RealGM Top 100 List #31

[john248]

CP3 or Paul Pierce here for me. Never was a big Drexler fan. As far as bigs, either one of Dwight, Gilmore, Reed, or Zo.

Pierce wasn't really in any favorable position in terms of the team. Pitino was terrible as a coach, and Boston gave up some young pieces early on aside from Walker and Pierce. Prior to Pierce, they trade Billups for Kenny Anderson. Few years later, they give up Joe Johnson for Rodney Rodgers. Derp. Still, in 02, they make the ECF. Pierce went off for 41 in the 4th in game 3 against the Nets before losing. Prior season, no playoffs. Then you have mediocre seasons to just poor seasons after that where at 1 point, Pierce is playing minutes next to Ricky Davis. At least the losing would then bring in some young talent like Al Jefferson to be flipped later. Still though, Pierce is a guy who looks good. 02-11 RAPM, edges out Kidd slightly 4.9 vs 4.7. Career PER 20.4 vs 17.9, career WS 143.6 vs 138.6. In a half court offense, I like what Pierce brings more than I do Kidd.

[Jim Naismith]

Vote: Elgin Baylor

Elite player for 4 years, great scorer, good rebounder. All-star player 7 other years.

Regular season
1960: 29.6 ppg / 16.4 rpg
1961: 34.8 ppg / 19.8 rpg
1962: 38.3 ppg / 18.6 rpg
1963: 34.0 ppg / 14.3 rpg

Postseason
1960: 33.4 ppg / 14.1 rpg
1961: 38.1 ppg / 15.3 rpg
1962: 38.6 ppg / 17.7 rpg
1963: 32.6 ppg / 13.6 rpg


Playoff seasons with at least 25 PER (min 6 games)
01 Michael Jordan...........9
02 Shaquille O'Neal..........9
03 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar....6
04 Tim Duncan...............6
05 Hakeem Olajuwon........6
06 Wilt Chamberlain.........5
07 LeBron James.............5
08 Charles Barkley...........4
09 Elgin Baylor..............4
10 Dirk Nowitzki.............4

Note that Jordan, LeBron, and Baylor are the only wing players on the above list.

Playoffs Games with 40+ points
Jordan........38
West..........20
Baylor........14
Wilt...........13
Kobe..........13
LeBron........12
Shaq..........12
Hakeem......11

[Texas Chuck]

Possibly shocking Kidd stat: 51st in NBA history in total rebounds. As a PG. He was an incredible rebounder.

Even more shocking: He's 25th all-time in total defensive rebounds.


That gets mentioned off-hand about Kidd a lot that he was a good rebounder. Nope, he was a weapon as a defensive rebounder with multiple seasons avg 8+ total rebounds, even more over 7 and multiple seasons over 20% DRB%

And it goes without saying what an advantage it is when Jason Kidd doesnt wait for an outlet pass. And when you factor in 2 steals a game on top of that.....

25th all-time in defensive rebounds. As a PG.

He has lots of other impressive career marks, but that rebounding....

[lorak]

Possibly shocking Kidd stat: 51st in NBA history in total rebounds. As a PG. He was an incredible rebounder.

Even more shocking: He's 25th all-time in total defensive rebounds.

Actually he is 25th since '74, not all time. That's still very good for a PG, but people should avoid such strong statements as "all time", when all time data isn't available.

[Jim Naismith]

Possibly shocking Kidd stat: 51st in NBA history in total rebounds. As a PG. He was an incredible rebounder.

Even more shocking: He's 25th all-time in total defensive rebounds.

He has lots of other impressive career marks, but that rebounding....

Baylor is #26 in rebounds, above David Robinson.

For rebounds per game, Baylor is #10, above Rodman and Moses.

Baylor is a 6'5" small forward.

[Texas Chuck]

Possibly shocking Kidd stat: 51st in NBA history in total rebounds. As a PG. He was an incredible rebounder.

Even more shocking: He's 25th all-time in total defensive rebounds.

Actually he is 25th since '74, not all time. That's still very good for a PG, but people should avoid such strong statements as "all time", when all time data isn't available.

Thanks for the clarification Stern. So not quite as impressive as I thought. Still noteworthy tho imo.

Carry on.

[ronnymac2]

Happy to see Havlicek go in. Great player.

Paul, Durant, and Isiah are my frontrunners, though Chuck and Drza have made spectacular posts regarding Kidd. Kidd vs. Payton is interesting. I guess it depends on what you see in Payton's offense: a ball-stopping, ball-pounding PG with non-elite playmaking vision and meh outside shooting and limited portability, or a legitimate 20/8 PG with an elite post game and mid-post game who kept his turnovers down and could get hot from 3. Truth is probably somewhere in between.

