Greatest Peaks series (Thinking Basketball/Ben Taylor)

[70sFan]

I haven't . . . yet.

Who would you suggest?

Well, if you have enough time it'd be great to do that for Admiral contemporaries like Hakeem, Mutombo and Ewing. Garnett and Duncan would also be great.

How far could your estimates work? Would they be accurate for Kareem or even Russell/Wilt?

For something like this . . .

I'm straight guessing about playoff pace that early on; I just blend the pace of the two teams involved and scale it down a bit. So the pace estimates will almost certainly at least be a little wrong. As long as it's understood that all the data from Wilt / Russell / early Kareem will be muddied I don't mind doing it. But Ewing/Hakeem/Mutombo/Garnett/Duncan are certainly less error-prone so I'll probably look into them first.

Thank you! Can't wait to see the stats.

[WestGOAT]

In these years, in the regular season, he averaged 54.4% of his team's combined VORP. This is a really, really, really high number. In the playoffs he averaged only 44.6% of his team's combined VORP. So his numbers fell off (as I figured they would). But 44.6% is still a ton. And here's a neat stat:

Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs only made the 1st Round: 53.6%
Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs made the 2nd Round: 42.0%
Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs made the Conference Finals: 35.1%

In other words, when his teammates played better (or were better), which shrank his VORP share, his teams went farther. This, again, is a long way of saying that Robinson's teammates were very weak, and he alone could really only take them so far.

Neat numbers, reminds me of earlier work by paratrooper that used team BPM as a measure of squad strength : viewtopic.php?t=1524268

Which makes me wonder, what do you think about using BPM/VORP for these purposes? I understand it's pretty convenient to use, and better than PPG/PER, but this method pretty much assumes that players BPM are independent of each other, no?

For example, take someone like Mo Williams who you recently highlighted in your Cavs 2009 post. Scored his best BPM (regular season) number playing with LeBron. Does that mean Mo Williams was actually a better player, or does LeBron actually deserve some credits for that improvement? I haven't looked at the actual numbers, but this is probably also true for a number of role players that played with Nash.

In Robinson's case since he wasn't asmuch as playmaker this might not be relevant, but I do think it's worthwhile to ask why the BPM of the rest of the team might be low? Could it be really cause of the quality of the players, or lack of synergy between the players (or superstar leading the team).

Sorry if it seems a bit random, this thought just popped into my mind.

[sansterre]

In these years, in the regular season, he averaged 54.4% of his team's combined VORP. This is a really, really, really high number. In the playoffs he averaged only 44.6% of his team's combined VORP. So his numbers fell off (as I figured they would). But 44.6% is still a ton. And here's a neat stat:

Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs only made the 1st Round: 53.6%
Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs made the 2nd Round: 42.0%
Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs made the Conference Finals: 35.1%

In other words, when his teammates played better (or were better), which shrank his VORP share, his teams went farther. This, again, is a long way of saying that Robinson's teammates were very weak, and he alone could really only take them so far.

Neat numbers, reminds me of earlier work by paratrooper that used team BPM as a measure of squad strength : viewtopic.php?t=1524268

Which makes me wonder, what do you think about using BPM/VORP for these purposes? I understand it's pretty convenient to use, and better than PPG/PER, but this method pretty much assumes that players BPM are independent of each other, no?

For example, take someone like Mo Williams who you recently highlighted in your Cavs 2009 post. Scored his best BPM (regular season) number playing with LeBron. Does that mean Mo Williams was actually a better player, or does LeBron actually deserve some credits for that improvement? I haven't looked at the actual numbers, but this is probably also true for a number of role players that played with Nash.

In Robinson's case since he wasn't asmuch as playmaker this might not be relevant, but I do think it's worthwhile to ask why the BPM of the rest of the team might be low? Could it be really cause of the quality of the players, or lack of synergy between the players (or superstar leading the team).

Sorry if it seems a bit random, this thought just popped into my mind.

That's an absolutely fair question. And the answer is, of course, I don't know.

