scale? Personally, I think it is more likely that the talent is still around the same level but fans are just more critical of players because everything is put under a microscope nowadays.

The talent pretty clearly isn't the same at the top. The game is more specialized and with it the stars are too. It's not that we're more critical, they're just less well rounded than previous stars. Adding to that notice how many bigmen are on the list, because basketball is a game of size. 8 of the 13 are bigs, with Magic and Bird basically also being bigs or capable of being bigs, and LeBron being a PF at times. The game is smaller now so guys outside of LeBron aren't having that "**** the world" impact. Embiid might one day, but this is the one NBA decade being defined by Gs.

[LA Bird]

The game is more specialized and with it the stars are too. It's not that we're more critical, they're just less well rounded than previous stars.

Being less well rounded does not mean a player has a lower peak. And if we are judging players by their versatility, why has Chris Paul, arguably the most well rounded PG in history, not received any support at all yet?

Regarding my original point, I was saying that we as fans are more critical towards modern players simply because we lack the video and stats to scrutinize earlier players in the same way. For example, Kobe in the 60s would probably be remembered as a more well rounded two-way player because we won't have the DRAPM numbers to prove otherwise. Era differences could be caused by how we evaluate players and not necessarily changes in the versatility of superstars.

Adding to that notice how many bigmen are on the list, because basketball is a game of size. 8 of the 13 are bigs, with Magic and Bird basically also being bigs or capable of being bigs, and LeBron being a PF at times. The game is smaller now so guys outside of LeBron aren't having that "**** the world" impact. Embiid might one day, but this is the one NBA decade being defined by Gs.

The list is predominantly big men because most of the peaks selected are from the past when the league was ruled by bigs. That does not explain why the best non-bigs of the last 10+ years can't stack up to the best non-bigs of the past. If you acknowledge that the game is smaller now and defined by guards, why is it that players today can't have GOAT level impact simply because they aren't bigs? If anything, since the league today is now more dominated by guards, shouldn't we expect more representation from non-bigs today than non-bigs from the past?

[E-Balla]

Being less well rounded does not mean a player has a lower peak. And if we are judging players by their versatility, why has Chris Paul, arguably the most well rounded PG in history, not received any support at all yet?

It doesn't, but typically it does. If 2 players are great, the more versatile one will be be better one more than likely. The specialist might fit better on a particular team.

Regarding my original point, I was saying that we as fans are more critical towards modern players simply because we lack the video and stats to scrutinize earlier players in the same way. For example, Kobe in the 60s would probably be remembered as a more well rounded two-way player because we won't have the DRAPM numbers to prove otherwise. Era differences could be caused by how we evaluate players and not necessarily changes in the versatility of superstars.

That would make sense if people were doing that. We had a lot of discussion on Bill Russell's offense earlier in this project for a quick example. Whatever Kobe was remembered as we'd be able to gather enough film and data to determine at the very least that he was overrated.

The list is predominantly big men because most of the peaks selected are from the past when the league was ruled by bigs. That does not explain why the best non-bigs of the last 10+ years can't stack up to the best non-bigs of the past. If you acknowledge that the game is smaller now and defined by guards, why is it that players today can't have GOAT level impact simply because they aren't bigs? If anything, since the league today is now more dominated by guards, shouldn't we expect more representation from non-bigs today than non-bigs from the past?

The league now is run by PGs. There's one PG (who's 6-9 and could easily play C) on this list so far. Curry is arguably about to be the first player under 6-6 on the list in this vote. I think maybe you guys need to practice some patience, it's not like we're that far into the list. I mean is there anyone in that top 10-11 spots you'd boot for someone under that? If there is where's the argument for them been at?

[LA Bird]

Whatever Kobe was remembered as we'd be able to gather enough film and data to determine at the very least that he was overrated.

That is only known with the benefit of hindsight. If Kobe actually played in the 60s, what defensive data do we have to know he was overrated - DWS? Opponent ppg WOWY? Team DRtg? Because none of those point to Jerry West being an all time defensive guard either and yet he is ranked much higher defensively on this board than Kobe. There is insufficient film for us to really know much about 60s/70s defense in depth. Without living through the +/- era and having underwhelming DRAPM stats, there is almost nothing stopping Kobe from being remembered as a GOAT level defensive guard.

