Iverson vs Nash

[jdzimme3]

How is this thread still going?

Nash >>>>>> Iverson, obviously. I actually struggle to think of a legit contender team build where I'd even want any version of Iverson for any role on the team

Saying Nash was better is fair but no way I take him over iverson for that 01 sixers team.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

How is this thread still going?

Nash >>>>>> Iverson, obviously. I actually struggle to think of a legit contender team build where I'd even want any version of Iverson for any role on the team

Saying Nash was better is fair but no way I take him over iverson for that 01 sixers team.

the thing is that those sixers were not actually a legit contender.
anyway, if you take version that started the year, before the Mutombo trade, you can make a legit case to still take Nash.

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

[jdzimme3]

How is this thread still going?

Nash >>>>>> Iverson, obviously. I actually struggle to think of a legit contender team build where I'd even want any version of Iverson for any role on the team

Saying Nash was better is fair but no way I take him over iverson for that 01 sixers team.

the thing is that those sixers were not actually a legit contender.
anyway, if you take version that started the year, before the Mutombo trade, you can make a legit case to still take Nash.

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

So a team that made the finals and was the only squad to take a game of the lakers isn’t a legit contender? That series was closer than most remember and lynch being injured was a massive loss.

[freethedevil]

In the public's perception, Iverson was a Kobe-like superstar. Even a cursory glance at the statistics show that his play did not line up with his reputation. I also think that players put a much higher value on 1-on-1 skills than what the other things that help win games, and Iverson had exceptional 1-on-1 skills, and was a lot flashier, although Nash was a very exciting player as well.

This is true but of course the public overrates Kobe much like they AI, and for the exact same reasons. Meanwhile they drastically underrate Nash.

The public has fallen in love with basketball from an individualistic perspective, which is another way of saying that they fundamentally miss much of team basketball's actual skillset. It's honestly funny to me that there's never been a serious TV spectacle based around one-on-one tournaments. If the NBA at some point ends up dying, I could see a one-on-one or two-on-two social media-based league really taking over.

I don't think we can so easily dismiss that former/active players are on the other side, to be honest.

Read on Twitter

Sure we can. Arguments are worth consideration. Opinions, not so much.

[freethedevil]

Modern analytics has caused people to underrate Iverson and overrate Nash to the point that you'd think we were comparing Kawhi and Jamal Mashburn..

Overrated based on what? Have you extrapolated what the actual gap would be based on an unheard of substitute for the holistic value estimations you take issue with when comparing player's holistically?

Have you figured out what the average adherent to modern analytics thinks the gap is?

Or was this just sentence silly posturing completely absent of substance.

[freethedevil]

I think people under rate the luxury provided by being able to count on a single guy on one end of the floor. He wasn’t the most efficient but iverson alone was enough to produce a middle of the road offense. That allowed the team to build a terrific defense by focusing all other playerS on that end. Deke, Lynch, snow, mckie.... all the players around AI are there to build a terrific defense. No way you can build that defense without a guy who can carry the load night in and night out on the other end.

We should acknowledge that iversons efficiency was low in part because of what his role was and went up when he went to Denver and there was less reliance on him. Iverson is horribly underrated by realgm because of a failure to understand the situation and a propensity to believe that advanced metrics tell the whole story.

How valuable is a middle of the road offense when the goal is to win a title?

Hint: not very.

The 2019 raptors disagree.

[freethedevil]

All you had to do to beat Phoenix was not rush shots. The 7 seconds or less offence let you score so they could get back on offence. Any team that could put the ball in the basket inside would beat them. They were a regular season gimmick. It was very easy to solve them in the playoffs. So as great as they were there was always better.

Sent from my SM-N970W using Tapatalk

So you're blaming Nash, a 6'3" PG, for his team not being able to defend the paint against interior scoring threats?

That is why Iverson is better? Because Nash's teams couldn't defend big men and Iverson's could?

I don't know what any of what you said has to do with this comparison.

It's a comparison of the West and East. The West was tough for Phoenix not because of talent issues but because there was an inherent flaw in their system the best Western teams could exploit at any time.

Sent from my SM-N970W using Tapatalk

The west and east distinction is irrelevant. None of iverson's teams had any hope of winning a title. Three of Nash's teams did.

3>0 last I checked.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Saying Nash was better is fair but no way I take him over iverson for that 01 sixers team.

the thing is that those sixers were not actually a legit contender.
anyway, if you take version that started the year, before the Mutombo trade, you can make a legit case to still take Nash.