Note that after Shawn Kemp left, the Sonics in 1998 had the 3rd-best offense in the NBA (+6.6). Payton had one of his best offensive seasons (19.2 points, 8.3 assists, 2.8 turnovers, 54.4%TS), and Seattle was the best 3-point shooting team in the league at nearly 40% (this is with the regular line). Hersey Hawkins, Detlef Schrempf, Dale Ellis, Greg Anthony, and Sam Perkins comprised an elite shooting cast around Payton. It was actually one of Vin Baker's better seasons, too, and in my opinion, peak Baker was better than Kemp on offense. How much credit you apportion GP for an absolutely elite offense is up for debate.

What about Tracy McGrady? He might have the best peak left, and he's got a decently long prime. 2001-2005 is 5 super strong years, and then you've got 2007 and 2008, too. Heck, his 2000 season is kind of Kawai Leonard-y!

[Quotatious]

What about Tracy McGrady? He might have the best peak left, and he's got a decently long prime. 2001-2005 is 5 super strong years, and then you've got 2007 and 2008, too. Heck, his 2000 season is kind of Kawai Leonard-y!

I wouldn't take him over Pierce. They're easy to compare since they're basically exact contemporaries (both had a breakout year in 2001) - T-Mac was clearly better at his peak (2003 Mac is on a different level), and I'd give him an edge in the other seasons between 01 and 05, but it's not a huge difference anymore. Pierce was IMO definitely better between 06 and 08, and his longevity is too great. Honestly, I don't know if I'd take McGrady over Durant (probably not, because KD is IMO better, comparing their primes - peak is very close, but Durant's other top seasons are better than T-Mac's).

[ronnymac2]

What about Tracy McGrady? He might have the best peak left, and he's got a decently long prime. 2001-2005 is 5 super strong years, and then you've got 2007 and 2008, too. Heck, his 2000 season is kind of Kawai Leonard-y!

I wouldn't take him over Pierce. They're easy to compare since they're basically exact contemporaries (both had a breakout year in 2001) - T-Mac was clearly better at his peak (2003 Mac is on a different level), and I'd give him an edge in the other seasons between 01 and 05, but it's not a huge difference anymore. Pierce was IMO definitely better between 06 and 08, and his longevity is too great. Honestly, I don't know if I'd take McGrady over Durant (probably not, because KD is IMO better, comparing their primes - peak is very close, but Durant's other top seasons are better than T-Mac's).

I suppose the comparison is shaped by how damning you think McGrady's relative inefficiency was from 2005 on. That's fair. What about Pierce and McGrady vs. Vince Carter and Allen Iverson?

[Warspite]

Vote Isiah Thomas

Epic playoff performances

Offensive genius who created many of the offensive plays run today.

Only top50 player of all time who never played with another and still won championships

A player who maximised his teammates leading great offenses in the Moe/Magic/Bird era.

Retired 4th all time in assists.

12x allstar

Only guard to break the MJ/Magic 1st team all NBA stranglehold.

[Texas Chuck]

^ Not that I think it has any relevance to how good Zeke is or isnt but I personally consider Dennis Rodman to be one of the 50 best NBA players ever. And even if you disagree Rodman is top 50, those Pistons had at least 3 other players who were top 100(Rodman, Dumars, Laimbeer) so I'm not sure that's really a great example of a carry job.

[Duane2390]

Hi guys, I am from England in the UK. I love the American sports system, been a huge fan of the nfl for a few years and have been to a few of the games that have been played at Wembley in London. I have played a couple of the nba 2k games. I have recently started to really enjoy the nba and have become a qualified basketball coach in the UK, even though the standard of basketball here isn't as good as in the usa!. Anyway I know this is slightly off topic but I was wondering if you guys could recommend any exciting teams to support in the nba and also In the nfl. I want to become a fan of a team in each league that I will enjoying watching. Appologise in advance for the long thread but any helpful replies will be appreciated. Thanks

[dautjazz]

CENTERS
Artis Gilmore or Dwight Howard are the next greatest 2 way centers but Artis seemed to lose his competitive fire when he came to the NBA and Dwight has not been the same dominant player since Orlando. Alonzo Mourning and Mel Daniels are the other 2 candidates that came to mind, very similar players in many ways; plus probably Dikembe Mutombo is a candidate as the most impactful defender left (and not a complete disaster offensively). The numbers clearly say Artis, but I'm just not as high on him as I used to be.

FORWARDS
Baylor, McHale, Rodman, and new star Kevin Durant. Interested to see who starts getting support. Baylor seemed to have efficiency issues even for his day, McHale is super efficient but worked against single teams in the post more than any great post scorer in history and was a mediocre defensive rebounder (though the presence of Larry Bird that gave him so many single teams also stole some rebounds from him). Rodman is the GOAT rebounder, but also a disruptive force and barely above the Ben Wallace level offensively. Kevin Durant may have the highest peak but is 5 years with no rings enough? What about someone like Alex English who was very good for over a decade in many different lineups and taking on many different roles?

