Post#5 » by HeartBreakKid » Sun May 16, 2021 4:36 pm
1) 1992 John Stockton - I've been thinking about this for years, but I've pretty much just been ranking Malone over Stockton because that's what everyone else does. It does remind me that in the 90s people used to argue who was better. Stockton aged worse than Malone, and by the late 90s when the Jazz became the team, the media tried to make Malone public enemy #1 to Jordan and propped him as the greatest power forward of all time. Stockton was regulated more to 2nd fiddle, which at the time I suppose he clearly was, but still - people talk as if Stockton is some feeble scorer, too shy to take initiative, he may as well be Ricky Rubio in the eyes of some people. Stockton not only averaged a sickening amount of assist, which alone is already matching Malone's raw volume of points in value, but he put up a mega efficient 18 points per game. That isn't bad at all...that's like a 20+ scorer in today's league. Stockton was also an amazing shooter, and even lead the league in TS% despite being a 6 foot point guard who made one 3 pointer per game. The biggest reason why I am not big on Malone is because his scoring just isn't good in the playoffs, it's clear to me that he has problems creating his own offense in half court situations. Even in his peak year, which I suppose most will say is one of his finals years - his TS% drops off significantly. And we have many, many, seasons where this has happened - we know it's not a fluke, Karl Malone's scoring isn't "real". Stockton on the other hand is more resilient, and when he does drop off it usually isn't as significant, and because scoring isn't his forte it's not that big of a deal anyway - in many ways Malone does not do his "role" correctly. Malone's passing and defense has always been the best things about him, but I'm not sure if that is more valuable to what Stockton brings to the table.
2) 1998 Karl Malone - Well, he's still Karl Malone so yeah, he gets to go here. I know I took a crap on him in order to put Stockton over him, but he's pretty clearly better than everyone else. I just think Stockton is very underrated, even more so than Malone is overrated (I actually don't think he is overrated anymore, not much around here at least).
3) 2020 Rody Gobert - Best defender of the current era. He often tops the the alphabet soup of defensive stats, and even edges out Draymond Green in the RS. His PS woes are greatly exaggerated. Most players still can't get in the paint when playing against Rudy, and that's a pretty big deal. I think AK-47's offense drops off too much in the playoffs and Williams/Dantly have more questionable impact.
4) 1984 Adrian Dantley - I do think that around the late 00s and early 10s when people started to look more into efficient volume scoring, they found someone who was a relatively forgotten and unsuccessful name in Adrian Dantley put up Michael Jordan like scoring numbers, and kind of had to say "well, he plays like a loser" in order to not to put Adrian into the pantheon of all time great scorers. Now, he does have some well weaknesses - defense being the worst thing. He didn't play off other players either. But I think he is pretty similar to Bernard King in a lot of ways.
5) 2017 Gordon Hayward - I don't think he was really any worse than Rudy Gobert in 2017. He is what I call a super glue guy, not too different from Eddie Jones who topped the Hornets list - actually, Hayward is probably more well rounded. Hayward is a great defender, great off ball player, equally good at cutting and catch and shooting, he can isolate, he rebounds, he passes. He really does it all. He can play with ensemble casts with little problems. He was very underrated in Boston because he was dealing with an ankle injury, but if he had been healthy his last season Boston would have probably made the finals. I don't even think it is crazy to say Hayward was the best player on the 2020 Celtics. We already saw his impact with the Hornets as well this year. I think 2017 Hayward is pretty much the first year where he really "got it" and the start of his true prime (which he's spent a lot of it shelved).
Deron Williams...not sure, just not convinced by him. But I might come around.I actually thought he was a bit underrated in the early Nets years when he got tore apart, but I have to refresh my memory of him.
Actually was going to put Zelmo Beaty at #3, but I realized the Utah Stars are not the same lineage as the Jazz.
Mark Eaton is a guy who kind of gets killed by the "time travel" argument. In his time he was a pretty damning defender, though I think he also killed the Jazz's offense - and playing alongside a relatively stiff exclusive post player in Dantley really messed up that side of the ball big time.
