RealGM 2017 Top 100 List #57 (Bob Lanier)

[LA Bird]

With Carter the fact that he was such a problem in his best years seems rough. Now I admit a part of me feels he got a bum rap. For example, what do we think about him attending his graduation between playoff games? He made it to the game, I can't recall the game....which is why I think people who love to talk about "seeing it live" are being silly because I know I did watch that game live and recall all the talk about it. Anyway the point is he was not seen at his apex as being serious about basketball, and I don't think that is an incorrect opinion.

From my post in the criteria thread: Players with unfulfilled potential don't get extra value for having more upside or penalized for not putting in more effort to maximize their career.

Carter at his peak averaged 27.6 / 5.5 / 3.9 on 55% TS with a +12 net on/off. Whether he reached that level by putting in 80% or 110% effort is irrelevant to me. As viewers, we know very little about how much effort each player invested on a game to game basis anyway and to judge them off what is mostly narrative-driven arguments is unfair in my opinion. There are some players (Vince Carter, Rasheed Wallace, Baron Davis, Lamar Odom for examle) who are labeled as underachievers yet rate out very well in the impact stats we have.

If however games played is a key driver for you, Kevin Willis, Clifford Robinson, and Jasson Terry are still on the board. Hayes is as well if you value minutes over games, and Hayes is the guy I think is best to argue as being closest if not better than Carter if anyone is debating Carter here. hayes has the better resume, more all nba, more allstars, more defensive team (made a defensive team), and a title. They have nearly identical career WS numbers. 121 vs 122. Nearly identical number of playoff games. Of course hayes was around for a bit different playoff format. Hayes does come out ahead of playoff WS 11.7 vs 7.4. This gap btw is enough to take their WS playoff + regular season from a mild Carter edge to a mild Hayes edge. This is wider of course if you think playoffs > regular season.

It's the quality of play combined with longevity that matters for me, not just the total number of games played. I haven't ranked Willis, Uncle Cliffy or Terry yet but I doubt any of them will make my top 100. Not voting for Hayes just yet because his intangibles is probably the worst of all time and his offensive impact is questionable despite his massive box score production. I have him as a borderline top 10 defensive player of all time though.

[dhsilv2]

With Carter the fact that he was such a problem in his best years seems rough. Now I admit a part of me feels he got a bum rap. For example, what do we think about him attending his graduation between playoff games? He made it to the game, I can't recall the game....which is why I think people who love to talk about "seeing it live" are being silly because I know I did watch that game live and recall all the talk about it. Anyway the point is he was not seen at his apex as being serious about basketball, and I don't think that is an incorrect opinion.

From my post in the criteria thread: Players with unfulfilled potential don't get extra value for having more upside or penalized for not putting in more effort to maximize their career.

Carter at his peak averaged 27.6 / 5.5 / 3.9 on 55% TS with a +12 net on/off. Whether he reached that level by putting in 80% or 110% effort is irrelevant to me. As viewers, we know very little about how much effort each player invested on a game to game basis anyway and to judge them off what is mostly narrative-driven arguments is unfair in my opinion. There are some players (Vince Carter, Rasheed Wallace, Baron Davis, Lamar Odom for examle) who are labeled as underachievers yet rate out very well in the impact stats we have.

If however games played is a key driver for you, Kevin Willis, Clifford Robinson, and Jasson Terry are still on the board. Hayes is as well if you value minutes over games, and Hayes is the guy I think is best to argue as being closest if not better than Carter if anyone is debating Carter here. hayes has the better resume, more all nba, more allstars, more defensive team (made a defensive team), and a title. They have nearly identical career WS numbers. 121 vs 122. Nearly identical number of playoff games. Of course hayes was around for a bit different playoff format. Hayes does come out ahead of playoff WS 11.7 vs 7.4. This gap btw is enough to take their WS playoff + regular season from a mild Carter edge to a mild Hayes edge. This is wider of course if you think playoffs > regular season.

It's the quality of play combined with longevity that matters for me, not just the total number of games played. I haven't ranked Willis, Uncle Cliffy or Terry yet but I doubt any of them will make my top 100. Not voting for Hayes just yet because his intangibles is probably the worst of all time and his offensive impact is questionable despite his massive box score production. I have him as a borderline top 10 defensive player of all time though.