GUARDS
I am looking hard at Clyde Drexler and Chris Paul who, like Artis, has spectacular numbers but I'm just not sure that his numbers don't overstate his impact. I am open to Payton, Kidd, or Isiah but all three have efficiency issues v. Paul and Paul is the best of the bunch as a playmaker and not a bad defender. Longevity is the biggest issue for Paul like it is for Durant. I'd love to say I'm looking at Sidney Moncrief here too but he is a bit below the Chris Paul level for either peak or longevity.

Things I need to see . . .

Some great posts on Artis have left me a bit less skeptical of his NBA years, he was far less active and played closer to the basket on both ends which accounts for (a) his lesser defensive impact, (b) the rep of not having good hands which was not a problem in the ABA, and (c) the great increase in efficiency AFTER the move to the NBA.

Haven't seen any analysis on other top centers like Zo or Deke yet. How do they compare to Artis (and Dwight)?

Dwight Howard v. Kevin Durant v. Chris Paul . . . who has the greatest CAREER value of the active guys?

For Baylor fans, I'd like to see a convincing case made for him against Kevin McHale and Alex English as well as John Havlicek (who I'm not as big a fan of as some).

Warspite, if you advocate Cousy, can you show him making his team appreciably better in any realistic way? It seems they replaced him without missing a beat and his playoff numbers are awful during the championship years; Ramsey was picking up the slack that Cousy dropped it seems. Thus the case for Cousy should probably be like the case for Nash or Kidd, based on his unique playmaking skills making his teammates better.

For now, I favor:

a. Artis Gilmore over other bigs left. Maybe McHale but I have questions about his rebounding.

b. Clyde Drexler over other wings left. Maybe Gervin but I like my stars to put in effort on defense.

c. Gary Payton over other PGs left. Better defense AND better individual offense than Kidd plus better team results (with better talent around him though). Kidd's playmaking in the half court just never seemed enough to make up this gap when he couldn't shoot; when he could shoot from 3, his defensive impact had dropped. Chris Paul is my second choice at PG over Kidd as well.

Am I missing something? Why would Dwight Howard get consideration this soon? What about Willis Reed or Bob McAdoo?

McAdoo had an MVP was runner up two other times.
Reed had a short career, but was MVP and a two time Finals MVP.
Walton was a beast, but was injury plagued, but my god was he a monster his MVP/championship season.
Parish was a 9 time All-Star, probably would be better remember if he didn't play alongside Bird and McHale, AND he played until he was 43!

Anyways, my point is, this is much too early for Howard.

[PaulieWal]

Hi guys, I am from England in the UK. I love the American sports system, been a huge fan of the nfl for a few years and have been to a few of the games that have been played at Wembley in London. I have played a couple of the nba 2k games. I have recently started to really enjoy the nba and have become a qualified basketball coach in the UK, even though the standard of basketball here isn't as good as in the usa!. Anyway I know this is slightly off topic but I was wondering if you guys could recommend any exciting teams to support in the nba and also In the nfl. I want to become a fan of a team in each league that I will enjoying watching. Appologise in advance for the long thread but any helpful replies will be appreciated. Thanks

This might the wrong thread to ask that question since it is strictly dedicated to the Top 100 project. Try the OT thread and you will have better luck there + members can give you genuine suggestions without derailing this thread. Here's the link:

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1337182

[drza]

Jason Kidd vs Gary Payton


Stylistics

This is another fun comp, between two Bay Area local legends. To me, this comparison is largely about their differences in styles. Both were excellent at what they did, but they often used similar tools to do very different things, with similar goals. Both are big for point guards, on the order of 6-3 or 6-4. Both are tenacious defensive players, two of the best that we've seen at the position. Both lacked the shooting range of many of their contemporaries, but both were still strong offensive players.

Despite all these similarities, their approaches were often almost diametric opposites. In a simplistic sense, on both offense and defense I see Payton as the better 1-on-1 player but Kidd as the better team player.

Offense
On offense, Payton was more of a scorer than Kidd. He owned his lack of shooting range, and adapted with a game that used his size and physicality to produce good looks from mid-range and in. He was an excellent post-up player for a point guard, able to get the shot that he wanted over the (almost always) smaller guard defending him. He also was good at getting a step and finishing from the paint or with a reasonable mid-range shot out to about 18 feet. As a point guard, Payton had good vision and was able to run the show off the dribble out front or with his back to the basket. He was a good floor general with good passing ability, but to me he never exhibited the type of pure point guard flare of the Magic/Stockton/Kidd/Nash type PGs. He was definitely a scorer as well as a floor general, and it was the combo of the two that made him great.