The league now is run by PGs. There's one PG (who's 6-9 and could easily play C) on this list so far. Curry is arguably about to be the first player under 6-6 on the list in this vote. I think maybe you guys need to practice some patience, it's not like we're that far into the list. I mean is there anyone in that top 10-11 spots you'd boot for someone under that? If there is where's the argument for them been at?

From the 2005-19 time frame, I wouldn't say PGs stand out much from the other non-big positions. And I am not pushing for Curry to be on the list just because he is from a particular time period. I was only pointing out that if there is truly zero era bias, we should not be seeing any major over/under representation of eras on the list. Of the peaks that have been confirmed voted in, 5 were from 1964~77 and only 1 from 2005~2019. This pattern will be reversed when we come to #15~#30 on the list where we will have ~7 peaks from the last 15 years but only Jerry West from the 60s/70s period. Maybe this is just luck but personally, that front/back loaded distribution does not appear to be random.

[penbeast0]

So, 3 of the best 14 seasons of all time come from '60s. Is not strange for you? Golden era...

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To be fair, Russell, Wilt, Oscar, and West dominated the league like few others have ever done. West and Oscar had better than Jordanesque relative to their peers at guard (each other excluded), no forward even came close, and Wilt and Russell dominated West, Oscar and everyone else more than any players to ever play. There are questions about era strength, but the 60s was pretty clearly stronger than the expansion, selfish play for contracts, and growth of the cocaine culture that characterized the 70s and into the early 80s and after that it is at least arguable that the 60s are stronger than the late 80s or 90s though it's a minority opinion. So, that individual dominance is unprecedented and should produce unprecedented results.

I think once the big 4 are in, you will wait a while for the next 60s year (Elgin . . . Pettit will go in from the 50s and Havlicek from the 70s), quite probably not even making the top 50.

That said, having read the other submissions and checking them against my own impressions and prejudices but without statistical analysis, I rank the next three:

Curry 16 -- GOAT offensive regular season puts this above 17.
West 66 -- Hard for me to put Oscar over West when West + Baylor is consistent NBA finalist while Oscar + Lucas (who I am pretty high on) is not a lot stronger than a .500 team over their time together. OScar was healthier and more of an ironman, West had a tendency to just explode in the playoffs.
OScar 64 -- The one year his individual brilliance in Cincinnati led to team success; just (of course) ran into the Russell Celtics.

[Owly]

West 66 -- Hard for me to put Oscar over West when West + Baylor is consistent NBA finalist while Oscar + Lucas (who I am pretty high on) is not a lot stronger than a .500 team over their time together. OScar was healthier and more of an ironman, West had a tendency to just explode in the playoffs.
OScar 64 -- The one year his individual brilliance in Cincinnati led to team success; just (of course) ran into the Russell Celtics.

Leaving aside Lucas's awful Royals WoWY numbers ... Baylor "by himself" (i.e. prior to West) made a finals. West and Baylor played in the West. And Elgin Baylor posted better than 16.1 PER, .059 WS/48 in the playoffs (Lucas's playoff metrics in Cincinnati).

[Odinn21]

Chiming in on the era discussion, I would say the last decade or so is slightly under represented on the current list. Oscar has a comfortable lead right now so assuming he wins this round, the number of voted peaks in each moving 15 year period would look like this:



Is the GOAT peak talent really weaker today even though the league is the most popular it's ever been on an international scale? Personally, I think it is more likely that the talent is still around the same level but fans are just more critical of players because everything is put under a microscope nowadays.

Well, I see where you’re coming from and I agree to some degree (we being much more critical of the current names due to available data getting way bigger by the day). But it doesn’t take much to recognise the league was headed to a low point in terms of all-time great talents.

