RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #13 (Jerry West)

[trex_8063]

2020 List
1. LeBron James
2. Michael Jordan
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
4. Bill Russell
5. Tim Duncan
6. Wilt Chamberlain
7. Magic Johnson
8. Shaquille O'Neal
9. Hakeem Olajuwon
10. Larry Bird
11. Kevin Garnett
12. Kobe Bryant
13. ???

This thread will likely turnover around 4pm EST on Monday.

Spoiler:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

[quote=”sansterre”].[/quote]

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

[getjeffrey]

I can see you've already gotten off on the wrong foot. Lebron #1. Please, don't make me laugh.

[No-more-rings]

No disrespect to West, Dirk and the rest but i think Oscar is the clear next guy here.

[Gibson22]

does my vote change the result? I edited it today (post #16), I think you missed it

[penbeast0]

No disrespect to Oscar, but I think Mikan is the clear next guy here. He was THE dominant player in the league for 8 years, less than 20 years before Oscar and West came in as the 3rd and 4th best players (though that should be adjusted for racism, it's still impressive dominance).

I have West and Oscar as the next two, though in the opposite order as I think West at his peak contributed more than Oscar with his spacing, defense, and ability to play different roles. Someone in the last thread listed ElGee's rankings of their best seasons and 4 of the top 5 were Jerry West. Oscar was healthier and posted more assists and rebounds, but in addition to spacing, defense, and versatility, West also had a longer prime by a year and a much stronger playoff resume (though Oscar was solid in his lesser opportunities).

1. George Mikan
2. Jerry West
3. Oscar Robertson

After that, I'm look at 3 vastly disparate names in David Robinson, Karl Malone, and Steph Curry though I am willing to listen to arguments for others.

[Odinn21]

13. Oscar Robertson
One of the greatest offensive players that ever graced the game and his defensive performance was not bad enough to hold him down against players like Moses, Erving, Erving and Garnett.
Based on so little knowledge compared to what we have for modern times, I'd go on a limb and say Robertson's performance in 1963 was the greatest individual performance against Bill Russell's Celtics. Better than Chamberlain's, West's and Baylor's. Surely, this is not a decider or a huge factor. Just wanted to mention and would like you to entertain this idea and hit me back with some feedback.

14. Moses Malone
I believe this will be my most controversial choice so far but I'm pretty confident in this pick.
His single season peak was tier 2 on overall for me. I'd put 1982 or 1983 Moses in the same tier as 2004 Garnett, even though I'd rate Garnett slightly higher. One of the things going for Moses though, his 3 season peak from 1980-81 to 1982-83 is definitely at the top level among the available names. He does not come short in peak, extended peak, prime and extended prime for me. His career resume is also massive.
He was one of the most skilled bigs on offense. His name rarely comes up among the best low post scorers but he literally had every move in his book and he was at least pretty good on some and great or best on most. Look at the players he thought; Hakeem Olajuwon and Charles Barkley. Also he was at least as good as old man Duncan from mid range.
The arguments against him usually go such as this;
- "He wouldn't be that good in the modern times which utilize PnR far more."
Portability is very important, yes. But, TBH, this is like saying Oscar Robertson did not shoot enough threes to me. Don't see the point of penalizing a player for a play style that was not there in his time.
Also, one of the things that gets easily overlooked while thinking about Moses' portability is that he's quite possibly the greatest foul drawing big. That would make wonders in any era. I don't have the exact numbers right now because BBRef made their play index service paid but I know that Moses Malone before fell out of his prime made young Hakeem Olajuwon fouled out in majority of their h2h games. I wrote the exact numbers in the past on the forum, if I find, I'll edit this part.
- "He was a negative impact on defense."
This is flat out wrong and it's not about some preference unlike the previous point. If Moses Malone was a negative impact on defense, then how did the Sixers improved on defense after losing their best defender in order to get Moses?
1982 Sixers; 7th in DRtg with -3.0 rDRtg
1983 Sixers; 5th in DRtg with -3.8 rDRtg
The thing about his defense was, he was inconsistent. He had bad defensive seasons and good defensive seasons, in the end both sides would cancel out each other and I'd put down Moses Malone as an average defender. But I never get the point of talking about him as if he was Nowitzki who got way more traction than him so far.
- "He was not an impact player."
This is also one of the wrong assumptions about him. I think I watched enough games of him to get the sense of a very positive impact player.
Also there was a Dipper 13 thread at the time, showing on/off Rtg numbers for the '80s Sixers. I'm looking for that, couldn't find it so far. If anyone has the link, it'd be appreciated.
Edit; Found it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZxRM9p2dFil5w6s21VEB4HnQZJymEY8_2vej-jREuUo/edit#gid=459687126
Just look at the numbers he had in '83 and '85 in Philly. (I tend to consider 1984 of Moses as something like 2005 for Bryant, a down year but also an outlier.)

