[Project] Top 5 single season peaks by franchises: The Warriors

[70sFan]

Well for perspective, given that Wilt played mostly every minute, I think we can largely say:

Wilt, On-Court ORtg: 93.0
Curry, On-Court ORtg: 115.2

You're making the argument that these team performances are comparable because you're comparing them to their contemporaries, but Curry's contemporaries have such high ORtg's because teams have realized "Oh, we were trying to do this all wrong before."

If you want to compare raw efficiency and ORtgs, then we can stop right here. So much happened during these 60 years, so much that wasn't related to Curry or Wilt... Using raw stats is dishonest.

By this logic, Oscar is also horrible offensive anchor. By this logic, the best offensive players in the world from 2010 are scrubs. It just doesn't work that way.

Not to mention that we're comparing players here relative to their competition. It's not "who would you draft on your team in 2021" project.

I'll also say that I struggle with the whole "Wilt had to dominate the offense because his teammates sucked" argument, because he had played with some guys who were great offensive players in their prime who weren't that old when they played with Wilt.

As an example, I think prime Arizin was clearly a more effective offensive player than Warriors' Wilt, and while he wasn't his best self in the Wilt years, if Wilt were great at making use of talent around him, you'd expect he'd have had more success with Arizin.

We've seen Arizin without Wilt in 1958 and 1959 - Warriors were quite terrible. I don't think it's fair to call past-1956 Arizin better offensive player than Warriors Wilt.

Not to mention that you said that Wilt had played with "some guys who were great offensive players" but outside of Arizin, I see nobody great on this Warriors team.

That Arizin was gone by '63-64 of course, but the idea of an argument like "Well, Wilt sucked at making things work with Arizin, but by '63-64 they'd gotten rid of all their other offensive talent, so we should classify this as a 'carry job'" bothers me.

Why is it always about stars when we talk about 1960s basketball? Warriors were simply not talented offensive team, old Arizin was decent enough but they also had horrible benches, bad starting PG and mediocre coaching. Why is it always on Wilt?

What I want to see from volume scoring Wilt is evidence that he could make use of better talent, and we don't see it.

I mean, he led decent offenze in 1962 with weak offensive roster and horrible offensive gameplan. I know you'd prefer to see Wilt leading the best offense in the league instead but there is no reason to expect that from him and the Warriors.

[Doctor MJ]

I view Thurmond as the better defender than Green. The only question is whether Green's offensive output is good enough to overcome Nate's defensive pressence. I don't know to be honest, but I don't think either one will make the list - Paul Arizin was damn good as well.

Do you think Thurmond would be a better defender than Green today?

Looking at their defensive value for respective times, I think it's reasonable to say Thurmond was a better defender than Green.

Thurmond wouldn't be a better defender than Green in 2010s, Green wouldn't be a better defender than Thurmond in 1970s. To me, it's not relevant to the topic at hand but I know that we see things differently.

Btw, I looked at ElGee's corp evaluations in the meantime. Here's some of the top candidates he has in corp page;
1964 Wilt; +3.00 on o, +3.25 on d, +6.25 total and -1 o-port
1967 Thurmond; -0.25 on o, +4.50 on d, +4.25 total and 0 o-port
1969 Thurmond; +0.25 on o, +4.50 on d, +4.75 total and 0 o-port
1975 Barry; +4.00 on o, +0.50 on d, +4.50 total and 0 o-port
2016 Green; +0.75 on o, +3.00 on d, +3.75 total and +2 o-port
2016 Curry; +6.25 on o, +0.25 on d, +6.50 total and +2 o-port (these are the numbers not downgraded for his injury worries)
2017 Curry; +6.00 on o, +0.25 on d, +6.50 total and +2 o-port
2017 Durant; +5.00 on o, +0.50 on d, +5.50 total and +1 o-port

So, I think it's important to ask ourselves how comfortable we feel giving a modern DPOY as defensive disadvantage compared to a defender from an earlier time period with far worse strategy and skill who we don't think would do as well against mature modern offense? Particularly when the modern DPOY is a much better offensive player (in the year in question at least).

I don't mean to imply that the answer is obvious. I'm still grappling with how I see Bill Russell through this new lens...but I'll say it helps that I actually still think Russell would be a better defender than Green in today's game. Thurmond? Really don't think so.

[70sFan]

I view Thurmond as the better defender than Green. The only question is whether Green's offensive output is good enough to overcome Nate's defensive pressence. I don't know to be honest, but I don't think either one will make the list - Paul Arizin was damn good as well.

Do you think Thurmond would be a better defender than Green today?

I don't think why it should be relevant in this project (I touched it already in previous thread), but I don't think Thurmond is one of these guys who wouldn't translate to 2021 defensive schemes. There are two things that stands out when I watch Thurmond:

1. His footwork and defensive fundamentals as a man defender - he's one of the best centers ever in that aspect and I don't mean strictly post defense. He could stay in front of guards and forwards really well because of that and with his freakish wingspan, he could conest outside shots without overcommiting.

2. He was a great athlete and was fairly mobile before he got old.

Thurmond's defense is often misunderstood - he's not a brute force that relied strictly on his size. Nate was very smart defender who worked extremely hard to improve his game and he relied heavily on his BBIQ, not athleticism.

Would he be better than Draymond? I'm not sure, but he had all the tools to be excellent defender in modern era. As I said though - it doesn't matter to me.

[Odinn21]

So, I think it's important to ask ourselves how comfortable we feel giving a modern DPOY as defensive disadvantage compared to a defender from an earlier time period with far worse strategy and skill who we don't think would do as well against mature modern offense? Particularly when the modern DPOY is a much better offensive player (in the year in question at least).

I don't mean to imply that the answer is obvious. I'm still grappling with how I see Bill Russell through this new lens...but I'll say it helps that I actually still think Russell would be a better defender than Green in today's game. Thurmond? Really don't think so.

