Peaks project update: #14

[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.

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.

Aside from Kidd, the names I mentioned were top 15/20 material in terms of talent and only McGrady didn’t end up in there due to obvious reasons.
I mentioned Kidd to show the depth with peak Kidd being borderline top 10 in the league.

Also I talked about a particular season. You just listed some names which don’t match the quality and the timeline in themselves.

If we stretch the timeline to a decade for example; LeBron, Curry, Durant, Paul, Harden and Westbrook, they still do not get close enough to O’Neal, Duncan, Garnett, Nowitzki, Bryant, Wade, Nash and Kidd.
Also including Love and Griffin? Come on now. I didn’t use the ones like Webber, Iverson (though I’m not sure he’s a good mention), Ming, Wallace, Stoudemire, etc. Heck even though I consider his particular performance as an outlier, 2005-06 Brand was better than any version of Griffin and Love. Those are not good mentions when the topic is top 15/20 material.

[No-more-rings]

Whoever loses this one between Curry and Oscar will run away with the next one. Be that as it may...

I look forward to how open it will get after those 2 though, guys on my radar after those 2 Wade seasons will be Tmac, Kobe, Drob, West, maybe Ewing? And yes Dirk can be argued too, but i’ll need strong convincing that his defense and rebounding had as much impact as some claim/and or his spacing makes up for the superior playmaking by lead guards.

1. 64' Oscar Robertson- The arguments have already been made. He was like a 6'6 Magic Johnson, or a 6'6 Chris Paul, probably the best offensive player left for peaks, and held his own on defense.

2. 09' Wade- Carried a putrid supporting cast to 43 wins, with Wade on court they ran a 110.5 ORTG which would've been tied for 5th best in the league that year, which is actually something considering the Heat ran a slow defense-first type of pace. Without Wade, they were playing with the worst offense in the league by far.(99.4 ORTG). The Heat were -3.2 DRTG better with Wade on the court also. Heavy lifting on both ends of the court. Playoff performance could've been better(though 29/5/5 on 57 ts% and 26.3 PER is nothing to sneeze at), but Wade dealt with back spasms in the series and had to play nearly 39 mpg on high usage over the season just so his team could be competitive. I believe if Wade had a legit supporting cast in 09 and 10 these seasons would be viewed more highly than they are.

3. 06' Wade- In 06 with Wade on court the Heat ran a 112.3 ORTG which would've been the best in the league. With Wade sitting, they were again the worst offense in the league. Wade led the league in RAPM, NPI RAPM, and had an historical championship playoff run for a guard. I don't think anyone left quite had a title run like Wade's considering both numbers and competition.

So during Wade's playoff run he played the 7th ranked defense, 3rd ranked defense, 5th ranked defense and 11th best in that order. Aside from the bulls in the first round, absolutely destroyed the other 3 teams. In the ECF against the 5th ranked defense, 64 win, fresh off a finals trip Pistons, Wade averaged 26.7/5.2/5.5 on 68.4 ts%, and helped hold Rip Hamilton to 37.8% from the field and just 46.6 ts%(see videos below). In the finals, Wade put up a carry job-victory that was emulated by perhaps only Lebron, Duncan and Shaq. It doesn't make it necessarily better than all the others, just the load carried+lack of offensive help.

Footage is not the best of quality, but you can see it's him.

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

The argument for 06 is probably stronger than 09, but i think 09 could've gave you all that 06 did with more precise passing and better decision making.

[DatAsh]

I have 09 Wade over 06 Wade, but I guess I need to look more at that comparison.

[liamliam1234]

For me it is the playoffs. 2009 was probably only his fourth-best year there. 2010 has better carry-over, but the playoff sample size is small. I understand not rating the postseason as highly as I do, but Wade was still incredible during the 2006 regular season, and his 2010 regular season was nearly as good as in 2009.

[DatAsh]

For me it is the playoffs. 2009 was probably only his fourth-best year there. 2010 has better carry-over, but the playoff sample size is small. I understand not rating the postseason as highly as I do, but Wade was still incredible during the 2006 regular season, and his 2010 regular season was nearly as good as in 2009.

I was going by memory and actually had 2009 playoffs and 2010 playoffs mixed up.