The only aspect I'd hold against him is his passing. He was not a black hole, he was a decent facilitator. Though his passing lacked in some sense and you wouldn't see him those cutting passes to a guard under the basket. That type of stuff was the only major gap in his game for me.
His skillset was great, his scoring volume was great, he had the proper impact on offense, he's among one of the greatest rebounders. We usually overlook rebounding, the neutral aspect of the game, in this offense and defense evaluations. His defensive inconsistencies and passing issues are there to be addressed surely but, his great qualities are enough for me to put him on 13th spot.

15. Karl Malone
This spot was between Erving, West and Karl Malone for me.
Between the 3, I'd rank their peaks in Erving, West, Malone order. While Malone falls behind in peak, average prime level and postseason resilience categoris, for me he makes up more than that with his longevity. I'm aware that it was harder for Erving and West to have that many quality seasons in their career due to their times. What makes Malone's case is his constantly being that good over a decade. His 1st prime season was 1988 and his best season was 10 years after in 1998 at his 34. It's very hard to leave out Malone for top 5 prime duration. That makes his career value bigger than Erving and West for me.

[eminence]

I think Pen's persistence is getting to me... Mikan was probably the best player in the world for each of his 8 seasons, can anyone else left claim more than a season or two if that?

[Dr Positivity]

I was swayed on some arguments towards Malone based on defense and passing vs Dirk last thread, and he has the best longevity here, so I'll give a real look towards him.

Personally I think Oscar's Royals are an underperforming team for their talent, while I'm generally anti-using team results, I have concerns his teams didn't really have it emotionally and some of that falls back on the leader.

[trex_8063]

does my vote change the result? I edited it today (post #16), I think you missed it

Yes I did. In the future [everyone take note] if you go back and edit an old post (to either add arguments OR adding votes to it), please notify me (via pm or quoting me). Once I've tabulated votes on a page, I generally do NOT go back thru and re-tabulate. I have a tracking spreadsheet where I note that I've tallied "thru post #66" for example; so when I go back to count more, I pick it up after post #66.

fwiw, no, including your vote would not have altered the result: after eliminating Mikan, Dirk, and Oscar, Kobe would have had a majority of 13 to 8 (instead of 13 to 7).

[penbeast0]

I think Pen's persistence is getting to me... Mikan was probably the best player in the world for each of his 8 seasons, can anyone else left claim more than a season or two if that?

“This will be a day long remembered. (Soon all will join us)."

[mailmp]

I will reiterate: if you are using Elgee’s CORP as an argument for peak West above Oscar, it feels irresponsible to not be looking at / mentioning how much of the difference or advantage is because of his (arbitrarily numbered) port penalty/bonus. Their peak seasons are much closer prior to the port factor.

Anyway...

1. Oscar Robertson
I am not judging these players for what they would do in the modern league. West’s spacing would indeed be an innate advantage now — but I am judging them in the context of the entire history of the league, and I think Oscar had a clear step up throughout their careers that would likely carry over up to the more recent three-point explosion. I also am not penalising Oscar for a smaller playoff sample resulting from inferior teams and a dramatically more difficult conference. I do not think West really had much of a true playoff advantage, if any, and for the talk about Oscar’s teams missing postseasons (because of the aforementioned team and conference obstacles), West missing postseasons his team made is a much more severe issue. I see West as a good defender but not by an amount that offsets Oscar’s stronger offence or his longevity edge; his defence strikes me as Wade level, which is not much of a needle-mover this early in these discussions.

2. Dirk Nowitzki
I am inclined to agree with Ben that team construction may have overstated Dirk’s impact, but I also do think he undersold Dirk (and the evaluation he mentions at the end of his profile which would have put Dirk up to #14 is one I feel he should have followed). The inelasticity of Dirk’s playoff scoring is legendary and paralleled basically only by Reggie, and he is a clear choice above West as a consequence of West’s weaker longevity and injured postseasons.

