RealGM Top 100 All-Time (2017)

[Jaivl]

Good time to return to the board. Don't know if I'll participate yet, but for sure I'll be taking a look.

[trex_8063]

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You're both in.

[SactoKingsFan]

I'd like to be on the voting panel. Will post my criteria within the next few days.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[Freighttrain]

I'd like to vote but my knowledge of the '50 &'60 aren't as good as I would like it to be.. Not sure if that would make me eligible to vote.

[trex_8063]

Not gonna lie but I've soured on these types of projects recently. 90% of the time we're rehashing old conversations, no one changes their opinions on guys, and its basically 2 people arguing from the POV of their drastically different standards.

Agreed.

I agree there's a lot of rehash; somewhat the nature of the beast, as the topic at hand generally doesn't change much over time (we're still talking about basically the same collection of characters and by mostly the same measures).

But fwiw, I disagree that no one changes their opinions on guys.

If two posters are going at it from divergent viewpoints, and in the end neither capitulates right then and there, and says "you know what, you're right; you've substantiated your point of view much better than I have, so I'm going to adopt your point of view on this topic"......that doesn't mean neither changed their opinion.

It probably never happens that someone swings a virtual 180 on a player as the result of a single debate (and pride alone would probably prevent most people from publicly admitting it even if it did); but shifts in opinion substantially less than "180" I would wager happen all the time (they certainly do for me).

My opinion (and rank) of many players has shifted---kinda substantially, in some cases---for many players over the years. The operative part of that statement is there at the end ("over the years"). The change is pretty much never result of a sudden epiphany or an "oh, I never thought about it that way" kind of occurrence. It's more along the lines of hearing similar arguments repeatedly (from different individuals), investigating this or that on my own (often inspired to do so by some debate or another), refining criteria, etc etc.......happens organically, often at a pretty sluggish pace over long periods of time.

But it happens.

Just as an example, I found my ATL from 2012; here's how the front end of it looked:
1. Michael Jordan
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Wilt Chamberlain
4. Magic Johnson
5. Larry Bird
6. Bill Russell
7. Shaquille O'Neal
8. Tim Duncan
9. Kobe Bryant
10. Hakeem Olajuwon
11. Karl Malone
12. Julius Erving
13. Lebron James
14. Oscar Robertson
15. Jerry West
16. Moses Malone
17. Charles Barkley
18. Kevin Garnett
19. David Robinson
20. Elgin Baylor
21. Dirk Nowitzki

Bob Cousy was #25, too, fwiw (he currently resides no where near that high on my ATL).

Now obviously Lebron has had A LOT of relevant career in the five years since. To a substantially lesser degree Duncan and Dirk have had some relevant career too, and to a still smaller degree so did Kobe and KG. But even in relation to the others (who were already retired), I can tell you my top 20-25 today looks very different in many ways.

In no small way that's occurred as a result of debates had here or conversations I've read here (and related private studies or ancillary reading/game viewing I may have done as a result).


Anyway, if you change your minds, just let me know.

[trex_8063]

I'd like to vote but my knowledge of the '50 &'60 aren't as good as I would like it to be.. Not sure if that would make me eligible to vote.

As per OP, I'm going to request a trial period for the first few threads of the project. Please contribute to the conversation (and feel free to state who your vote would be, too, though it will not be officially counted initially); if things go well, you'll be added to voter panel.

[Doctor MJ]

Re: no one changes their opinions. I've been hearing this in several places lately.

On numerous occasions I've persuaded others, and on numerous occasions I've been persuaded by others. It's relatively rare, but that's to be expected when we've thought about things as much as we have.

So then I'm sorry to be a jerk here, but anyone who thinks "I never change my opinion and I'm never able to change others opinions" should probably focus first on why it is they never change their opinion, because it probably has everything to do with why their opinion doesn't convince others.

[ardee]

Would love to participate. I can post in the criteria thread in a bit.

[penbeast0]

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I agree there's a lot of rehash; somewhat the nature of the beast....

HEY!

Anyway, I'm in. I've changed my votes on several players over doing several of these. Not sure how many were during the project but certainly over time and from discussion in the project. It's the discussion that is really the key to this for me, not the actual ranking.

[E-Balla]

Not gonna lie but I've soured on these types of projects recently. 90% of the time we're rehashing old conversations, no one changes their opinions on guys, and its basically 2 people arguing from the POV of their drastically different standards.

Agreed.

I agree there's a lot of rehash; somewhat the nature of the beast, as the topic at hand generally doesn't change much over time (we're still talking about basically the same collection of characters and by mostly the same measures).

But fwiw, I disagree that no one changes their opinions on guys.

If two posters are going at it from divergent viewpoints, and in the end neither capitulates right then and there, and says "you know what, you're right; you've substantiated your point of view much better than I have, so I'm going to adopt your point of view on this topic"......that doesn't mean neither changed their opinion.

It probably never happens that someone swings a virtual 180 on a player as the result of a single debate (and pride alone would probably prevent most people from publicly admitting it even if it did); but shifts in opinion substantially less than "180" I would wager happen all the time (they certainly do for me).

My opinion (and rank) of many players has shifted---kinda substantially, in some cases---for many players over the years. The operative part of that statement is there at the end ("over the years"). The change is pretty much never result of a sudden epiphany or an "oh, I never thought about it that way" kind of occurrence. It's more along the lines of hearing similar arguments repeatedly (from different individuals), investigating this or that on my own (often inspired to do so by some debate or another), refining criteria, etc etc.......happens organically, often at a pretty sluggish pace over long periods of time.

But it happens.