I don't think that's an advantage or a disadvantage though. It's just what it is.

Russell would be a better defender than Green because he was bigger, quicker and he already meets the requirements of the modern game in terms of strong suits. But I don't see the point of knocking Thurmond down for not meeting requirements of a play type that did not exist in his time. That's why I mentioned both sides of the coin in my post. I also do not see the point of knocking Green down for not being suitable to 1970s.

If we're going down the road about defensive impact being a different ceiling in different eras, I don't think Thurmond is at a disadvantage or at an advantage. Nate was playing in an environment that let a defensive player to have a higher ceiling, but then again, he also has a superior relative value. He was one of those players forcing that ceiling to be that high.

[Doctor MJ]

Well for perspective, given that Wilt played mostly every minute, I think we can largely say:

Wilt, On-Court ORtg: 93.0
Curry, On-Court ORtg: 115.2

You're making the argument that these team performances are comparable because you're comparing them to their contemporaries, but Curry's contemporaries have such high ORtg's because teams have realized "Oh, we were trying to do this all wrong before."

If you want to compare raw efficiency and ORtgs, then we can stop right here. So much happened during these 60 years, so much that wasn't related to Curry or Wilt... Using raw stats is dishonest.

By this logic, Oscar is also horrible offensive anchor. By this logic, the best offensive players in the world from 2010 are scrubs. It just doesn't work that way.

Not to mention that we're comparing players here relative to their competition. It's not "who would you draft on your team in 2021" project.

I think the only serious way to do this stuff is to use both absolute and relative ratings to come to a more holistic conclusions. And if you're not someone putting Mikan first on your Lakers list, that's precisely what you're doing too.

So when you say "Curry couldn't even..." focusing entirely on relative rankings, I'm going to bring up the absolutes.

But there's also a very specific thing going on here: We're literally talking about a series of paradigm shifts that have specifically counter to the big-man oriented offenses that began with Mikan, so using that to elevate guys playing in the Mikan-paradigm just seems like a problem to me.

I'll also say that I struggle with the whole "Wilt had to dominate the offense because his teammates sucked" argument, because he had played with some guys who were great offensive players in their prime who weren't that old when they played with Wilt.

As an example, I think prime Arizin was clearly a more effective offensive player than Warriors' Wilt, and while he wasn't his best self in the Wilt years, if Wilt were great at making use of talent around him, you'd expect he'd have had more success with Arizin.

We've seen Arizin without Wilt in 1958 and 1959 - Warriors were quite terrible. I don't think it's fair to call past-1956 Arizin better offensive player than Warriors Wilt.

Not to mention that you said that Wilt had played with "some guys who were great offensive players" but outside of Arizin, I see nobody great on this Warriors team.

I'm not saying later Arizin was better than Wilt, what I am saying though is that he was someone still capable of volume scoring with (era relative) good efficiency, so to me talking as if Wilt's teammates were the problem because he could volume score with good efficiency doesn't work.

Quite honestly, I think if Wilt plays '67 style with that Arizin, I think it works better.

Re: Nobody on this Warriors team. Well I mean, there was Kenny Sears. Now, I do think that Sears fell off pretty quickly because he was facing the Russell's and Wilt's of the world, and I don't think a Wilt-Sears fit was ever likely to work that well, but I think it's worth noting it's not like Sears was a zero-talent guy. When the team settled on a "Wilt for everything" offense, they really weren't trying to take advantage of the other offensive talent they had.

That Arizin was gone by '63-64 of course, but the idea of an argument like "Well, Wilt sucked at making things work with Arizin, but by '63-64 they'd gotten rid of all their other offensive talent, so we should classify this as a 'carry job'" bothers me.

Why is it always about stars when we talk about 1960s basketball? Warriors were simply not talented offensive team, old Arizin was decent enough but they also had horrible benches, bad starting PG and mediocre coaching. Why is it always on Wilt?

When we are evaluating a candidate, we talk about the pros and cons of that candidate.

What I want to see from volume scoring Wilt is evidence that he could make use of better talent, and we don't see it.

I mean, he led decent offenze in 1962 with weak offensive roster and horrible offensive gameplan. I know you'd prefer to see Wilt leading the best offense in the league instead but there is no reason to expect that from him and the Warriors.

I see evidence that Wilt in his volume scoring mode resulted in a meh offensive ceiling relative to his time.

If you disagree with that, then aside from further debate, I'd expect you to vote differently than me.

I'd object though to getting too abstract with notions of "Well but Wilt would have played totally differently if only...", because to me this is about what players actually did, because if we go with what they might have done, the Lakers go 82-0 in '68-69 and Wilt's '68-69 campaign becomes arguably the #1 on this list.

To take this back to a player I think you know I am biased toward:

I think that if the Suns know what they are doing in 1996, they dropkick Jason Kidd out of town and hand the offense over to Nash. I think he leads an elite offense quickly if the Suns hire D'Antoni instead of Denver, quite possibly he's the most valuable offensive player in the league a half decade plus earlier.

But that's not what happened, so I don't bring up those early Suns years in a project like this, just as I don't try to argue those early Nash bench years as All-NBA campaigns.

All of that might seem snarky, but with Wilt arguably more than any other player in history, there's a tendency to start from his statistical stature and wave away concerns about impact as "Well if X and Y then he'd have had impact as impressive as the 50 PPG!", and I think this is problematic.

[70sFan]

I think the only serious way to do this stuff is to use both absolute and relative ratings to come to a more holistic conclusions. And if you're not someone putting Mikan first on your Lakers list, that's precisely what you're doing too.

So when you say "Curry couldn't even..." focusing entirely on relative rankings, I'm going to bring up the absolutes.