Basketball is a synergistic team sport. Magic Johnson routinely led dominant offenses, but scored only a fraction of those points. Which means his teammates scored most of them, which implicitly means their BPMs were higher playing with Magic than they would have been otherwise. The role-players on the '09 Cavs all posted better BPMs with LeBron than without him. Certainly Nash's teammates did the same. When Wilt is *obviously* the best player on his teams, are his teammates bad or is his presence detracting from their performance?

I really can't do any better than to say:

1) All BPMs/VORPs interact with each other to some extent;
2) When I say "Robinson was 53.6% of his team's VORP" all I can ever hope to mean is "Robinson was 53.6% of his team's VORP, with the understanding that it is possible that in some way he may have made his teammates worse (thus making his numbers look better), or even vice versa"; but
3) I, personally, have a hard time imagining that his personal struggles (which seem to be mostly an inability to score efficiently for himself) hurt his teammates' numbers in the playoffs more than they hurt his own (since what we're really doing is comparing Robinson's performance to that of his teammates); so
4) I'm inclined to take the numbers loosely within face value

I will say that BPM does to a reasonably good job giving love to quality drivers like this. Even though Magic was reasonably low usage (for a superstar) early in his career, BPM loves him the entire time. And even with Mo Williams etc posting artificially good BPMs with LeBron in '09, it still makes LeBron post laughably high Heliocentrism scores.

So, in short (he said, never having said anything "in short" in his life), your point is extremely valid, but I lean far more toward trusting the numbers than not, as I don't have much of a reason to discount them (unless someone proves otherwise).

[WestGOAT]

In these years, in the regular season, he averaged 54.4% of his team's combined VORP. This is a really, really, really high number. In the playoffs he averaged only 44.6% of his team's combined VORP. So his numbers fell off (as I figured they would). But 44.6% is still a ton. And here's a neat stat:

Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs only made the 1st Round: 53.6%
Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs made the 2nd Round: 42.0%
Robinson's Playoff VORP Share when the Spurs made the Conference Finals: 35.1%

In other words, when his teammates played better (or were better), which shrank his VORP share, his teams went farther. This, again, is a long way of saying that Robinson's teammates were very weak, and he alone could really only take them so far.

Neat numbers, reminds me of earlier work by paratrooper that used team BPM as a measure of squad strength : viewtopic.php?t=1524268

Which makes me wonder, what do you think about using BPM/VORP for these purposes? I understand it's pretty convenient to use, and better than PPG/PER, but this method pretty much assumes that players BPM are independent of each other, no?

For example, take someone like Mo Williams who you recently highlighted in your Cavs 2009 post. Scored his best BPM (regular season) number playing with LeBron. Does that mean Mo Williams was actually a better player, or does LeBron actually deserve some credits for that improvement? I haven't looked at the actual numbers, but this is probably also true for a number of role players that played with Nash.

In Robinson's case since he wasn't asmuch as playmaker this might not be relevant, but I do think it's worthwhile to ask why the BPM of the rest of the team might be low? Could it be really cause of the quality of the players, or lack of synergy between the players (or superstar leading the team).

Sorry if it seems a bit random, this thought just popped into my mind.

3) I, personally, have a hard time imagining that his personal struggles (which seem to be mostly an inability to score efficiently for himself) hurt his teammates' numbers in the playoffs more than they hurt his own (since what we're really doing is comparing Robinson's performance to that of his teammates); so

That seems fair of enough, especially for the type of player Robinson is. I don't see him as a playmaker, like LeBron and Nash, so I don't expect much interaction/synergy with his teammates BPMs. For players that do run a team's offence, I do think it's fair to ask if they failed to elevate their teammates' play if their team's BPM looks (consistently) bad.