I too put a ton of weight into the postseason (like 90/10) but his sample sizes those two years are 5 and 7 games. I can't really put any weight into that.

[E-Balla]

For me it is the playoffs. 2009 was probably only his fourth-best year there. 2010 has better carry-over, but the playoff sample size is small. I understand not rating the postseason as highly as I do, but Wade was still incredible during the 2006 regular season, and his 2010 regular season was nearly as good as in 2009.

I was going by memory and actually had 2009 playoffs and 2010 playoffs mixed up.

I too put a ton of weight into the postseason (like 90/10) but his sample sizes those two years are 5 and 7 games. I can't really put any weight into that.

I say we can put weight into it, but he played amazing both series anyway. In 09 he "only" averaged 29/5/5 on 56 TS% and in 10 he had the best series anyone had vs the KG Celtics.

[DatAsh]

For me it is the playoffs. 2009 was probably only his fourth-best year there. 2010 has better carry-over, but the playoff sample size is small. I understand not rating the postseason as highly as I do, but Wade was still incredible during the 2006 regular season, and his 2010 regular season was nearly as good as in 2009.

I was going by memory and actually had 2009 playoffs and 2010 playoffs mixed up.

I too put a ton of weight into the postseason (like 90/10) but his sample sizes those two years are 5 and 7 games. I can't really put any weight into that.

I say we can put weight into it, but he played amazing both series anyway. In 09 he "only" averaged 29/5/5 on 56 TS% and in 10 he had the best series anyone had vs the KG Celtics.

I'm not saying don't put any weight into it, but 29/5/5 on 56% is probably within the realm of best peak of all time for a 7 game sample size. I'm guessing you could find a 7 game sample for 91 Jordan that is worse than that.

[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).

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).

Comp works visually (white 4s, shooter/rebounder, offense oriented, not athletic). Problem is if you are measuring by wins ("not a lot stronger than a .500 team") Love has on/off numbers showing high impact, that he moved that needle (https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/loveke01.html). Lucas, pre-Knicks, has 3 years of WoWY available ('65, '69, '70) each of which that suggest him a a small negative. You can buy in to these numbers more or less, but if at all it's hard to see Lucas as an analogous win-impact guy.

And as above Baylor's advantage over Royals Lucas in the playoffs is not small if playoffs is the focus (and finals appearances from different conferences might not be a fair gauge - cf the Lakers' record in those finals versus Boston for an idea of how many finals they make in the East).

[euroleague]

1. Steph Curry '16 - unanimous MVP, dominated the league, people were comparing him to MJ in dominance and bypassing LBJ. Greatest regular season ever, bla bla bla, already explained. The reason for the bias against him is quite obvious... the knee-jerk reaction against players who don't fit the mold in how they play is a pretty ingrained reaction. If you do this same project with mostly voters under 20m, with access to the same data and similar statistics knowledge, Curry would be ranked much higher - with players like Duncan/Erving/Walton (who have more old-school games) ranked lower.

2. Oscar Robertson 64 - He dominated in a league that was not exactly elite, but beating out peak Russell/Wilt for an MVP is a pretty wild accomplishment. The weakness of the league in general compared to the elite in the 60s is pretty stark, and that creates a few players who have years that are tough to match in the more balanced modern era. This is one of those years.

3. David Robinson 94 - There isn't much more you can ask of a player than what DRob did in 94. Anchored both the defense and offense, dominated in almost every aspect of the game. He had a poor post-season showing, but this is pretty clearly his peak in terms of play....

[DatAsh]

1. Steph Curry '16 - unanimous MVP, dominated the league, people were comparing him to MJ in dominance and bypassing LBJ. Greatest regular season ever, bla bla bla, already explained. The reason for the bias against him is quite obvious... the knee-jerk reaction against players who don't fit the mold in how they play is a pretty ingrained reaction. If you do this same project with mostly voters under 20m, with access to the same data and similar statistics knowledge, Curry would be ranked much higher - with players like Duncan/Erving/Walton (who have more old-school games) ranked lower.

2. Oscar Robertson 64 - He dominated in a league that was not exactly elite, but beating out peak Russell/Wilt for an MVP is a pretty wild accomplishment. The weakness of the league in general compared to the elite in the 60s is pretty stark, and that creates a few players who have years that are tough to match in the more balanced modern era. This is one of those years.

