Can we safely say Jokic is the best offensive player ever?

[nikster]

Best offensive player ever with the...5th, 7th, 6th, 5th, and 5th best offenses in the league. What a titan. The argument would be a lot stronger if we didn't see him getting his team's offense shut down last year by KAT and Naz Reid.

In all seriousness Jokic is wonderful and it's so exciting to watch him play. But if you want to call him the best offensive player or even comparable to the top dogs, he needs to actually deliver those results.

It would be reasonable for the best offensive player to have offenses only in that level if their team is stacked with defensive specialists like some of the Jordan Bulls squads. Then the 'best offensive player' can do such heavy lifting that they can use extra roster spots for better defense or rebounding. But that's not the case with the Nuggets, who have all their good players as more all around or offensive-centric.

Magic in his career had 5 1st ranked offenses, two 2nds, and a 3rd out of 10 healthy years. Some of his rosters were stacked offensively, others definitely weren't.

Jordan in the threepeats had 4 1st ranked offenses, 1 2nd ranked, and 1 9th. Several of his rosters were much more defensive centric as well, making him pick up all the attention on offense.

Neither had serious playoff drops. That's what a true greatest offensive player ever looks like. Jokic has the tools to get there, but he has to deliver consistent top tier results.

When you factor in that Jamal hasn't been as good in the regular season and that both him and MPJ have missed tons of time, it's not surprising where his teams ended up.

20-21 MPJ and Murray missed 21 and 34 games respectively and the other players leading in minutes were Monte Morris, Will Barton, Campazzo, Paul Milsap and Jamychal Green. 21-22 Jokic led a top 6 offense with Will Barton, Monte Morris, Jeff Green and Aaron Gordon starting most of the season. They've always been a low 3 point shooting team. That is generally pretty bad offensive support.

[reddyplayerone]

Do other sports have younger fans who constantly dismiss anyone they didn't get to see live as "plumbers and firemen?"

I don’t know. I do know that NFL fans don’t delude themselves into thinking Bart Starr was a better football player than Patrick Maholmes. It’s only NBA fans that think pro athletes are getting worse over time, which is laughably stupid.

The “plumbers and firemen” talk is a tongue-in-cheek response to the insufferable boomer posting we have to endure.

The NFL is a perfect means to illustrate how sports grow and improve over time. Back in the 50s and 60s it wasn't uncommon for elite QBs to barely complete half their passes and throw more interceptions than touchdowns. (Namath, Bradshaw, etc.)

Efficiency wasn't a glimmer in even the most advanced coach's eye. Much like NBA coaches with the 3-point line, they didn't fully grasp the power of an optimized passing game emphasizing keeping drives alive instead of focusing on deep shots downfield, wasted too many downs running the football, did almost nothing to fool defenses with motion and formations, looked at fourth downs as massive gambles instead of tools to extend drives, etc etc etc.

Bill Barnwell did a fascinating breakdown a while ago to detail just how far offenses have advanced by comparing personnel packages and formations from Super Bowl I to one of the more recent games. It was something like 7/12 to 20/40-plus, with any number of variations based on presnap motion, shotgun formations, etc. Not even remotely comparable in terms of sophistication and preparation.

And that's sports. They'll be doing stuff in 30 or 40 years that make today's game look archaic, and old people will be complaining about it. (Full disclosure, I'm now one of the old people, but I'm also not married to any one iteration I grew up with.)

Again idk anything about football, but I would say generally that yeah I would expect there to be at least some evolution in strategy and training when you consider the recourses that have been devoted to sports

Yet even with that when we look at basketball we see teams using offensive principles and even recycling sets developed by Tex Winter, who won rings with the triangle offense in my lifetime, and learned it from his coach at USC along with his teammate Alex Hannum, who used that exact philosophy to coach Wilt Chamberlain to a championship.

Everyone's had a Horns set in their playbook for the last forty years. Everyone's had their split cut plays. It's been a pick and roll league since at least Stockton & Malone, and guys like Paul Westhead and Don Nelson were simply playing with the extreme ends of the ideas Red Auerbach implemented in ways that wouldn't look out of place at all in the modern NBA.