But there's also a very specific thing going on here: We're literally talking about a series of paradigm shifts that have specifically counter to the big-man oriented offenses that began with Mikan, so using that to elevate guys playing in the Mikan-paradigm just seems like a problem to me.

But I mentioned Curry only because you said that Wilt couldn't lead good offense. I replied that Curry couldn't lead good offenses either by modern standards without good teammates - then you decided to compare their raw ORtgs.

To be consistent, you should also blame Oscar Robertson for running horrible by modern standards offenses, but you're not doing it.

I'm not saying later Arizin was better than Wilt, what I am saying though is that he was someone still capable of volume scoring with (era relative) good efficiency, so to me talking as if Wilt's teammates were the problem because he could volume score with good efficiency doesn't work.

Quite honestly, I think if Wilt plays '67 style with that Arizin, I think it works better.

Again, you're looking at Arizin and conclude that Warriors team isn't that bad. Why don't you look at entire team? Arizin was decent enough as a second scoring option on decent team, but he's not good enough after 1960 to be co-star of elite offense with mediocre teammates around him. It's like saying that 2021 Sixers should be elite because Tobias Harris is a decent 2nd option on offense.

Re: Nobody on this Warriors team. Well I mean, there was Kenny Sears. Now, I do think that Sears fell off pretty quickly because he was facing the Russell's and Wilt's of the world, and I don't think a Wilt-Sears fit was ever likely to work that well, but I think it's worth noting it's not like Sears was a zero-talent guy. When the team settled on a "Wilt for everything" offense, they really weren't trying to take advantage of the other offensive talent they had.

Kenny Sears was washed up veteran who played 10-15 mpg and missed around 30 games per season. If you have to use him as an example of talented teammate, then you basically proved my point.

When we are evaluating a candidate, we talk about the pros and cons of that candidate.

You're not doing that here though, you just decide that it has to be something wrong with Wilt because Warriors were not great offensively. Wilt didn't make Guy Rodgers, Andy Phillpis, Wayne Hightower, Andy Johnson or Woody Sauldsberry inefficient. You can criticize him for not making terrible players efficient, but wouldn't that be too much?

Please tell me - what would you expect from a team like 1964 Warriors offensively with strong offensive bigman like Shaq? What would you expect from a bit better offensive team like 1962 Warriors with Shaq? I'd like to know your expectations.

I see evidence that Wilt in his volume scoring mode resulted in a meh offensive ceiling relative to his time.

If you disagree with that, then aside from further debate, I'd expect you to vote differently than me.

I don't disagree with that, because these are the facts outside of 1962. The point is that you decided to put all blame on Wilt here, when he played with some horrible offensive casts during that time. Old Paul Arizin alone isn't someone who could make -5 offense into +3 offense next to Wilt and inefficient, bad offensive players.

I know you like the idea of TS Add - I suggest you to look at some of these early 1960s Warriors teams. They don't look good to say the least. Why do you put all the blame on Wilt?

All of that might seem snarky, but with Wilt arguably more than any other player in history, there's a tendency to start from his statistical stature and wave away concerns about impact as "Well if X and Y then he'd have had impact as impressive as the 50 PPG!", and I think this is problematic.

I don't think it's something that exist in serious discussion on PC Board though, you and I are both well aware that 50 ppg doesn't make Wilt GOAT offensive player. The question is - don't you think that your Wilt criticism went a bit too far at some point?

[70sFan]

For all this talk of how terrible Wilt Warriors were offensively - Rick Barry did clearly a worse job anchoring their offense in 1966 and 1967. Would anyone try to deny that Barry was great offensive player?

[ZeppelinPage]

1. '64 Wilt Chamberlain
One of the greatest single seasons in NBA history. No other all-time great as had a weaker supporting cast around him in the NBA Finals than '64 Wilt. The Warriors finished 3rd in SRS with a rookie Nate Thurmond and players like Wayne Hightower, Tom Meschery, and Guy Rodgers leading in shots. Wilt had a .325 WS/48 in the regular season (3rd all-time), and his .323 WS/48 playoff run is 4th all-time in the Shot Clock Era.

In the WDF, with his team playing poorly, Wilt put up 38.6 PPG on a +7.8 rTS%.
In the Finals, he finished with 29.2 PPG on a +2.4 rTS% against the greatest defense of all-time. Only one other player (Tom Meschery) shot above 35 FG% in that series. This year Kevin Durant had a spectacular performance against the Bucks--he played heavy minutes while his team was injured and/or playing poorly. This was basically Wilt Chamberlain every postseason before '67, and Wilt was doing it against far superior competition than the '21 Milwaukee Bucks.

The mixture of scoring, passing, rebounding, and defense that Wilt provides is so impactful to a team. During this season he was truly an amazing all-around player and is definitely deserving of this #1 spot.

2. '18 Kevin Durant
A little ahead of Curry--while both '17 and '18 from Durant are great, I value his playoff competition a little more in '18. Durant was amazing without Curry in the playoffs. He then played a tough Rockets team to 7 games and had a near 60 TS% on 30 PPG.

3. '16 Stephen Curry
Insane regular season by every metric, fell off in the playoffs a little too much for my liking.

4. '75 Rick Barry
Turned into more of a playmaker. While Barry's TS+ suffered, he was able to use his high shot volume and gravity to create plays and pass for his team--resulting in a strong offense. Led the playoffs in BPM and had little drop off from regular season to playoffs.

5. '16 Draymond Green
High in every advanced metric, fantastic playoffs and Finals in particular. This one was close between him, Thurmond, and Arizin. I think Draymond just brings so much to the table compared to the other two.

[Dr Positivity]

1. 1964 Wilt - Wilt in this season when he's dominant on defense and doing the right things offensively is nearing GOAT level.