My question isn't on unfulfilled potential. It is about his leadership, intangibles, and well the example he set for his team as the "best player on the floor". Basically all the issues you take with Hayes, at his peak Carter had the same issues. I feel like the high quality bench guy that Carter is masking a lot of his issues.

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote 1 - Adrian Dantley

Vote 2 - Elvin Hayes

From my 2014 Project Greatest Hits...

As I took a closer look at english vs. dantley, english had a slightly longer prime and better durability. However, dantley still had a substantial prime in his own right, and his 29.6 PPG on 63.2% TS and .205 WS/48 from 80-86 is pretty staggering. He was also a better playoff performer in similar sample size. I admittedly came away more impressed with english’s skill set as a scorer (just more fluid and gervin-esque in my opinion), but you can’t argue with results, either.

One other point of reference: as a rookie in 77, dantley scored 20.3 PPG on 60.1% TS. The league average TS% that season was 51.1%.

I then look at the controversy with dantley leaving DET and them winning the championship following his departure, and it seems overblown. Dantley’s averages in the 88 finals (loss) are as follows:

21.3 PPG, 5 RPG, 2.3 APG, .6 SPG, 57.3% FG, 85.6% FT, 67.6% TS, 127 ORTG

Games 6 and 7 of the 88 finals were decided by a total of 4 points, and this was with a substandard game 7 by the injured isiah thomas. If he’s healthy, they very well could’ve won the title that year. I don’t hold the turn of events against dantley all that much relative to general perception.

Some great research here by Moonbeam on Dantley and other star SFs of the 80s:

I love looking at these guys because most of my favorite players are small forwards, and it was such an exciting time to watch, as these guys were each capable of amazing offensive outbursts.

Spoiler:

One thing I've taken a hard look at is how to weigh up offensive statistics in the context of team offense. There has been a fair bit of discussion in the Top 100 poll about how to gauge individual performance based on team performance (e.g. Garnett's Minny teams did not generally excel on defense, how to compare Kidd's team offenses to Payton's given teammate quality), so I tried to come up with a rough model of expectations for team offense.

I used offensive win shares as the basis for this analysis. I know many aren't happy with OWS, but on a team-level, it is very strongly correlated with offensive rating, which is a good measure of overall team offensive performance. I looked at all regular season data from 1977-2014 to come up with a set of aging curves to encompass different types of peak shapes. I've used five different levels of peak sharpness and five different peak ages (21, 24, 27, 30, and 33), which makes it possible to model a player's career based on OWS/48, like this:



This is a very simple approach, but I wanted something specific enough to broadly capture the relationship between offensive production and aging, but not too specific as to produce perfect models - I'm interested in the deviations from expectations, after all, so I'm happy with a bit of noise.

Based on these curves of expected OWS/48, I then looked at team offense relative to expectations as judged by total OWS. I'm still looking to road-test this analysis, so if you know of any instances where you felt a team overachieved or underachieved its talent level, I'd be eager to check it against my model!

I parsed out performance relative to expectations for each of these players plus Larry Bird (in >28 MPG seasons) and their respective teammates as a whole. Why 28 MPG? I wanted to include enough seasons to get a big picture view, plus I wanted to avoid discontinuities where I could (e.g. Bernard King's 1988 season). Here are the resulting plots of player OWS, player expected OWS, teammate ("help") OWS and expected teammate OWS:

















Over this span, here are the MP-weighted averages for player OWS, % of team OWS, both rate and raw difference of help OWS to expectations:

Code: Select all

Player   WtOWS   %Off  Help Rate  Help Diff
Aguirre  5.112  0.166    1.018      +0.428
Bird     7.429  0.220    1.048      +1.056
Dantley  8.803  0.394    0.844      -2.155
English  6.536  0.246    1.016      +0.307
Johnson  5.954  0.253    1.040      +0.636
King     4.466  0.269    0.887      -1.413
Wilkins  6.084  0.255    1.015      +0.260
Worthy   5.065  0.155    1.116      +2.809


On the surface, it looks like Dantley (and to a lesser extent, King) may be getting their Win Shares somewhat at the expense of teammates, while Bird and Worthy are associated with boosts for their teammates. How much praise (or blame) should be apportioned for performance of teammates is up for debate, but I think it at least provides a framework for comparison.