I remember talking to people on message boards in my native language around 2007, 2008 and I was bummed at the time because LeBron was the only real young talent that got the cloth to make it.
Agains, around 2012, 2013 I was being critical of LeBron’s domination over ‘the league’s best player’ title because the only top 15 material he was dominating was KD. And it doesn’t have anything to do with me being too nostalgic. I’m gonna give you example;
Duncan was the best player in 2002-03 season. He had prime Nowitzki and near-peak Garnett as competition for the PF position alone. Then there was Shaq, still a very dominant force. Then there were McGrady and Bryant, both having the time of their lives. And there was also Jason Kidd as well who made it to b2b finals (I’m big on this. Usually people talk about the East being very weak at the time but Kidd also didn’t have a good supporting cast, what he did was truly great).
After seeing that, predicting the league was headed to a low point as for goat level talents wasn’t hard, even 10 years ago.

[Colbinii]

Chiming in on the era discussion, I would say the last decade or so is slightly under represented on the current list. Oscar has a comfortable lead right now so assuming he wins this round, the number of voted peaks in each moving 15 year period would look like this:



Is the GOAT peak talent really weaker today even though the league is the most popular it's ever been on an international scale? Personally, I think it is more likely that the talent is still around the same level but fans are just more critical of players because everything is put under a microscope nowadays.

Well, I see where you’re coming from and I agree to some degree (we being much more critical of the current names due to available data getting way bigger by the day). But it doesn’t take much to recognise the league was headed to a low point in terms of all-time great talents.

I remember talking to people on message boards in my native language around 2007, 2008 and I was bummed at the time because LeBron was the only real young talent that got the cloth to make it.
Agains, around 2012, 2013 I was being critical of LeBron’s domination over ‘the league’s best player’ title because the only top 15 material he was dominating was KD. And it doesn’t have anything to do with me being too nostalgic. I’m gonna give you example;
Duncan was the best player in 2002-03 season. He had prime Nowitzki and near-peak Garnett as competition for the PF position alone. Then there was Shaq, still a very dominant force. Then there were McGrady and Bryant, both having the time of their lives. And there was also Jason Kidd as well who made it to b2b finals (I’m big on this. Usually people talk about the East being very weak at the time but Kidd also didn’t have a good supporting cast, what he did was truly great).
After seeing that, predicting the league was headed to a low point as for goat level talents wasn’t hard, even 10 years ago.

2012/2013 had Chris Paul (top 20ish player in some circles) in the thick of his prime, young KD, young Rose/Westbrook (many debates between westbrook/durant), Blake Griffin/Kevin Love. Unfortunately many players were injured (Westbrook, Love and Rose all to varying degrees of "probably never be the same" type injuries) and then we have the rise of Curry who will undoubtably be a top 20 player alltime (many will put him top 10).

I think LA Bird hit the nail on the head with how we micro-analyze these players.

I'm not sure why we bring up Kidd here without mentioning Harden/Paul/Curry who all peaked higher at the same position.

[Mavericksfan]

Chiming in on the era discussion, I would say the last decade or so is slightly under represented on the current list. Oscar has a comfortable lead right now so assuming he wins this round, the number of voted peaks in each moving 15 year period would look like this:



Is the GOAT peak talent really weaker today even though the league is the most popular it's ever been on an international scale? Personally, I think it is more likely that the talent is still around the same level but fans are just more critical of players because everything is put under a microscope nowadays.

Well, I see where you’re coming from and I agree to some degree (we being much more critical of the current names due to available data getting way bigger by the day). But it doesn’t take much to recognise the league was headed to a low point in terms of all-time great talents.

I remember talking to people on message boards in my native language around 2007, 2008 and I was bummed at the time because LeBron was the only real young talent that got the cloth to make it.
Agains, around 2012, 2013 I was being critical of LeBron’s domination over ‘the league’s best player’ title because the only top 15 material he was dominating was KD. And it doesn’t have anything to do with me being too nostalgic. I’m gonna give you example;
Duncan was the best player in 2002-03 season. He had prime Nowitzki and near-peak Garnett as competition for the PF position alone. Then there was Shaq, still a very dominant force. Then there were McGrady and Bryant, both having the time of their lives. And there was also Jason Kidd as well who made it to b2b finals (I’m big on this. Usually people talk about the East being very weak at the time but Kidd also didn’t have a good supporting cast, what he did was truly great).
After seeing that, predicting the league was headed to a low point as for goat level talents wasn’t hard, even 10 years ago.