2. 1975 Barry - Superb all around season with the 31/6/6 and then winning the title in an upset that would be like the Hawks going all the way this year.

2. 2017 Curry - I would rate his 2016 #1 in regular season but easier to guard in playoffs with slower paces, better defense and less mistakes from the opponent, plus his 2016 misses some games in playoffs that would have knocked 95% of teams out. Ultimately I think the Warriors are his team over Durant and his numbers are fine so I'll go with 2017 when 16 missed games is taken into account.

4. 2017 Durant - I don't think they really needed him in regular season but no doubt he was elite in the playoffs and then went toe to toe with Lebron in the finals.

5. 1956 Arizin - Fantastic in playoffs so I'm ok with Arizin here over some of the alternatives. Not a big fan of Thurmond's offensive game, I'd probably rate Draymond over him, and I'm not really in the Baron Davis is a secret superstar camp although his Warriors version is his best. Mullin is probably closest cut as he was great on offense.

[Doctor MJ]

I think the only serious way to do this stuff is to use both absolute and relative ratings to come to a more holistic conclusions. And if you're not someone putting Mikan first on your Lakers list, that's precisely what you're doing too.

So when you say "Curry couldn't even..." focusing entirely on relative rankings, I'm going to bring up the absolutes.

But there's also a very specific thing going on here: We're literally talking about a series of paradigm shifts that have specifically counter to the big-man oriented offenses that began with Mikan, so using that to elevate guys playing in the Mikan-paradigm just seems like a problem to me.

But I mentioned Curry only because you said that Wilt couldn't lead good offense. I replied that Curry couldn't lead good offenses either by modern standards without good teammates - then you decided to compare their raw ORtgs.

To be consistent, you should also blame Oscar Robertson for running horrible by modern standards offenses, but you're not doing it.

Huh? You name-checked me early in the thread and said you wanted a Curry vs Wilt debate.

Re: To be consistent you should also... As I've said, I use both absolute and relative rankings as part of a process by which I come up with more holistic solutions.

I'm not saying later Arizin was better than Wilt, what I am saying though is that he was someone still capable of volume scoring with (era relative) good efficiency, so to me talking as if Wilt's teammates were the problem because he could volume score with good efficiency doesn't work.

Quite honestly, I think if Wilt plays '67 style with that Arizin, I think it works better.

Again, you're looking at Arizin and conclude that Warriors team isn't that bad. Why don't you look at entire team? Arizin was decent enough as a second scoring option on decent team, but he's not good enough after 1960 to be co-star of elite offense with mediocre teammates around him. It's like saying that 2021 Sixers should be elite because Tobias Harris is a decent 2nd option on offense.

To play back the conversation:

Me: Wilt wasn't leading great offenses with his volume scoring and I'm skeptical that he was really able to.
You: His teammates were bad.
Me: He wasn't entirely out there alone, look at Arizin's numbers.
You: Why don't you look at the rest of the team?

To continue from there:

I think it's a problem when we try to justify why a team's offense is stagnant by saying "Yeah, but other than Wilt and the other efficient volume scorer, what about the role players?"

Not saying the role players don't matter, but generally the idea is that the volume scorers suck attention away from the role players to make it easier for them to score, so if the rest of them are struggling, something is probably going wrong with the system.

And this is also where it would be easier for me to give Wilt the benefit of the doubt if we hadn't seen that happened in '66-67: Wilt's teammates shoot more and shoot more efficiently.

My general sense is that pre-'66-67, Wilt led offenses tended to be stagnant, and while there's plenty of blame to go around, when we look to evaluate Wilt's actual impact, this is something that indicates his impact like this is less that we would tend to assume.

Re: Nobody on this Warriors team. Well I mean, there was Kenny Sears. Now, I do think that Sears fell off pretty quickly because he was facing the Russell's and Wilt's of the world, and I don't think a Wilt-Sears fit was ever likely to work that well, but I think it's worth noting it's not like Sears was a zero-talent guy. When the team settled on a "Wilt for everything" offense, they really weren't trying to take advantage of the other offensive talent they had.

Kenny Sears was washed up veteran who played 10-15 mpg and missed around 30 games per season. If you have to use him as an example of talented teammate, then you basically proved my point.

I don't know if it's so clear cut. Consider that in his first year on the Warriors he was 29 years old and was 2nd on the team in TS Add.

It's easy to look at how his playing time was rapidly dwindling and conclude he just plain got awful, but I know that his issues in New York started off the court. I think it's entirely possible that he developed a bad reputation and never really got another chance to shine.

I would also note that he didn't play big minutes - which on one level makes a point of "Even if he was good, he wasn't playing that much so he wasn't helping the offense that much" - but on another level sure seems to say something about what the team prioritized.

When you have Wilt, and he's volume scoring like crazy, is playing him with a 6'9" scorer really your priority?

Re: if you have to use him... I mean when I mentioned Arizin you said "but what about other guys?", when I mention another guy, you discredit him. At this point I don't really have any reason to think you won't "what about" whatever I bring up.

When we are evaluating a candidate, we talk about the pros and cons of that candidate.

You're not doing that here though, you just decide that it has to be something wrong with Wilt because Warriors were not great offensively. Wilt didn't make Guy Rodgers, Andy Phillpis, Wayne Hightower, Andy Johnson or Woody Sauldsberry inefficient. You can criticize him for not making terrible players efficient, but wouldn't that be too much?

Please tell me - what would you expect from a team like 1964 Warriors offensively with strong offensive bigman like Shaq? What would you expect from a bit better offensive team like 1962 Warriors with Shaq? I'd like to know your expectations.

I guess I'll be really explicit here:

I consider the fact that in '66-67 Wilt, when Wilt moved away from volume scoring, his teammates' efficiency went up despite having to carry a bigger scoring burden, to be probably the single most important event in basketball history to understand.