[Doctor MJ]

It's not about mine, but Ben's greatest peaks. He's clearly higher on D-Rob than Moses or other players you mentioned, and the same goes for Curry-Wade comparison. I also included Wilt and Russell to this top 15, but we can assume he ignored them as it was before merger, and created first video to show methodology. If you add D-Rob and Curry to the list (and Walton), you already have 14 players. But obviously I don't know if it's 15 or more or less, also I initially missed it's only since the merger, so Oscar, West or Dr J are also out for this reason. So I agree it's too early to forseen and players you mentioned can still be part of the project, but D-Rob video is not a good example, we know Ben is clearly higher on him than these you mentioned.
Also don't take my post as offensive, it was just to mention D-Rob case and my guessing which players probably we're going to see. Of course I might be wrong.

I have my disagreements with Taylor and like anyone else, you or me, he’s not above criticism.
Heck, him being critical of the old approach made him so good and popular.
And the way I got response looked like that it was bad to criticize his work.

On a personal level, I can confidently say that I put immense effort to my process, probably the biggest effort on the NBA history by a non-US follower. I had a massive full game archive which got destroyed. I still have tens of GBs of MS Excel documents with notes, full game logs for majority of the NBA Finals before 1980, shot-rebounding charts of notable players, playbooks of teams and how they utilized those playbooks against changing defensive schemes, etc, not just some formulas to see how a top 10 xxx would look like with different weightings or that kind of stuff. And I stopped with all that because I wasn’t getting paid for it. It took my time greatly with zero money return. Now I rely on my impressions stuck with me and easy notes.
Taylor however is making money out of these stuff and knowing that some of his personal assumptions/notes are just inaccurate makes me more critical than average follower of him.

Criticism is itself a form of content creation, shaming people for cricitism is synaonymus with shaming creators.

Sure, but critics on the internet are dime a dozen, particularly those incapable of anything grander. Be nothing but a critic all your life and when you die, no one will look at you as a creator. Frankly this is an issue for me. When I'm not in the flow, all I can do respond to prompts a la RealGM.

I'll also say: It's important to be clear what we mean about "criticism". Are we talking about evaluation and synthesis, which is what academic criticism is, or are we just talking about something with an inherently negative charge? I think all of us on the internet right now are struggling not to be negative and I have empathy for those like me that struggle with it, but tearing down is not building up

[Doctor MJ]

Taylor however is making money out of these stuff and knowing that some of his personal assumptions/notes are just inaccurate makes me more critical than average follower of him.

This makes sense, just make sure you're drawing a distinction between big time mainstream people and ElGee.

I know that this is something that's consider more analytical than art, but I'll share a story from music.

I had a cynical student who said she was 100% fine with torrenting all her music because musicians were already making their money.

Meanwhile my favorite musical artist of the 2010s at her very best was living below my teacher's lifestyle and when her stuff proved a bit too edgy for her indie music label, they dropped her. She is, from my perspective, the single best musical artist of the 2010s, and I don't know if she'll ever release an album again. And meanwhile there are people who seem to assume folks like her must be living a glamourous pop star lifestyle.

For people who like the mainstream stuff - the boring, unchallenging, formulaic stuff - the artists they listen to don't need money. Those on the edge often are living far closer to the brink than those on the outside realize.

Back to basketball:

If Stephen A is your man, then you don't need to worry about your favorite content providers losing money, but if you like ElGee, well, know that he could be making more money if he were still in his non-basketball industry, and had he stayed there, we wouldn't have anyone doing the stuff he's doing.

[Doctor MJ]

Thing about tobinsons is its not just that his offenses plummeted against half decent opposition against any half-decent opponent again and again, his --defenses-- aslo consistently plummeted against any tp 10 offense, and were mediocre against the rest.

Giannis in the first postseason of his prime probably already peaked higher offensibve;y and defensively both form a team success perspective and an inudviuda l perspective than robinson did at like any point in his postseason of his career.

So we're pretending the '99 Spurs defense wasn't about Robinson because Duncan was there now? C'mon.

Re: Giannis in the first postseason of his prime...lost 4 straight games to end it. The Bucks got figured out, swept the rest of the way, came back the next year, got trucked by a 5 seed. I'm really not looking to damn Giannis because I'm hoping he can turn the corner, but the start of his playoff prime is frankly very similar in feel to Robinson for me.

