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

[Doctor MJ]

Doc, if Oscar had never went to Milwaukee I might understand your criticism of Oscar failing to lead a revolution (though even in '68 he was a half point behind West in terms of results). As is I'm a bit lost, he went there, and immediately led a spectacular offense the likes of which the league had never seen before.

Here are the +3 offenses each led (I'm not giving Oscar '72/'74 though still a key part of those offenses too) along with the other two +5 offenses through the end of their careers

1. +6.7 1971 Oscar
+5.4 1967 Sixers
2. +5.2 1972 West
*+5.0 1954 Celtics
3. +4.9 1968 West
4. +4.7 1962 Oscar
4. +4.7 1969 Oscar
6. +4.4 1965 Oscar
7. +4.3 1964 Oscar
7. +4.3 1968 Oscar
9. +3.8 1965 West
10. +3.5 1961 Oscar
10. +3.5 1963 Oscar
12. +3.4 1966 West
13. +3.3 1964 West
14. +3.0 1969 West

First thing I should be clear is that what Oscar did in Milwaukee impresses me. It's definitively a positive thing, and specifically shows that he can be more of a pass-first point guard.

But the team had a 102.1 ORtg the previous year with Flynn Robinson as the lead assister, and only went up to 103.9 the next year with Oscar. That's not a huge difference. I understand wanting to look at rORtg and all of that, but if we simply gave Oscar 1.8 points worth of offensive credit, that wouldn't be that impressive would it? Now add in that Kareem was actively getting better from year to year.

I want to be clear that I'm not holding this against Oscar like he did something wrong, but we also need to remember that there's not really any hard and fast reason why offenses back then couldn't have gotten considerably better than 103.9, which nowadays we would consider an incompetent offense. As such, looking at 103.9 as "as good as you could possibly hope for" doesn't sit right to me.

Trading for Oscar coincided with the Bucks moving form the 2nd best offense in the league to the best offense in the league. A good thing, but not necessarily anything we wouldn't expect on paper.

And it does have to be emphasized that both in general consensus at the time, and I think by common sense now, the guy leading that previously #2 offense has to be brought up when we note that "Oscar actually played on a better offense than any West played on." I think your chart is essentially showing that West was the 1st option of 2 offenses that were better than any offense Oscar was the best 1st option on.

As I say all of this, you can throw back some similar criticisms in the other direction with Laker teams that seemed to be less than the sum of their parts. I'll acknowledge that and let people tee off on that as they like. I'm not thinking that I'm proving West > Oscar, I'm just saying, the stuff I credit Oscar for, I also feel like I pretty much to credit West for too. Oscar did it earlier and thus longer, and feel free to use that as the basis for your decision, but it means something to me that when all is said and done, I'd draft West in probably any era of basketball over Oscar.

[penbeast0]

...

#3. George Mikan - I hate including Mikan at all. The game that long ago is hard to compare. But if we're treating him as a legitimate option, then a player that played at that world-beating level, even if only for a handful of seasons, needs to be considered seriously here.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” – Darth Vader

[penbeast0]

'... and then I do not see West’s 1972-74 West having much of an edge over 1971-74 Oscar at all because, again, guess who was there the whole time (but even if you just get rid of Oscar’s worst year of those four, I still do not think West is really topping him by much).

Let's get rid of 74 for both as Oscar's decline accelerated and West was injured most of the year, neither were difference makers.

72 West 38.6mpg, 4.2reb, 9.7 ast (led league), 25.8 pt, .546 ts%,
73 West 35.7mpg, 4.2reb, 8.8ast, 22.8pts, .533ts%

72 Oscar 37.3mpg, 5.0reb, 7.7ast, 17.4ppg, .540ts%,
73 Oscar 37.5mpg, 4.9reb, 7.5ast, 15.7ppg, .511ts%

Both are definitely down from their peaks but I see a distinct difference between these two sets of numbers. Oscar is still a very good player, but West has a clear and pretty large advantage.

[70sFan]

There is one problem I have with this "West led the best offense in history in 1968" with comparison to Oscar. When we look at rORtg, Lakers were visibly better at +4.9 compared to Royals +4.3.

We know that West missed a lot of games in 1968 and it certainly hurt their overall ORtg. How much? We don't know, but here is how they performed with and without him:

Lakers with West: 33-18 (53 wins pace)
Lakers without West: 19-12 (50 wins pace)

Unless you think that Lakers were better without West on defense (which is highly unlikely), LA were very strong offensive team even without him. It's unlikely that their offense collapsed without him. I'd expect Lakers offense to be clearly above average without West (as I said many times, Baylor had his last dance in that season and this team was very talented offensively overall). Having someone like Baylor as a floor raiser certainly helps, so my point is not that West didn't have large impact - he definitely had.

Oscar didn't miss nearly as much games, but he did miss significant time as well. Here are Royals stats with and without him:

Royals with Oscar: 35-30 (44 wins pace)
Royals without Oscar: 4-13 (19 wins pace)

Again, Royals were already terrible defensively so I don't expect them to be much worse without Oscar on that end. This leads us to conclusion that their offense had to be much worse without Oscar. In fact, the difference in offensive ratings doesn't seem that big when you see how bad Royals were without Oscar.

Does it mean that Oscar was better offensive player than West? Not necessarily, but it shows how much different their situations were in that season. You can praise West for leading historical offense at that time, but you have to keep in mind that Royals were damn close to Lakers despite being significantly worse without Oscar than Lakers without West.

