Greatest Peaks series (Thinking Basketball/Ben Taylor)

[KTM_2813]

Just finished the Shaq video on Patreon. I was most interested in his defensive breakdown, which I thought was well done as usual, and aligned pretty well with my own thoughts.

[Odinn21]

Just watched the O’Neal episode and I loved how more focused he was on movement of the body parts.
What I loved the most though was how much he showed O’Neal being unguardable when he positioned himself right at the center of the lane. O’Neal ran towards the middle because he knew defenders wouldn’t want to get a beat by his strength.
Though I think he could do more about O’Neal’s defense.
I think this was better than Robinson episode but Olajuwon’s one stays the best of the last 3 episodes for me.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Watch on YouTube

[Djoker]

Just watched the Shaq video. It's probably my favorite along with the Bird video. He really broke down a lot of parts to his game that may not be obvious to the casual viewer. How good he was fighting for position, how good his footwork was, how quickly he moved his feet for a guy his size, how well he could react to double teams and find passers. I'm also happy with the analysis he did on his defense. It's interesting how the opponents' shooting-at-the-rim metrics show him clearly lacking compared to the best big defenders like Hakeem and Robinson which I expected but I didn't know that teams shot less in the paint against him meaning that he really intimidated the opposition. Ben's final conclusion that he was a clearly positive defender to me means he definitely has an argument for the highest peak ever.

For me personally I think the highest peak ever is between Jordan, Kareem and Shaq. Everyone else is a step below but I look forward to seeing more videos. It may well change my mind. And honestly this peak discussion in general is very refreshing in a quest to find the best player in history. Counting accolades is boring.

[eminence]

No Ostertag mentions

In all seriousness, loved that video, probably my favorite one yet.

Kobe up next.

[70sFan]

Shaq video is one of the best, although I don't like Wilt comparison at the beginning - Wilt couldn't play like Shaq in the 1960s. Ask Gilmore who got called for a lot of BS offensive fouls.

[Goudelock]

Shaq video is one of the best, although I don't like Wilt comparison at the beginning - Wilt couldn't play like Shaq in the 1960s. Ask Gilmore who got called for a lot of BS offensive fouls.

Yeah I agree with you there. Taylor doesn't seem like the biggest Wilt fan in the world, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that particular criticism fell flat for me. Chamberlain would have fouled out in the late-60s and early-70s if he tried to bump into guys like Shaq did.

[Slava]

The offensive side of Shaq’s game wasn’t new to me at least as I always thought Shaq did his best work before he even got the ball and he was an excellent passer out of double teams. The part about him always flashing towards the middle was something I relatively less remembered, I thought he could go both ways depending on where the entry could be made with less pressure.

The defensive side of the breakdown was nice, especially contrasting Shaq when he tried vs when he was hibernating on possessions.

[yuurrognhee8u3]

I think he did not do a good enough job explaining just how bad of a defender Shaq is compared to the all time greats. His rim protecting, which was his best defensive asset, is worse than most elite rim protectors, and his weakness to PnR, stretch big shooting and switching paint him as a big weakness that's gotta be covered on that end. I stand firmly that Kareem has the better peak than Shaq.

[freethedevil]

Watch on YouTube

Interesting to see Ben potray shaq as high iq to wilt. Was suprised by his rs impact, that wowy is righ tin line with peak Jordan's rs despite playong on better teams. On the other hand, hime being able to be tired out by offenses shoooting long two's doesn' tbode well for how he woudl fare against modern schemes. Impressive off-the-ball making me wonder why ben only has him at +1 port

[parsnips33]

That pass out and quick re-post move reminds a lot of the Steph pass and relocate. Crazy how two guys who seemingly couldn't be more different have strange similarities in how they can warp a whole defense.

[ZeppelinPage]

The first 5 minutes was pretty ridiculous using cherry-picked examples to prove a point. I myself have been through Wilt footage numerous times and I can say that using a few clips doesn't paint the full picture. Examples of what he speaks about regarding Wilt are few and far between when factoring in things that are obviously rule/era based like positioning and use of strength, which 70sFan and Goudelock already mentioned.

Other than that, the actual breakdown of Shaq himself was very well done and I mostly agree with his overall assessment.

[Odinn21]

The things kept me from rating the O'Neal episode on the same level as the Olajuwon episode;
- That Chamberlain comparison so forced and so off point. For some reason, he just keeps some very important nuances (those would change the outcome entirely) in his sleeve to prove his inaccurate point. That was truly annoying.
- He let O'Neal easy off the hook for his defense. O'Neal went through one of the easiest positional competitions during his peak / threepeat seasons. O'Neal faced pretty capable frontcourts, don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is that was when O'Neal was on offense and they were on defense. O'Neal wasn't tested by a big that could score properly on defense in those seasons. It should've been noted somewhere in there. For someone whose defense entirely collapsed when he was asked to perform to his limits on offense (2000 NBA Finals), this was such an important angle to mention.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

¹

I thought the Hakeem having iffy shot-selection was a great point that most people kind of gloss over. For all of Hakeem's spins and beautiful footwork, he also took a lot of low-percentage turnarounds. I have to wonder if he could've been an even better player had he taken smarter shots.