Kidd, on the other hand, wasn't a very good one on one scorer. His set-shot jumper eventually got better, but he was never a good scorer off the dribble. But he was a brilliant floor general with outstanding passing skills. As such, when he was probing a defense off the dribble, he was almost always looking to set up a teammate before his own shot. He would call his own number enough to average in the teens (sometimes upper teens), but his scoring efficiency/volume was never his strong point. No, his strong point was that on his teams all of his teammates tended to maximize their production. That's why, in the vs. Nash and vs. Paul comps I've done in recent threads, we see Kidd with a consistently strong offensive RAPM despite the fact that his box score offensive numbers would argue that he should be weaker.

Way back when we were comparing Larry Bird and Hakeem Olajuwon I broached the concept of "team offense" as the analogy to the accepted "team defense" term. I argued that Bird's individual scoring efficiency issues in some of his early playoffs were way overblown and that he was still having mega offensive impact in those situations because with his passing and floor generalship he was providing excellent team offense independent of his 1-on-1 scoring. I made a similar argument for KG. Similar for Scottie Pippen (though under a different name, as I think we just called it a "point guard effect" or something like that). But the point is, I think that this "team offense" thing has some meat to it, and that it's a particular strength of Kidd's that doesn't show up in the box scores...but does show up in the +/- stats.

Defense
The defense seems to mirror the offense, with these two players. Payton's nickname was "The Glove", and it mirrored his on-court persona. He was aggressive, strong, and would climb into his opponent's shorts to keep him from getting to the rim. Trying to drive on or score against Payton was famously difficult, with all manner of players (including Jordan) weighing in on it through the years. Plus, Payton's penchant for trash-talking and mind games often worked to his advantage on defense as he could frankly tick his opponents off and have them make mistakes.

Kidd, on the other hand, was again more of a team defender. Which is really strange, because that's not often something you see at point guard. But Kidd played defense more like a forward than a guard. He was a solid 1-on-1 defender, especially against big guards, but he wasn't who you would think of as a "stopper" to put on the opponents point guard to take him out of the game. And as Kidd got older, some of the lightening bug quick PGs could give him some trouble 1-on-1. But Kidd was very strong (for a PG) at help defense, with quick/smart rotations and the size/physicality to switch onto bigger wings and forwards and give them difficulties. Then, at the end of the possession, Kidd was an absurdly strong rebounder for his position...again, more like a big forward than a point guard.

The impact stats

Usually when I'm doing these types of comps I list box score stats, but I didn't here (more for reasons of convenience due to me sneaking to write this from work, but also because I don't know how much bearing it has for my analysis). If you want to see them, it's a quick B-R search away, but I think most of us know the cliff notes version: Payton was the better scorer by both volume and efficiency, while Kidd was the better distributor by both volume and efficiency and also the better rebounder. We could have gathered most of that from the stylistic comparison above, though. The more important question to me, then, is how did these different styles and approaches change how much Payton and/or Kidd were able to impact the games.

RAPM: 1998 and after

For the 1998 season Payton was 29 year old, in his 8th season. He would make the All-NBA and All-Defensive teams every year from '98 thru 2002 (two 1st team All NBA, five 1st team All Defensive nods). He also set his career bests in PER and Win Shares/48 in both the regular season and postseason during this time window. So this period definitely captures a good chunk of what would be considered Payton's prime, as well as some of his peak.

Kidd was a handful of years younger than Payton. So if we want to compare apples-to-apples as much as possible, I'll only consider Kidd's RAPM scores from his 8th season and after for this comp. Because Doc MJ normalized in his spreadsheet, we can compare RAPM scores from different years on essentially the same scale. So, let's do it.

3-year peaks:
Payton (1998 - 2000): +7.5, +4.5, +8.1, avg. +6.7
Kidd ( 2002, 03, 05): +7.3, +7.0, +7.3, avg +7.2

It's hard to draw very much from this, outside of that their impacts in these time windows looked pretty similar. So, let's separate this into offense and defense for closer looks.

3-year peak, ORAPM:
Payton (1998 - 2000): +6.2, +4.7, +6.8, avg. +5.9
Kidd ( 2002, 03, 05): +4.6, +4.2, +4.6, avg. +4.5

3-year peak, DRAPM:
Payton (1998 - 2000): +1.3, -0.2, +1.3, avg +0.8
Kidd ( 2002, 03, 05): +2.6, +2.9, +2.8, avg +2.8

I purposefully took the values from the years where their overall RAPM peaked, and didn't mix and match offensive and defensive peaks from different years, because I wanted to see how their impacts were distributed in their best years (e.g. Kidd, in particular, had better defensive values to pick from during his time in Dallas).

