RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #3 (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)

[Mazter]

3. Kareem
4. Duncan
5. Russell

Hmm, all the criticism Russell is getting are valid in my opinion, I had him at 4th spot but I'm dropping him to 5. This favors Duncan. I think they are about equal in defense. At least the difference in defense is not bigger than the difference in offense. Also Russell playing in an era where the NBA is not by far the most dominant league works in favor of Duncan. Longevity I have them about equal, 13 seasons in the 60's against 16/17 this century. Kareem beats both of them. A lesser defender but superior offensively throughout the years. 6 MVP's, 6 rings and all time scorer will do the rest for me.

[Dr Positivity]

What is the difference people see in a comparison of KAJ and Duncan. Duncan's peak you can put up against anyone in history and to my estimation they have a comparable prime. I guess KAJ has a longevity advantage but not by too much I think.

Thoughts?

I view Kareem as peaking higher. Duncan's scoring game is good not great in my opinion compared to some other players at this level.

[70sFan]

I also want to point out one thing - if we assume that Russell wasn't that much of a passer, was turnover prone and hurt Celtics offense, then what does it tell about Auerbach as a coach, who built their offense around Russell? I think we can all agree that Russell wasn't used properly on offense and if his team had excellent offensive talent indeed - then why Red (who's called a great coach in this thread) destroy it by giving Russell the ball? Why didn't he build offense around all this perimeter talent?

You can't have both things - either Red wasn't a good coach or Celtics didn't have that much offensive talent. I think that both arguments put Russell's offense in positive light because he was never used in proper way.

Russell was playing 44-48 mpg most seasons, so Boston needed to find a way to make him do something of use on offense... and Russell was a notoriously poor scorer/shooter, so Red might have thought the best way to make him useful was to actually turn him into a passing hub. That makes more sense than feeding Russell the ball as the primary option scorer or completely ignoring him on offense. Yes, once Cousy/Sharman/Ramsey got older in the early 60's, the new guard outside of Sam Jones wasn't awfully talented on offense, so the Celtics were kind of 'damned if they did, damned if they don't'.

Still, i'm not sure how this paints Russell's offense in a positive light? Russell had offensive talent on his roster in the late 50's/early 60's and once he was anointed as player/coach of the Celtics at the end of his career, and he still couldn't find a way to be a great offensive player or a lead cog in producing elite offenses, so i'm not sure what more you want? Do you want Russell to play besides a lineup of Oscar Robertson, Sam Jones, John Havlicek and Elgin Baylor for him to be used 'the proper way' on offense?

Russell wasn't poor scorer though, he was mediocre but in big part because of how he was used offensively. His worst scoring seasons came when he became more oriented to high post passing, which isn't something you wouldn't expect - he wasn't a good shooter.

I also wouldn't blame Russell for his coaching years - he took a lesser role on offense than with Red, his teams just weren't good enough to play elite offenses. Old Jones, Hondo and Howell are good, but there wasn't much offensive talent behind them eapecially considering that Russell was old and regressed as a finisher.

I'm sure that Russell would become far more efficient player in modern offensive system. It's not like he was Ben Wallace - he could finish through traffic, had decent post moves, could handle the ball and was a nice passer even if overrated by assist numbers. His biggest strengths - offensive rebounding and finishing - weren't utilized to the same degree they would be today. Nobody says that Russell would be offensive superstar in 2020, but he wouldn't be a 48 TS% scorer either.

[Doctor MJ]

What is the difference people see in a comparison of KAJ and Duncan. Duncan's peak you can put up against anyone in history and to my estimation they have a comparable prime. I guess KAJ has a longevity advantage but not by too much I think.

Thoughts?

For perspective here, consider their Adjust Shooting TS Add that bkref now has:

Kareem +4718.8
Duncan +1009.4

Basically, Kareem was giving you a lot more value-add relative to his peers based strictly on how success he was at making his shots, and while some of that was do to lower efficiency standards in the old day, on an absolute sense Kareem was more efficient than Duncan.