2012/2013 had Chris Paul (top 20ish player in some circles) in the thick of his prime, young KD, young Rose/Westbrook (many debates between westbrook/durant), Blake Griffin/Kevin Love. Unfortunately many players were injured (Westbrook, Love and Rose all to varying degrees of "probably never be the same" type injuries) and then we have the rise of Curry who will undoubtably be a top 20 player alltime (many will put him top 10).

I think LA Bird hit the nail on the head with how we micro-analyze these players.

I'm not sure why we bring up Kidd here without mentioning Harden/Paul/Curry who all peaked higher at the same position.

Honestly it’s just noise tbh

After the top 5 or 6 it’s all pretty damn close. Between then and like 30ish or so there a lot of great seasons.

For me I’d love to put 2011 Dirk but his minutes played in the regular season are pretty low. 2017 Curry is the only guy for me that checks all of the boxes to be easily top 10 but there’s debate about exactly how much help he has(although 86 Bird and 87 Celtics are also ridiculously stacked). Plus they didnt face any “great” teams. I know the Cavs were defending Champs but they didnt stand a chance either.

Besides that I think it’s just a matter of preference and a lot of these ranking could go either way.

[penbeast0]

West 66 -- Hard for me to put Oscar over West when West + Baylor is consistent NBA finalist while Oscar + Lucas (who I am pretty high on) is not a lot stronger than a .500 team over their time together. OScar was healthier and more of an ironman, West had a tendency to just explode in the playoffs.
OScar 64 -- The one year his individual brilliance in Cincinnati led to team success; just (of course) ran into the Russell Celtics.

Leaving aside Lucas's awful Royals WoWY numbers ... Baylor "by himself" (i.e. prior to West) made a finals. West and Baylor played in the West. And Elgin Baylor posted better than 16.1 PER, .059 WS/48 in the playoffs (Lucas's playoff metrics in Cincinnati).

I rate Baylor over Lucas, just think of Lucas as a very good second banana as well, sort of the Kevin Love of his era (Cincinnati Lucas being the Minnesota version of Love).

[E-Balla]

That is only known with the benefit of hindsight. If Kobe actually played in the 60s, what defensive data do we have to know he was overrated - DWS? Opponent ppg WOWY? Team DRtg? Because none of those point to Jerry West being an all time defensive guard either and yet he is ranked much higher defensively on this board than Kobe. There is insufficient film for us to really know much about 60s/70s defense in depth. Without living through the +/- era and having underwhelming DRAPM stats, there is almost nothing stopping Kobe from being remembered as a GOAT level defensive guard.

Honestly his reputation comes mostly from the fact that his reputation was as a highly disruptive defender more than anything else, racking up steals and blocks and at the age of 35 in just short of 1000 minutes he averaged 3.0 steals and 0.9 blocks per 36. Right there it lines up extremely well with his reputation, and we haven't seen anything to say he's a negative defender. It's not like many here think guard defenders move the needle much anyway, look at how people feel about CP3.

From the 2005-19 time frame, I wouldn't say PGs stand out much from the other non-big positions. And I am not pushing for Curry to be on the list just because he is from a particular time period. I was only pointing out that if there is truly zero era bias, we should not be seeing any major over/under representation of eras on the list. Of the peaks that have been confirmed voted in, 5 were from 1964~77 and only 1 from 2005~2019. This pattern will be reversed when we come to #15~#30 on the list where we will have ~7 peaks from the last 15 years but only Jerry West from the 60s/70s period. Maybe this is just luck but personally, that front/back loaded distribution does not appear to be random.

This assumes talent for all eras is equal and we know that isn't true. We all know different eras in league history have different strengths. In the modern NBA the league is deeper with talent, but back then the guys at the top were amazing because they were bigger and basketball is a big man's game. Why go back to 05 here too, we have 3 guys from 00-04 on the board and those guys were the best bigs in the league from 05-08 too.

And for non big positions vs PG there's talent at F but not compared to other eras. KD and LeBron are that level, and arguably Kawhi and Giannis. Outside of them who's having all time great seasons? Westbrook, Harden, Curry, and CP3. That's as many PGs as SG/SF/PFs combined.

[DatAsh]

A few thoughts on the era bias

I do think Chris Paul might be slept on a bit in comparison to Oscar.