Idk I guess this just comes down to a glass half full sort of thing? Cause even on an individual player level, the fact that there was a generation of players who had to hold down real jobs in their offseasons while still performing to the level they did kind of just makes them sound even more impressive to me.

Like yeah, a modern player who has had to do little else but play basketball since they were 12, with all the advantages to infrastructure and everything that comes with it, probably should clear those firemen and plumbers! By like A LOT!

Except they don't really, right? I mean it really starts to feel very squishy and unquantifiable when you start considering how things like rule changes allowed guys to stop looking so goofy while they dribbled with one hand.

And like that's fine! It's much more fun to watch someone do a sick crossover than to get called for a travel or carry just for switching your dribbling hand.

That doesn't mean guys weren't capable though.

And I say this as a girl who was born in 1993 so I guess I skew a bit young around here, but I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I just have never been able to see the value in this sort of thinking:

I believe he said Giannis was a better offensive player than Bird, which is a perfectly reasonable opinion.

I’m not that young btw, I just don’t delude myself into thinking players from 30 years ago were better than players today. They were not. Players today are better in almost every conceivable way.

If NBA players in 20 years make Lebron and Curry look like amateurs, great. You won’t hear me yelling at clouds.

Like, okay, Giannis clears Bird. Great. Now what?


This is why I hate GOAT talk. It always boils down to these obnoxious declarations of unknowable's that do nothing to deepen or enrich anyone's understanding or appreciation of the game itself.

[picc]

He has the highest offensive floor ever imo, meaning his worst games on offense are better than anyone else's worst games on offense. He doesn't have the same ceiling that other players have, but his average is comparable to anyone, and his floor is better than anyone else's.

So depending on how you weight those things there's a real argument for best offensive player ever.

[Sedale Threatt]

Again idk anything about football, but I would say generally that yeah I would expect there to be at least some evolution in strategy and training when you consider the recourses that have been devoted to sports

Yet even with that when we look at basketball we see teams using offensive principles and even recycling sets developed by Tex Winter, who won rings with the triangle offense in my lifetime, and learned it from his coach at USC along with his teammate Alex Hannum, who used that exact philosophy to coach Wilt Chamberlain to a championship.

Everyone's had a Horns set in their playbook for the last forty years. Everyone's had their split cut plays. It's been a pick and roll league since at least Stockton & Malone, and guys like Paul Westhead and Don Nelson were simply playing with the extreme ends of the ideas Red Auerbach implemented in ways that wouldn't look out of place at all in the modern NBA.

Idk I guess this just comes down to a glass half full sort of thing? Cause even on an individual player level, the fact that there was a generation of players who had to hold down real jobs in their offseasons while still performing to the level they did kind of just makes them sound even more impressive to me.

Like yeah, a modern player who has had to do little else but play basketball since they were 12, with all the advantages to infrastructure and everything that comes with it, probably should clear those firemen and plumbers! By like A LOT!

Except they don't really, right? I mean it really starts to feel very squishy and unquantifiable when you start considering how things like rule changes allowed guys to stop looking so goofy while they dribbled with one hand.

And like that's fine! It's much more fun to watch someone do a sick crossover than to get called for a travel or carry just for switching your dribbling hand.

That doesn't mean guys weren't capable though.

And I say this as a girl who was born in 1993 so I guess I skew a bit young around here, but I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I just have never been able to see the value in this sort of thinking:

I believe he said Giannis was a better offensive player than Bird, which is a perfectly reasonable opinion.

I’m not that young btw, I just don’t delude myself into thinking players from 30 years ago were better than players today. They were not. Players today are better in almost every conceivable way.

If NBA players in 20 years make Lebron and Curry look like amateurs, great. You won’t hear me yelling at clouds.

Like, okay, Giannis clears Bird. Great. Now what?

This is why I hate GOAT talk. It always boils down to these obnoxious declarations of unknowable's that do nothing to deepen or enrich anyone's understanding or appreciation of the game itself.

