Doctor MJ wrote:Re: "conjecture". I wouldn't agree with that word, but I could see using a word like "subjective".
I feel that's sort of semantically splitting hairs, but OK.
My point is: a statement like, "His career really doesn't matter for any team he's ever played for. A brief summary of both franchises shouldn't mention his name".....
Would be kinda like me saying "
Annie Hall is not one of the best movies of the 1970s. A list of notable movies from that decade should not mention this film."
Maybe you disagree [about
Annie Hall], but who can say which of us is right? We're talking about art; it's purely subjective.
You can try to argue it's not an apt analogy because basketball's not purely art, and we have actual measurable indicators of how good someone is at basketball.
But you have essentially distilled it to a purely subjective opinion, very similar to one a person can have regarding a movie.
I mean, I've been presenting those measurable indicators for scrutiny, and you've in essence said they don't matter. In your prior statements it's implied [one of the most] the important thing[s] is how many people appreciated him in the stops of his career [which is just about the only indicator you could use for a movie, too: how many people agree with you that a movie is good, great, mediocre, or poor?].
You might counter by saying this "process" is about rendering a subjective opinion on the value of a player's career; and it is to a degree. But I tend to fall back on measurable points of argumentation because opinions are like, well......you know. Everyone's got 'em, and everyone thinks his is the best. Throwing up some relatively non-subjective support is my go-to method of making a point.
I guess I'm just unable to walk SO FAR from the objective(ish) measures that I can simply note that Player A "measures out" better than Player B in nearly every single indicator I'd care to select.......and still shrug it off and say, "whatever, I still think Player B's better".
If it WAS my initial impression [that Player B's better], there's only so much stuff I can look at before I begin to think gee wiz, maybe I'm wrong.
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: "lacks cool success story". You make this sound like I'm talking about something that lacks meaningful substance. Go tell that to folks in Portland.
This is again harkens to a notion that how many people appreciate him is more important than how good he was on a basketball court.
fwiw, I seem to recall you being relatively low on Bob Cousy (like outside your top 100 entirely???).....though I would say few were loved MORE by their city [and league-wide fans in general].
Doctor MJ wrote: I'm all for guys switching teams if they want to, but there's a cost when you do this just as there is when you switch the organization you work for. And when fundamentally the reasons for leaving speak to a person's own insecurities preventing them from taking their places among a franchise's pantheon, well, there's a void where something more should be in Aldridge's career.
Re: DJ. I'm not looking to argue for DJ - worth noting that I haven't been advocating for any of those Sonics and am on the record calling them one of the weakest champs in history - but it's meaningful that he won championships on two different teams - once as Finals MVP, and once taking a smaller role on a greater team. In the end, there's something there for DJ.
Re: has narrative. I might suggest you're reducing "team accomplishments" to "narrative", and I would suggest that this is antithetical to an NBA-based focused project.
wrt the bolded portion, there's a frequently a razor-thin difference between the two, at least given how they're often used.
To my point of view, you're doing it yourself above, but don't seem to realize it.
You say it's notable that DJ won a title with the Sonics and that he won the FMVP [which I don't disagree with, btw].......but a) you don't ask the question about whether his FMVP was even deserved [it is certainly debatable; he could even be argued down to third (or 2b)]; b) you allow the implication [that he was their best player (because he won the FMVP)] to linger without acknowledging that he most definitely was NOT their best player in the full playoff run and was probably
only 3rd-best in the rs.
And c) [probably most importantly] is that this kind of off-hand statement declares that being a part of that particular team is heads and tails more important [by default] than being a part of any equal
or potentially better team that just doesn't go the distance [usually as result of less favourable circumstance].
In these ways, some of these bullet-point [and often
team, not individual] accomplishments are cited as essentially narrative props, without taking it to the granular level or answering those concerns.
I think LMA was the fairly clear 2nd-best player on no fewer than TWO teams that were better than the '79 Sonics. You yourself have ackowledged they're one of the weakest champions in the last half-century.
I have no reservations
whatsoever in suggesting that the '16 Spurs would beat the '79 Sonics rather handily/easily in a 7-game series.