What jumps out at me right away is that Kidd's DEFENSIVE impact seemed to be noticeably higher than Payton's. That is a somewhat surprising finding, since so much of Payton's reputation comes from being the Glove on defense. But these results would argue that, at least in this portion of their careeers, Kidd's more team-defense approach had a bigger impact on his team's results than Payton's 1-on-1 brilliance.

The other thing that jumps out is that Payton was extremely strong on offense. Payton's 3-year offensive peak of +5.9 is 18th best from 1998 - 2012, and not far off from what we saw from Chris Paul's offensive peak according to ORAPM (+6.2 3-year avg.).

Longevity

I had planned to delve into the new on/off +/- data from 1994 - 1996 to give some estimates into what Payton was providing in his earlier prime, but I'm just flat out of time and my bosses are over my shoulder. But from memory, I don't believe that Payton was overly impressive in those studies (in fact, I think in one of them his on/off was dramatically negative in a weird effect that had folks looking into the Sonics' rotations for explanations).

But one thing that shows up in the later RAPM studies is that Payton's game didn't seem to age nearly as well as Kidd's. We looked at him from 1998 - 2000, then we don't have RAPM data for 2001. But from 2002 until he retired, Payton only had three more positive RAPM scores (peaked at +2.8 in 2003), with three negative scores as well. Meanwhile,Kidd was still posting an average +5.1 RAPM through his first three years in Dallas, and was about +2 even in 2011 and 2012 when he was on his way out the door. Kidd's defense weathered beautifully, especially as he took on more big-guard defense in Dallas, and his mix of part-time general + spot-up-shooter was a positive all the way up until 2012 (when he was essentially neutral). As such, Kidd's time as an impact player continued long after Payton's and gives him a legitimate advantage in longevity.

Bottom line

Kidd and Payton was every bit as fun of a comp as I expected. Payton, with his efficient scoring and still good floor generalship, peaked a bit higher than Kidd on offense (on the order of Chris Paul in terms of impact, from the information we have...side note, it's very interesting that RAPM sees peak Paul and Payton as similar on offense, but with PAUL as the higher impact defender). I didn't get to spend much time on Payton pre-98, so if anyone thinks that time period really changes his story I'd be interested in seeing more of that.

Kidd and Payton, in the years that we have available, peaked with very similar overall impact as measured by RAPM. Kidd's offense still measures (a lot) stronger than his scoring efficiency suggests, but on top of that he showed a marked defensive advantage over Payton. Also, Kidd's ability to adapt his game with age (less offensive primacy, more defensive and spot-up focused) allowed him to remain a high-impact player well into his mid/late 30s, during a time when Payton was consistently showing up as negative. Payton seemingly needed to be ball-dominant on offense to maintain his offensive impact, and his defense (at least from '98 on) never had the type of impact we may have expected (well short of what we saw from Kidd).

All in all, I'd say that I'm more impressed with Kidd's entire body of work. But as expected, they make quite the comparison.

[Owly]

Vote Isiah Thomas

Epic playoff performances

Offensive genius who created many of the offensive plays run today.

Only top50 player of all time who never played with another and still won championships

A player who maximised his teammates leading great offenses in the Moe/Magic/Bird era.

Retired 4th all time in assists.

12x allstar

Only guard to break the MJ/Magic 1st team all NBA stranglehold.

By what measure top 50? Because if it's the NBA at 50, see the previous thread

Spoiler:

IThe logic behind Isiah Thomas escapes me. He was the best player on the court who played for the best team. When he was outplaying MJ, Bird and Magic nobody told him that he still needed to play better because some kid in 20 yrs under totally different rules vs vastly inferior players was going to put up those stats. If those stats are so much more impressive am I to conclude that its much tougher to beat Steph Curry than Magic or Bird?

"Breaking" the stranglehold is pretty dubious. Firstly it implies he took it off MJ or Magic. In fact he was All-NBA before MJ. '86 MJ missed most of the season. So what it comes down to is he got All-NBA over Michael in his rookie year. Whilst I'd argue that he didn't deserve it (cf: http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... rder_by=ws ; metrics suggest 3rd or 4th best guard and they struggle to quantify Moncrief's D) that at his absolute peak get first team over rookie MJ is far less impressive than the grandiose "breaking the stranglehold".