The theory that all volume scorers make it easier for their teammates to score efficiently gets disproven by Wilt, and you're not just not applying this knowledge to understand the game more broadly, you're not even applying it to Wilt.

I'm sorry for the condescending tone here. I respect your knowledge, and recognize that you know many thing I don't, but I find myself shaking my head here. While you can argue that Wilt's Warriors teammates didn't have the ability to do what his 76ers teammates did because X, Y & Z, you're literally giving me what you think is a rhetorically absurd question to something I had assumed you would understand the answer to already.

Re: What would I expect of Shaq? If they let Shaq be Shaq, he destroys everybody. If they call enough fouls on Shaq, he won't. (ftr, I don't think Shaq would fare well against modern flopping, so he'd have to adjust there as well as find a way not to get murdered by modern picks and spacing.)

I should be clear: I'm not saying necessarily that Wilt couldn't have wrecked everybody with a power game, nor am I saying that he should've have. You can argue that the officiating of the time made that impossible. But whether Wilt played the way he played by choice or by necessity, that was how he played, and that's what I'm trying to go by.

I see evidence that Wilt in his volume scoring mode resulted in a meh offensive ceiling relative to his time.

If you disagree with that, then aside from further debate, I'd expect you to vote differently than me.

I don't disagree with that, because these are the facts outside of 1962. The point is that you decided to put all blame on Wilt here, when he played with some horrible offensive casts during that time. Old Paul Arizin alone isn't someone who could make -5 offense into +3 offense next to Wilt and inefficient, bad offensive players.

I know you like the idea of TS Add - I suggest you to look at some of these early 1960s Warriors teams. They don't look good to say the least. Why do you put all the blame on Wilt?

As I've said, I'm not putting all the blame on Wilt. If I thought the Warriors back then would have had the best offense in the league if only they benched Wilt, then Wilt wouldn't be in my Top 5.

Me pointing out his issues in comparison with Curry is not the same thing as me championing Al Attles as GOAT.

All of that might seem snarky, but with Wilt arguably more than any other player in history, there's a tendency to start from his statistical stature and wave away concerns about impact as "Well if X and Y then he'd have had impact as impressive as the 50 PPG!", and I think this is problematic.

I don't think it's something that exist in serious discussion on PC Board though, you and I are both well aware that 50 ppg doesn't make Wilt GOAT offensive player. The question is - don't you think that your Wilt criticism went a bit too far at some point?

I think basically everybody does this until they realize they are doing it, and actively try to combat it. I don't think it's something that only "dumb people" do, I think it's analogous to why people have a far harder time evaluating peak than they do careers. People tend to latch on to certain things that feel most real to them, and then extrapolate outward from there.

Do I think my Wilt criticism went too far? I think my choice of words tends to get hyperbolic and pithy at times, but I think that in general these conversations tend to meander pretty far away from objective statements of "exactly how far did he go".

To this point, I've not said where I'm ranking Wilt, so what exactly constitutes "too far" here?

[ZeppelinPage]

To play back the conversation:

Me: Wilt wasn't leading great offenses with his volume scoring and I'm skeptical that he was really able to.
You: His teammates were bad.
Me: He wasn't entirely out there alone, look at Arizin's numbers.
You: Why don't you look at the rest of the team?

To continue from there:

I think it's a problem when we try to justify why a team's offense is stagnant by saying "Yeah, but other than Wilt and the other efficient volume scorer, what about the role players?"

Not saying the role players don't matter, but generally the idea is that the volume scorers suck attention away from the role players to make it easier for them to score, so if the rest of them are struggling, something is probably going wrong with the system.

And this is also where it would be easier for me to give Wilt the benefit of the doubt if we hadn't seen that happened in '66-67: Wilt's teammates shoot more and shoot more efficiently.

My general sense is that pre-'66-67, Wilt led offenses tended to be stagnant, and while there's plenty of blame to go around, when we look to evaluate Wilt's actual impact, this is something that indicates his impact like this is less that we would tend to assume.

I need some clarification on this to better understand.

Are you basically saying that players like Guy Rodgers, Woody Sauldsberry, etc. being massive negatives on offense was more of an indictment on Wilt, rather than those players themselves? That if Wilt passed more, these players would have improved on offense?

[BobbyPortisFan]

Do you think Thurmond would be a better defender than Green today?

Looking at their defensive value for respective times, I think it's reasonable to say Thurmond was a better defender than Green.

Thurmond wouldn't be a better defender than Green in 2010s, Green wouldn't be a better defender than Thurmond in 1970s. To me, it's not relevant to the topic at hand but I know that we see things differently.

Btw, I looked at ElGee's corp evaluations in the meantime. Here's some of the top candidates he has in corp page;
1964 Wilt; +3.00 on o, +3.25 on d, +6.25 total and -1 o-port
1967 Thurmond; -0.25 on o, +4.50 on d, +4.25 total and 0 o-port
1969 Thurmond; +0.25 on o, +4.50 on d, +4.75 total and 0 o-port
1975 Barry; +4.00 on o, +0.50 on d, +4.50 total and 0 o-port
2016 Green; +0.75 on o, +3.00 on d, +3.75 total and +2 o-port
2016 Curry; +6.25 on o, +0.25 on d, +6.50 total and +2 o-port (these are the numbers not downgraded for his injury worries)
2017 Curry; +6.00 on o, +0.25 on d, +6.50 total and +2 o-port
2017 Durant; +5.00 on o, +0.50 on d, +5.50 total and +1 o-port

So, I think it's important to ask ourselves how comfortable we feel giving a modern DPOY as defensive disadvantage compared to a defender from an earlier time period with far worse strategy and skill who we don't think would do as well against mature modern offense? Particularly when the modern DPOY is a much better offensive player (in the year in question at least).