As somebody who has been watching the NBA for going on 40 years now, I have zero problem agreeing that, as a collective, players are well advanced from where they were even 20 years ago, let alone beyond that.

It's just a totally different game with a totally different emphasis, which requires a totally different skill set. Does that mean there weren't plenty of players who would have readily translated even today? Of course not. (Bird would have been incredible shooting more 3s. As Steve Nash himself said, it was a total failure of imagination that coaches/players didn't realize they should be utilizing that skill more.) Does that mean that, if those same players had been brought up in the modern era they wouldn't have developed better skills? Of course not.

Nor does it mean that NBA coaches have totally reinvented the wheel. The pick-and-roll is probably a good 100 years old and it's a staple of pretty much every offense in the league. Fundamentals are fundamentals for a reason. But much like the NFL has figured out how to better utilize the passing game and fourth downs, so did NBA teams finally figure out they were playing too slow and drastically underutilizing the 3-point line, and that changed everything.

Don Nelson's teams were treated like a novelty for going small, and now every team plays that way because they realized they're better off getting another dribbler/shooter on the court than wasting minutes on the Jim McIlvaines of the world. As a result, the amount of rotating and switching defensive players have to do is not even remotely comparable to past decades. The way NBA offenses will ruthlessly seek out and exploit matchups is not even remotely comparable to past decades.

Even as somebody who grew up watching those various eras, I just find the constant rhapsodizing to be totally obnoxious. Not everything is better, but from strategic and tactical standpoints, we're light years ahead. That's just how sports (and so man other industries) work.

[zero rings]

I don’t know. I do know that NFL fans don’t delude themselves into thinking Bart Starr was a better football player than Patrick Maholmes. It’s only NBA fans that think pro athletes are getting worse over time, which is laughably stupid.

The “plumbers and firemen” talk is a tongue-in-cheek response to the insufferable boomer posting we have to endure.

The NFL is a perfect means to illustrate how sports grow and improve over time. Back in the 50s and 60s it wasn't uncommon for elite QBs to barely complete half their passes and throw more interceptions than touchdowns. (Namath, Bradshaw, etc.)

Efficiency wasn't a glimmer in even the most advanced coach's eye. Much like NBA coaches with the 3-point line, they didn't fully grasp the power of an optimized passing game emphasizing keeping drives alive instead of focusing on deep shots downfield, wasted too many downs running the football, did almost nothing to fool defenses with motion and formations, looked at fourth downs as massive gambles instead of tools to extend drives, etc etc etc.

Bill Barnwell did a fascinating breakdown a while ago to detail just how far offenses have advanced by comparing personnel packages and formations from Super Bowl I to one of the more recent games. It was something like 7/12 to 20/40-plus, with any number of variations based on presnap motion, shotgun formations, etc. Not even remotely comparable in terms of sophistication and preparation.

And that's sports. They'll be doing stuff in 30 or 40 years that make today's game look archaic, and old people will be complaining about it. (Full disclosure, I'm now one of the old people, but I'm also not married to any one iteration I grew up with.)

Again idk anything about football, but I would say generally that yeah I would expect there to be at least some evolution in strategy and training when you consider the recourses that have been devoted to sports

Yet even with that when we look at basketball we see teams using offensive principles and even recycling sets developed by Tex Winter, who won rings with the triangle offense in my lifetime, and learned it from his coach at USC along with his teammate Alex Hannum, who used that exact philosophy to coach Wilt Chamberlain to a championship.

Everyone's had a Horns set in their playbook for the last forty years. Everyone's had their split cut plays. It's been a pick and roll league since at least Stockton & Malone, and guys like Paul Westhead and Don Nelson were simply playing with the extreme ends of the ideas Red Auerbach implemented in ways that wouldn't look out of place at all in the modern NBA.

Idk I guess this just comes down to a glass half full sort of thing? Cause even on an individual player level, the fact that there was a generation of players who had to hold down real jobs in their offseasons while still performing to the level they did kind of just makes them sound even more impressive to me.