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

So a team that made the finals and was the only squad to take a game of the lakers isn’t a legit contender? That series was closer than most remember and lynch being injured was a massive loss.

Absolutely not, that was a team that was not passing the 1st round in the west.
This accomplishment of barely getting through the weakest EC of the last 25 years is ridiculously overrated. Moreover, it was such fluke...

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

[jdzimme3]

the thing is that those sixers were not actually a legit contender.
anyway, if you take version that started the year, before the Mutombo trade, you can make a legit case to still take Nash.

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

So a team that made the finals and was the only squad to take a game of the lakers isn’t a legit contender? That series was closer than most remember and lynch being injured was a massive loss.

Absolutely not, that was a team that was not passing the 1st round in the west.
This accomplishment of barely getting through the weakest EC of the last 25 years is ridiculously overrated. Moreover, it was such fluke...

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

Games 2 and 3 were decided by 9 and 5 points. The whole series is different if they pull one of those out. George Lynch was their premier wing defender, you don’t think having him to guard Kobe would have helped? Calling the 01 sixers a fluke is revisionist.

[rrravenred]

How valuable is a middle of the road offense when the goal is to win a title?

Hint: not very.

The 2019 raptors disagree.

13 of the last 20 Champs have had a top 5 (by ORtg) offence.

Lowest was (predictably) the Pistons, ranked 18th.

Also out of that top-flight offence were the 2010 Lakers (11th) and Boston (10th)

(This does include in-season fluctuation, of course. Peaking at the right time of year is a liiiiiitle crucial when it comes to a championship)

[HeartBreakKid]

So a team that made the finals and was the only squad to take a game of the lakers isn’t a legit contender? That series was closer than most remember and lynch being injured was a massive loss.

Absolutely not, that was a team that was not passing the 1st round in the west.
This accomplishment of barely getting through the weakest EC of the last 25 years is ridiculously overrated. Moreover, it was such fluke...

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

Games 2 and 3 were decided by 9 and 5 points. The whole series is different if they pull one of those out. George Lynch was their premier wing defender, you don’t think having him to guard Kobe would have helped? Calling the 01 sixers a fluke is revisionist.

You think the 01 Sixers would have been a force in the West? Come on now.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Games 2 and 3 were decided by 9 and 5 points. The whole series is different if they pull one of those out. George Lynch was their premier wing defender, you don’t think having him to guard Kobe would have helped? Calling the 01 sixers a fluke is revisionist.

well, hard to call me revisionist when I've been saying the same thing for 20 years...
anyway, how is this not a fluke?
- never got close to repeat this achievement again
- survived two extremely close game 7 series, where opponents arguably choked
- those opponents never repeated similar playoff runs for more than a decade
- the year after a new, equally mediocre, team started dominating the EC for two years, once Kidd started replicating his Suns teams results in the east

If this is not a fluke I don't know what is

[Owly]

So a team that made the finals and was the only squad to take a game of the lakers isn’t a legit contender? That series was closer than most remember and lynch being injured was a massive loss.

Absolutely not, that was a team that was not passing the 1st round in the west.
This accomplishment of barely getting through the weakest EC of the last 25 years is ridiculously overrated. Moreover, it was such fluke...

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

Games 2 and 3 were decided by 9 and 5 points. The whole series is different if they pull one of those out. George Lynch was their premier wing defender, you don’t think having him to guard Kobe would have helped? Calling the 01 sixers a fluke is revisionist.

If a team keeps its six point win, and turns around a 9 or 5 point win, maybe the games where they were crushed would have been different ... hmmm. Given the context Lakers showing multiple years of dominance or capacity for dominance when healthy (and better when tightening rotation) and the 76ers of that era never reaching +4 SRS and only twice reaching +2 ('01, '99) fits with a finals points margin significantly in the Lakers favor.

And no one game versus a great team doesn't make you anything except good on that day.

[jdzimme3]

Absolutely not, that was a team that was not passing the 1st round in the west.
This accomplishment of barely getting through the weakest EC of the last 25 years is ridiculously overrated. Moreover, it was such fluke...

Sent from my SM-N975F using RealGM mobile app

Games 2 and 3 were decided by 9 and 5 points. The whole series is different if they pull one of those out. George Lynch was their premier wing defender, you don’t think having him to guard Kobe would have helped? Calling the 01 sixers a fluke is revisionist.

If a team keeps its six point win, and turns around a 9 or 5 point win, maybe the games where they were crushed would have been different ... hmmm. Given the context Lakers showing multiple years of dominance or capacity for dominance when healthy (and better when tightening rotation) and the 76ers of that era never reaching +4 SRS and only twice reaching +2 ('01, '99) fits with a finals points margin significantly in the Lakers favor.