Taking a look at the 5-year intervals in the OP:

Code: Select all

Player  Years   WtOWS   %Off  Help Rate  Help Diff
Aguirre 84-88   5.920  0.187    1.041      +1.005
Bird    84-88   9.933  0.302    0.989      -0.257
Dantley 80-84  11.213  0.553    1.083      +0.606
English 82-86   7.849  0.268    1.026      +0.548
Johnson 79-83   7.192  0.275    1.057      +0.984
King    81-85   6.675  0.323    0.919      -1.268
Wilkins 86-90   7.835  0.270    1.158      +2.891
Worthy  86-90   6.465  0.180    1.181      +4.496


Dantley is clearly the leader in both OWS and percentage of team offense (some of those supporting casts in Utah look dreadful), but perhaps he didn't provide the "lift" as others (or worse, perhaps his presence deflated his teammates offense). If we split his career into phases, it seems his early career is where his teammates fared the worst (0.731 rate, fit issues with Lakers?), while in Utah they performed nearly to (awful) expectations (0.968 rate), while in Detroit during 87-88, the rate fell to 0.801 (problems of fit with Isiah?), and across 89-90, it was 0.935.

I don't think Worthy's help numbers are attributable to him so much as they are to Magic, but he clearly fit into Showtime quite well. Wilkins looks like he could have provided decent lift across 86-90, and Aguirre's apparent issues with teammates did not seem to affect his teams' offenses.

I've got H2H stats I can post later, but I thought I'd put this out there as it's a fascinating comparison for me.

Entire discussion here:

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=41264223#p41264223

[penbeast0]

...
I'm open to changing this one. Looking at Wilkens, Tmac, Sam Jones, Arzin, Thurmond, DeBusschere, Greer, and Hayes. Maybe Carter too, Harden is going to get in ahead of some of these for me, but I can't see him getting my alt just yet. Oh McAdoo is another guy I could consider around here.

Looking at Lenny Wilkens or Dominique Wilkins? (assuming Nique) . . . and not looking at English, Dantley, or Worthy if you are talking about Nique? Why not?

[dhsilv2]

...
I'm open to changing this one. Looking at Wilkens, Tmac, Sam Jones, Arzin, Thurmond, DeBusschere, Greer, and Hayes. Maybe Carter too, Harden is going to get in ahead of some of these for me, but I can't see him getting my alt just yet. Oh McAdoo is another guy I could consider around here.

Looking at Lenny Wilkens or Dominique Wilkins? (assuming Nique) . . . and not looking at English, Dantley, or Worthy if you are talking about Nique? Why not?

Nique, sorry, my spelling is horrid. For English and Dantley, I think he's better than both of them and given they played in the same era I feel pretty comfortable on this. That isn't to say once in that they wouldn't get looked at against the other's here. This wasn't a ranking of players left.

I considered Worthy here. 7 time allstar and 2 time all nba and a key guy for the laker's 3 titles. I never saw him as a defense guy. 1 season with a 20 PER. 1 season with a 10 WS. He did however have better playoff performances than regular season play which should get some weight. I could be convinced to add him to the above. I'd need to hear that he's a high impact intangibles guy, and to be honest I can't say I ever heard much about that aspect of him. For now I have him a bit further down.

[iggymcfrack]

Just copy-pasting for now:

Picking Harden this time for his unparalleled efficiency. Here are his PER and TS% by year every year from his age 22 season on:

21.1 PER on .660 TS%
23.0 PER on .600 TS%
23.5 PER on .618 TS%
26.7 PER on .605 TS%
25.3 PER on .598 TS%
27.4 PER on .618 TS%

That's really an unparalleled run. His TS% is 4th all-time among 20 PPG scorers. He also has learned how to faciliatate an offense at an incredibly high level which has value beyond the box score, setting his teammates up for 3s at an unprecedented rate, and creating more points off of points and assists than anyone in NBA history last season. I think the defense criticism is a little overblown too since a lot of it is regular season effort stuff and not capability stuff that shows up in the playoffs.


Alternate: Tracy McGrady

Insanely high peak, arguably was better than Kobe at the peak of his powers. Crazy BPM and PER numbers that rank among the best all-time and even some good efficiency numbers including a .564 TS% the year he led the league in scoring. Played over 7500 more minutes than Reed and still has a career PER better than Reed peaked in any individual season.