Like yeah, a modern player who has had to do little else but play basketball since they were 12, with all the advantages to infrastructure and everything that comes with it, probably should clear those firemen and plumbers! By like A LOT!

Except they don't really, right? I mean it really starts to feel very squishy and unquantifiable when you start considering how things like rule changes allowed guys to stop looking so goofy while they dribbled with one hand.

And like that's fine! It's much more fun to watch someone do a sick crossover than to get called for a travel or carry just for switching your dribbling hand.

That doesn't mean guys weren't capable though.

And I say this as a girl who was born in 1993 so I guess I skew a bit young around here, but I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I just have never been able to see the value in this sort of thinking:

I believe he said Giannis was a better offensive player than Bird, which is a perfectly reasonable opinion.

I’m not that young btw, I just don’t delude myself into thinking players from 30 years ago were better than players today. They were not. Players today are better in almost every conceivable way.

If NBA players in 20 years make Lebron and Curry look like amateurs, great. You won’t hear me yelling at clouds.

Like, okay, Giannis clears Bird. Great. Now what?


This is why I hate GOAT talk. It always boils down to these obnoxious declarations of unknowable's that do nothing to deepen or enrich anyone's understanding or appreciation of the game itself.

I don’t like the GOAT talk either, but that’s not what this thread is about. It’s about whether Jokic is the best offensive player ever.

Given that he’s the best offensive player in the most sophisticated offensive era, I’d say he has a very strong argument.

[reddyplayerone]

Q: Why were guys Rik Smits and Tony Kukoc sensations when they played (when the only real non American superstar had been, basically, Hakeem?)

1. Basketball players got much, much better in almost every country outside the United States in the past several decades.

https://www.sportico.com/leagues/olympics/2024/olympics-basketball-2024-nba-international-1234791937/

2. Scouting and player development and recruitment got drastically better, more sophisticated, and deeper.

3. The "subpar" American replacement level players who got (all) the jobs in the 1980's and 1990's were replaced by more talented players from other countries where basketball has become (incredibly) popular in the last 25 or so years.

See like I get that basketball exploded in popularity around the world after the 92 olympics and everything, and like sure we have a wider player pool today simply cause there are more players from all over the place.

But replacement level is replacement level, and there are 125 international players in the league right now, and we do not have 125 Jokic's or Giannis' or Luka's.

But anyway I think my primary issue is with the framing of this. Someone like Jokic is great and awesome and that wouldn't change if he was the exact same guy in every way except he was born in Pittsburgh. It's not like he was Arvydas Sabonis and was being kept from coming to the USA.

[reddyplayerone]

I don’t like the GOAT talk either, but that’s not what this thread is about. It’s about whether Jokic is the best offensive player ever.

Ok so it's a different flavor of GOAT talk lol

Given that he’s the best offensive player in the most sophisticated offensive era, I’d say he has a very strong argument.

Then I guess you just don't have a lot to talk about when it comes to basketball huh?

I think that's fine if that's how deeply you want to engage with stuff, but it definitely doesn't make you any smarter or more sophisticated in your understanding or appreciation for the sport. The opposite tbh

[Doctor MJ]

Older NBA fans are the absolute worst in sports. No other “fans” are driven so entirely by their resentment of today’s players, and their insecurities about their childhood heroes.

Jokic has the best touch and vision of any big man ever, maybe any player ever, but apparently he would be nothing special in 1998 - a league where Rik Smits and Dikembe Mutumbo were standout centers. You’ve got to be kidding me…

Do other sports have younger fans who constantly dismiss anyone they didn't get to see live as "plumbers and firemen?"

So this is something that different sports have differently at different times.

In tennis for example, there's actually a long tradition of old pros (and those of their generation) saying that the guys from the past were better than contemporary guys. The pre-WW2 guys did it to the post, then the post-WW2 pre-Open era guys did it to the Open era guys.