And no one game versus a great team doesn't make you anything except good on that day.

Ah yes, second best record in the league. Makes it to the finals. But just good on that day.

[Owly]

Games 2 and 3 were decided by 9 and 5 points. The whole series is different if they pull one of those out. George Lynch was their premier wing defender, you don’t think having him to guard Kobe would have helped? Calling the 01 sixers a fluke is revisionist.

If a team keeps its six point win, and turns around a 9 or 5 point win, maybe the games where they were crushed would have been different ... hmmm. Given the context Lakers showing multiple years of dominance or capacity for dominance when healthy (and better when tightening rotation) and the 76ers of that era never reaching +4 SRS and only twice reaching +2 ('01, '99) fits with a finals points margin significantly in the Lakers favor.

And no one game versus a great team doesn't make you anything except good on that day.

Ah yes, second best record in the league. Makes it to the finals. But just good on that day.

You appear not to have understood your own point.

So a team that made the finals and was the only squad to take a game of the lakers isn’t a legit contender?

You make two points one of which is that taking a game off a team (i.e. a single game) is a noteworthy mark of a contender rather than mostly noise, and massively insufficient to make any such claim.

Then you misunderstood my last point. There is no "just" about it. Using a single game as a serious measure for any team's contender status would be wrong. The earlier points that the series points margin and the difference between the two teams performance over a larger sample match well stands entirely independently.

But regarding your broader point here, as implied above, SRS is a better measure of quality (and a more accurate measure of future performance) than W-L record, using, as it does, points margin rather than merely binary W-L, and a team's schedule to account for opponent difficulty (if hypothetically one were in a soft conference). Imperfect of course (it lacks contextual information, for instance it doesn't know that the Lakers missed Fisher, had spells without their big two and coasted in that RS), but undoubtedly superior to W-L.

[Rapcity_11]

I think people under rate the luxury provided by being able to count on a single guy on one end of the floor. He wasn’t the most efficient but iverson alone was enough to produce a middle of the road offense. That allowed the team to build a terrific defense by focusing all other playerS on that end. Deke, Lynch, snow, mckie.... all the players around AI are there to build a terrific defense. No way you can build that defense without a guy who can carry the load night in and night out on the other end.

We should acknowledge that iversons efficiency was low in part because of what his role was and went up when he went to Denver and there was less reliance on him. Iverson is horribly underrated by realgm because of a failure to understand the situation and a propensity to believe that advanced metrics tell the whole story.

How valuable is a middle of the road offense when the goal is to win a title?

Hint: not very.

The 2019 raptors disagree.

They had the #5 offense in the league.

[freethedevil]

How valuable is a middle of the road offense when the goal is to win a title?

Hint: not very.

The 2019 raptors disagree.

They had the #5 offense in the league.

And that regressed to nuetral during the playoffs.

[Owly]

The 2019 raptors disagree.

They had the #5 offense in the league.

And that regressed to nuetral during the playoffs.

Could you clarify by what measure?

Is a "middle of the road offense" (or neutral) what a league average offensive team would be expected to do against the specific defenses faced (based on their RS Drtgs, weighted for games played)?

Median among playoff teams?

Mean among playoff teams (either proper, minute-weighted or just averaging the teams' Ortgs)?

Ortg circa RS league average?


Not saying this is wrong, but not sure there is a clear standard so it would be helpful to cite your methodology/source.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

The 2019 raptors disagree.

They had the #5 offense in the league.

And that regressed to nuetral during the playoffs.

I am sure you adjusted to opponent strength in your analysis, didn't you?
A stat like this requires A LOT of context to be used with playoffs data.
All this non considering the obvious fact that an average offence among PO teams is NOT and average NBA offence, given the sample.

[Ron Swanson]

Modern analytics has caused people to underrate Iverson and overrate Nash to the point that you'd think we were comparing Kawhi and Jamal Mashburn..

Overrated based on what? Have you extrapolated what the actual gap would be based on an unheard of substitute for the holistic value estimations you take issue with when comparing player's holistically?

Have you figured out what the average adherent to modern analytics thinks the gap is?

Or was this just sentence silly posturing completely absent of substance.

Maybe read the rest of the post(s) and the subsequent points brought up instead of cherry-picking one sentence and pretentiously calling other people's arguments as having "no substance"? I've made my position pretty clear on this topic and I'm not gonna write another essay about it.