[mailmp]

Since it came up, Gail Goodrich was the first option on the 1972 Lakers. Granted it was close, but saying it was West is strictly inaccurate.

I'm just saying that if there's any notion that West didn't show himself to be extraordinarily capable as a passer beyond the vast majority of volume scorers, there's clear evidence suggesting otherwise.

To the notion of it being only one season, with regards to career achievement I get that, but if we're talking about skills and capacity, it doesn't matter what fraction of a player's career he did something if we have evidence to suggest he was capable of doing it in general.

It kind-of does when you start extrapolating past the outlier context. West lead an excellent offence under an innovative system with a good roster. That is not proof of elite passing — or at least no more than that shown by 1970 Lou Hudson or 2009 Brandon Roy. Yes, West was a top tier passer for volume scorers, but such a stipulation is meaningless. So was Karl Malone, but I am not going to say he was close to Jokic.

I don't consider "additive" to be a meaningful descriptor here, just personally. To me great passing should be in effect multiplicative (or choose whatever non-linear function you prefer). You're trying to unlock opportunities for your team based on what you see in any given moment, and when you have multiple guys on your team who can do this, it presents a more qualitative increase in what's possible for your team.

This is pure linguistic pedantry.

I think it does have to be noted that the offenses that Oscar led were literally ineffective compared to those that would come later. He deserves plenty of credit for being the most effective offensive player in the game for first half decade or so of his career, but this was a time ripe for further revolution. It should not be suggested that Oscar was doing everything definitively in the best possible way, only that he had first rate passing abilities, both in vision and execution.

In the end, I'm hard pressed not to say something similar about West.

Okay, and now we get back to imposing coaching strategy onto players... The Lakers implement a Princeton offence and skyrocket, and somehow West gets all the credit? You know in the past vein of Wilt criticisms, why did it take so long? If players are supposed to intuitively push the envelop, why did it take until 1968?

I really do not buy this notion of it being better to peak late than to peak early. The fact Nash elevated late his career is not a positive; it just is. West peaked later than Oscar and outperformed him when he did. Why does that matter? At best you can get into an argument of which player would have been more effective had they not retired, but they did, so really all that matters is the sum total of their career; not which peak falls which way on their career arcs. Karl Malone and Dirk peaked later in their careers than Duncan and Garnett, but no one cares. Aldridge arguably had his peak season in 2018. Lowry peaked late. Going with late career understanding is not the worst consideration — although by rights that all should show up in their real impact — but that is yet another bit where it just feels more like a retroactive justification, unless you really want to start locking yourself in to deep analyses of which players in this project “understood the game” more.

[70sFan]

To be fair, I think that West was better passer than most volume scorers. He was true PG in that matter, especially in the second part of his career. When he was young he was more of a volume scorer who took advantage of his gravity, but as he got older he became legitimate floor general.

[mailmp]

'... and then I do not see West’s 1972-74 West having much of an edge over 1971-74 Oscar at all because, again, guess who was there the whole time (but even if you just get rid of Oscar’s worst year of those four, I still do not think West is really topping him by much).

Let's get rid of 74 for both as Oscar's decline accelerated and West was injured most of the year, neither were difference makers.

72 West 38.6mpg, 4.2reb, 9.7 ast (led league), 25.8 pt, .546 ts%,
73 West 35.7mpg, 4.2reb, 8.8ast, 22.8pts, .533ts%

72 Oscar 37.3mpg, 5.0reb, 7ast, 17.4ppg, .540ts%,
73 Oscar 37.5mpg, 4.9reb, 7.5ast, 15.7ppg, .511ts%

Both are definitely down from their peaks but I see a distinct difference between these two sets of numbers. Oscar is still a very good player, but West has a clear and pretty large advantage.

And what about 1971? This is again the problem with West. Everyone wants to dismiss Oscar’s Bucks years (even though in 1973 he showcased he still had the ability to perform in the postseason), but the reality is West basically lost two seasons at the end of his career, and Oscar did not. Pretty much any neutral analysis would acknowledge that Oscar gained notably more career value in his final four years than West did, and yet...

Some of these votes try to get so cute with rejecting perception. 1961-65 Oscar has a strong edge. 1967, 1971, and 1974 he has a substantial edge. 1971 he has a complete edge. So West’s arguments come down to 1966, 1968-70, and 1972-73. The first three years of which Oscar was still generally perceived as the superior guard (even if retroactively we disagree), and the later two of which West had clearly lost a step or two. And mind you Oscar was never bad (he led the league in scoring for one of those years and continued to lead top of the league offences); he was just on a gradual decline. So what exactly indicates that West’s advantage in those years was so incomparably massive that they completely eclipsed Oscar’s edge every other year of their respective careers?

[DQuinn1575]

Oscar won one. All right.

He was 2nd once.
3rd 3 times.

West was 2nd four times.
3rd once.

There is no big gap there even if we add the MVP award for Robertson.

About the voters not even knowing that Boston won... I don't buy that. West was clearly the best player of the series.

About Reed... we're living again in the world of could and would but did not do. That's why I don't rank Oscar over Jerry West - oh he could have done very well in the playoffs... or KG... he could have done this and that... yeah, but they didn't.

So you don't see a case for 66 West being the best player in the league?

Being ahead of his time doesn't matter... to you. I think it shows how great of a scorer West was, since he had a type of game that was not designed for that era and he still was among the elite and playing superb in the playoffs.

No, Wilt was clearly the best player in 1966,
and Oscar and West were basically even, West got a couple of more votes for MVP, but the stats are real close.

