Owly wrote:No offense but the free throw thing is an odd distinction. I mean I get that it isn’t an area where the game visibly changes (though you could argue it’s psychological, whether he was too amped or whatever) but ... if you judge on what actually happened then use what actually happened. If it’s hypothetical “how his skills translate” then you’d have to do that (“well it could be luck”) with every number. And note free throw shooting is one of, if not the, most stable factors in the stat line. If we say that’s luck why can’t we say the same of Malone’s shooting (and whilst Malone’s failures might be rationalised in terms of lacking a Moses, Erving, KJ, Olajuwon, Drexler albeit not general at their very best, to take attention away, Barkley’s free throw failure’s are entirely his own doing).
It's primarily because I don't consider the whole choking under pressure thing as much, sure, it does happen, as evidenced by Nick Anderson, but that's rare. I think Malone's overall struggles have far more to do with his limited skill set not being as effective in the playoffs, similar to David Robinson.
If it continued over a longer period of time with Barkley, then I'd be more receptive to it, but that wasn't the case before or after. In '86 and '87, Barkley's FT% was 72.2% in 17 playoff games, which was the exact same % he shot from the line in the regular season over those 2 seasons. And then from '93-'97, Barkley's FT% was 76.5% in 64 playoff games compared to 74.1% in the regular season during that time. And overall, there wasn't a great difference between Barkley's career regular season FT%(73.5%) and playoff FT%(71.7%).
In Malone's case, we saw him for years and he was regularly comfortably over 50% in the regular season with the 2 exceptions being 49.7% in '94 and 49.3% in '99, but also had seasons of 55+% in '90, '93 and '97. Yet in the playoffs, he was regularly shooting 46-47% in his best extended runs, and significantly lower in some, like the '97 and '99 runs. '92 and '00 were his only extended runs shooting over 50%.
That's not an anomaly in a short sample size or anything. From '90-'00, Malone shot 52.9% in the regular season and just 46.6% in the playoffs.
And I wouldn't buy the teammate excuse with Malone at all. In fact, I'd say the opposite since I can't think of a great who benefited more from a particular teammate than Malone did.
As for Barkley's prime Philly years where he made the playoffs, he clearly didn't have particularly good casts for the time.
1989: He had Gminski who was a solid offensive center capable of hitting jumpers making him a good fit alongside Barkley, Ron Anderson was a good scorer at the 3 coming off the bench and Mo Cheeks was still pretty good, but aging at 32. However, that offense was 3rd best in the league(in a virtual tie with Phoenix for 2nd best) and had a +5.2 offensive rating above league average. Now compare that cast to the Laker and Suns teams who were ahead of them offensively.
1990: They still had Gminski and Anderson, while Cheeks was replaced by Johnny Dawkins who wasn't really a downgrade by that point, Hersey Hawkins improved in his 2nd year and was now one of the better offensive 2 guards, and they added Rick Mahorn, though Mahorn was mostly a defender and rebounder. But Philly improved offensively to 2nd behind only a Laker team who undoubtedly had more talent, and ahead of a Suns team who also clearly had more talent. Philly's offensive rating was now 2nd best in the league and +5.4 above league average. A solid cast, but that top 2 offense so far above the average was clearly primarily a result of Barkley's excellence, just like '89.
1991: Philly did fall off dramatically to 13th and right at the league average of 107.9, but their cast took a major hit. Barkley still had Hawkins and Anderson, but Johnny Dawkins missed virtually entire season and 36 year old Rickey Green was the player who filled in. Then Gminski was playing like garbage shooting 38.4% with Philly, but they got worse after trading him for the more talented Armen Gilliam because Gilliam was a low post player who didn't fit as well with Barkley as Gminski did. Finally, Barkley missed 15 games, during which Philly went 5-10. So this wasn't a good cast at all.
I'm not seeing Barkley's individual playoff success during this time being more or even equally attributable to teammates as Malone. Besides, Barkley was a superior post player who was significantly better at getting his own shot and his game wasn't really dependent on any particular teammate.