3. Julius Erving
The on/off scolds border on having some of us believe that the three time NBA finalist 76ers probably would have been better off trading Erving and building around Bobby Jones and Maurice Cheeks (strangely I doubt this will come up with Dwight Howard). He was the best player of the ABA, was a top three player in the NBA until 1983, succeeded with varying rosters (please criticise the scalability of a player who led that mismashed 1977 76ers roster to the Finals ), had strong longevity, and was an excellent postseason performer throughout his career. People here can talk about winning bias, but if you flip his 1982 defeat of the Celtics with his narrow 1981 loss, he is probably locked in among most fans’ top fifteen.

[Cavsfansince84]

Something which has generally made me always keep West in my top 13-14 is how he was getting all defensive 1st teams into his 30's and even in his final season was 2nd team defense. Plus things like averaging 2.6 spg at the age of 35 when steals finally got recorded. So its quite possible he had a ton of seasons with over 3.0 steals per game. Which leads me to think he would have gotten about 10-12 all defense 1st teams had they existed in the 60's unless someone could argue he improved that much on defense over the course of his career.

[Doctor MJ]

Since I got my vote in so late last time I think I'll just quote myself here below while first posting my #13 ballot minus the already inducted Kobe Bryant.

Vote:
1. Jerry West
2. Oscar Robertson
3. Karl Malone

I think West is a monster. I think the more I learn about him, the more he seems like someone made up. The fact his arms were so long in an era decades before understood how significant and valuable that is, the fact that he thrived off-ball, the fact that it's utterly reasonable to see him as a top tier shooter at a variety of ranges, the fact that West's mind was so quick and intuitive on the court and yet has also had the best pulse on the game in the near half century since then.

For me the question with West is really more of whether I should have him higher than this.

I also think Oscar is something incredible, but it's more of a classifiable, quantifiable-as-bin kind of extraordinary-ness. , I think Oscar has an argument for being the point guard in history...I think West is a multi-dimensional outlier of a freak who we literally haven't seen anyone all that similar to him in the entire history of the NBA.

But being arguably the best point guard in history, is no small thing and there's also the matter that Oscar was literally the best offensive player in the NBA the moment he stepped on the floor as a rookie and was strong for a very solid longevity. It's not easy to move past him in my mind.

My third pick is Kobe. I'll say up front I won't answer questions about why I prefer other players to Kobe, but I will speak to why I chose him over other guys:

The main guy I was considering at this spot other than Kobe was Dirk. By +/-, Dirk is generally the more valuable guy and that's not just a regular season thing, it's a "always doing what's right for the team" thing that speaks to why Dirk remained valuable for Dallas after Kobe's time ceased to be.

These things are not nothing, but they aren't enough to move him past Kobe in my mind unless I really feel as confident about my ability to build a top contender around him as I do Kobe, and I'm not there. While I do think it took Dirk longer to become resilient against all defense than it did Kobe, the bigger concern for me is still defense.

I find the All-D accolades thrown at Kobe frankly pretty offensive, but while people overrated how effective Kobe was game-in-game-out, he wasn't a vulnerability offenses wanted to try to attack directly. Kobe was able to play great defense when locked in, and I value this more than I used to. It's a bigger deal in today's game, but it was always a thing, and I'd say I turned away from this rather obvious thing because of some emotional bias. It bothered me that people kept singling out Kobe for his defense when his actual play didn't warrant this. It still bothers me. All of those All-D awards are going to give people in the future the wrong ideas basically forever now.

But strip all the narrative out of it, if I'm building a contender, I'm happy to have Kobe on my defense for a lot of years.

I can't say the same for Dirk. That isn't everything, but it matters in a conversation where we're comparing him to someone with more traditional respect and more traditional success. I'm not a rings guy, but when comparing Guy A to a guy with X rings, I do find myself asking if I feel confident that I could build a team that would win X rings around Guy A. This is part of why it's really hard for me to put anyone ahead of Bill Russell.

I'm still more confident in Kobe.

But I'll say, while that debate took up the most space, that honestly doesn't mean that Dirk is my next guy after Kobe. Funny how that works, at least for me. I've mentioned Malone, Robinson, and Erving before, and it's not so much that Dirk earned his way "into the finals" against Kobe, but that Kobe's comparison with Dirk was the least clear.