Kinda hard to punish him for team success in the playoffs when he played so well in those series and the degree of difficulty was so very high to advance in any of them. Also, almost his entire athletic peak was spent on some absolutely awful Orlando teams. When he did have a little help in Houston, he hit a game winner in Game 6 vs. the Mavericks before ultimately losing the series in 7 the one season before he got injured and was never quite the same.

[trex_8063]

One other point of reference: as a rookie in 77, dantley scored 20.3 PPG on 60.1% TS. The league average TS% that season was 51.1%.

No one is denying Dantley is amazing from a individual statistical standpoint; the talking point thru which I've been hard on him (and where most people are hard on him) is that there's often a lack of transference of offensive success for his team.

I'd previously mostly focused on his prime years in Utah. In those years he had a pretty consistent [and fair/OK offensively] starting backcourt of Rickey Green and Darrell Griffith. Green was super-quick and a fine [even excellent??] playmaker, especially in transition (which he'd get his share of those opportunities as he frequently was among the league-leaders in steals), excellent FT-shooter. Griffith was a scorer; not a great one, but a fair/decent one (roughly Antoine Walker quality of scorer, perhaps? maybe even a pinch better?). They didn't have any respectable back-up guards until Stockton arrived; then they at least had a respectable back-up PG.
Thurl Bailey (rookie in '84) was capable offensively; not what I'd call good, but capable. And for a couple injury-riddled years they had John Drew as a back-up SF.
I'll admit the rest of the cast was pretty much trash offensively; but he did have some (a little) help. One would expect an offensive power-house of Dantley's apparent [as per his box-based metrics] caliber to at least be able to elevate that to mediocrity (if not slightly better). But outside of 1-2 seasons, that was not the case; and at times they were outright bad.


wrt to the rookie season you've highlighted above......
Note the '76 Braves with a core of Bob McAdoo, Randy Smith, and Jim McMillan were a +0.7 rORTG (5th/18). In '77, they lost McMillan and traded McAdoo away early in the year (though he did play 20 games for the Braves this year); still had prime Randy Smith who played every game, as well as 2-3 other principle supporting cast players from the year before, and added the aforementioned rookie Dantley.......the team rORTG fell by -2.6 (to -1.9 rORTG, 18th/22).
And then despite the fabulous rookie numbers, the Braves traded Dantley after just the one season (along with a bench player) for Billy Knight. And the core of Billy Knight, Randy Smith, and Swen Nater managed a -0.6 rORTG for the Braves in '78 (+1.3 from the year before with Dantley).

The '78 Pacers only held on to Dantley for a third of a season before trading him (and Dave Robisch) to the Lakers for Earl Tatum and James Edwards (and cash). The '78 Pacers rORTG was -1.1 worse than their '77 rORTG; the Lakers rORTG improved marginally (+0.4-0.5) over '77 with Dantley.
The Lakers only hang on to Dantley for a year and a half. With the loss of Dantley and the addition of rookie Magic (and some shake-up of the lower supporting cast----core of Kareem, Wilkes, Nixon was the same in both '79 and '80), the Lakers rORTG improved by +1.9.


Anyway, there just seems to be these consistent trends throughout much of Dantley's career that are concerning for me. Not saying that he doesn't have his place in the project (and likely very soon in this project); I'm just skeptical his place is now.

[penbeast0]

with you on Utah . . .

... And then despite the fabulous rookie numbers, the Braves traded Dantley after just the one season (along with a bench player) for Billy Knight. And the core of Billy Knight, Randy Smith, and Swen Nater managed a -0.6 rORTG for the Braves in '78 (+1.3 from the year before with Dantley).

That was John Y. Brown.
He also within that two year stretch, dealt former UK star and Kentucky lifer Dan Issel to Baltimore (who folded) for virtually nothing, Moses Malone for Jim Price, Bob McAdoo for John Gianelli, folded the Kentucky team for cash, bought majority interest in Buffalo then sold Buffalo to buy a half interest in the Celtics where he helped trade to get McAdoo back and create possibly the most disfunctional team in Boston history (working off memory, hope these are all correct). It was all about the short term cash flow for him at that point and any deal that would give him quick liquidity he was all over.

The '78 Pacers only held on to Dantley for a third of a season before trading him (and Dave Robisch) to the Lakers for Earl Tatum and James Edwards (and cash). The '78 Pacers rORTG was -1.1 worse than their '77 rORTG; the Lakers rORTG improved marginally (+0.4-0.5) over '77 with Dantley.
The Lakers only hang on to Dantley for a year and a half. With the loss of Dantley and the addition of rookie Magic (and some shake-up of the lower supporting cast----core of Kareem, Wilkes, Nixon was the same in both '79 and '80), the Lakers rORTG improved by +1.9.