"When the 50 greatest players were honored I looked around and I noticed that every player who won a ring had at least 1 teammate with him who was also a 50 greatest. That is everyone but me and thats my legacy compared to the all time greats." Isiah Thomas

When he was outplaying MJ, Bird and Magic

Didn't happen. When did Isiah Thomas outplay any one of those guys? Or is this the way in which Gus Williams outplayed Kareem (except what he have of Gus's stats suggests that isn't as bad as saying Isiah outplayed any of those guys. Is a title requisite for this sort of outplaying or do you just have to be the percieved star and win a series. If so, remember that time Dolph Schayes outplayed Wilt? What kind outplaying is this?

If that quote is real then it shows a very poor grasp of history. Arizin won a title without a top 50 teammate. So to did George Mikan. As did Bob Pettit. Also Hakeem Olajuwon, Dolph Schayes and Bill Walton. So six out of 49. If it were one or two maybe but ...

In any case that's terrible reasoning on his part. 50 is arbitrary. The list was likely influenced by winners bias. And the implication that coaching and non top 50 players are of little importance are absurd.

That's the main issue though for me ...

-I'd suggest that leading great offenses is dubious, (depending on time frame/range, definition of great)

-Where a player was on a specific counting stat list is a pretty slender support for any claim of greatness (why are we completely ignoring since?). I'd suggest Bob Feerick lists very high on a number of such lists at his retirement.

-Regarding All-Star counting; accolade counting in principle aside, defend Isiah as a top 4 EC guard in 1993, defend that accolade as meaningful, ditto '92 etc
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... tats::none
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... rder_by=ws

-His postseason is relatively strong (I better than RS), but not metrically more so than Baron Davis, Chauncey Billups, Gus Williams. If you go with the belief that PER overvalues scoring and DWS are poor at distributing defensive credit (albeit OWS goes too far in favouring efficiency over usage) his playoff numbers aren't notably distinct from KJ, Terry Porter, Price, Mo Cheeks. And these guys either have superior RS numbers (KJ/Price) or reputations as noted stoppers (Cheeks, Porter).

[penbeast0]

Jason Kidd vs Gary Payton


Stylistics

This is another fun comp, between two Bay Area local legends. To me, this comparison is largely about their differences in styles. Both were excellent at what they did, but they often used similar tools to do very different things, with similar goals. Both are big for point guards, on the order of 6-3 or 6-4. Both are tenacious defensive players, two of the best that we've seen at the position. Both lacked the shooting range of many of their contemporaries, but both were still strong offensive players.

Despite all these similarities, their approaches were often almost diametric opposites. In a simplistic sense, on both offense and defense I see Payton as the better 1-on-1 player but Kidd as the better team player.

Offense
On offense, Payton was more of a scorer than Kidd. He owned his lack of shooting range, and adapted with a game that used his size and physicality to produce good looks from mid-range and in. He was an excellent post-up player for a point guard, able to get the shot that he wanted over the (almost always) smaller guard defending him. He also was good at getting a step and finishing from the paint or with a reasonable mid-range shot out to about 18 feet. As a point guard, Payton had good vision and was able to run the show off the dribble out front or with his back to the basket. He was a good floor general with good passing ability, but to me he never exhibited the type of pure point guard flare of the Magic/Stockton/Kidd/Nash type PGs. He was definitely a scorer as well as a floor general, and it was the combo of the two that made him great.

Kidd, on the other hand, wasn't a very good one on one scorer. His set-shot jumper eventually got better, but he was never a good scorer off the dribble. But he was a brilliant floor general with outstanding passing skills. As such, when he was probing a defense off the dribble, he was almost always looking to set up a teammate before his own shot. He would call his own number enough to average in the teens (sometimes upper teens), but his scoring efficiency/volume was never his strong point. No, his strong point was that on his teams all of his teammates tended to maximize their production. That's why, in the vs. Nash and vs. Paul comps I've done in recent threads, we see Kidd with a consistently strong offensive RAPM despite the fact that his box score offensive numbers would argue that he should be weaker.

Way back when we were comparing Larry Bird and Hakeem Olajuwon I broached the concept of "team offense" as the analogy to the accepted "team defense" term. I argued that Bird's individual scoring efficiency issues in some of his early playoffs were way overblown and that he was still having mega offensive impact in those situations because with his passing and floor generalship he was providing excellent team offense independent of his 1-on-1 scoring. I made a similar argument for KG. Similar for Scottie Pippen (though under a different name, as I think we just called it a "point guard effect" or something like that). But the point is, I think that this "team offense" thing has some meat to it, and that it's a particular strength of Kidd's that doesn't show up in the box scores...but does show up in the +/- stats.

Defense
The defense seems to mirror the offense, with these two players. Payton's nickname was "The Glove", and it mirrored his on-court persona. He was aggressive, strong, and would climb into his opponent's shorts to keep him from getting to the rim. Trying to drive on or score against Payton was famously difficult, with all manner of players (including Jordan) weighing in on it through the years. Plus, Payton's penchant for trash-talking and mind games often worked to his advantage on defense as he could frankly tick his opponents off and have them make mistakes.