I tend to say that if I'm really looking to build a great offense I don't build around Duncan, just as I say that for every classic big.

Kareem is one of the plausible exceptions because he was really quite efficient at what he did, and that's really what makes the Kareem vs Duncan debate pretty straight forward to me. I think Kareem's considerably stronger as an offensive player.

I should be clear that I'm not taking TS Add too seriously when comparing guys across era, despite the fact that you could argue that's precisely what it's for. As the league gets more efficient, it's hard to get TS Add. Harden's TS Add goes down from '15-16 to '17-18 despite increasing both volume and efficiency, which really shows how ramped up the efficiency arms race is nowadays.

[Clyde Frazier]

What is the difference people see in a comparison of KAJ and Duncan. Duncan's peak you can put up against anyone in history and to my estimation they have a comparable prime. I guess KAJ has a longevity advantage but not by too much I think.

Thoughts?

For perspective here, consider their Adjust Shooting TS Add that bkref now has:

Kareem +4718.8
Duncan +1009.4

Basically, Kareem was giving you a lot more value-add relative to his peers based strictly on how success he was at making his shots, and while some of that was do to lower efficiency standards in the old day, on an absolute sense Kareem was more efficient than Duncan.

I tend to say that if I'm really looking to build a great offense I don't build around Duncan, just as I say that for every classic big.

Kareem is one of the plausible exceptions because he was really quite efficient at what he did, and that's really what makes the Kareem vs Duncan debate pretty straight forward to me. I think Kareem's considerably stronger as an offensive player.

I should be clear that I'm not taking TS Add too seriously when comparing guys across era, despite the fact that you could argue that's precisely what it's for. As the league gets more efficient, it's hard to get TS Add. Harden's TS Add goes down from '15-16 to '17-18 despite increasing both volume and efficiency, which really shows how ramped up the efficiency arms race is nowadays.

I hope as we get deeper into the project the bold is noted when looking at say production over the last 3-4 seasons. I'm not making a blanket statement that all stats are inflated and there's no way a player could just be "better" now, but it's trending that way in some areas. ElGee comes to mind as someone who's done a good job at accounting for that in their player evaluation recently. I think their videos will be pretty useful as a reference this time around.

[That said, I love that bball ref finally added that feature. It was a long time coming to say the least.]

[dontcalltimeout]

Found a pretty cool visualization of league quality. It was developed by Kevin Pelton when he was creating his "championships added" metric in 2016. I think it is consistent with most people's intuitions.

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/14671128/explaining-championships-added-all-nba-rank-kevin-pelton

Adjusting for league quality
The last stop of the process is adjusting for how quality of play has evolved in the NBA over time. When I was ranking the top teams of all time last June, I used an adjustment based on whether players saw more or less playing time from one season to the next after accounting for aging.

That version worked well at the team level as far as dealing with expansion and the merger, but it doesn't seem to reflect the improvement of the league over time. Given the increased size of the player pool the NBA now draws from with the growth of the game internationally, it's hard to believe quality of play is really worse now than in the 1980s.

The solution turned it to be considering minutes played year over year without the aging factor. That results in the following graph of league quality dating back to 1946-47 and relative to 2014-15.

Now growth is apparent throughout the NBA's history, most rapid in the early years before expansion and relatively steady since the merger. (The red line reflects quality of play in the ABA, which started out several decades behind the NBA but nearly caught up by the time of the merger.)

[Doctor MJ]

Vote:

1. Bill Russell
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Kevin Garnett

I think the discussion about Russell is largely already in the thread so I'll try to keep this short.

The Celtics did more winning in Russell's years than anyone has done in any major sport before or since.
They did so with defense.
Bill Russell is considered by absolutely everyone to be by far the MVP of the defense.
In Russell's peak years, he was playing every meaningful minute while everyone else was platooned, which tell you that there was only one essential piece here.