Just as an example, I found my ATL from 2012; here's how the front end of it looked:
1. Michael Jordan
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Wilt Chamberlain
4. Magic Johnson
5. Larry Bird
6. Bill Russell
7. Shaquille O'Neal
8. Tim Duncan
9. Kobe Bryant
10. Hakeem Olajuwon
11. Karl Malone
12. Julius Erving
13. Lebron James
14. Oscar Robertson
15. Jerry West
16. Moses Malone
17. Charles Barkley
18. Kevin Garnett
19. David Robinson
20. Elgin Baylor
21. Dirk Nowitzki

Bob Cousy was #25, too, fwiw (he currently resides no where near that high on my ATL).

Now obviously Lebron has had A LOT of relevant career in the five years since. To a substantially lesser degree Duncan and Dirk have had some relevant career too, and to a still smaller degree so did Kobe and KG. But even in relation to the others (who were already retired), I can tell you my top 20-25 today looks very different in many ways.

In no small way that's occurred as a result of debates had here or conversations I've read here (and related private studies or ancillary reading/game viewing I may have done as a result).


Anyway, if you change your minds, just let me know.

Well you have to understand there's not many posters like you who have healthy debating habits. I know plenty of guys that are just impossible to reason with around here.

I think the biggest problem is the format here. If it was a debate with some judges picking the top guy impartially based on how well the guys were defended/how well others were attacked I feel the results we'd get would be wildly different but in this format it doesn't really leave much room for successfully arguing a player into his "deserved" spot.

[E-Balla]

Re: no one changes their opinions. I've been hearing this in several places lately.

On numerous occasions I've persuaded others, and on numerous occasions I've been persuaded by others. It's relatively rare, but that's to be expected when we've thought about things as much as we have.

So then I'm sorry to be a jerk here, but anyone who thinks "I never change my opinion and I'm never able to change others opinions" should probably focus first on why it is they never change their opinion, because it probably has everything to do with why their opinion doesn't convince others.

You missunderstood. First off you should know I always enter a thread with an open mind. If you don't you'll get frustrated often and I come here for fun not stress. Secondly I made sure to mention there's differences in what posters value because I don't think there's many posters here at this point that haven't put tons of thought into their lists. That being said what is there I can realistically bring up to change your opinions on player x that you haven't thought of and made up your mind on? Last project for tons of players we had posts that were just guys finding old posts they had on people to repost them. That's all good but I don't think that is inspired and healthy discussion. Its still a good project to figure out the overall consensus but its hardly a good format for debate which is what really used to interest me about these projects before I thought about my "rankings" heavily.

There's some other projects I think can come of with a bang though. Another peaks project would be amazing and since it isn't careers you can get a lot more specific with guys.

[penbeast0]

You missunderstood. First off you should know I always enter a thread with an open mind. If you don't you'll get frustrated often and I come here for fun not stress. Secondly I made sure to mention there's differences in what posters value because I don't think there's many posters here at this point that haven't put tons of thought into their lists. That being said what is there I can realistically bring up to change your opinions on player x that you haven't thought of and made up your mind on? Last project for tons of players we had posts that were just guys finding old posts they had on people to repost them. That's all good but I don't think that is inspired and healthy discussion. Its still a good project to figure out the overall consensus but its hardly a good format for debate which is what really used to interest me about these projects before I thought about my "rankings" heavily.

There's some other projects I think can come of with a bang though. Another peaks project would be amazing and since it isn't careers you can get a lot more specific with guys.

If you really think there's a closed mind mentality, look at the arguments for Kevin Garnett in the last top 100, particularly the strong explanations of RAPM type impact stats, and look how high he finished. I am pretty sure he doesn't finish there without the support he was getting in the thread; the arguments were powerful and moved some people.

[RSCD3_]

Sign me up please

[JordansBulls]

I'll participate as well.

[E-Balla]

You missunderstood. First off you should know I always enter a thread with an open mind. If you don't you'll get frustrated often and I come here for fun not stress. Secondly I made sure to mention there's differences in what posters value because I don't think there's many posters here at this point that haven't put tons of thought into their lists. That being said what is there I can realistically bring up to change your opinions on player x that you haven't thought of and made up your mind on? Last project for tons of players we had posts that were just guys finding old posts they had on people to repost them. That's all good but I don't think that is inspired and healthy discussion. Its still a good project to figure out the overall consensus but its hardly a good format for debate which is what really used to interest me about these projects before I thought about my "rankings" heavily.

There's some other projects I think can come of with a bang though. Another peaks project would be amazing and since it isn't careers you can get a lot more specific with guys.

If you really think there's a closed mind mentality, look at the arguments for Kevin Garnett in the last top 100, particularly the strong explanations of RAPM type impact stats, and look how high he finished. I am pretty sure he doesn't finish there without the support he was getting in the thread; the arguments were powerful and moved some people.

I specifically went out of my way to specify it has nothing to do with close minds and everything to do with different standards for what makes players great. You guys know I value playoffs more than most so my differences in opinion from you might be based on that and not a misunderstanding of the actual abilities of the player. Most opinions going into these projects were already formed after tons of analysis. One post ain't changing that fast enough for voting to be affected. That's why a debate format would be a lot more fun (unfortunately it would be way tougher to pull off).

[THKNKG]

I'd be in if you guys would have me.

Could I propose an alternative voting system?

[Blackmill]

Anyway, if you change your minds, just let me know.

I still wish to be part of the project. I just sometimes wonder if making a list is the best way to encourage productive discourse. After all, the list we come up with has no value, it's the discussions producing it that do.

By the way, in the OP I didn't see mention of when the first project thread will be opened for debate. Do you know about when that will be?

[BasketballFan7]

I'm interested in participating.

[Goudelock]

Sign me up. Although I'm mostly participating so I can learn more about the players. I'll try to contribute to the best of my abilities though.

[trex_8063]

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You're in.