No idea what was going on with the Pacers, the Lakers rOTG improved by less than 2.0 by adding arguably the greatest offensive facilitator in the histoyr of the game who had a great rookie year . . . not sure that's terrible.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #28:

Bob Lanier - 2 (trex_8063, Dr Positivity)
James Harden - 2 (iggymcfrack, pandrade83)
Allen Iverson - 1 (dhsilv2)
Alex English - 1 (penbeast0)
Vince Carter - 1 (LABird)
Adrian Dantley - 1 (Clyde Frazier)


OK, we're going to runoff: Lanier vs Harden.
Eliminating the guys with one vote each does not transfer any new votes to the runoff contestants.

Bob Lanier - 2 (trex_8063, Dr Positivity)
James Harden - 2 (iggymcfrack, pandrade83)

If your name isn't shown here, please state your pick between Lanier and Harden, and reasons why. Will conclude within 24 hours.

Spoiler:

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[trex_8063]

That was John Y. Brown.
He also within that two year stretch, dealt former UK star and Kentucky lifer Dan Issel to Baltimore (who folded) for virtually nothing, Moses Malone for Jim Price, Bob McAdoo for John Gianelli, folded the Kentucky team for cash, bought majority interest in Buffalo then sold Buffalo to buy a half interest in the Celtics where he helped trade to get McAdoo back and create possibly the most disfunctional team in Boston history (working off memory, hope these are all correct). It was all about the short term cash flow for him at that point and any deal that would give him quick liquidity he was all over.

Wasn't aware of that. Good to know.

No idea what was going on with the Pacers, the Lakers rOTG improved by less than 2.0 by adding arguably the greatest offensive facilitator in the histoyr of the game who had a great rookie year . . . not sure that's terrible.

Maybe not terrible; probably not exactly a feather in his cap within the context of this debate, either.
Rookie Magic wasn't yet the player he'd become, especially when he was still forced to share so much of the offensive orchestration with Norm Nixon. So if having a partially-neutered rookie Magic is still ~+1.9 over Dantley, how much over Dantley would a prime Magic with full reins to the offense be? +4? More??
And if so [the +4(ish), I mean], that would possibly indicate that Dantley didn't provide much lift to their offense.

[mikejames23]

Runoff Vote: James Harden

I had stated before that I felt Harden was best player avail. and was getting closer to the point where I'd ignore his longevity. He's doing enough to warrant himself as a yearly MVP candidate for some time, and the '14, 15, '17 respective years were very very good years in my eyes. He has done so with relatively large avg. talent. Eric Gordon, Clint Capela, Ryan Anderson, Beverly weren't the kind I'd consider for the shaping of a 55 W Ballclub. In '15 he overcame a 3-1 deficit vs the Clippers, and that was no easy feat either. He has some ways to go in terms of climbing the all time W/S comparison lists, but is closing in on guys like Iverson, who I would've voted here. His yearly W/S right now is closest to a Jerry West or Steph Curry type which is way way above the kind of guys we're discussing as of now. His BPM is also nuts (though there's some inflation there for modern day guys). The only thing that maybe slows down his ascent to the Top 30 or so are the various rule changes taking place to affect his game some.

Bob Lanier in comparison is the ideal 20/10 running man for a superstar like Harden. I have him up and coming on my list and he's neck and neck with Cowens, Nique, etc. but not voting him quite yet.

[Owly]

That was John Y. Brown.
He also within that two year stretch, dealt former UK star and Kentucky lifer Dan Issel to Baltimore (who folded) for virtually nothing, Moses Malone for Jim Price, Bob McAdoo for John Gianelli, folded the Kentucky team for cash, bought majority interest in Buffalo then sold Buffalo to buy a half interest in the Celtics where he helped trade to get McAdoo back and create possibly the most disfunctional team in Boston history (working off memory, hope these are all correct). It was all about the short term cash flow for him at that point and any deal that would give him quick liquidity he was all over.

Wasn't aware of that. Good to know.