I don't mean to imply that the answer is obvious. I'm still grappling with how I see Bill Russell through this new lens...but I'll say it helps that I actually still think Russell would be a better defender than Green in today's game. Thurmond? Really don't think so.

draymond's offense shoud be considered, especially in 2016 when he went supernova in the finals

[HeartBreakKid]

What do we mean by players had superior strategy today than before? The rules are different.

There wasn't even a 3 point line in the NBA during Nate Thurmond's career. Why would it be relevant if he is better than a player who is better at guarding the 3 point line?


It isn't like the 2000s where they were undershooting from long range, they did not even have the option during Nate's day.

[Doctor MJ]

To play back the conversation:

Me: Wilt wasn't leading great offenses with his volume scoring and I'm skeptical that he was really able to.
You: His teammates were bad.
Me: He wasn't entirely out there alone, look at Arizin's numbers.
You: Why don't you look at the rest of the team?

To continue from there:

I think it's a problem when we try to justify why a team's offense is stagnant by saying "Yeah, but other than Wilt and the other efficient volume scorer, what about the role players?"

Not saying the role players don't matter, but generally the idea is that the volume scorers suck attention away from the role players to make it easier for them to score, so if the rest of them are struggling, something is probably going wrong with the system.

And this is also where it would be easier for me to give Wilt the benefit of the doubt if we hadn't seen that happened in '66-67: Wilt's teammates shoot more and shoot more efficiently.

My general sense is that pre-'66-67, Wilt led offenses tended to be stagnant, and while there's plenty of blame to go around, when we look to evaluate Wilt's actual impact, this is something that indicates his impact like this is less that we would tend to assume.

I need some clarification on this to better understand.

Are you basically saying that players like Guy Rodgers, Woody Sauldsberry, etc. being massive negatives on offense was more of an indictment on Wilt, rather than those players themselves? That if Wilt passed more, these players would have improved on offense?

I'm saying that we know for a fact that Wilt has been in situations where his supporting cast looked worse when he was a volume scorer compared to when he was more of a facilitator, and thus I'm uncomfortable with treatment of his volume scoring years as if the problem was simply his teammates.

Let me go into his 76er years more, because they influence me heavily.

By TS Add (basically relative TS% times volume), here's how the non-76ers did in the following years:

'63-64 -115.2 (no Wilt)
'64-65 -75.2 (some Wilt)
'65-66 -221.1 (all Wilt)
'66-67 +225.8 (passer Wilt)
'67-68 -1.4 (passer Wilt)
'68-69 +292.4 (no Wilt)

Notice the greater than 400 rise when Wilt becomes a passer. That's huge. There was no effect remotely like this when Wilt joined the team - and no effect remotely like this when Wilt joined the Warriors either.

I would argue that what that's telling us is there's far more proven capacity to help Wilt's teammates by changing how he plays than by merely adding him to a team.

And I would argue that many tend to see these arguments more in terms of "The 76ers were able to optimize with a change of approach, but that's a subtle improvement compared to what Wilt brought by his presence", and what I'm saying is that on offense, I don't actually think so. How you had Wilt play really had a profound impact on whether his teammates would be able to thrive.

And for the record, here's what the overall TS Add numbers look like for those teams:

'63-64 -115.2 (no Wilt)
'64-65 +44.7 (some Wilt)
'65-66 +73.6 (all Wilt)
'66-67 +667.3 (passer Wilt)
'67-68 +211.3 (passer Wilt)
'68-69 +292.4 (no Wilt)

You can see that adding Wilt seemed to help some up front, but small compared to what the change in strategies gave.

There is also the matter of much of that improvement falling apart the next year, but given the way the teammates continued to thrive after Wilt left with a system very passing-oriented, I think the point still stands. To get the most out of the team and the teammates, you needed a strategy that didn't leave the water brackish.

I do understand that the 76ers teammates were better than the Warriors teammates, and I'll concede that an argument that something at all like this would not be possible for the Warriors is entirely plausible even if I think there's still something to it.

However even if I were to say "Yeah, passer Wilt wouldn't have helped this lot", there is the matter that Wilt didn't have a night and day (offensive) impact like this with the Warriors with his presence, and so when I look at Wilt's offensive impact in those volume scoring years, I do kinda peg in on a scale relative to what I think his play was able to inspire in '66-67, which I believe was top tier, but not a beyond all the other offensive greats in history.

I think in the end that his offensive impact in those Warriors years was pretty modest. I'm considerably more impressed by his defensive impact in key years.

[Doctor MJ]

What do we mean by players had superior strategy today than before? The rules are different.

There wasn't even a 3 point line in the NBA during Nate Thurmond's career. Why would it be relevant if he is better than a player who is better at guarding the 3 point line?


It isn't like the 2000s where they were undershooting from long range, they did not even have the option during Nate's day.

I think it's fine if you want to say that Thurmond was something close to perfect for his time's defense and a more modern player shouldn't gain an advantage over him simply because the modern player is more adapted to the rules and strategy of today.

What rubs me the wrong way is the idea that the guy who may well be the single best defender of the 2010s (Draymond) would be knocked relative to the defense of previous eras. The idea that we'd be effectively saying "The best defenders ever were in the past" while pointing to guys who'd get torched by today's shooters just seems weird.

I will say, when asked "GOAT Defender?" my immediate though remains "Bill Russell" so this is on me too, and I don't mean to come across all sanctimonious. I'm still grappling with this myself, so I'm not looking to say "this is the way", but I do think it should cause more brows to furrow than merely my own.

[homecourtloss]

Golden State has one of the strongest groups of honorable mentions.

1. Steph Curry, 2016.

Absurd offensive efficiency and impact metrics. His game changed the NBA. Warriors only outscored 5 times all season with Curry on court. That’s absurd.