On top of this his Celtics supporting cast has gotten overrated for a variety of reasons. It's not that they were a bad supporting cast, but the time to make arguments that Russell beat Wilt because of supporting cast was in the early '60s. Back then it was a plausible argument. It has not been a plausible argument since. Wilt got his super teams. No dynasties ensued. It clearly wasn't that simple.

It has to be understood that Russell played defense differently than Wilt or anyone else because of his combination of length, quickness, and intelligence. And that in the era he played, that was the cheat code. Neither Wilt nor West nor Oscar was able to have the same kind of offensive impact that Russell was on defense, and it wasn't close.

I'm currently struggling to decide where I should rank Russell because I've come to accept that the difference between his era and later eras can not be described merely as rule and strategy changes. Guys have become much better shooters specifically to avoid having to clash with someone like Russell. Once they did that, the peak potential impact of a defensive player dropped below the potential impact of an offensive player and the game has largely been offense-dominated ever since.

That's real and a reason for possible lowering Russell in the rankings.

The skepticism toward Russell really having impact though? Nah, that was real, and if you think about it it's pretty far fetched to imagine another causal scenario. How can you expect to have a defensive system which relies on your big to be present in all meaningful minutes and not expect everything about that defense's effectiveness to be dependent on that big? And how can you conclude Auerbach's defense was anything other than that when Russell was the one he was choosing to depend upon while letting everyone else rest?

To say that the Celtic success was not primarily about Russell is to say Auerbach was a lucky, confused fool. And of course, nobody anti-Russell ever says that because it would just be absurd to knock both the defensive star and the defensive architect while talking about the greatest defensive dynasty (and overall dynasty) in history.

Kareem's my next spot, clearly he'll win here. Good for him, a worthy choice for any of the top 4 spots.

Finally, KG.

Honestly, I think if you're looking for one conversation on this, go listen to the Thinking Basketball podcast where ElGee and drza go back and forth on Duncan vs Garnett:

Thinking Basketball: Duncan vs. Garnett | Andre Snellings, Great Debates

We've had a ton of conversations along these lines over the years and I've personally gone back and forth multiple times.

And maybe I will again here. I expect we'll have a number of threads to go over this as I seriously doubt KG gets the #5 slot or anything all that close to it.

My thoughts in a nutshell:

Duncan was the past, Garnett was the future.
Duncan's way would be less competitive today, Garnett's way would be better capitalized on today by the average coach.

The odd thing is that despite this Garnett was already more impactful than Duncan by many measures. I can argue that among guys from the '60s Jerry West would be the best pro today because of the evolution of the game, but part of why it's worth bringing up is that he so clearly wasn't quite the #1 guy from his era when he actually played. This is not the case for KG.

Win KG was winning that MVP in 2004, no one saw Duncan as a tier above KG. That separation came over the next 3 years when Duncan's team won 2 more titles and Garnett's team fell apart. The vast majority of basketball folks have never gone back and done a full accounting of how their opinions were shaped by this, but some of us on here have and that's why we surprised ourselves at gave KG the nod.

[Doctor MJ]

Responding to some stuff from thread #2 here.

Spoiler:

(ETA: lol, TRex called the thread while I was typing this. I thought about that possibility and went to make a 'placeholder' post, but when I last hit 'preview' I saw that TRex had called the thread a minute earlier, so...yeah. I guess this whole post will be "after the final whistle", as it were. I'll also probably recycle the lion-share of it for my first Russell vs Kareem post next thread, so it can be seen. C'est la vie!)


Count me as another for whom the 2-day window makes things difficult. I understand the reason for it (and am not even arguing against it), I'm just pointing out why in this (and likely future) threads I may miss the actual heart of the argument. I'd intended to go for a big "Jordan vs Russell" post here, with MJ's entry a foregone conclusion (and LeBron already in) I figured this might be my only opportunity to do this. On the other hand, this thread is effectively over so I don't know if it's worth it to put in the time to really dig in at this point. :Shrugs: Let's just free-write and see where this goes.

I was the other person wanting a longer window. I'm here for the discussion more than the result, and once a player is inducted, comparisons to him mostly leave the conversation. It's unfortunate and makes me feel like these threads are sometimes incomplete.