No idea what was going on with the Pacers, the Lakers rOTG improved by less than 2.0 by adding arguably the greatest offensive facilitator in the histoyr of the game who had a great rookie year . . . not sure that's terrible.

Maybe not terrible; probably not exactly a feather in his cap within the context of this debate, either.
Rookie Magic wasn't yet the player he'd become, especially when he was still forced to share so much of the offensive orchestration with Norm Nixon. So if having a partially-neutered rookie Magic is still ~+1.9 over Dantley, how much over Dantley would a prime Magic with full reins to the offense be? +4? More??
And if so [the +4(ish), I mean], that would possibly indicate that Dantley didn't provide much lift to their offense.

Magic's neutered? Adding a second ballhandler a harsher fit than than Dantley has sharing the frontcourt with the most potent low-block scorer ... maybe ever? And that player's fellow UCLA alumnus (though non-overlapping) - and fwiw fellow Islamic convert - who's also a scoring inclined small forward, like Dantley. Dantley is the odd man out here culturally and has a poor fit positionally and skill-set wise.

Also ignored here is that the '79 Lakers actually led the league in efg% the area where you'd expect Dantley to have an impact (though they would improve in this area in '80). Reinforcing the above fit issue, the area the Lakers make the greatest leap is offensive rebounding. Was Dantley miscast as his teams leading offensive rebounder (by oreb%) yes. Is it better if you have actual power forwards (Haywood to a lesser extent Chones, and then Magic and some Cooper a huge upgrade in this are from 2 guards ... Hudson and Boone I guess). So I'd want finer grained analysis and it really mitigates Dantley notional lack of impact.

The above leads me to conclude that (2) you'd need to look closer at which areas you'd expect Dantley to have impact upon, and perhaps focus primarily on those and that (2) in this, and when looking at wider offensive performance, it needs to be done more comprehensively/holisitcally. As in LA had not insignificant turnover between the seasons. Their offensive improvement, by rank at least, changes most on the boards (and I think not just by rank, because they went from the same distance below the second worst offensive rebounding team as that team was from league mean in '79, to around the middle of the pack in '80). And that other turnover (upgrade in size, quality and rebounding at the "2" and backup guard position, having and playing 4s at the four) more reasonably explains the improvement than ... Dantley's individual statistics don't affect the team.

Finally, it seems curious that you would allow for progression by Magic, but not for Dantley from his impact in his age 22 season.

I don't know where I am on Dantley, I get the concerns with percieved possible non-impact, but broad measures of team performance (often within changing teams) seem too blunt a tool to draw confident conclusions.

[penbeast0]

Either the longevity or the truly atrocious defense could be worked around as we have for others, but when you combine the two plus an okay but not outstanding playoff resume, I can't support Harden this early. Not a big Lanier fan but have to go with him here.

Runoff Vote: Bob Lanier

[Clyde Frazier]

One other point of reference: as a rookie in 77, dantley scored 20.3 PPG on 60.1% TS. The league average TS% that season was 51.1%.

No one is denying Dantley is amazing from a individual statistical standpoint; the talking point thru which I've been hard on him (and where most people are hard on him) is that there's often a lack of transference of offensive success for his team.

I'd previously mostly focused on his prime years in Utah. In those years he had a pretty consistent [and fair/OK offensively] starting backcourt of Rickey Green and Darrell Griffith. Green was super-quick and a fine [even excellent??] playmaker, especially in transition (which he'd get his share of those opportunities as he frequently was among the league-leaders in steals), excellent FT-shooter. Griffith was a scorer; not a great one, but a fair/decent one (roughly Antoine Walker quality of scorer, perhaps? maybe even a pinch better?). They didn't have any respectable back-up guards until Stockton arrived; then they at least had a respectable back-up PG.
Thurl Bailey (rookie in '84) was capable offensively; not what I'd call good, but capable. And for a couple injury-riddled years they had John Drew as a back-up SF.
I'll admit the rest of the cast was pretty much trash offensively; but he did have some (a little) help. One would expect an offensive power-house of Dantley's apparent [as per his box-based metrics] caliber to at least be able to elevate that to mediocrity (if not slightly better). But outside of 1-2 seasons, that was not the case; and at times they were outright bad.


wrt to the rookie season you've highlighted above......
Note the '76 Braves with a core of Bob McAdoo, Randy Smith, and Jim McMillan were a +0.7 rORTG (5th/18). In '77, they lost McMillan and traded McAdoo away early in the year (though he did play 20 games for the Braves this year); still had prime Randy Smith who played every game, as well as 2-3 other principle supporting cast players from the year before, and added the aforementioned rookie Dantley.......the team rORTG fell by -2.6 (to -1.9 rORTG, 18th/22).
And then despite the fabulous rookie numbers, the Braves traded Dantley after just the one season (along with a bench player) for Billy Knight. And the core of Billy Knight, Randy Smith, and Swen Nater managed a -0.6 rORTG for the Braves in '78 (+1.3 from the year before with Dantley).