Where it gets interesting is that I'd say this flipped in the 21st century where the guys from the past seem to make a point to bow down to Fed/Rafa/Nole. You can say they do that because it's "obvious" the new guys are better, but frankly I think it was just about as obvious in earlier eras, and what really changed was the attitude.

So why did the attitude change? I'd say it has to do with a) old pros continuing to make a living being a part of the tennis landscape, and b) tennis falling in popularity despite technical improvements. Basically, the world of tennis has had a "we're all in this together" realization because they are having to try to earn attention from the sporting masses.

Hence: The basketball old pros are acting like brats because the popularity of their sport allows them not to grow up.

Other sports are going to have their own individual wrinkles, but I think you can understand a lot about the situation when you consider how that sport is waxing or waning in popularity.

As far as the young people not respecting the past, I'd say that's endemic to human experience. Kids find history boring and find reasons why they shouldn't have to learn about it, so why would it be any different in a maturing field of entertainment?

I would say though that basketball is too some degree it's own thing because of the racial dynamic. None of the other major American sports had such a clear cut dramatic shift from White-dominated to Black-dominated like basketball did. When folks are saying "plumbers and firemen", though they may not realizing it, they're essentially saying "white guys".

People may not want to accept it - because they are good people who aren't looking to be called "racists" - but I think we have to acknowledge the racial changeover was absolutely noticed by the people of the time, and they were the ones who set the tone for what came later. So now we're in a society that tries to avoid saying "Then they let the Blacks play, and they were inherently better so they took over the sport", even though that is what they believe.

And I would say that White Americans believe it to the point where they mostly don't even try to go into basketball any more, and as a result white boys are more likely to max out their basketball talent if they are from Eastern Europe than the US. To the point where tiny countries like Serbia and Slovenia actually stand a chance against the US despite having a combined population much smaller than New York City.

So yeah, some weird things going on in basketball culture even beyond the pettiness that I'd expect to see from most major sports.

[QPR]

Best offensive player ever with the...5th, 7th, 6th, 5th, and 5th best offenses in the league. What a titan. The argument would be a lot stronger if we didn't see him getting his team's offense shut down last year by KAT and Naz Reid.

I'd argue that goes in his favour tbh. He basically maintains a top five offense in the league over a prolonged period, despite his only team mate who can create his own offense being very streaky and injury-prone, and the remainder of the team being spot-up shooters and cutters/dunkers.

Besides, you're talking about a team metric. There are individual metrics that measure how much a single player impacts his team's offense while on the floor, and unsurprisingly Jokic is at the top of those.

[The High Cyde]

I have Jokic tied with LeBron as the best offensive player ever. Bron might have the edge because he’s been doing it for longer and he’s adapted his game to a dynamic and changing league. They’re in the same top tier regardless, head and shoulders above the rest.

[DaPessimist]

As someone who loves to pass it hurts me to say this, but assists get overrated when ranking offensive players. The ability to SCORE the ball at an efficient rate is the most valuable skill in basketball by a fairly wide margin.

[Doctor MJ]

Q: Why were guys Rik Smits and Tony Kukoc sensations when they played (when the only real non American superstar had been, basically, Hakeem?)

1. Basketball players got much, much better in almost every country outside the United States in the past several decades.

https://www.sportico.com/leagues/olympics/2024/olympics-basketball-2024-nba-international-1234791937/

2. Scouting and player development and recruitment got drastically better, more sophisticated, and deeper.

3. The "subpar" American replacement level players who got (all) the jobs in the 1980's and 1990's were replaced by more talented players from other countries where basketball has become (incredibly) popular in the last 25 or so years.

See like I get that basketball exploded in popularity around the world after the 92 olympics and everything, and like sure we have a wider player pool today simply cause there are more players from all over the place.

But replacement level is replacement level, and there are 125 international players in the league right now, and we do not have 125 Jokic's or Giannis' or Luka's.

But anyway I think my primary issue is with the framing of this. Someone like Jokic is great and awesome and that wouldn't change if he was the exact same guy in every way except he was born in Pittsburgh. It's not like he was Arvydas Sabonis and was being kept from coming to the USA.