Kidd, on the other hand, was again more of a team defender. Which is really strange, because that's not often something you see at point guard. But Kidd played defense more like a forward than a guard. He was a solid 1-on-1 defender, especially against big guards, but he wasn't who you would think of as a "stopper" to put on the opponents point guard to take him out of the game. And as Kidd got older, some of the lightening bug quick PGs could give him some trouble 1-on-1. But Kidd was very strong (for a PG) at help defense, with quick/smart rotations and the size/physicality to switch onto bigger wings and forwards and give them difficulties. Then, at the end of the possession, Kidd was an absurdly strong rebounder for his position...again, more like a big forward than a point guard.

The impact stats

Usually when I'm doing these types of comps I list box score stats, but I didn't here (more for reasons of convenience due to me sneaking to write this from work, but also because I don't know how much bearing it has for my analysis). If you want to see them, it's a quick B-R search away, but I think most of us know the cliff notes version: Payton was the better scorer by both volume and efficiency, while Kidd was the better distributor by both volume and efficiency and also the better rebounder. We could have gathered most of that from the stylistic comparison above, though. The more important question to me, then, is how did these different styles and approaches change how much Payton and/or Kidd were able to impact the games.

RAPM: 1998 and after

For the 1998 season Payton was 29 year old, in his 8th season. He would make the All-NBA and All-Defensive teams every year from '98 thru 2002 (two 1st team All NBA, five 1st team All Defensive nods). He also set his career bests in PER and Win Shares/48 in both the regular season and postseason during this time window. So this period definitely captures a good chunk of what would be considered Payton's prime, as well as some of his peak.

Kidd was a handful of years younger than Payton. So if we want to compare apples-to-apples as much as possible, I'll only consider Kidd's RAPM scores from his 8th season and after for this comp. Because Doc MJ normalized in his spreadsheet, we can compare RAPM scores from different years on essentially the same scale. So, let's do it.

3-year peaks:
Payton (1998 - 2000): +7.5, +4.5, +8.1, avg. +6.7
Kidd ( 2002, 03, 05): +7.3, +7.0, +7.3, avg +7.2

It's hard to draw very much from this, outside of that their impacts in these time windows looked pretty similar. So, let's separate this into offense and defense for closer looks.

3-year peak, ORAPM:
Payton (1998 - 2000): +6.2, +4.7, +6.8, avg. +5.9
Kidd ( 2002, 03, 05): +4.6, +4.2, +4.6, avg. +4.5

3-year peak, DRAPM:
Payton (1998 - 2000): +1.3, -0.2, +1.3, avg +0.8
Kidd ( 2002, 03, 05): +2.6, +2.9, +2.8, avg +2.8

I purposefully took the values from the years where their overall RAPM peaked, and didn't mix and match offensive and defensive peaks from different years, because I wanted to see how their impacts were distributed in their best years (e.g. Kidd, in particular, had better defensive values to pick from during his time in Dallas).

What jumps out at me right away is that Kidd's DEFENSIVE impact seemed to be noticeably higher than Payton's. That is a somewhat surprising finding, since so much of Payton's reputation comes from being the Glove on defense. But these results would argue that, at least in this portion of their careeers, Kidd's more team-defense approach had a bigger impact on his team's results than Payton's 1-on-1 brilliance.

The other thing that jumps out is that Payton was extremely strong on offense. Payton's 3-year offensive peak of +5.9 is 18th best from 1998 - 2012, and not far off from what we saw from Chris Paul's offensive peak according to ORAPM (+6.2 3-year avg.).

Longevity

I had planned to delve into the new on/off +/- data from 1994 - 1996 to give some estimates into what Payton was providing in his earlier prime, but I'm just flat out of time and my bosses are over my shoulder. But from memory, I don't believe that Payton was overly impressive in those studies (in fact, I think in one of them his on/off was dramatically negative in a weird effect that had folks looking into the Sonics' rotations for explanations).

But one thing that shows up in the later RAPM studies is that Payton's game didn't seem to age nearly as well as Kidd's. We looked at him from 1998 - 2000, then we don't have RAPM data for 2001. But from 2002 until he retired, Payton only had three more positive RAPM scores (peaked at +2.8 in 2003), with three negative scores as well. Meanwhile,Kidd was still posting an average +5.1 RAPM through his first three years in Dallas, and was about +2 even in 2011 and 2012 when he was on his way out the door. Kidd's defense weathered beautifully, especially as he took on more big-guard defense in Dallas, and his mix of part-time general + spot-up-shooter was a positive all the way up until 2012 (when he was essentially neutral). As such, Kidd's time as an impact player continued long after Payton's and gives him a legitimate advantage in longevity.