Just to say a little on the other guys:

Malone - a mountain of a man and a mountain of minutes played. How you value longevity shapes how you rank him and I'm lower on longevity than some, but I'll admit to asking a question of "Now, do you really think X contributed more total value in his career than Malone?" that is really hard to answer and still makes me question whether I should really have Malone ahead of guys like Magic/Bird.

Robinson - I'm more infatuated with Robinson's game than Malone's. I think the way he was able to transition from volume scorer to #2 on offense, #1 on defense, while actively mentoring his successor is just beautiful. But the matchup with Malone himself looms in my mind and it's just hard for me to really push him above Malone.

Erving - the Aesthetic GOAT and one inspiration for my handle. Love him, but he has dropped in my eyes from a RealGM Top 100 perspective that, for me, is always informed by your actual impact. And to just speak plainly, I was shocked by Pollack's 76er +/- tracking and what it showed about him. The team really seemed to often do better with him on the bench.

I think you have to ask yourself what it means. Here's how I see it at this reflection:

I think that basically until the data ball era, teams and players were essentially wandering around in the dark in terms of actually knowing what was working. I think, for example, that Kobe Bryant represents essentially the last of the great pre-data ball era guys, and what we see with him is something similar to Erving in seeming to say that our traditional views overrate them.

But Erving's +/- numbers look dramatically more disappointing than Kobe's.

This does not mean that Erving wasn't an extraordinarily talented player.
This does not mean that Erving didn't scale well pretty dang well to playoff competition.
This does not mean that Erving wasn't a big piece on arguably the most dominant playoff team in the 20th century.

And most importantly it doesn't mean that his ABA years aren't amazingly good, which is the backbone of why I don't expect to drop Erving too much further.

[Joao Saraiva]

Votes
1. Jerry West
2. Karl Malone
3. Dirk Nowitzki

In the limited 60s and early 70s footage I've seen I gotta say: it's a pleasure to watch Jerry West! The game feels actual with him. His shooting skills and read on offensive setting is great to watch.

For a guy that played in an absolute non shooting era, he was a damn great shooter. He even lead the league twice in ts%, and that is something to take into consideration on how much he was ahead of his time.

He was a major playoff performer, and he flirted arround a 55 ts% for his career. He also comes very well on WS/48, and as the leading scorer of the playoffs.(PPG)

In a league with two GOAT candidates and another perimeter player of the highest caliber, I gotta say it's pretty impressive West has a case for being the best player of the year several years. Voted for #2 in the MVP run four times, he would usually raise his game in the playoffs.

I put him ahead of Karl Malone for playoff consistency, and even ahead of Dirk too. Dirk elevated his game in several playoff runs, but it's not like he hasn't some black marks here and there. I belive West was more consistent.

Also his longevity doesn't fall that far behind Malone and Dirk. In his 14 seasons, he was a legit great player in all of them.

I'm glad he got one championship in 72. He actually shot bad in those finals but his playmaking and read on offensive setting more than made him a positive there.

His most iconic moment however was the 69 finals, and he did put a huge game 7. Too bad luck wasn't on his side!

To sum it up:
- Good longevity with 14 legit seasons;
- Very good in the RS, #2 in the MVP voting 4 times in a league he had no business discussing the award with his style of play;
- Major playoff contributor. Elevated his game even more and has several years that with his consistency he could be considered player of the year;
- Great shooter, ahead of his time;
- Right reading in the offensive settings most of the time;
- very well deserved FMVP in a loss.

[Joao Saraiva]

I can see you've already gotten off on the wrong foot. Lebron #1. Please, don't make me laugh.

If you want to discuss the #1 spot on the list you can find that thread. Place is locked, but the thread remains open for discussion. We're now doing #13, so if you want to join the discussion for #13 please do. If not... well, comment on some thread more suited for what you want to discuss.

[Joao Saraiva]

No disrespect to West, Dirk and the rest but i think Oscar is the clear next guy here.

So what separated Oscar from West to you?

[Odinn21]

- Very good in the RS, #2 in the MVP voting 4 times in a league he had no business discussing the award with his style of play;

Shouldn't you be rewarding Robertson more than West if this is important for you? Since he actually won one? And he had further 1 second place and 3 third place finishes.

Since MVP's inception, these are the first 3 non-big players won the award;
Bob Cousy in 1957 (Russell's rookie season which he missed one third of season with 24 games and Chamberlain wasn't around.)
Oscar Robertson in 1964 (Right in the middle of Russell's and Chamberlain's prime, West and Baylor were also around and in their respective primes.)
Julius Erving in 1981.