The '78 Pacers only held on to Dantley for a third of a season before trading him (and Dave Robisch) to the Lakers for Earl Tatum and James Edwards (and cash). The '78 Pacers rORTG was -1.1 worse than their '77 rORTG; the Lakers rORTG improved marginally (+0.4-0.5) over '77 with Dantley.
The Lakers only hang on to Dantley for a year and a half. With the loss of Dantley and the addition of rookie Magic (and some shake-up of the lower supporting cast----core of Kareem, Wilkes, Nixon was the same in both '79 and '80), the Lakers rORTG improved by +1.9.


Anyway, there just seems to be these consistent trends throughout much of Dantley's career that are concerning for me. Not saying that he doesn't have his place in the project (and likely very soon in this project); I'm just skeptical his place is now.

I don't have time to respond in detail right now, but I will say I have guys like Dantley, English, Cowens, Hayes and Lanier all in the same range. It just stuck out to me that Dantley was quite good for the pistons. I believe their coming up short before he was traded was a result of difficult competition and circumstances as opposed to his play specifically, which tends to be the narrative.

And while this is admittedly more subjective, I do believe even rookie Magic was a transcendent player. So the Lakers' improvement that year would be more of a comment on Magic's greatness than a black mark on Dantley's career.

[Doctor MJ]

Runoff Vote: James Harden

To be honest I felt uncomfortable championing Harden but I also can’t seriously object either. He’s a brilliant player. He has been for a while now. He has a case for Top 50 in my mind.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[dhsilv2]

So i'll do a running commentary as I look at this one. I'll just open with I do not want harden this high on the list. I've backed him last year for MVP (I've since moved to Leonard maybe was the better choice) and I felt that he was the MVP in 15 and am still in favor of that, despite being a much bigger Curry guy.

I did NOT want Lanier here mostly because I'm not ready to comment on him. I feel he's a bit early based on stats alone and with my factoring in his poor team success, that alone made me feel I could wait on him, but here he is. I also just will admit, this is the only player we've discussed who I didn't know about before this project. I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest given what I'm seeing from him. The fact I've certainly read about him as well and just didn't recall makes me feel pretty silly too.

I'll also note, I'm putting in at least 30 to an hour on youtube for this one. I hate you all (lol).

Great hands, really strong when making contact with the ball on rebounds/tips, good touch and just has nice soft hands. Jumper and range is better than I'd expected. he seems to get super star defensive attention on offense (we've had a lot of guys who haven't gotten his level of attention in so far). He's also got a really nice passing game. I'm watching the conference finals from 76, skipping around on game 3 and 6. BTW good lord THANK YOU 3 point line. Defense looks pretty solid, these are playoff games I'm watching so that is what it is. He's not great, seems he just loses track of what's going on at times, when he's aware he seems pretty good. Kinda odd to see. He's got some issues with strength down low on offense. Not bad, but he's not a power player at all. Doesn't cover space well at all on defense. However he's got great timing on shots and rebounds. Chris Ford is now my least favorite player.

OK now I feel like I at least have a feel for his game so lets dive into the stats and awards a bit. Sorry, just a rule of mine I need at least a feel for a player before I go to stats. I think stats for "GOAT" rankings do 90% of what we want with awards, but you gotta watch a bit to put those stats into context.

Per

Lanier 9 top 10 seasons.
7 top 5 seasons
harden 3 top 10 seasons
5 top 5 seasons

WS

Lanier 3 top 10 and top 5 WS teasons
Harden 6 top 10, 4 top 6. 2 league leader.

VORP

Lanier 4 top 10, 2 top 5, 1 league leader
Harden 5 top 10, 4 top 5.

Career WS

Lanier 117.1
Harden 92.3

Career VORP

Lanier 41.9
Harden 42.2

Lanier of course has 3 seasons before VORP was around and that raw stats look VERY solid for him in 2 of those years.