3. David Robinson 94 - There isn't much more you can ask of a player than what DRob did in 94. Anchored both the defense and offense, dominated in almost every aspect of the game. He had a poor post-season showing, but this is pretty clearly his peak in terms of play....

How close do you see 17 Curry to 16 Curry? He's definitely worse, but how much of that is simply a change in role? How much of that is an actual change in goodness?

The injury in 2016 disqualifies that year for me, but I don't see 2017 as that much worse once you account for the role change.

[euroleague]

1. Steph Curry '16 - unanimous MVP, dominated the league, people were comparing him to MJ in dominance and bypassing LBJ. Greatest regular season ever, bla bla bla, already explained. The reason for the bias against him is quite obvious... the knee-jerk reaction against players who don't fit the mold in how they play is a pretty ingrained reaction. If you do this same project with mostly voters under 20m, with access to the same data and similar statistics knowledge, Curry would be ranked much higher - with players like Duncan/Erving/Walton (who have more old-school games) ranked lower.

2. Oscar Robertson 64 - He dominated in a league that was not exactly elite, but beating out peak Russell/Wilt for an MVP is a pretty wild accomplishment. The weakness of the league in general compared to the elite in the 60s is pretty stark, and that creates a few players who have years that are tough to match in the more balanced modern era. This is one of those years.

3. David Robinson 94 - There isn't much more you can ask of a player than what DRob did in 94. Anchored both the defense and offense, dominated in almost every aspect of the game. He had a poor post-season showing, but this is pretty clearly his peak in terms of play....

How close do you see 17 Curry to 16 Curry? He's definitely worse, but how much of that is simply a change in role? How much of that is an actual change in goodness?

The injury in 2016 disqualifies that year for me, but I don't see 2017 as that much worse once you account for the role change.

Significantly worse. While he had similar skills, he didn't play a style that demonstrated them well. He didn't play for his own strengths, and compromised a lot to include KD. Not playing the style which suits him best means he isn't playing at his best, regardless of the reason. In the playoffs he focused a bit more on himself, but it still wasn't particularly close to the level of 2016. I wouldn't have any of his other seasons in the top 20. Changing his role is something to be judged similar to shot-selection of Kobe - it clearly didn't benefit him, and his team was arguably worse with the new role. When KD went down in 2017, the team got better. After a few games of adjusting, they immediately had a 14 game win-streak and Curry began dominating again - which he continued in the post-season. Overall, though, Curry didn't play well with KD.

2017 regular season: 24.6 PER, 12.6 WS, 7.3 BPM, 67 wins with KD
2016 regular season: 31.5 PER, 17.9 WS, 12.5 BPM, 73 wins without KD

The gap is just massive. Him not playing particularly well when injured not withstanding.

[Timmyyy]

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.

I will give my case for overall peak and I don't think there is a need to 'just like him more' to have Dirk above Wade for peak (you actually did talk about the PO runs only, so maybe I misinterpret this, but since Dr. P didn't compare Wades and Dirks PO runs in his post rather then just having Dirk 1st, I thought you took that as a point against Dirks season as a whole, since Dr. P can have Wade's PO run as slightly better while having Dirk with the better overall season). Both appear really, really close to me, so I don't know why you feel so strong about that.

First of all I will give a little overall impression on them.
Wade having the ball in his hands more clearly gave him the opportunity to impact the game in the more obvious ways (boxscore) that you compared. Ridiculing Dirks off ball impact by saying it is 'magical' doesn't make it untrue. Dirk was a significantly more impactful off ball player than Wade and Dirk is not the only guy we saw where such an off ball ability made more than up for missing on ball duties (Curry). So offensively it is really close I might still give it to Wade but it is a debate worth having. Defensively Wade was good but just a small. Dirk was average or slightly above that and a big. Comparable I would say, DRAPM has Dirk in front by a solid enough margin that I give the slight nod to him.
Overall looking at different RAPM sets both look like the best players in the league in their years. But Dirk has a significant bigger gap to the competition than Wade to his and looking at the scores the gap between both looks big enough (to overcome the fact that you can't compare it in detail) to at least consider it in the evaluation.
With that we have a little framework that says they are close and that there definitely is a case for Dirk being better.

Now we go to the PO you mentioned.