To your last:

I would say it's unlikely Jokic would be anything like Jokic as we know him if he grew up in the US, and that is a huge problem for American basketball.

Mind you, I'm not saying he couldn't possibly be in the NBA with American training, but he would not have been taught to play the same way.

The type of player I would consider Jokic is a traditional pivot. "Pivot" has become synonymous with center, because what it specifically referred to was a style of play where the great passer (ideally tall) could stay stationary with the ball as his teammates cut to openings. This style emerged in the 1920s, and soon dominated all-levels basically until the arrival of George Mikan as more of a scorer than passer.

Post-Mikan, we still had some use of the pivot approach with Bill Walton in the '70s being the peak of it until Jokic arrived - and I do often wonder how things might have been different if Walton had had better health.

But what's interesting is that the pivot style of play didn't die there. It lived on in two main places:

1) The Harlem Globetrotters
2) Europe

Now, I think it's fine to say that I'm stretching things a bit when I use the same label ("pivot") for Jokic as someone a century before - I don't think we've ever seen someone like Jokic before - but what is pretty clear is that the style Jokic plays is something that has its roots in New York City with Dutch Dehnert and the Original Celtics, and yet if you're grew up in NYC in the same generation as Jokic, you probably wouldn't even learn about it, let alone be taught to play it by a coach with that particular expertise.

[Doctor MJ]

As someone who loves to pass it hurts me to say this, but assists get overrated when ranking offensive players. The ability to SCORE the ball at an efficient rate is the most valuable skill in basketball by a fairly wide margin.

I would just point out that what you're expressing is very much a modern (post-Jordan) view of basketball. From the 1890s to the 1980s, the best minds in basketball would tell you that it's a mistake to rely too much on a guy just focused on scoring.

Not saying that your assertion is wrong necessarily, only that it isn't what people have always thought about the game, even if most discussing basketball now weren't around to see that things were once seen differently.

[falcolombardi]

I want him to lead one elite offense team at least once before that assertion?

[AleksandarN]

I want him to lead one elite offense team at least once before that assertion?

I want to have an allstar teammate too. Sometimes we don’t get what we want

[reddyplayerone]

To your last:

I would say it's unlikely Jokic would be anything like Jokic as we know him if he grew up in the US, and that is a huge problem for American basketball.

Mind you, I'm not saying he couldn't possibly be in the NBA with American training, but he would not have been taught to play the same way.

Right so I think this is a different statement than what I'm referring to and honestly it's a better and more thoughtful one lol

Like it's one thing to say that other countries are doing things to develop players to have more success in the NBA and another thing entirely to suggest that a player is inherently better simply because they're non American.

Idk I guess I want to avoid any sort of insinuations of any sort of inherent superiority for obvious reasons lol

The type of player I would consider Jokic is a traditional pivot. "Pivot" has become synonymous with center, because what it specifically referred to was a style of play where the great passer (ideally tall) could stay stationary with the ball as his teammates cut to openings. This style emerged in the 1920s, and soon dominated all-levels basically until the arrival of George Mikan as more of a scorer than passer.

Post-Mikan, we still had some use of the pivot approach with Bill Walton in the '70s being the peak of it until Jokic arrived - and I do often wonder how things might have been different if Walton had had better health.

But what's interesting is that the pivot style of play didn't die there. It lived on in two main places:

1) The Harlem Globetrotters
2) Europe

Now, I think it's fine to say that I'm stretching things a bit when I use the same label ("pivot") for Jokic as someone a century before - I don't think we've ever seen someone like Jokic before - but what is pretty clear is that the style Jokic plays is something that has its roots in New York City with Dutch Dehnert and the Original Celtics, and yet if you're grew up in NYC in the same generation as Jokic, you probably wouldn't even learn about it, let alone be taught to play it by a coach with that particular expertise.

Yeah see this is way more interesting to me than who the best is or what era is the best or any of that. Like now I'm interested about whether Europe may have picked up on that "Pivot" style of play from the Globetrotters touring all over the place and things like that.