MVP Voting

So a bit of color but Lanier was never an all nba player, but he got MVP votes 7 times. Including 3rd in 74 and 4th in 77.

Harden 5 years with votes and finished second twice.

1974 is pretty crazy the MVP voting Kareem, McAdoo, Lanier, Cowens, Hayes....talk about a log jam for big men for all nba. Back to earlier posts where all nba is great, unless you're a center.

I was really really hoping I'd leave this analysis with a clear cut winner. I mean I was REALLY hoping i'd have a clear choice.

Case for Harden. I'm not ready to judge the modern score first pass first monster stat point guard. I think this is a function of rules changes and well I think it's inflating stats absurdly but I'm not sure the guys putting those numbers are up legit. That said Harden is insanely smart, his basketball IQ is on another level. All those drawn fouls are brilliance and I've enjoyed watching how he gets people off balance and forces them to foul, but I'm a nerd with this stuff. He dominates the ball and dominates the box scores and it's fun to watch. That said, I don't trust him at all in the playoffs. His defense despite a top 10 DWS year in 15 leaves me cold. He also just doesn't seem like a leader, I don't see him talking or motivating teammates. Defenses seem oddly ok with him doing his thing. It feels like to me teams are OK with him having the ball in big moments or big games, they just guard him well, but seem perfectly fine with him having the ball.

Lainer has the stats of an all time great, I love his touch and hands. He seems to have great offensive IQ, but he gets lost on defense a bit. The defensive stats early on in his career seem really good though. Can anyone explain Lainer's 88 DRtg as a rookie? That's insane for that era and in 3000+ minutes.

I have said before i'm a peak guy, but here I'm not sure who has the better peak. Hear me out. Harden has the numbers big time, but it seems the game has changed a bit the last few years and maybe I'm not ready to trust our stats given both Harden and Westbrook just had box score NUTS seasons and RAMP kinda said "meh" to it. Watching just a bit of Lanier today he seemed to get treated like a super star. So after a lot of thought I think Harden needs another season or I need to feel better that the stars of this year or last should get credit for their crazy odd stats. It feels odd but I feel like last year is too recent and I just can't give guys credit for that season until i see this year. I'm pretty OK with being the "anti recency bias" guy here.

Vote Lanier by about 1/10th of a hair.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #36:

Bob Lanier - 4 (trex_8063, Dr Positivity, penbeast0, dhsilv2)
James Harden - 4 (iggymcfrack, pandrade83, fundamentals21, Doctor MJ)


Will [hopefully] conclude this runoff in about 4 more hours, if the tie is broken.

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[Clyde Frazier]

Runnoff vote - Bob Lanier

Taking a quick look at lanier’s playoff history (where he was a solid performer throughout his career), the team that eliminated him was favored in SRS the majority of the time. He faced especially tough matchups against the sixers for multiple seasons and celtics during his bucks days.

His longevity is decent (14 seasons) and he hit a bit of a rough durability patch in the middle of his career, but was still productive at 35 years old in his last season - https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIL/1984.html

Taking into account Lanier having 4+ full seasons worth of meaningful play over harden, harden’s defensive lows and some shaky playoff performances, i’m giving lanier the nod here.

[trex_8063]

Magic's neutered?

Merely meaning Magic's full offensive potential likely isn't realized unless you give him full rein to the offense (similar to a Steve Nash). Wasn't comparing his fit [next to Nixon] to Dantley's fit on the team (which I'll concede was likely inappropriate within the context of what I said).

Also ignored here is that the '79 Lakers actually led the league in efg% the area where you'd expect Dantley to have an impact (though they would improve in this area in '80).

fwiw, I'd expect FTr to be the offensive FF that Dantley shifts the needle the most on (Lakers were just 17th/22 in FTr). And Dantley's eFG%, while significantly above league average, was 0.7% worse than the Laker team average in '79 (he was 4th on the team, not counting Brad Davis and his 65 total minutes played).

But you're right that the prior post was shallow analysis on my part.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #39:

Bob Lanier - 5 (Clyde Frazier, trex_8063, Dr Positivity, penbeast0, dhsilv2)
James Harden - 4 (iggymcfrack, pandrade83, fundamentals21, Doctor MJ)


Calling it for Lanier. Will have the next thread up in a moment.

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