And Oscar beat West EVERY year in MVP voting from 1961-1968 except 1, where it was real close. And in 1969, Oscar was 1st team all-NBA, while West was 2nd.
I checked the Sporting News in 1966 to see their Player of the Year voting, which was not given. But in talking about Oscar, it said,
"Robertson, generally considered as the greatest all-around player in the NBA, because if he cant find clearance to score himself, he can spot a teammate who will." This is just a typical comment of the time, you can find many contemporary quotes that Oscar was the best all-around player of the 60.

Ok.

Still think there is an advantage on playoff West over Oscar during that time.

And why count only till 68 when they played both further than that? (Until 74)

West was the better player 1970-1973. In 74 he only played 31 games, while Oscar was 3rd best player in runner-up. So they played 14 years, Oscar was better player in at least 9 (giving West 66, 70-73).
Oscar played 20% more minutes- that’s basically 2+ seasons.
As stated in previous posts the playoff gap isn’t that big; basically west made more finals because of the conference and never beat a better team in the post season. Oscar’s numbers are fairly similar in playoffs, better in regular season, and he played a lot more

[eminence]

Doc, if Oscar had never went to Milwaukee I might understand your criticism of Oscar failing to lead a revolution (though even in '68 he was a half point behind West in terms of results). As is I'm a bit lost, he went there, and immediately led a spectacular offense the likes of which the league had never seen before.

Here are the +3 offenses each led (I'm not giving Oscar '72/'74 though still a key part of those offenses too) along with the other two +5 offenses through the end of their careers

1. +6.7 1971 Oscar
+5.4 1967 Sixers
2. +5.2 1972 West
*+5.0 1954 Celtics
3. +4.9 1968 West
4. +4.7 1962 Oscar
4. +4.7 1969 Oscar
6. +4.4 1965 Oscar
7. +4.3 1964 Oscar
7. +4.3 1968 Oscar
9. +3.8 1965 West
10. +3.5 1961 Oscar
10. +3.5 1963 Oscar
12. +3.4 1966 West
13. +3.3 1964 West
14. +3.0 1969 West

First thing I should be clear is that what Oscar did in Milwaukee impresses me. It's definitively a positive thing, and specifically shows that he can be more of a pass-first point guard.

But the team had a 102.1 ORtg the previous year with Flynn Robinson as the lead assister, and only went up to 103.9 the next year with Oscar. That's not a huge difference. I understand wanting to look at rORtg and all of that, but if we simply gave Oscar 1.8 points worth of offensive credit, that wouldn't be that impressive would it? Now add in that Kareem was actively getting better from year to year.

I want to be clear that I'm not holding this against Oscar like he did something wrong, but we also need to remember that there's not really any hard and fast reason why offenses back then couldn't have gotten considerably better than 103.9, which nowadays we would consider an incompetent offense. As such, looking at 103.9 as "as good as you could possibly hope for" doesn't sit right to me.

Trading for Oscar coincided with the Bucks moving form the 2nd best offense in the league to the best offense in the league. A good thing, but not necessarily anything we wouldn't expect on paper.

And it does have to be emphasized that both in general consensus at the time, and I think by common sense now, the guy leading that previously #2 offense has to be brought up when we note that "Oscar actually played on a better offense than any West played on." I think your chart is essentially showing that West was the 1st option of 2 offenses that were better than any offense Oscar was the best 1st option on.

As I say all of this, you can throw back some similar criticisms in the other direction with Laker teams that seemed to be less than the sum of their parts. I'll acknowledge that and let people tee off on that as they like. I'm not thinking that I'm proving West > Oscar, I'm just saying, the stuff I credit Oscar for, I also feel like I pretty much to credit West for too. Oscar did it earlier and thus longer, and feel free to use that as the basis for your decision, but it means something to me that when all is said and done, I'd draft West in probably any era of basketball over Oscar.

If I were simply categorizing Oscar as a +2 offense type, then yes, that wouldn't be very impressive. But for a number of reasons I'm thinking of '71 Oscar as notably higher than that (I'd say around +5). League average offense dropped 2 pts as the league went from 7 teams at 100+ to only 2 (the Bucks at 103.9 and the Bulls at 100.5) from '70 to '71. The West/Wilt/Goodrich Lakers were over 5 pts behind in the same league (98.8).

Categorizing West as the clear #1 in '72 seems foolish (especially given playoff performance), I would absolutely put Oscar in '71 at the same level of offensive lead as West.

[eminence]

West was the better player 1970-1973. In 74 he only played 31 games, while Oscar was 3rd best player in runner-up. So they played 14 years, Oscar was better player in at least 9 (giving West 66, 70-73).
Oscar played 20% more minutes- that’s basically 2+ seasons.
As stated in previous posts the playoff gap isn’t that big; basically west made more finals because of the conference and never beat a better team in the post season. Oscar’s numbers are fairly similar in playoffs, better in regular season, and he played a lot more

Important to note imo, Oscar absolutely had the more valuable '71 as well given West missing the playoffs. I think Oscar was quite arguably better when healthy prior to the injury too, the team gap was titanic when looking at the talent level of those squads.

[Doctor MJ]

There is one problem I have with this "West led the best offense in history in 1968" with comparison to Oscar. When we look at rORtg, Lakers were visibly better at +4.9 compared to Royals +4.3.