This was a 67-win, +10.28 SRS team, which then in the playoffs swept an admittedly mediocre Grizzlies team
by 22 pts/game, and then played a contender-level Thunder team to a stand-still.
sansterre's version 1.0 top team formula pegged this squad as the 23rd best team
of all-time, and the 2nd-best team in arguably the superest of super-team years ever.
However, "an unsuspectingly all-time great team when you really look closely [to that granular level]" just doesn't have the same narrative
umpha! as "
championship team".
But I'm nonetheless exceedingly comfortable saying they were better than the '79 Sonics.
I have little doubt [bearing no fluky injury to Kawhi] that the '17 Spurs could dismantle the '79 Sonics too.
For that matter, I'm not 100% confident the '79 Sonics were notably better than the '14 Blazers.
So Aldridge was the 2nd-best player for at least two [possibly even three???] teams that were better than the team DJ was the [probably] 3rd-best player for.......but DJ will get FAR more credit on the basis of two words: "championship" and "FMVP".
To me, that's narrative. It's NOT looking at the nitty gritty context.
wrt his role on the great '86 Celtic team.....was he even the 4th-best player on that team? My wife was recently purging some junk and came across some "collector's edition" sports release about the Bulls '91 title and Jordan's rise to the top of the league [by Bob Sacomato]. In it, he writes about the seasons leading up to '91, including '86. When reaching the part about the Celtics squad, he makes a point of mentioning their stacked line-up of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish......and Danny Ainge.
It's just one author, but he mentions four guys and DJ is NOT one of them [let's not forget 6MOY Walton is on this team too].
It got me thinking about how it's not absurd
at all to suggest Dennis Johnson was only the 5th-best or most important player on that team. tbh, discussing whether or not he was only 6th-best player on the team might be a viable debate.
The fact is, you could replace Dennis Johnson with just about ANY starting guard in the entire league that year, and the Celtics STILL would likely have come out champions.
Don't get me wrong: role players are important on championship teams [I believe I've been vocal on that point in the past]. But let's not overstate what DJ was, specifically, to that particular team.
To me, this is again kind of using certain team achievements as narrative props for DJ which oversell his actual value.
Doctor MJ wrote:
We absolutely see floor-raising differently, and that's okay.
Yeah, and this is definitely a point upon which we'll have to agree to disagree, because it's a divergence down to a very fundamental level.
I mean, sure: ideally you love a guy who can do BOTH [e.g. Jordan or Lebron]. For me, I guess that a ceiling-centric view feels too much like saying: "If you're not first, you're last." I just don't agree. The spirit of competition [to me] is about doing the best you can with what you've got. And most "best/near-best on the team" players will simply NOT have the necessary pieces around them to contend anyway; about a quarter are going to have trash supporting casts.......but what they do with those circumstances can still be admirable achievements [imo].
Although longevity is the bigger issue for me/my criteria where Draymond Green [for example] is concerned, his utter lack of floor-raising ability is another.
Give him an all-time tier cast, and he can do some amazing things. Take that talent away, and.....well, we saw it last year didn't we: the literally rock-bottom team in the entire league by all measures.
And I'm not saying floor-raising is MORE important than ceiling-raising. But they're pretty close to equal footing in my eyes.
EDIT: I'll take a page out of sansterre's book and quote some Tolkein [or at least the movies made from his work], specifically Gandalf's reply to Frodo when Frodo is lamenting having become the ring-bearer......
If a player says "I have no chance of achieving better than a middling playoff team here. I wish I had a better team."
I [Gandalf] might say: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
Doctor MJ wrote:Well let's make sure we're not confusing "Kawhi led a contender" with "Kawhi & Aldridge synergized really well".
I'm not aware of any +/- data that indicates that Kawhi's WOWY data with Aldridge was particularly "wow".
OK, perhaps "mesh" or similar was not the best word.
However, you made a statement that LMA is a player who basically ensures you do NOT contend for a title.
My point was: that right there was a team [on which LMA was the 2nd-best player] that absolutely
was in the mix for a title; a team that would actually be the odds-on favourite many years in NBA history.......I think they'd rip the '79 league apart, for example.
For me, that's the proof that you CAN potentially have a title-team that features Aldridge heavily.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