Is 99 robinson the one you want to compare to giannis?

And again, no, not really, becase robinson's team got murked on both ends against 99% of opponents. Giannis broke that bar like, on his first try.

Giannis could literally retire right now, and his track record in the postseason would be better than robinson. The comparison makes like no sense.

In '99 Robinson was the most valuable player on the team that ripped every other playoff team apart. Let me know when Giannis does that.

Also, you're implying '99 Robinson wasn't peak Robinson, and yeah, I know. Still more impressive than anything Giannis has led his team to accomplish in the playoffs so far.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Perhaps the most controversial player on this board (except for maybe KG) ands has already created quite the storm of discussion before the vid was officially dropped.

Watch on YouTube

[eminence]

Probably my least favorite one so far, in that it didn't actually talk about '94-'96 Robinson all that much, and was more of a career video. Still solid and hopefully got folks in the more mainstream to think about roles. Wish there'd been some detailed stuff on the '94/'96 series vs the Jazz and what went wrong defensively in those series, to see if Ben felt David was involved in that or not.

In general I came away a bit higher on David's faceup scoring. Still a bit lower on his passing then Ben.

[Odinn21]

Taylor however is making money out of these stuff and knowing that some of his personal assumptions/notes are just inaccurate makes me more critical than average follower of him.

This makes sense, just make sure you're drawing a distinction between big time mainstream people and ElGee.

I know that this is something that's consider more analytical than art, but I'll share a story from music.

I had a cynical student who said she was 100% fine with torrenting all her music because musicians were already making their money.

Meanwhile my favorite musical artist of the 2010s at her very best was living below my teacher's lifestyle and when her stuff proved a bit too edgy for her indie music label, they dropped her. She is, from my perspective, the single best musical artist of the 2010s, and I don't know if she'll ever release an album again. And meanwhile there are people who seem to assume folks like her must be living a glamourous pop star lifestyle.

For people who like the mainstream stuff - the boring, unchallenging, formulaic stuff - the artists they listen to don't need money. Those on the edge often are living far closer to the brink than those on the outside realize.

Back to basketball:

If Stephen A is your man, then you don't need to worry about your favorite content providers losing money, but if you like ElGee, well, know that he could be making more money if he were still in his non-basketball industry, and had he stayed there, we wouldn't have anyone doing the stuff he's doing.

I never cared about any of ESPN stuff (and not just about basketball) like ever. Or something like that.

Taylor's making money from what he loves to do, which is great for him and us, his audience. I'm a subscriber on his Patreon. I'm giving him 4 USD per month while minimum wage in where I live is like 400 USD (I do better but not much better, 4 USD + VAT per month is still somewhat significant amount).
I mean, if I were a person cared about mainstream stuff - especially in a way you put it, I wouldn't care about any of it. I wouldn't care Taylor's content, I wouldn't care if he gets money, I wouldn't care if he has some inaccurate notions at any point and I wouldn't care to comment at all.

It's a bit personal more than usual for me because like I said, being a non-US person kept me away from doing what I love and also making money from it. English isn't my native language, it's limiting on different levels. Being a content creator in a secondary language is not easy and drawing people into basketball, and more importantly to the hard stuff of it, in a language other than English is extremely hard. If I try to talk anyone in my country that how LeBron James' patterns to attack the rim changed over time from how to beat his man to how to beat the entire defense and it's mostly about how he changed use of his left shoulder, etc, they're bored out of their mind.
This may not sound good but he's living my dream life and that leads me to expect that he lives up to the potential there is.

I think this topic is dragged out for too long. I'll leave it alone after saying a few more things.
There's a saying in my native language and "the tree that bears fruit will be stoned" would be its translation I guess. And my criticism is nothing like it. The initial two responses to my latest criticism built as if I did that. Amares' response sounded like it until he cleared out that it wasn't his personal stance and Jordan Syndrome blatantly ranted about that. (My post wasn't that much of a criticism BTW...) I voiced a concern but this debate going on is not on me.
And I don't think my criticism of Taylor is just too much. For many of his followers, they see a person who put immense time and effort to these things, probably more so than themselves. He's the golden boy of these things. I see a fellow researcher like me, a peer and sometimes I think he could do better.