We know that West missed a lot of games in 1968 and it certainly hurt their overall ORtg. How much? We don't know, but here is how they performed with and without him:

Lakers with West: 33-18 (53 wins pace)
Lakers without West: 19-12 (50 wins pace)

Unless you think that Lakers were better without West on defense (which is highly unlikely), LA were very strong offensive team even without him. It's unlikely that their offense collapsed without him. I'd expect Lakers offense to be clearly above average without West (as I said many times, Baylor had his last dance in that season and this team was very talented offensively overall). Having someone like Baylor as a floor raiser certainly helps, so my point is not that West didn't have large impact - he definitely had.

Oscar didn't miss nearly as much games, but he did miss significant time as well. Here are Royals stats with and without him:

Royals with Oscar: 35-30 (44 wins pace)
Royals without Oscar: 4-13 (19 wins pace)

Again, Royals were already terrible defensively so I don't expect them to be much worse without Oscar on that end. This leads us to conclusion that their offense had to be much worse without Oscar. In fact, the difference in offensive ratings doesn't seem that big when you see how bad Royals were without Oscar.

Does it mean that Oscar was better offensive player than West? Not necessarily, but it shows how much different their situations were in that season. You can praise West for leading historical offense at that time, but you have to keep in mind that Royals were damn close to Lakers despite being significantly worse without Oscar than Lakers without West.

You're drilling down a layer and I appreciate that.
I'll drill down another layer with what I can quickly assemble. If I go simply by PPG rather than estimated ORtg/DRtg:

All 82: For 121.2, Against: 115.6
West: For 125.2, Against: 116.3
no West: For 114.6, Against: 114.4

I'll leave that for folks to analyze rather than get into the details with West vs Oscar, but I think that's likely to resonate with at least some, and perhaps you'll drill down further and come up with counterpoints, but it sure looks to me like West was having a profound impact on the team and offense.

[Doctor MJ]

If I were simply categorizing Oscar as a +2 offense type, then yes, that wouldn't be very impressive. But for a number of reasons I'm thinking of '71 Oscar as notably higher than that (I'd say around +5). League average offense dropped 2 pts as the league went from 7 teams at 100+ to only 2 (the Bucks at 103.9 and the Bulls at 100.5) from '70 to '71. The West/Wilt/Goodrich Lakers were over 5 pts behind in the same league (98.8).

Categorizing West as the clear #1 in '72 seems foolish (especially given playoff performance), I would absolutely put Oscar in '71 at the same level of offensive lead as West.

I would note that the Lakers had basically the same ORtg from '69-70 to '70-71, and that the worst team in '69-70 had an SRS of -4 while in '70-71 had expansion teams checking in at -6, -8, and -12 SRS respectively.

This ties into why I'm very cautious about using rORtg (and rDRtg) when looking at year-to-year improvements. It's fine as a first pass when comparing teams from different eras, but when you do it year-on-year you essentially give a team like the Bucks extra credit for getting to feed on inflation.

If you're making a point about a West-led team performing "5 pts behind", well you should make of it as you will, but I've been pretty loud about how freaking problematic I found Wilt's attitude when he arrive at the Lakers. The offense got worse when Wilt arrived and continued to have issues until Bill Sharman came in and essentially got Wilt the way vBK wanted him to play in the first place. So you can count the lack of elite offense in those years against West, but from my perspective this was at least partially about Wilt gumming up the works.

Re: first option. Goodrich scored slightly more while taking a far smaller playmaking role. West was the one dictating that offense more than Goodrich. If you want to say Goodrich was the 1st option simply because he was the leading scorer okay, but I consider West to have been the lead offensive player on those teams and I've never been under the impression that this was much of a debate for people.

[Magic Is Magic]

Voting for the #13 spot:

1. Jerry West
2. Oscar Robertson
3. Dirk Nowitzki

I know Jerry only has one ring but there is a reason he is the literal logo of the NBA for crying out loud--this guy was so great he won a Finals MVP on the losing team. With something like that being the 1st and only time it ever happened, plus with him having so many Finals scoring records it's an insane combo. It would be a travesty to not include him on this list in the range of 11 to 15 just because he lost a bunch of Finals. Even making it to 9 Finals is hard enough and when I think about that, the only guys that made 9 or more are all already top 10 anyway: LBJ, KAJ, Russell, Magic

Oscar Robertson is one of those guys that is hard to rank, but what isn't hard to rank is his ability to be an elite level all around player. He was a 12x all star and led the league in assists 6x. Oscar also averaged a triple double for a full season BEFORE it was cool. He was one of those truly all around players that could shoot, pass, and rebound at a high level.

This spot is hard and I can admit I could be swayed but I find it hard not to include Dirk in this spot. Dirk does have his blunder as a favorite (1 seed to 8 seed loss) but most all all-time greats have at least one series where they lose as a favorite. What Dirk does have in his resume is everything an all-time great needs to be considered all-time great. He has longevity, he has an MVP, he has a ring, he has a Finals MVP, he also is a great +/- playoff performer among the cream of the crop.

Additionally, 30,000 points and 10,000 rebounds with a championship over Wade, Lebron, and Bosh is hard to argue against. Most of the guys someone would argue over Dirk do not have all the accolades that Dirk has: Karl Malone (no ring), George Mikan (no longevity), David Robinson (no Finals MVP), but again, I can admit I could be swayed but I find it hard not to include Dirk in this spot.

[penbeast0]

And what about 1971? This is again the problem with West. Everyone wants to dismiss Oscar’s Bucks years (even though in 1973 he showcased he still had the ability to perform in the postseason), but the reality is West basically lost two seasons at the end of his career, and Oscar did not. Pretty much any neutral analysis would acknowledge that Oscar gained notably more career value in his final four years than West did, and yet...