- Major playoff contributor. Elevated his game even more and has several years that with his consistency he could be considered player of the year;

I'd like to see your PotY list because I can't think of a single one. Even in 1970, West's best season to argue for, Reed was better than West up until his injury.

- Great shooter, ahead of his time;

Being ahead of his time shouldn't matter this much.

- very well deserved FMVP in a loss.

This should be just an anecdote. We don't even know if they gave the award to West to reward his heroics. There were bunch of stories about the voters thinking the Lakers as the victorious. And there were bunch of other performances that could've gotten the award in losing situations. As a criteria, don't see the point of rewarding such an outlier.

Surely, West is a great pick here. Definitely among the contention and has a very strong case. Don't think I'd agree with these points though.

[DQuinn1575]

Since the argument is West vs Oscar, I guess we are lucky in that they played against each other.
https://stathead.com/tiny/jtzzZ
87 games -
Oscar 28.5 to West 27.7
For games with stat totals - West 53.5%TS/5.8 reb/7.0 asst
Oscar 53.7%TS/7.2 reb/9.6 asst
So Oscar outscored West with better TS%, outrebounded him and has a lot more assists. Head-to-head 87 games.
Oscar played 20% more RS minutes than West, due to West playing 118 less games- so Oscar winds up with 189.1 winshares versus West's 162.6

West is lauded for his superior post season play. In 14 years, he only had one win against a team with a better record - 2 wins less than the 1970 Hawks,
in a season where Wilt only played 12 games. So he really never beat a better team in the playoffs. Mostly they were able to make the finals because he had
a better team the the Royals, and he played in the conference opposite Boston.

Twice they both played Boston in the postseason -
Year ppg reb ast fg ft vs Bos
1963 West 29.5 6.8 4.5 49.0 75.8 4-2
1963 Oscar 33.4 12.4 8.6 48.5 89.2 4-3
1966 West 33.9 6.4 5.1 51.5 87.1 4-3
1966 Oscar 31.8 7.6 7.8 40.8 89.7 3-2

So 1963 Oscar looks better, 1966 West, but each looks pretty darn good against top competition.


1. Oscar
2. Dirk - great longevity, top tier offense
3. Mikan- Top 15 seems about right, if we didn't adjust for era, he would definitely be in the Top 5, so adjusting times 3 for era "seems" about right.
(put West behind these 3 for 4th -

[penbeast0]

1. Oscar Robertson
I am not judging these players for what they would do in the modern league. West’s spacing would indeed be an innate advantage now ...

I could care less about how a player from another era would play now or visa versa. West's spacing, the ability to shoot from 15+ feet away at such a consistently high percentage and volume, gave his teams a spacing advantage THEN, opening up inside space for Baylor, LaRusso, etc. as well as more space for him to slash to the basket.

[Dutchball97]

1. Jerry West - Oscar playing more regular season minutes is somehow important but the gulf in play-off resumes is completely disregarded because West had a better team? I've been critical of this approach the entire way through, since people were voting KG top 5 because of hypothetical scenarios and raw regular season production. West is one of the best and most consistent play-off performers ever but I guess that's winning bias, right? If people don't value proving yourself in the play-offs then what is the argument from Oscar voters to not vote D-Rob here? Jerry West is 11th in career play-off WS, while Oscar is 56th. That's not something you can just blame on a less ideal situation.

2. Kevin Durant - I see Karl Malone getting mentioned but he never peaked close to KD's level, whether in terms of regular season or play-offs. Voting for Malone here seems like it's just another longevity case. With someone like Dirk I'm just not seeing the consistency needed to be this high. Dr J is still an interesting case but another of questionable consistency. I did almost just defaulted to Oscar here but if I don't put Oscar ahead of West despite West missing play-off games due to injury, I can't justify putting KD below Oscar for that same reason. KD is just a much more proven play-off performer. Where Oscar only has a handful of meaningful play-off runs, whereas KD has been making waves in the play-offs his entire career and already has equal play-off WS than Dirk and Karl Malone who played much longer, while KD is already past them in play-off VORP. I can't penalize his durability too much when he did so much still.

3. Oscar Robertson - I'm starting to doubt this placement more and more as I go but I think he's comparable to KG careerwise so it makes sense to have them close in these rankings as well. Since I already have KD as my first alternate it does make sense to also look at Curry but his time on top has been rather short so he'll have to wait a few more spots.