We don't have much to go off of for Oscar, statistically, but I do think we have enough to say he was a better offensive player than Paul. The number one offenses he led, along with his high volume scoring(on superb efficiency) and league leading assist numbers, along with his reputation, is enough for me to comfortably rank him ahead of Chris on offense.

Chris is arguably the defensive GOAT at PG though, up there with Kidd and a few others. His strong offense and strong defense combined consistently put him at the top of impact metrics. Only guys that really outdo him are Lebron and KG, but he's always on that next tier with guys like Duncan, Dirk, Curry, and Draymond. He's usually not a league leader in offense or defense, but he's usually a +5 off, +2 def level guy. Oscar wasn't known as an all time great defender at his position, is it possible that Paul's combined offense and defense is higher than Oscar's? What if Oscar was a +7/-1 guy? or a +6/+0 guy? I'm currently still leaning Oscar, but I'm not at all confident.

On the broader subject, I do think there tends to be an anti current era bias, but I see it more as a "hindsight is 20/20" bias than I do a nostalgic bias, or a specialization or less well roundedness difference. Without the validation of subsequent years to confirm what we're currently seeing, it's a bit harder to accurately assess it. Go back to 2009 and I think you'd be surprised how many people were arguing Kobe over Lebron that year. It was probably 60/40 in favor of Lebron back then, but it's 95/5 now. There were questions of Lebron's style and whether it could really lead to championships...questions that Kobe had already answered. Subsequent years would answer those questions for Lebron as well, and many now see those years under a different lens.


I think I'm definitely going with 2017 Curry as my first vote. I wish I could vote 2016, but the injury basically disqualifies him for me.

Oscar, Paul(not sure year), other Curry years, Wade, West, Dirk and Robinson are all in consideration for 2 and 3.

[DatAsh]

Whatever Kobe was remembered as we'd be able to gather enough film and data to determine at the very least that he was overrated.

That is only known with the benefit of hindsight. If Kobe actually played in the 60s, what defensive data do we have to know he was overrated - DWS? Opponent ppg WOWY? Team DRtg? Because none of those point to Jerry West being an all time defensive guard either and yet he is ranked much higher defensively on this board than Kobe. There is insufficient film for us to really know much about 60s/70s defense in depth. Without living through the +/- era and having underwhelming DRAPM stats, there is almost nothing stopping Kobe from being remembered as a GOAT level defensive guard.

The league now is run by PGs. There's one PG (who's 6-9 and could easily play C) on this list so far. Curry is arguably about to be the first player under 6-6 on the list in this vote. I think maybe you guys need to practice some patience, it's not like we're that far into the list. I mean is there anyone in that top 10-11 spots you'd boot for someone under that? If there is where's the argument for them been at?

From the 2005-19 time frame, I wouldn't say PGs stand out much from the other non-big positions. And I am not pushing for Curry to be on the list just because he is from a particular time period. I was only pointing out that if there is truly zero era bias, we should not be seeing any major over/under representation of eras on the list. Of the peaks that have been confirmed voted in, 5 were from 1964~77 and only 1 from 2005~2019. This pattern will be reversed when we come to #15~#30 on the list where we will have ~7 peaks from the last 15 years but only Jerry West from the 60s/70s period. Maybe this is just luck but personally, that front/back loaded distribution does not appear to be random.

I think the Kobe/West defensive comparison is a really interesting one. Outside of impact metric informed opinions, Kobe arguably has a better defensive reputation than West. If impact metrics didn't exist, I don't think it's far fetched to say that most would rank Kobe over West defensively.

Luckily for Kobe, we do have impact metrics available, so we know his real impact is nowhere near what the majority eye test would suggest.

Unfortunately for West, we don't have those same impact metrics, so we're forced to go strictly by the majority eye test and the limited footage we have.

I do believe the limited footage we have for West shows a good defender, but you can find far more footage of Kobe playing better defense than we see from West in that footage. It's the aggregate effort that truly makes or breaks.

Is it possible that the majority eye test overrates West's defense in the same way it does Kobe's? I'd say it's definitely possible, and not all that unlikely, but in the absence of evidence, unfortunately, I think we have to go with the only evidence we have.