Some of these votes try to get so cute with rejecting perception. 1961-65 Oscar has a strong edge. 1967, 1971, and 1974 he has a substantial edge. 1971 he has a complete edge. So West’s arguments come down to 1966, 1968-70, and 1972-73. The first three years of which Oscar was still generally perceived as the superior guard (even if retroactively we disagree), and the later two of which West had clearly lost a step or two. And mind you Oscar was never bad (he led the league in scoring for one of those years and continued to lead top of the league offences); he was just on a gradual decline. So what exactly indicates that West’s advantage in those years was so incomparably massive that they completely eclipsed Oscar’s edge every other year of their respective careers?

71 Oscar was still strong, All-NBA level (5.7/8.2/19.4@.563ts%). . . and West's numbers are actually clearly superior (4.6/9.5/26.9@.571ts%). This is your "complete edge," which was a good and very competitive year for both (Oscar's scoring is lower due to playing with Kareem, but then West's 62-68 numbers were put up playing with Elgin Baylor while Oscar had undisputed primacy on his team).

Oscar declined in 72-74 to below All-Star level, West stayed All-Star for 2 more years before being injured in 74. You say West lost 2 years at the end of his career, is that 72 (4reb, 9ast, 24pts in 77 games) or 73 (4reb, 9ast, 23 pts in 69 games) that you say is a "lost year?"

For that matter I think you overstate the "STRONG edge" in 62 to 65 when West averaged 30, 27, 29, and 31 ppg while being one of, if not the, best defensive guards in the league. Those were the years West was playing both PG and off guard so his assist number don't stack up against Oscar's; nor does his rebounding totals. His counter is defense, greater outside shooting/spacing, and that his role wasn't yet to be the pure point. Both were superstar scorers.

I have it as a strong edge for Oscar in 62, close competition for a decade after that through 71, and a clear edge for West in 72-73, with 74 being basically irrelevant to a greatness argument for either. I don't think there are particularly strong edges for either in those intervening years though some swing Oscar's way, and some West's. The key is how you perceive their overall body of work, not trying to add up years anyway.

[Joao Saraiva]

No, Wilt was clearly the best player in 1966,
and Oscar and West were basically even, West got a couple of more votes for MVP, but the stats are real close.

And Oscar beat West EVERY year in MVP voting from 1961-1968 except 1, where it was real close. And in 1969, Oscar was 1st team all-NBA, while West was 2nd.
I checked the Sporting News in 1966 to see their Player of the Year voting, which was not given. But in talking about Oscar, it said,
"Robertson, generally considered as the greatest all-around player in the NBA, because if he cant find clearance to score himself, he can spot a teammate who will." This is just a typical comment of the time, you can find many contemporary quotes that Oscar was the best all-around player of the 60.

Ok.

Still think there is an advantage on playoff West over Oscar during that time.

And why count only till 68 when they played both further than that? (Until 74)

West was the better player 1970-1973. In 74 he only played 31 games, while Oscar was 3rd best player in runner-up. So they played 14 years, Oscar was better player in at least 9 (giving West 66, 70-73).
Oscar played 20% more minutes- that’s basically 2+ seasons.
As stated in previous posts the playoff gap isn’t that big; basically west made more finals because of the conference and never beat a better team in the post season. Oscar’s numbers are fairly similar in playoffs, better in regular season, and he played a lot more

Good points. I'll wait for some vote counting. If it comes down to it I might think about including Oscar in there at least. If it is irrelevant, I'll think about that for next thread.

[eminence]

If I were simply categorizing Oscar as a +2 offense type, then yes, that wouldn't be very impressive. But for a number of reasons I'm thinking of '71 Oscar as notably higher than that (I'd say around +5). League average offense dropped 2 pts as the league went from 7 teams at 100+ to only 2 (the Bucks at 103.9 and the Bulls at 100.5) from '70 to '71. The West/Wilt/Goodrich Lakers were over 5 pts behind in the same league (98.8).

Categorizing West as the clear #1 in '72 seems foolish (especially given playoff performance), I would absolutely put Oscar in '71 at the same level of offensive lead as West.

I would note that the Lakers had basically the same ORtg from '69-70 to '70-71, and that the worst team in '69-70 had an SRS of -4 while in '70-71 had expansion teams checking in at -6, -8, and -12 SRS respectively.

This ties into why I'm very cautious about using rORtg (and rDRtg) when looking at year-to-year improvements. It's fine as a first pass when comparing teams from different eras, but when you do it year-on-year you essentially give a team like the Bucks extra credit for getting to feed on inflation.

If you're making a point about a West-led team performing "5 pts behind", well you should make of it as you will, but I've been pretty loud about how freaking problematic I found Wilt's attitude when he arrive at the Lakers. The offense got worse when Wilt arrived and continued to have issues until Bill Sharman came in and essentially got Wilt the way vBK wanted him to play in the first place. So you can count the lack of elite offense in those years against West, but from my perspective this was at least partially about Wilt gumming up the works.

Re: first option. Goodrich scored slightly more while taking a far smaller playmaking role. West was the one dictating that offense more than Goodrich. If you want to say Goodrich was the 1st option simply because he was the leading scorer okay, but I consider West to have been the lead offensive player on those teams and I've never been under the impression that this was much of a debate for people.

First option bit - this was only in reference to a really poor playoffs from West, Cousy levels of 'efficiency'. I consider West the offensive lead of those Lakers overall. I also consider Oscar the clear offensive lead of the '71 Bucks.