Since we know that Wade and Dirk were the anchor of their offenses and only secondary pieces on D I will show how their teams did against the competition they played and compare it to how much better/worse that was than the RS performance. For everything I say now I used NBA.com as a source.

Dirk played POR, LAL, OKC and MIA. The offensive performances against these teams were +4.1, +10.9, +5.5, +5.7 above the RS Drtg of these teams respectively. Taking a simple average of that, they were +6.55 per PO series (defense -3.2, -10.2, -1.1, -5.3. Average -4.95). Comparing that to the RS offense of the Mavs which was a +2.1, they actually elevated themselves pretty clearly (+4.45 over the expectations from RS) with Dirk as their clear leader on that end (defensively -2.8. So clear improvement there too albeit I won't credit Dirk for that too much). Seeing that the Mavs where significantly worse when Dirk was off and that he had a ortg of 112.2 with him is another indicator for how important he was (although I have to say that Terry played a huge part too).

Now doing the same for Wade, he played CHI, NJN, DET and DAL. Offensive performances were +3.6, +9.3, +2, -4.1 resulting in an average of +2.7 (defense +0.4, +1.7, -10.9, -11.5. Average -5.1). Comparing that to the Heats RS performances they did roughly as expected on offense (+0.1 compared to RS offense) and elevated their performance on defense (-3.6). Wade as Dirk was the heart and soul on offense (107 Ortg). He other than Dirk didn't have another player with a comparable on court Ortg (in Dirks case only Terry who had an even better one than Dirk). So that should clearly be acknowledged when drawing conclusions.

To sum it up, starting from a pretty good +/- data base that is painting Dirk as the higher impact player for the season, we look into the PO's and see that Dirks team elevated their offensive performance to a great degree. Not all of that is on Dirk as he had good help, but he was the leader and should get a lot of credit. The defense improved too, but I don't think Dirk should be seen as a major part of that.
Wade's team didn't elevate their offensive performances and although that seems to be for the most part due to having less help, the gap still seems to be pretty significant. The Heats defense improved but as Dirk, Wade wasn't more than a part of the D and not the major key.

What I take away from it is that I saw Dirk and Wade comparable on both sides of the ball from the eye test. RAPM has Dirk as more impactful. Dirk elevated his game in the PO's according to my interpretation of the +/-, my eye test and the boxscore. Wade elevated his game when I follow my eye test and from a boxscore perspective too. Wade +/- analysis when used with context should make it clear that Wade had the tougher way to improve his team and therefore didn't do it as well as Dirk.
I want to make clear that I didn't do the +/- analysis to give a Dirk>Wade in the PO's argument per se. I rather want to show that looking at the boxscore doesn't do the guy that makes more impact away from the boxscore any favor. Neither does raw on/off when Dirk had a way more balanced team (on/off is higher when you have a bad bench). I wanna give a counter part showing that there are indicators that Dirk elevated his team to a comparable degree as Wade did, while having a solid argument for better overall season impact via RAPM.

So please note that I have them freakin close. I personally go with Dirk by a slight margin. I just wanna share that view since I thought talking about needing bias to have him in front is doing Dirk a huge disfavor.

[LA Bird]

Final totals as at the deadline are:

1) 64 Oscar = 28.0 points
2) 16 Curry = 20.0 points
3) 63 Oscar = 11.5 points
4) 95 Robinson = 9.0 points
5) 17 Curry = 6.0 points

64 Oscar wins. All but 1 vote was cast within the first 12 hours so I hope the shortening of the deadline to 48 hours was not the cause of the low turnout in this thread.

Spoiler:

ardee didn't copy and paste his reasoning for his first 2 picks from previous threads so his vote wasn't counted.

[No-more-rings]

Moving post to new thread.

[freethedevil]

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.

Just so we're clear, when we say "talent" do you mean as in, if we were to transport players across eras? Or do we mean in terms of standing out relative to the era?

[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.

Just so we're clear, when we say "talent" do you mean as in, if we were to transport players across eras? Or do we mean in terms of standing out relative to the era?

Hmm... Mind rephrasing that I don't quite get what you mean. I'm saying talent as in how good guys are at playing basketball.

[freethedevil]

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.


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.

Just so we're clear, when we say "talent" do you mean as in, if we were to transport players across eras? Or do we mean in terms of standing out relative to the era?