Then again, Taylor showed that Hakeem's efficiency didn't really drop all that much in the playoffs. So at least in terms of scoring, Olajuwon's game was similar to Kobe's. They took way too many tough shots, but neither suffered much drop off when it came to efficiency come playoff time.

Kobe's comparison is excellent on many levels. Hakeem never reachd all-time great scoring level in RS, but he did better than most when defense game planned against him and took away easy shots.

Curious about their success rate with those hard shots. I always thought of Bryant as a bad shot selector. He tried to make so many and so unnecessary hard shots. IMHO, he tried a bit too hard to be the hero. But I didn't that kind of impression from Olajuwon under Rudy T's coaching. Maybe that's on not watching Olajuwon night in and night out at the time. I got to watch Bryant like that but not quite of Olajuwon.

I think the reason is that Kobe was a guard, he was handling the ball and he was forcing the offense to go to his lo % shots.
Moreover, he's been playing in structured offense often breaking the plays to iso.
Hakeem was asked to play that way, Rudy T's offensive game plan was to five him those looks, and guards were feeding him there.

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[Goudelock]

- That Chamberlain comparison so forced and so off point. For some reason, he just keeps some very important nuances (those would change the outcome entirely) in his sleeve to prove his inaccurate point. That was truly annoying.

So I get why he included the Chamberlain comparisons, since those two are regarded as the top "freak of nature" athletes at the five in NBA history. But it seemed like just a way for Taylor to get a few digs in at Chamberlain, since he didn't give any context/reasons for why he was making those comparisons.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Shaq video is one of the best, although I don't like Wilt comparison at the beginning - Wilt couldn't play like Shaq in the 1960s. Ask Gilmore who got called for a lot of BS offensive fouls.

It's true and I remember some games I saw where Wilt or Kareem were called for offensive fouls for some moves we would laugh on today.
Otoh, it doesn't look to me Wilt had the low center of gravity and quickness in the power spins Shaq had.

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[Ryoga Hibiki]

Two comments on the Shaq video:
- I think it should be mentioned how privileged Shaq has been in terms of guards sidekicks throughout his career, and that covered his limitations on offense. Switch him and Robinson and I suspect their reputation would have been massively different
- I think we should really think what Shaq could have been if he stayed at around 310 rather than bulking up much. He could have gained so much on defense

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[70sFan]

- That Chamberlain comparison so forced and so off point. For some reason, he just keeps some very important nuances (those would change the outcome entirely) in his sleeve to prove his inaccurate point. That was truly annoying.

So I get why he included the Chamberlain comparisons, since those two are regarded as the top "freak of nature" athletes at the five in NBA history. But it seemed like just a way for Taylor to get a few digs in at Chamberlain, since he didn't give any context/reasons for why he was making those comparisons.

He did similar thing on Kareem video, it was more understandable then because these two videos were shared in close period but here I don't see any reason to mention Wilt in bad light again and again...

It's possible that at some point Ben will make similar videos about the best pre-merger players, so I hope he'll be more positive on Wilt in these videos. After all, he rates him as 9th best player of all-time.

[freethedevil]

The things kept me from rating the O'Neal episode on the same level as the Olajuwon episode;
- That Chamberlain comparison so forced and so off point. For some reason, he just keeps some very important nuances (those would change the outcome entirely) in his sleeve to prove his inaccurate point. That was truly annoying.
- He let O'Neal easy off the hook for his defense. O'Neal went through one of the easiest positional competitions. O'Neal faced pretty capable frontcourts, don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is that was when O'Neal was on offense and they were on defense. O'Neal wasn't tested by a big that could score properly on defense in those seasons. It should've been noted somewhere in there. For someone whose defense entirely collapsed when he was asked to perform to his limits on offense (2000 NBA Finals), this was such an important angle to mention.

Is this a joke? In what planet would shaq, someone whose greatest strength defneisvely is rim protect and psot d, have an easier time defneisvely in a league littered with guard and wing talent than a league dominated by bigs lol. The time machine arguments for players in the 60's being unfairly disavdantaged continue to baffle me.

[Odinn21]

- That Chamberlain comparison so forced and so off point. For some reason, he just keeps some very important nuances (those would change the outcome entirely) in his sleeve to prove his inaccurate point. That was truly annoying.

So I get why he included the Chamberlain comparisons, since those two are regarded as the top "freak of nature" athletes at the five in NBA history. But it seemed like just a way for Taylor to get a few digs in at Chamberlain, since he didn't give any context/reasons for why he was making those comparisons.

This was not the first time he had some underhanded digs at Chamberlain. If you watch the intro episode to the series, you'd see that Taylor painted Chamberlain as a black hole. I had a message about that in page 3 of this very thread. For some reason, he has a weird bias against Wilt the Stilt.