I don't really see the Bucks offensive evaluation as legit, nobody else managed to feast on the expansion like they did. Oscar quite clearly led the best offense in the league by a huge margin, even if you don't think it's clearly the GOAT offensive team to that date like RelOrtg would suggest. It's at least on par with West's best team offensive accomplishment.

'Gummed' this makes some sense to me, but to me when I look at West's career it seems more likely than not his team's offense is going to be 'gummed' (merely good, not great like the talent might suggest). A hint towards his skillset potentially being more easily thrown off of high impact. When things go right he hits Oscar's levels (you'd say a level higher I believe, but I'm saying equal), but things don't go right all that often.

Sidenote - maybe I should've been a bit harder on Wilt for his/West Laker's time together, cause looking at them/the talent around them it looks like a pretty abject failure overall, 1 title in 5 years and then Wilt pretty much quitting on the team.

[2klegend]

1. Durant
2. Oscar
3. West

I was going to vote for Oscar but after deep thought, I have to put Durant already at #13 despite an ongoing NBA career. His resume is already impressive with 2 titles and an MVP. Being close to a 7 footer with handle and shooting ability, Durant is an ultimate scoring machine if he really focuses on scoring. I will not penalize him for chasing that 2 titles as a Warrior as it is the rule of this era to win at all cost, like Lebron, he deserves that 2 titles because he did perform at a high level and his team will likely not win without him.

[Odinn21]

I wouldn't quite put Paul at the very top of minds like this because to me he doesn't adapt to his teammates like you'd want. The Cliippers were supposed to be Lob City. When you come to a team with young Griffin and Jordan, you should be looking to attack in transition like crazy if you're a point guard who can truly do it all. Instead Paul and does what Paul likes: Play slow, look to eek out small advantages with low risk.

What I meant was not necessarily adaptability. More like some thing like this;
Remember when James was talking about check my (box) numbers to show how great he was.
In a way, Paul did it by +/- numbers.

But you're asking about Wade here, and I do see Wade as someone more like Erving/Durant and less like Paul. I think Wade had a simple game that worked best when he had his motor on full blast, and because his decision making instincts were largely in the right direction, you generally don't see a lot of wasted effort from him...but that doesn't mean he was super-flexible in what he could do. Maybe he had the brain for most things and was just limited by things like shooting ability, but by and large I don't see Wade as being in the conversation for smarter players the way Paul is.

Wade wasn't as tricky / crafty as Paul but he capitalized on his strengths more greatly. So, I guess this is about different interpretations of smart players.

Wade is definitely in debates with guys like Paul, Durant, and Barkley for me. I'm not sure how I'm going to come down on things.

This is what I wrote in Barkley-Wade thread.

Barkley's peak was arguably higher. We can argue that Barkley's average prime level was also better.
But more importantly than those, his prime was longer.
I consider 2005-06 / 2010-11 time frame as Wade's prime and he missed 83 games in that span. Played in 409 games (469 if playoffs included).
Barkley's prime was from 1988-89 to 1995-96 for me and he missed 86 games. Played in 580 games (658 with playoffs).
We can talk about Wade's 2004-05, 2011-12, 2012-13 seasons as his extended prime. But not only those seasons are comparable to Barkley's 1986-87, 1987-88 and 1996-97 seasons, Wade's those seasons were hampered by injuries once again.
I really don't see Wade's case over Barkley.

Wade's prime being short and too injury riddled makes him lower ranked than Barkley if one could argue that he was on Barkley's level as a player or even better. It just didn't happen.

MVP is never a great showing of quality, though in a time MVP was percieved as the best player award more than now, Barkley was on the same level with Jordan, Magic and Olajuwon which were all voted in way before him.
We can talk about how perception is different now, there's a lot more coming from hindsight, MVP being flawed, etc. But I still can't think of a reason that would put Barkley so far behind of Magic and Jordan in 1990, and Jordan and Olajuwon in 1993. I just fail to see Wade, Durant, Curry and Paul forcing those names for PotY title like Barkley did.

With longer prime and better average prime quality, I have Barkley and the other 4 in different tiers.

(Nowitzki's existence makes the gap between those 2 tiers a bit blurry though. Wade vs. Nowitzki and Nowitzki vs. Barkley, both are legit questions those can go both ways.)

I do think at this point that Paul has a clear cut edge over Wade on longevity, and so given what I've already said, I feel a pull to put Paul over Wade.

I feel a dilemma about Paul and Wade. Paul's prime duration and overall longevity are better than Wade's ones. On one hand, his prime was even more hampered than Wade's by injuries. On the other one, he did not match Wade's 2006, 2009 and 2010 seasons. If I think of top 5 and/or top 10 seasons between the two, Wade's clearly superior to me.

On Durant vs Wade, this one's interesting. As with the Paul comparison, Durant has an advantage in seeming to scale better than Wade. Being a 7 footer who is a fantastic shooter, fantastic in isolation, and quite capable on defense, gives you some advantages over shorter guys. But when it comes to the franchise player thing, Wade has a glaring advantage over Durant. Sure things likely would have been different in OKC if they'd won an early championship and Wade and the Heat were profoundly lucky to get that '06 title, but we can no longer pretend that Durant is just "normal" personality-wise compared to other superstars. His insecurity and tendency toward grudges is a serious problem, and if you're looking to draft Durant vs Wade, you absolutely need a plan to coddle Durant much like you need to with Shaq or Wilt. And at least so far, it seems likely that even when you coddle him, he's still going to become unhappy and rip your heart out.