Cause while I would guess Jokic wouldn't know the name Dutch Dehnert either, I think it's cool that the roots of his development can be even indirectly traced all the way back to the game's very early days

Idk I'm a history girly because I feel like it gives me a better understanding of whatever is happening today and this is a good example so ty ^^

[ScrantonBulls]

Well im glad that we have young guys like yourself on here to tell us how much worse 90s/80s nba was compared to today. One of them actually said that Giannis is a more skilled offensive player than Larry Bird. Its easy to dismiss players in the 90s and 80s when you didnt watch them play. But 20 years from now, 18 year olds will be saying James, Curry, and Durant played against plumbers and firefighters too. It will come around.

I believe he said Giannis was a better offensive player than Bird, which is a perfectly reasonable opinion.

I’m not that young btw, I just don’t delude myself into thinking players from 30 years ago were better than players today. They were not. Players today are better in almost every conceivable way.

If NBA players in 20 years make Lebron and Curry look like amateurs, great. You won’t hear me yelling at clouds.

In no way is Giannis a better offensive player than Larry Bird but im not going to argue with you over it.

I never said players from 30 years ago were better than players today. The league is better overall because of the amount of international talent that we have in the nba today. But are most players more skilled today? At shooting 3s but thats about it. Dribbling, post moves, passing, pick and pop/roll, and the basic fundamentals? No, i dont think so. It also seems like the league has a problem keeping players healthy although they seem to have less back to backs and extended time off during the all star break. Thanks for the yelling at clouds comment, i should just shut up and listen to whatever you guys say on here right?

I, for one, am utterly shocked that you aren't willing to defend your viewpoint.

[MavsDirk41]

I believe he said Giannis was a better offensive player than Bird, which is a perfectly reasonable opinion.

I’m not that young btw, I just don’t delude myself into thinking players from 30 years ago were better than players today. They were not. Players today are better in almost every conceivable way.

If NBA players in 20 years make Lebron and Curry look like amateurs, great. You won’t hear me yelling at clouds.

In no way is Giannis a better offensive player than Larry Bird but im not going to argue with you over it.

I never said players from 30 years ago were better than players today. The league is better overall because of the amount of international talent that we have in the nba today. But are most players more skilled today? At shooting 3s but thats about it. Dribbling, post moves, passing, pick and pop/roll, and the basic fundamentals? No, i dont think so. It also seems like the league has a problem keeping players healthy although they seem to have less back to backs and extended time off during the all star break. Thanks for the yelling at clouds comment, i should just shut up and listen to whatever you guys say on here right?

I, for one, am utterly shocked that you aren't willing to defend your viewpoint.

Ok TajFTW you want advanced statistics?

Bird top 4 seasons Offensive Win Shares
11.2
10.5
10.4
9.6

Bird top 4 seasons OBPM
7.8
7.3
6.8
6.6

Giannis top 4 seasons Offensive Win Shares
9.5
9.2
8.9
8.3

Giannis top 4 seasons OBPM
7.6
7.4
6.7
6.3

Bird is a better 3 point shooter
Bird is a better mid range shooter
Bird is a better post player
Bird is a better free throw shooter
Bird is a better passer

So how many games have you watched Bird play on Youtube?

[Snake3]

He has the highest offensive floor ever imo, meaning his worst games on offense are better than anyone else's worst games on offense. He doesn't have the same ceiling that other players have, but his average is comparable to anyone, and his floor is better than anyone else's.

So depending on how you weight those things there's a real argument for best offensive player ever.

Offensively?

Who do you think has a better ceiling?

[picc]

He has the highest offensive floor ever imo, meaning his worst games on offense are better than anyone else's worst games on offense. He doesn't have the same ceiling that other players have, but his average is comparable to anyone, and his floor is better than anyone else's.

So depending on how you weight those things there's a real argument for best offensive player ever.

Offensively?

Who do you think has a better ceiling?

Every guard and wing you can think of who's also in the conversation.