Bottom line

Kidd and Payton was every bit as fun of a comp as I expected. Payton, with his efficient scoring and still good floor generalship, peaked a bit higher than Kidd on offense (on the order of Chris Paul in terms of impact, from the information we have...side note, it's very interesting that RAPM sees peak Paul and Payton as similar on offense, but with PAUL as the higher impact defender). I didn't get to spend much time on Payton pre-98, so if anyone thinks that time period really changes his story I'd be interested in seeing more of that.

Kidd and Payton, in the years that we have available, peaked with very similar overall impact as measured by RAPM. Kidd's offense still measures (a lot) stronger than his scoring efficiency suggests, but on top of that he showed a marked defensive advantage over Payton. Also, Kidd's ability to adapt his game with age (less offensive primacy, more defensive and spot-up focused) allowed him to remain a high-impact player well into his mid/late 30s, during a time when Payton was consistently showing up as negative. Payton seemingly needed to be ball-dominant on offense to maintain his offensive impact, and his defense (at least from '98 on) never had the type of impact we may have expected (well short of what we saw from Kidd).

All in all, I'd say that I'm more impressed with Kidd's entire body of work. But as expected, they make quite the comparison.

Great post. I may not agree with the result having seen a lot of them both, but it does make me think about it a bit more.

[trex_8063]

On the topic of Kidd vs. Paul.....

If I were only comparing Kidd's best nine years vs. Paul (9-year career), I'd go with Paul. It's not even all that close, although nor do I think it's too terribly far. I wouldn't go with a metaphor like "by miles", for instance........let's say it's by a "football field or two".

As measured by advanced stats and per 100 numbers, Chris Paul's career is ahead of Kidd's best 9-year ('99-'07) stretch "by miles". A couple other points, though:
*Paul has missed 105 rs games; Kidd missed only 57 in that 9-year stretch (the difference is more than half of a season).
**Impact: I believe it was Chuck Texas who showed some compelling data showing that---although we can't put our fingers on exactly what it is about Kidd---teams seem to spontaneously get better as soon as he arrives on a team.....and just as quickly get worse the moment he leaves.
***Impact redux: I'm surprised the devotees of RAPM data aren't more readily getting behind Kidd.
Kidd during his peak years....
'02: 5th-highest combined PI RAPM in the league, behind only prime Shaq, PEAK Tim Duncan, and surprising results Doug Christie and rookie Tony Parker.
'03: 5th in league, behind only PEAK Tim Duncan, prime Garnett, prime Shaq, and again Doug Christie.
'04: 5th in league, behind only PEAK Garnett, prime Shaq, prime Duncan, prime Rasheed Wallace.
'05: 6th in league, behind only Manu Ginobili, prime Shaq, prime Duncan, and weird Jason Collins and Brad Miller results (AHEAD OF peak Dirk, MVP Steve Nash, prime Garnett, to name a few).

He's consistently right there with the big boys, largely only behind the guys who are the "gold standards" of RAPM greatness (all long since voted in).
In '08 (not even a top 8-9 season for him), his RAPM was +3.0, equal to that of peak Chris Paul.

Just adding up the yearly RAPM's, Paul's career adds up to +32.9.
If we were to take Kidd's best 9-year stretch ('99-'07), his adds up to +30.89. If, however, we were to pick and choose his nine best years by RAPM, his 9-year score is +33.89.



Again, I'm not suggesting Kidd's best nine years beats Paul's career. I don't pick and choose which players I'm going to only going to focus on impact data, and which I'm only going to on other metrics; I try to be consistent in using a combined approach. Impact data (and other impact indicators), however, is why I don't think the gap between Paul's career and Kidd's best nine is too huge.
Kidd then goes on to have 6 other years at at least borderline All-Star (if not legit) level, plus 4 solid role player years. Outside of '99-'07, he's got seven other seasons (every other year RAPM data is available) showing positive impact (PI RAPM outside of '99-'07 anywhere from +0.2 to +3.0 every single year). He was a principle role player on a title-winning team (played excellent in the playoffs, too). That's A LOT of added career value. For me, about 5 of the those additional AS or borderline-AS seasons brings him even with Paul's career. The other five years are Kidd pulling away, imo.

The more I look at Kidd, I've nearly convinced myself to switch my vote.

[ronnymac2]

I think of Payton's defense being much better from 92-97 as opposed to 98-02.

[DQuinn1575]

Chris Paul and Durant have been the 2-3 players in the modern game which right now is the least represented. We have the 8th-9th best players in weaker eras, and are missing Durant #2 and Paul #3.

Due to longevity, I am taking Paul over Durant -who will be my next pick.

Vote for CHRIS PAUL[/quote]