Durant vs. Wade, that's definitely Wade for me. Simply put, if Durant were as good as Wade, he wouldn't have the need to move to enjoy an environment that he wasn't part of in its development phase. Not just talking about intangibles in here. Wade was one of the better playoff performers, almost always rose to the occasion - especially against very tough defenses. Durant was not only among worse, he was among the worst of his calibre. If Durant had Wade's quality and resilience, he would've done better in OKC.

On Barkley: Similarly, it's hard to see drafting Barkley above Wade. There are just issues there with his effort and explosive temper that are going to be hard to manage and will likely result in spotty effort from him. While I don't think Barkley has the same kind of insecurity that Durant does, and he absolutely doesn't hold a grudge the way Durant does, I do think Durant's game is more potent and effort isn't the same level of concern for him the way it is for Barkley.

Barkley sure is another problematic superstar. For example I went with Abdul-Jabbar over Jordan and James as my goat because he had far better intangibles. I definitely see the appeal of that aspect. But I wouldn't say performance wise Barkley and Wade were as close as Abdul-Jabbar and James for intangibles to make a difference. Barkley's performance and level should make him superior to Wade IMHO.

What all this means is that I expect to have Barkley below these other guys mentioned.

Well, we're going in opposite ways on Barkley then. I have him over those 4 and you have him below. Wonder if one of us reasons will cause a change.

While I'm at it I'll bring up Nash. I don't know where I'll put him, but I'll say that Nash vs Paul is very much an open question for me. I've thought for a long time that Paul would eventually have such an edge on Nash in longevity that he'll definitively take the comparison, but it's still never been that clear cut for me.

You know that I'm not as high as you on Nash. But I definitely see his case to be mentioned for top 25. I wouldn't agree but the gaps are already very hazy. Nash's career had a unique trajectory. He wasn't the player as we tend to rate and rank very highly until his 2nd spell in Phoenix. He was 30 by that point. Impact wise, he had massive 5 seasons in there. Surely great but is it enough? His overall longevity doesn't strike me as top notch despite his age and impressive box numbers in Dallas. Also, his defensive impact was always on the negative. He was not even an average defender at his defensive best. That's quite an issue for him.

[DQuinn1575]

If I were simply categorizing Oscar as a +2 offense type, then yes, that wouldn't be very impressive. But for a number of reasons I'm thinking of '71 Oscar as notably higher than that (I'd say around +5). League average offense dropped 2 pts as the league went from 7 teams at 100+ to only 2 (the Bucks at 103.9 and the Bulls at 100.5) from '70 to '71. The West/Wilt/Goodrich Lakers were over 5 pts behind in the same league (98.8).

Categorizing West as the clear #1 in '72 seems foolish (especially given playoff performance), I would absolutely put Oscar in '71 at the same level of offensive lead as West.

I would note that the Lakers had basically the same ORtg from '69-70 to '70-71, and that the worst team in '69-70 had an SRS of -4 while in '70-71 had expansion teams checking in at -6, -8, and -12 SRS respectively.

This ties into why I'm very cautious about using rORtg (and rDRtg) when looking at year-to-year improvements. It's fine as a first pass when comparing teams from different eras, but when you do it year-on-year you essentially give a team like the Bucks extra credit for getting to feed on inflation.

If you're making a point about a West-led team performing "5 pts behind", well you should make of it as you will, but I've been pretty loud about how freaking problematic I found Wilt's attitude when he arrive at the Lakers. The offense got worse when Wilt arrived and continued to have issues until Bill Sharman came in and essentially got Wilt the way vBK wanted him to play in the first place. So you can count the lack of elite offense in those years against West, but from my perspective this was at least partially about Wilt gumming up the works.

Re: first option. Goodrich scored slightly more while taking a far smaller playmaking role. West was the one dictating that offense more than Goodrich. If you want to say Goodrich was the 1st option simply because he was the leading scorer okay, but I consider West to have been the lead offensive player on those teams and I've never been under the impression that this was much of a debate for people.

First option bit - this was only in reference to a really poor playoffs from West, Cousy levels of 'efficiency'. I consider West the offensive lead of those Lakers overall. I also consider Oscar the clear offensive lead of the '71 Bucks.

I don't really see the Bucks offensive evaluation as legit, nobody else managed to feast on the expansion like they did. Oscar quite clearly led the best offense in the league by a huge margin, even if you don't think it's clearly the GOAT offensive team to that date like RelOrtg would suggest. It's at least on par with West's best team offensive accomplishment.

'Gummed' this makes some sense to me, but to me when I look at West's career it seems more likely than not his team's offense is going to be 'gummed' (merely good, not great like the talent might suggest). A hint towards his skillset potentially being more easily thrown off of high impact. When things go right he hits Oscar's levels (you'd say a level higher I believe, but I'm saying equal), but things don't go right all that often.

Sidenote - maybe I should've been a bit harder on Wilt for his/West Laker's time together, cause looking at them/the talent around them it looks like a pretty abject failure overall, 1 title in 5 years and then Wilt pretty much quitting on the team.

So Wilt gummed up the Lakers, as did Baylor according to West backers while Oscar blended well when teamed with Jabbar. We talk about portability and fit but it looks like Oscar did do better than West. The only championship he won with Wilt he played lousy.