Lastly and most importantly, I certainly do not like that it's gotten to a point that I had to explain all these, especially the part that I pay Taylor myself. That alone gives me more power to be critical of him than majority of his audience. But I shouldn't feel a need mention that in the first place. And all the need for these explanations felt like coercion. Heck, I didn't have to give any explanation about my personal situation at all but I just felt that I needed to be overly explanative.

Next time around, if I ever post a thing about Ben Taylor, any of you don't agree with it and doesn't have anything else to say than just to point out my disagreement, just carry on.

[Vladimir777]

Let me just say that I love how passionate everyone on the PC Board is about basketball! I aspire to be as big of a fan as some of you guys are someday. Hopefully everyone gets along on here, because I think we all care about the game of basketball at heart.

Odinn, where are you from originally? Just curious.

[Doctor MJ]

I never cared about any of ESPN stuff (and not just about basketball) like ever. Or something like that.

Taylor's making money from what he loves to do, which is great for him and us, his audience. I'm a subscriber on his Patreon. I'm giving him 4 USD per month while minimum wage in where I live is like 400 USD (I do better but not much better, 4 USD + VAT per month is still somewhat significant amount).
I mean, if I were a person cared about mainstream stuff - especially in a way you put it, I wouldn't care about any of it. I wouldn't care Taylor's content, I wouldn't care if he gets money, I wouldn't care if he has some inaccurate notions at any point and I wouldn't care to comment at all.

It's a bit personal more than usual for me because like I said, being a non-US person kept me away from doing what I love and also making money from it. English isn't my native language, it's limiting on different levels. Being a content creator in a secondary language is not easy and drawing people into basketball, and more importantly to the hard stuff of it, in a language other than English is extremely hard. If I try to talk anyone in my country that how LeBron James' patterns to attack the rim changed over time from how to beat his man to how to beat the entire defense and it's mostly about how he changed use of his left shoulder, etc, they're bored out of their mind.
This may not sound good but he's living my dream life and that leads me to expect that he lives up to the potential there is.

I think this topic is dragged out for too long. I'll leave it alone after saying a few more things.
There's a saying in my native language and "the tree that bears fruit will be stoned" would be its translation I guess. And my criticism is nothing like it. The initial two responses to my latest criticism built as if I did that. Amares' response sounded like it until he cleared out that it wasn't his personal stance and Jordan Syndrome blatantly ranted about that. (My post wasn't that much of a criticism BTW...) I voiced a concern but this debate going on is not on me.
And I don't think my criticism of Taylor is just too much. For many of his followers, they see a person who put immense time and effort to these things, probably more so than themselves. He's the golden boy of these things. I see a fellow researcher like me, a peer and sometimes I think he could do better.

Lastly and most importantly, I certainly do not like that it's gotten to a point that I had to explain all these, especially the part that I pay Taylor myself. That alone gives me more power to be critical of him than majority of his audience. But I shouldn't feel a need mention that in the first place. And all the need for these explanations felt like coercion. Heck, I didn't have to give any explanation about my personal situation at all but I just felt that I needed to be overly explanative.

Next time around, if I ever post a thing about Ben Taylor, any of you don't agree with it and doesn't have anything else to say than just to point out my disagreement, just carry on.

Odinn, I'm sorry that I singled you out. You said a particular thing that made me want to say something to the group. It was not meant as a statement as if this was about you specifically.

Most broadly, I just feel so much negativity right now, and I'm absolutely part of the problem. It's just in the water right now and I want to try to make it better, but I may not have the credibility to play that role any more.

[freethedevil]

So we're pretending the '99 Spurs defense wasn't about Robinson because Duncan was there now? C'mon.