2. Wilt, 1964.

One of the greatest seasons ever but just below Curry’s 2016.

3. Durant, 2017.

Absurdly efficient, played well in the finals.

4. Draymond, 2016.

Absurdly high RAPM and Corp numbers I cannot hand wave away. In addition to his defense (deserved DPOY that year), stepped up his offense with Curry’s injury against Houston and Portland and played one of the greatest game 7s in NBA history.

5. Barry, 1975.

Scorer and improved playmaker.

HM: 1990 Mullin, 2015 Klay, 1956 Arizin, 2007 Baron Davis, 1991 Hardaway, 1967 Thurmond.

[Doctor MJ]

Still chewing things over but at this point I am thinking:

Arizin over Barry over Green, which would mean Green misses out on my Top 5.

I'm most conflicted about Green. I can't shake the feeling that his impact that season is rather fluky, and highly dependent on context compared to the alphas, but at his best, he was incredibly impactful as the perfect guy to pair with the Splash Brothers.

With the two alphas, it bothers me that Barry wasn't more efficient than he was. I do think he had a high BBIQ in a lot of ways, particularly in his later years (which includes the chip), and by no means does the lack of efficiency undo all the good playmaking he's doing out there, but I feel like with the exception of the 3-point shot - which seemed to be beyond intuition for people in general - there are certain guys who have such an encompassing nose for the the efficient play that it just can't help but make them a (relatively) efficient scorer on top of everything else, and I suppose I think Arizin is that guy more than any other perimeter player pre-Oscar/West.

[70sFan]

Huh? You name-checked me early in the thread and said you wanted a Curry vs Wilt debate.

I meant that I had mentioned 2021 Warriors offensive struggles only to show that even the best offensive players can't do much without help. Sorry if I wasn't clear

Re: To be consistent you should also... As I've said, I use both absolute and relative rankings as part of a process by which I come up with more holistic solutions.

You know that Curry-led teams would never reach 115 ORtg within 1960s rules - even if you give them all the knowledge they have now about history. So again - using unadjusted ratings only tells us that offenses were less efficient back then, but they don't tell us that it was basically impossible to be as efficient without three point line or perimeter-friendly rules.

To play back the conversation:

Me: Wilt wasn't leading great offenses with his volume scoring and I'm skeptical that he was really able to.
You: His teammates were bad.
Me: He wasn't entirely out there alone, look at Arizin's numbers.
You: Why don't you look at the rest of the team?

To continue from there:

I think it's a problem when we try to justify why a team's offense is stagnant by saying "Yeah, but other than Wilt and the other efficient volume scorer, what about the role players?"

Not saying the role players don't matter, but generally the idea is that the volume scorers suck attention away from the role players to make it easier for them to score, so if the rest of them are struggling, something is probably going wrong with the system.

Arizin was only efficient in 1960 and 1961 (not in playoffs) though - both years when Wilt clearly wasn't in his offensive prime yet. If you want to tell me that rookie Wilt wasn't capable of leading great offenses then I agree with you - he was still on a learning curve and he needed time to adjust for professional league (mind you, he played full year for Harleem Globetrotters which wasn't serious basketball).

He still had Arizin in 1962 when he started to improve, but Arizin wasn't efficient at this point anymore. Then Paul retired and Wilt ended up with nobody else.

Again - if you're trying to tell me that Wilt wasn't GOAT-level offensive player then you don't need to. If you're trying to tell that Wilt wasn't impactful offensive player because Warriors offense wasn't great, then I have to disagree.

And this is also where it would be easier for me to give Wilt the benefit of the doubt if we hadn't seen that happened in '66-67: Wilt's teammates shoot more and shoot more efficiently.

Sixers situation is completely different, because Wilt played with efficient offensive players. This wouldn't work in 1962-64 Warriors, because Wilt would pass to Wayne Hightower and Guy Rodgers instead of Chet Walker and Hal Greer.

My general sense is that pre-'66-67, Wilt led offenses tended to be stagnant, and while there's plenty of blame to go around, when we look to evaluate Wilt's actual impact, this is something that indicates his impact like this is less that we would tend to assume.

It might be true, but how much is it on Wilt?

As you all know, I've been collecting the old footage and I have found pieces from infamous 1962 season. You can see all of them in spoiler.

Spoiler:

https://youtu.be/Dq8Eu-qJ3t0
https://youtu.be/RM7RfYCxHhY
https://youtu.be/1w34A77fn-4
https://youtu.be/RDYgq5qGtPA
https://youtu.be/rQl3HIw_NOw
https://youtu.be/0B_0OKVLsxI
https://youtu.be/pPMEW9mdjAA
https://youtu.be/ioiIW_sAcic

Most of them are short clips unfortunately, but I really hope that you'll take time and watch them all. I want to highlight one thing - Wilt didn't ate up the clock, Warriors players didn't just give him ball and watch (despite existed narrative). Warriors played very fast, they run a lot in transition and they often didn't even use Wilt in offensive possessions. Wilt usually took quick shot from the post or tried to find open teammate. There was nothing unusual with their strategy, ball movement or time of possession.

It might be true that Wilt shot too much in that season - I think that nobody should take as many shots in basketball game. At the same time, these Philly clips don't indicate that Wilt slowed down Warriors offense or that they forced the ball too much to him. It does show Guy Rodgers running the floor a lot (which is backed up with more extensive footage we have from 1964 season) and I wonder how many times he failed on these attempts, given his horrible efficiency.

If you want to look for more material, I can give more extensive footage from 1963/64 season, along with 1964/65 Sixers footage. In fact, we can create another thread with analysis of all prime Wilt footage I have found so far (including 1966/67 season). If you think it can be fun, let me know and we'll move on to new thread

I don't know if it's so clear cut. Consider that in his first year on the Warriors he was 29 years old and was 2nd on the team in TS Add.