Vote (I know it's too late, but for posterity. Also, like last time, limiting my vote to players that have gotten legitimate mention thus far):

1. Russell
2. Jordan
3. Duncan

I know you've championed KG as much as any one. Is the emphasized line why you haven't voted for him or has your evaluation changed? I'm very tempted to vote for KG as one of my three votes in this next round.

The former. For a couple reasons. For one, I've learned in past projects that KG can be polarizing, and I don't want to derail the discussion by bringing him into the votes unless/until I get a sense that people are ready to be receptive. Plus, of course, I've written a lot of KG content on here through the decades (I'm so old). But I haven't written a lot about LeBron vs MJ, or Russell vs MJ, or even Russell vs Kareem. So, I'm also exploring some of these while I'm here.

All that said, you know I think he's worthy of mention/votes anywhere in this project. And, like you, I'm in it for the discussion way more than the vote. So, I'm really looking forward to seeing your thoughts if/when you do start talking KG

Well I jumped in the pool. The water's cool and refreshing.

[Sublime187]

What is the difference people see in a comparison of KAJ and Duncan. Duncan's peak you can put up against anyone in history and to my estimation they have a comparable prime. I guess KAJ has a longevity advantage but not by too much I think.

Thoughts?

For perspective here, consider their Adjust Shooting TS Add that bkref now has:

Kareem +4718.8
Duncan +1009.4

Basically, Kareem was giving you a lot more value-add relative to his peers based strictly on how success he was at making his shots, and while some of that was do to lower efficiency standards in the old day, on an absolute sense Kareem was more efficient than Duncan.

I tend to say that if I'm really looking to build a great offense I don't build around Duncan, just as I say that for every classic big.

Kareem is one of the plausible exceptions because he was really quite efficient at what he did, and that's really what makes the Kareem vs Duncan debate pretty straight forward to me. I think Kareem's considerably stronger as an offensive player.

I should be clear that I'm not taking TS Add too seriously when comparing guys across era, despite the fact that you could argue that's precisely what it's for. As the league gets more efficient, it's hard to get TS Add. Harden's TS Add goes down from '15-16 to '17-18 despite increasing both volume and efficiency, which really shows how ramped up the efficiency arms race is nowadays.

Great insight. Thanks Doc.

[Doctor MJ]

Do people believe Russell would've won more titles than Kareem if he played in his shoes?

I'm more inclined to say that I don't believe Kareem would have won as many championships on the Celtics as Russell did.

That might seem like I'm moving the goal post, but I tend to focus my player comparison debates based on the person who appeared to accomplish more. I struggle to put anyone above Russell because I think so few players could have ever led as dominant of a run as Russell did even in their dream circumstance.

I do think that strategically things really didn't change that much from the last 60s through the 70s in the NBA. Some teams did some stuff that was super interesting and effective, but we're not talking about the same type of rapid obsolescence that we saw in the early NBA or during the databall era. I feel like Russell could largely be Russell had he come in the league 15 years later.

I am inclined to say that Russell even as he was doesn't win the early championships if his team is starting from scratch, and I think Kareem's scorer makes him a better floor raiser. But I think you could build a solid offense with time and have a major championship contender without any, say, Oscar or Magic level players on the roster.

This is another way to say that I think Russell could have relatively easily won more than 1 championship in the '70s.

Would he have maintained his value deep into his career the way Kareem did to allow him to win 5 more chips in the '80s? Probably not as well as Kareem did. Russell aged very well given that his dominance relied things like agility, but Kareem could probably hit that skyhook over NBA competition still to this day.

[PistolPeteJR]

I was posting and then closed it by accident -.-
Sorry for not posting in #2 by the way, crazy weekend...

1) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2) Bill Russell
3) Wilt Chamberlain

Top-5 peak, terrific defender in his long prime, especially the chateaubriand of his prime, and just all-in-all, a winner. Only 2 FMVPs, and that really has me hurts him from being #2 in my books. The longevity with that kind of production is peak, and the only guy up there with him on that front is LeBron. A measure of consistency, never being on a team below 49 wins I believe if memory serves me correctly.