Re: Giannis in the first postseason of his prime...lost 4 straight games to end it. The Bucks got figured out, swept the rest of the way, came back the next year, got trucked by a 5 seed. I'm really not looking to damn Giannis because I'm hoping he can turn the corner, but the start of his playoff prime is frankly very similar in feel to Robinson for me.

Is 99 robinson the one you want to compare to giannis?

And again, no, not really, becase robinson's team got murked on both ends against 99% of opponents. Giannis broke that bar like, on his first try.

Giannis could literally retire right now, and his track record in the postseason would be better than robinson. The comparison makes like no sense.

In '99 Robinson was the most valuable player on the team that ripped every other playoff team apart. Let me know when Giannis does that.

Also, you're implying '99 Robinson wasn't peak Robinson, and yeah, I know. Still more impressive than anything Giannis has led his team to accomplish in the playoffs so far.

Robinson wasn't the most valuable player. You understand plus minus is a rate stat right? liek true shooting? Effiency goes up as volume goes down.

This is like callig gobert the second best player in 2019 based on his ws/48, or calling draymond the best player in the league based on his pipm.

Robinson had exceptional effiency on a hilariously diminished role. If you think draymond is a better player than james harden, fine, if not, robinson achieve dnothing of note in an all time context in 99.

This is robinson's impact as a superstar in the playoffs

https://youtu.be/G_5ZhbbDvQg?t=1185

Was david robinson better at basketball in 99? No. He played a far diminsihed role. If you think robinson's 99 demonstrates he's a giannis level peak, I expect similar argumentation for someone like draymond.

Otherwise, we can look at their primes where, Giannis took one season to accomplish more than robinson managed in 8. It would seem the player who requires schemes to stop him is better than the one getting man handled 1 on 1 by karl malone.

[Odinn21]

...

...

For some reason, PMs aren't working properly. I have two messages sitting in my outbox for several hours. This post is just a head up if you get them days later.

[70sFan]

It would seem the player who requires schemes to stop him is better than the one getting man handled 1 on 1 by karl malone.

I don't think that Giannis would fare much better against Karl Malone with 1990s Spurs offensive system. Malone is a perfect defender against someone like Giannis.

[nolang1]

Could anyone show stats that suggest Robinson's led teams did below expectations on defensive end against decent offensive teams?

The +2.0 or better rORtg teams and 1995 Rockets (included this because they had an all time great offensive postseason run) that Robinson and the Spurs faced;

The Blazers in 1990; +2.4 rORtg, 110.5 ORtg r. season and 107.2 ORtg against the Spurs
The Warriors in 1991; +4.0 rORtg, 111.9 ORtg r. season and 111.7 ORtg against the Spurs
The Suns in 1993; +5.3 rORtg, 113.3 ORtg r. season and 109.9 ORtg against the Spurs
The Jazz in 1994; +2.3 rORtg, 108.6 ORtg r. season and 110.6 ORtg against the Spurs
The Rockets in 1995; +1.4 rORtg, 109.7 ORtg r. season and 110.6 ORtg against the Spurs
The Suns in 1996; +2.7 rORtg, 110.3 ORtg r. season and 109.3 ORtg against the Spurs
The Jazz in 1996; +5.7 rORtg, 113.3 ORtg r. season and 114.1 ORtg against the Spurs

I'd say these results do not correlate with general perception about Robinson's defensive qualities. The only particularly good result/number is 1990 Blazers series and from 1994 to 1996 (which is the time frame usually considered as Robinson's extended peak), the only time (out of 4 series) a team didn't improve their ORtg was the Suns in '96 and they were 41W - 0.28 SRS team, they weren't a strong team like the Jazz or the Rockets.

The Warriors series was a relatively famous example of early Nellieball where they neutralized Robinson by having their scrub center stand 25 feet from the basket, where Robinson had to go out and guard him. Obviously the rules are different now, but in general it's a lot easier to do this kind of thing to a defensive superstar than an offensive one.

The other thing with Robinson's career is that the average player during the 80s-90s obviously lived more of a rock star lifestyle on the road than today's players do, and Robinson as someone who didn't drink or go out serves as a pretty solid baseline for the level of focus given to a regular season versus a playoff game.