It's easy to look at how his playing time was rapidly dwindling and conclude he just plain got awful, but I know that his issues in New York started off the court. I think it's entirely possible that he developed a bad reputation and never really got another chance to shine.

I would also note that he didn't play big minutes - which on one level makes a point of "Even if he was good, he wasn't playing that much so he wasn't helping the offense that much" - but on another level sure seems to say something about what the team prioritized.

To me it matters that he basically didn't play, because he couldn't impact Warriors offense on consistent basis. When your best offensive teammate played total of 100 games and 12.3 mpg in two seasons, it doesn't give you much.

When you have Wilt, and he's volume scoring like crazy, is playing him with a 6'9" scorer really your priority?

I mean, Warriors played Tom Meschery anyway and although he wasn't 6'9, he definitely was a bigman scorer. Sears wasn't your typical banger either - he played a lot without the ball from what I've seen and he seemed to have nice jumpshot.

Re: if you have to use him... I mean when I mentioned Arizin you said "but what about other guys?", when I mention another guy, you discredit him. At this point I don't really have any reason to think you won't "what about" whatever I bring up.

Yeah, I discredited him because he barely played. It'd be fair if Sears played consistent minutes and didn't miss games, but he wasn't reliable. Also remember - Sears and Arizin didn't play together. It means that Wilt either had old, but still good Arizin or old and not good anymore Sears.

I guess I'll be really explicit here:

I consider the fact that in '66-67 Wilt, when Wilt moved away from volume scoring, his teammates' efficiency went up despite having to carry a bigger scoring burden, to be probably the single most important event in basketball history to understand.

The theory that all volume scorers make it easier for their teammates to score efficiently gets disproven by Wilt, and you're not just not applying this knowledge to understand the game more broadly, you're not even applying it to Wilt.

I'm sorry for the condescending tone here. I respect your knowledge, and recognize that you know many thing I don't, but I find myself shaking my head here. While you can argue that Wilt's Warriors teammates didn't have the ability to do what his 76ers teammates did because X, Y & Z, you're literally giving me what you think is a rhetorically absurd question to something I had assumed you would understand the answer to already.

I mean, I agree that it's inarguably a better strategy to play Wilt like he did in 1967 than in 1962, but there are two factors:

1. Coaching gap is massive. Hannum didn't only make Wilt shoot less, he created entire system built around Wilt's passing and inside pressence. He didn't just reduce Chamberlain's offensive role, he changed it and adjusted whole team to that. McGuire was far less capable coach and he simply assumed that Wilt scoring a lot and Philly playing fast would be enough.

2. I still disagree that Wilt would be able to play this role in Warriors teams. Hannum himself understood that in 1964 and he didn't take the ball out of Wilt's hands.

There is also one more minor point - you assume that Wilt always had similar capabilities. There are strong evidences that Wilt improved as a passer significantly at the beginning of 1963 year. From what I've seen, Wilt's offensive game got better in mid-60s, he had wider array of scoring moves and he passed the ball more. I don't think it's out of possibility that 1964-67 Wilt was simply better basketball player than 1962 Wilt. I mean, most players don't peak in their 3rd years, why Wilt would?

Re: What would I expect of Shaq? If they let Shaq be Shaq, he destroys everybody. If they call enough fouls on Shaq, he won't. (ftr, I don't think Shaq would fare well against modern flopping, so he'd have to adjust there as well as find a way not to get murdered by modern picks and spacing.)

I should be clear: I'm not saying necessarily that Wilt couldn't have wrecked everybody with a power game, nor am I saying that he should've have. You can argue that the officiating of the time made that impossible. But whether Wilt played the way he played by choice or by necessity, that was how he played, and that's what I'm trying to go by.

I was talking more about the expectations of Shaq/Arizin led offenses with mediocre supporting casts. Do you think that he'd make them +3 offense? Or better?

To this point, I've not said where I'm ranking Wilt, so what exactly constitutes "too far" here?

Not about ranking, more about blaming Wilt for every Warriors problems.

[70sFan]

What do we mean by players had superior strategy today than before? The rules are different.

There wasn't even a 3 point line in the NBA during Nate Thurmond's career. Why would it be relevant if he is better than a player who is better at guarding the 3 point line?


It isn't like the 2000s where they were undershooting from long range, they did not even have the option during Nate's day.

I think it's fine if you want to say that Thurmond was something close to perfect for his time's defense and a more modern player shouldn't gain an advantage over him simply because the modern player is more adapted to the rules and strategy of today.

What rubs me the wrong way is the idea that the guy who may well be the single best defender of the 2010s (Draymond) would be knocked relative to the defense of previous eras. The idea that we'd be effectively saying "The best defenders ever were in the past" while pointing to guys who'd get torched by today's shooters just seems weird.

I will say, when asked "GOAT Defender?" my immediate though remains "Bill Russell" so this is on me too, and I don't mean to come across all sanctimonious. I'm still grappling with this myself, so I'm not looking to say "this is the way", but I do think it should cause more brows to furrow than merely my own.

Why do you think that Thurmond would get torched by today's shooters but Russell wouldn't? I am aware that Russell was better equipped to today's game than Thurmond (he's better equipped than almost anybody), but I don't see any evidences that Thurmond wouldn't fare better than most bigs in today's league. He was fairly mobile, he was smart, he possessed excellent defensive fundamentals.

I don't know, sometimes I wonder how many people really watched Thurmond games (that's not necessarily on you Doc). It seems that people think that he was a powerful low post banger in Eaton/Hibbert mold.

[Odinn21]

Only 5 votes after 2 pages of discussion.
Though I haven't voted myself. The same for most active participants in 70sFan and Doctor MJ. Hopefully we'll do before the deadline.