We all know about his accolades so not much more need be said on that front.

Bill Russell comes ahead of Wilt for me because him and the Celtics (I want to be careful not to say it was simply Russell despite him being the main reason) that stopped Wilt and his squads multiple times. There's no way that Russell can be slotted ahead of Wilt seeing how much success he had against him, and the sample size is not minuscule in the slightest.

[SeniorWalker]

I had a few down days to participate but probably wont have much time going forward.

Anyway, I will vote Russell at 3 and Kareem at 4.

[Clyde Frazier]

I had a few down days to participate but probably wont have much time going forward.

Anyway, I will vote Russell at 3 and Kareem at 4.

FYI you need to provide some reasoning for your Russell pick and provide a 3rd vote for someone after Kareem.

[penbeast0]

Found a pretty cool visualization of league quality. It was developed by Kevin Pelton when he was creating his "championships added" metric in 2016. I think it is consistent with most people's intuitions.

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/14671128/explaining-championships-added-all-nba-rank-kevin-pelton

Adjusting for league quality
The last stop of the process is adjusting for how quality of play has evolved in the NBA over time. When I was ranking the top teams of all time last June, I used an adjustment based on whether players saw more or less playing time from one season to the next after accounting for aging.

That version worked well at the team level as far as dealing with expansion and the merger, but it doesn't seem to reflect the improvement of the league over time. Given the increased size of the player pool the NBA now draws from with the growth of the game internationally, it's hard to believe quality of play is really worse now than in the 1980s.

The solution turned it to be considering minutes played year over year without the aging factor. That results in the following graph of league quality dating back to 1946-47 and relative to 2014-15.

Now growth is apparent throughout the NBA's history, most rapid in the early years before expansion and relatively steady since the merger. (The red line reflects quality of play in the ABA, which started out several decades behind the NBA but nearly caught up by the time of the merger.)

This is a pretty reasonable estimate (meaning I generally agree with it. )Most surprising thing for me isn't the NBA part of the line but how the ABA line trends upwards sharply from 75 to 76. They did concentrate talent as teams failed and their players were redistributed but that meant poor unit cohesion plus VA was so incredibly all-time awful (who wants to coach the team this week?). I always think of 75 as the ABA's peak.

[SHAQ32]

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Some hiccups in his resume but he peaked much higher and for way longer than Tim Duncan.

2. Tim Duncan

3. Wilt Chamberlain
Peaked as high or higher than anybody in this project, but there's so much static in his resume that I can't ignore it in relation to Duncan. There's also the era at play as well.

[Owly]

... as Wilt got players like Greer, Walker and Cunningham. Wilt's Sixers team is every bit the talent that Russell's overpowered Celtics was supposed to have

Walker and Cunningham didn't peak until the 70s and weren't high level contributors until '67 (they won that year and then were crippled by injuries in '68). Even if you credit Russell as the main force in the dreadful supporting cast shooting in '66 it seems a tad mean to tout their talent.

and that's before he changed teams again to play with a player in West who's easily better than anyone Russell played with. It doesn't matter if Baylor and the rest of the Lakers was flawed - it's Wilt with another top 15 player in history, that's devastating talent wise (and for the record I'm skeptical of just discounting Baylor who was very good under van Breda Koff, he might still be one of the best 3rd best players in history)

I would posit that it very much does matter about flaws in fit and in talent 3 through ... at least 8 depending on coach, injuries, threshold for "mattering". How could it not?

I don't see why he has to be worse than say 2014 Noah on offense.

Well assuming one is somewhat high on Noah's offense (and that was an ugly Bulls offense).

1) We know that the Bulls played significantly better offensively with Noah on the floor.
2) We know that whilst not being super low usage (18.7) he shot slightly below league average TS% (.531 versus .541) in a league increasingly oriented towards perimeter players as the offensive stars.
3) We know his assist% as genuinely exceptional for a center. An imperfect tool across eras to be sure and that his team was considerably less turnover prone with him on the floor.
4) We know Noah spaced the floor somewhat by taking a moderate volume (.183 of fgas) with a fairly solid accuracy (.397) from 16ft to 3.