[Doctor MJ]

If I were simply categorizing Oscar as a +2 offense type, then yes, that wouldn't be very impressive. But for a number of reasons I'm thinking of '71 Oscar as notably higher than that (I'd say around +5). League average offense dropped 2 pts as the league went from 7 teams at 100+ to only 2 (the Bucks at 103.9 and the Bulls at 100.5) from '70 to '71. The West/Wilt/Goodrich Lakers were over 5 pts behind in the same league (98.8).

Categorizing West as the clear #1 in '72 seems foolish (especially given playoff performance), I would absolutely put Oscar in '71 at the same level of offensive lead as West.

I would note that the Lakers had basically the same ORtg from '69-70 to '70-71, and that the worst team in '69-70 had an SRS of -4 while in '70-71 had expansion teams checking in at -6, -8, and -12 SRS respectively.

This ties into why I'm very cautious about using rORtg (and rDRtg) when looking at year-to-year improvements. It's fine as a first pass when comparing teams from different eras, but when you do it year-on-year you essentially give a team like the Bucks extra credit for getting to feed on inflation.

If you're making a point about a West-led team performing "5 pts behind", well you should make of it as you will, but I've been pretty loud about how freaking problematic I found Wilt's attitude when he arrive at the Lakers. The offense got worse when Wilt arrived and continued to have issues until Bill Sharman came in and essentially got Wilt the way vBK wanted him to play in the first place. So you can count the lack of elite offense in those years against West, but from my perspective this was at least partially about Wilt gumming up the works.

Re: first option. Goodrich scored slightly more while taking a far smaller playmaking role. West was the one dictating that offense more than Goodrich. If you want to say Goodrich was the 1st option simply because he was the leading scorer okay, but I consider West to have been the lead offensive player on those teams and I've never been under the impression that this was much of a debate for people.

First option bit - this was only in reference to a really poor playoffs from West, Cousy levels of 'efficiency'. I consider West the offensive lead of those Lakers overall. I also consider Oscar the clear offensive lead of the '71 Bucks.

I don't really see the Bucks offensive evaluation as legit, nobody else managed to feast on the expansion like they did. Oscar quite clearly led the best offense in the league by a huge margin, even if you don't think it's clearly the GOAT offensive team to that date like RelOrtg would suggest. It's at least on par with West's best team offensive accomplishment.

'Gummed' this makes some sense to me, but to me when I look at West's career it seems more likely than not his team's offense is going to be 'gummed' (merely good, not great like the talent might suggest). A hint towards his skillset potentially being more easily thrown off of high impact. When things go right he hits Oscar's levels (you'd say a level higher I believe, but I'm saying equal), but things don't go right all that often.

Sidenote - maybe I should've been a bit harder on Wilt for his/West Laker's time together, cause looking at them/the talent around them it looks like a pretty abject failure overall, 1 title in 5 years and then Wilt pretty much quitting on the team.

I would emphasize again that the Bucks had the 2nd best offense in the league the previous year and their ORtg got better by less than a bucket per 100 possessions. I think it pretty much any context, if there was an established clear-cut top offensive player on the first team, and respect for him only grew the following year, he'd probably still be considered the star of the offense.

Re: thrown of high impact. I get that in theory but Oscar & West are just about the two greatest in/out players in history. As in, if you see the gap between them statistically as enough to make the difference, then you should probably be considering Oscar & West both a lot earlier on in the project. (Which granted, maybe you were, I don't recall.)

For me, looking at those stats as ElGee was compiling them, they absolutely never said "Wow Oscar's a lot better than West!", they said "Oh my god, Oscar & West are absolutely legit!" I wouldn't use the numbers to elevate one or the other, to me given the noise involved we really can't see a significant difference between the two. Everyone else is free to come to their own conclusions I just mention it because what you describe is what I was expecting to find in both West and Oscar.

I was expecting that the competence of Baylor & West would make each look more replaceable than they actually were. While I guessed West would end up looking better based on my prior assessments, I figure West wouldn't look that amazing by in/out metrics compared to some.

I also thought something similar involving Oscar & Lucas. Lucas after all was a college mega-star virtually on par with Oscar. Had he gone to most other teams he'd have instantly been expected to be the first option. And I had at first expected that Lucas was probably doing a bang up job leading offenses without Oscar. Turns out, not so much, and further Lucas really seemed to be a set of talents in search of impact for much of his career. I think you could argue he played his best ball on the Knicks as something of a role player - though I'll absolutely note that those Knicks were no ordinary team and being able to fit in with their read & react scheme took considerable BBIQ. Oscar on the other hand, was exceptionally consistent in his impact.

So just want to say: West & Oscar are my 2 next guys and I won't feel unhappy at all if Oscar goes in next. I'm impressed with both.

But West does seem to have been able to achieve similar-to-Oscar level impact while playing with the poor-fitting Baylor and the initially-poor-fitting Wilt. And what that means is if you're instinct is to say that poor fit reduced West's impact, then that means that with poor fit he was already a strong rival to Oscar, and so we should not be surprised when he surpasses Oscar in evaluation around the NBA as their career's unfold. People thought Oscar was playing better for one part of their career, but West just kept getting better and better and West became the guy generally seen as playing more like an MVP.

And I have to leave with one last thing:

Remember that West had a more successful team career than Oscar did in general. That doesn't say West > Oscar, but it does mean we need to be careful about penalizing West for lack of success. West had more team success, and thus from an impact success we would expect Oscar to have to make up the difference in impact.

That's not necessarily a super high bar to rise above depending on how you see things, but my point is that it's a different bar one built with the perspective there's something negative about West's team success that should hold him back next to Oscar.