Hmm... Mind rephrasing that I don't quite get what you mean. I'm saying talent as in how good guys are at playing basketball.

Is it better as in, they got better relative to their contemporaries, or are you asserting that in a deeper league, the players at the top just got worse compared to where they were before?

Because if it's the former, then fine, but if it's the latter, I think them competing vs a deeper league is a much more logical explanation for them not being as high on the forum's all time list.

[E-Balla]

Just so we're clear, when we say "talent" do you mean as in, if we were to transport players across eras? Or do we mean in terms of standing out relative to the era?

Hmm... Mind rephrasing that I don't quite get what you mean. I'm saying talent as in how good guys are at playing basketball.

Is it better as in, they got better relative to their contemporaries, or are you asserting that in a deeper league, the players at the top just got worse compared to where they were before?

Because if it's the former, then fine, but if it's the latter, I think them competing vs a deeper league is a much more logical explanation for them not being as high on the forum's all time list.

I think the league is deeper in terms of all star level players. I don't think they're deeper at the very top. Role players are basically the same IMO, just more heavily specialized and better utilized. For the most part the only time role players drop in quality is when expansion happens.

So looking at Harden last year for example I don't think he's top 5 (and maybe not top 6) if we teleport him to 1990 because at the top there was more talent. There's a lot more Dame and Jokic level guys now (or Chambers for a 1990 example).

[freethedevil]

Alright, so I'll preface all my comments with this. You are arguing that in a vacuum the older top tier players were "better" at basketball. Using how they fare, relative to their own era's competition, would not tell you if they are better or worse, it would just tell you they stood out less. IMO, If you're going to be arguing that in a vacuum, modern superstars are worse, That argument should be made based on their skills in a vacuum. So a player's legacy/ resume/impactin era, which is what most of people's all time lists are based on shouldn't be used to argue anything either way.

I think the league is deeper in terms of all star level players. I don't think they're deeper at the very top.

Alright, but even there being more all star players would make superstars look worse against them.

Role players are basically the same IMO, just more heavily specialized and better utilized.

Huh? Yeah I don't buy this at all. If anything, role players now are less specialized and expected to do a wide variety of things. Role players are now, at a minimum, expected to shoot and defend and in many cases are also good passers, dribblers, guarding multiple positions, ect, ball handlers ect. Role players are not expected to be specialized, teams want role players who can do multiple things at a high level. It's basically impossible to get significant time on a good team as a "specialist." Additionally rule changes have made it so that
A. There are a greater variety of ways players can and hence are expected to attack
B. Defenders have to be good at different things to counter all he way these players can attack.

I don't see how you think players are more specialized now.

So looking at Harden last year for example I don't think he's top 5 (and maybe not top 6) if we teleport him to 1990 because at the top there was more talent. There's a lot more Dame and Jokic level guys now (or Chambers for a 1990 example).

Yeah, I don't see how harden or jokic's skillset is more limited than say, barkley's. If anything their passing and shooting make them more talented.

Anthony davis is, imo as skilled as anyone from the 90's or early 2000's. Generally offensive superstars are now more likely to be versatile scorers AND great passers while defensive superstars are now more likely to be able to both protect the paint and also switch around the perimeter.

What skills did older players have that we don't see in a variety of current players?

[Mavericksfan]

Hmm... Mind rephrasing that I don't quite get what you mean. I'm saying talent as in how good guys are at playing basketball.

Is it better as in, they got better relative to their contemporaries, or are you asserting that in a deeper league, the players at the top just got worse compared to where they were before?

Because if it's the former, then fine, but if it's the latter, I think them competing vs a deeper league is a much more logical explanation for them not being as high on the forum's all time list.

I think the league is deeper in terms of all star level players. I don't think they're deeper at the very top. Role players are basically the same IMO, just more heavily specialized and better utilized. For the most part the only time role players drop in quality is when expansion happens.

So looking at Harden last year for example I don't think he's top 5 (and maybe not top 6) if we teleport him to 1990 because at the top there was more talent. There's a lot more Dame and Jokic level guys now (or Chambers for a 1990 example).

At absolute worst I dont see how you could put Harden below top 3.

Magic/Jordan are the only 2 you could say were clearly better that year imo.