It's unclear which editions of Russell this addresses but
1) We don't know this for Russell. Some numbers posted in this thread suggest the opposite.
2) Russell played in a league which allowed many centers to score efficiently. Versus his starter minutes peers he tended towards the very bottom of the pile in usage and TS%.
3) Russell assisted quite a lot for his day (at least in the latter years of his career, though he is then increasingly inefficient versus league norms). I would suggest he does not stand out like Noah and is unlikely to have been leading to reduced turnovers (at best no evidence he helped here).
4) Russell's ugly FT% (iirc 18th worst in NBA/ABA history among those with 1000 or more attempts). combined with infrequent shooting bodes ill for him having any spacing effect.

None of this should necessarily preclude him from being here at 3, but I do disagree with the reasoning offered here.

[TheGOATRises007]

I've gone back and forth, but I'll still go Kareem.

I think Russell had ideal circumstances and Kareem for most of his prime did not. I don't think Kareem would do worse than Russell if they switched places.

Russell's defensive impact is immense(best ever), but I don't think it outweighs Kareem's 2-way impact. He was a GOAT level offensive player, while being a great defender too. Russell's offense is impactful, but I still think the offensive impact is lacking to make up the ground.

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

2. Bill Russell

3. Wilt Chamberlain

[Owly]

I also want to point out one thing - if we assume that Russell wasn't that much of a passer, was turnover prone and hurt Celtics offense, then what does it tell about Auerbach as a coach, who built their offense around Russell? I think we can all agree that Russell wasn't used properly on offense and if his team had excellent offensive talent indeed - then why Red (who's called a great coach in this thread) destroy it by giving Russell the ball? Why didn't he build offense around all this perimeter talent?

You can't have both things - either Red wasn't a good coach or Celtics didn't have that much offensive talent. I think that both arguments put Russell's offense in positive light because he was never used in proper way.

I think you can have both.

Sidenote: "Around" Russell, in the Auerbach era isn't without contention. Russell doesn't become team assist leader until his first year as coach. 64-66 K.C. out assists him each year whilst playing about 72% of his mpg.

Auerbach can be a great coach overall (from the start of the BAA to '66) and be unsophisticated and sub-optimal in his offense (even granting sacrificing O for D) by the end of his career, that's even assuming we're granting he did build an offense around Russell (even if, like Pen, I think more of him as a GM).

[Owly]

Do people believe Russell would've won more titles than Kareem if he played in his shoes?

I'm more inclined to say that I don't believe Kareem would have won as many championships on the Celtics as Russell did.

Presumably this means, on average - given, say, 1000 runs through - rather than imagining one certain unavoidable history (or perhaps there's something else, another framing).

That then raises the question do you think Russell would typically feature on 11 (or better) title teams?

[Hornet Mania]

I'm with the majority in believing Kareem is the next-best player.

The difference between Duncan and Russell to me comes down to offensive ability. Russell was probably a superior defender but the gap was likely not very wide, whereas Duncan could give a team much more on offense. In terms of intangibles it feels like they're basically a wash. Both were fantastic leaders, set a great example by having no ego and putting winning first, and basically never led a bad team. In terms of temperament and reliability Duncan and Russell might be the two best all-time. I give Duncan a very slight edge.

Next up I'm favoring Shaq (GOAT peak) and Magic (GOAT offensive player). Both had their warts but at their best I think they played at a level no one aside from the aforementioned and already ranked players reached. Tbh I was very tempted to put Magic over Russell just because I believe he lifts team offense like no one else and I'm a bit skeptical that Russell could dominate at the same level in a later era. But in the end I think regardless of concerns he might not be able to translate his dominance Russell's accomplishments are just too great to let slide any further.

My votes:
1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2. Tim Duncan
3. Bill Russell