[PistolPeteJR]

Yeah Elgees defensive evaluation of Mj doesnt make that much sense. Underrates him quite a bit IMO

Even in 98 Scottie missed half the season and they were still a top 3 defense despite guys like Kerr and Kukoc not being good defenders. They had Harper, Rodman and a couple good defensive role playing bigs but considering Scotties rep on that end and how Elgee paints his defense they shouldve seen a much bigger dropoff. And this was mid-30yo Mj.

The 98 Bulls were the #1 defense in the league without either Jordan or Pippen on court. People only ever talk about his triangle offense but Phil Jackson teams have often outperformed their talent on the defensive end as well.

Yeah there seems to a be a blatant disconnect here with perception and reality when we look at team results.

Jordan wins dpoy in 88 on the 3rd best defense in the league. Next season oakley leaves and they're 11th. Next season they're 19th. Then in 91, wth Jordan getting worse at basically everything defensively(slower, less atheltic, less rim protection, more breakdowns), they become the best defense in the league which coinices with...checks notes....Pippen and Rodman(but mostly Pippen) Entering their prime. Jordan leaves in 93 and their defense is...basically unaffected.

Looking at more induvidual data, Ben gives jordan #1 in backpicks bpm(which he says does the worst job of his preferred stats defensively), is second in dpipm, and then when he and his team hardtrack jordan's playoff games to come with apm specifcally citing that "its hard to account for defense" as justificaton, Jordan ends up coming...9th.

Quick comparison with someone people insist jordan is close to or better than defensively, the 09 cavs withotu lebron are the 18th best defense in the league, with him they ae 3rd. He has a dpipm of +3.3 which is twice as close to dwight howard as it is to say..2020 ben simmons.

Lebron's drapm over the playoffs is higher than kawhi leonard's despite playing vastly longer. Remember guys, averages go down as players play longer.

Maybe the guy who can make dwight second guess about trying things at the rim and shut down derrick rose while committing less defensive errors is better at defense....

I don't always agree with your takes, but I felt like it was important to give you props on this. Simple, yet rooted.

[PistolPeteJR]

What do you think about Robinson vs Giannis after this video? I find them quite comparable, with the difference that I think Admiral is better suited to 2nd option role on offense than Antetokumpo.

Thinking about it myself, I see Robinson as some kind of Giannis-Bosh type hybrid, with elements of both players in his game on both ends of the floor.

[PistolPeteJR]

I like seeing content about Robinson but wish Taylor didn’t have him on there because Robinson’s peak fall into an ambiguous tier.

If 1994-96 David Robinson is on there, denying 1981-83 Moses Malone and 1989-91 Charles Barkley doesn’t make sense. Also it’ll be also questionable if he leaves out any of Karl Malone, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, James Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Knowing Taylor, I’m sure he’ll leave out at least two or three of these names though.

I actually really like that he has him in there not only because his peak was terrific (though definitely not on the same tier as some others), but because of the fun "what could have been" with his peak. Sure, that could be said for a few players in history, but I believe the uniqueness of Robinson's skillset and the taste we got of him finally being able to play the role he was best suited to play in the late 90s made for a fun breakdown.

[PistolPeteJR]

I think he'll leave out all of them except Curry, so no two or three but nine. D-Rob peak is higher than Moses and Barkley, that's why he missed them, this is just ~15 greatest peaks. None of the players you mentioned is in this range.

I agree but not everyone does.

The truth is no matter who he leaves out there will be people complaining because Humans love to complain. I do my best to not voice my frustrations on projects like this because of the amount of work put in and because there is already enough room for positive conversation.

If people want to complain about this then they likely complain in all sorts of facets of life, unfortunately.

Agree, as always there will be some complaining. For sure there will be a lot of people complaining on lack of Kobe, and probably Durant. I assume both of them won't be in this project and for many casuals it will be shocking news to hear Kobe is not top 3 ever.

I'm a big Kobe critic, but I'd be surprised if he was left out of this project.