Pelton:Ranking MJ, LeBron, Magic, Bird and the 40 best NBA players ever
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non-player zealot
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:13 pm    Post subject:

Wilkes52 wrote:

Malone's early career head case problems (temper, foul troubles, bad team karma) made him of much, much, much lower value than the list suggests.


I have a clip from 88 of Bavetta yelling "DON'T F WITH ME!" at Malone while they were all lined up for a free throw. The cam accidentally panned in on Dick's face with the audio when he said it. He was demonically pissed.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 1:40 pm    Post subject:

activeverb wrote:
non-player zealot wrote:
People hem and haw about Mikan being on these lists because of era conflicts, but Russell started his career in the 50s league.


Russell began a new era. The NBA (or NBL) that Mikan played in was significantly different than the one Russell played in. Mikan was a king in the early and mid 50s, but even if he had stayed healthy I think he would have declined significantly by the late 50s because of the improvement in competition.

non-player zealot wrote:
If Mikan gets points deducted for being mysterious, how is Bill Russell's career so well-known besides the obvious?


Mikan wasn't downgraded for being "mysterious." He played in an era before they gave out MVP awards. He undoubtedly would have won a few of them, which would have helped him in this ranking system. So if they had the MVp award back then Mikan would have made the top 10.

non-player zealot wrote:
Russ feels like a square peg pounded into a round hole when compared to Chamberlain or Jabbar. With Wilt, you have a reasonable expectation that he would be a superstar in any era. I don't know how true that is for Russ, that's especially so considering the current push to downgrade Larry Bird because of his body/mediocre athleticism.


I haven't seen any push to downgrade Bird myself. I typically see him rated about 5th or 6th best of all time. Anyway, people have been arguing about how good Russell would be in latter eras forever.

That said, this particular list doesn't try to play the time machine game. It evaluates players based on how they played in their era.


I think it's impossible to purely rank players from black and white decades to more contemporary guys, starting with Kareem. It's even tricky to compare legendary centers with smalls. They're just too different. The Wiltons and Shaquilles are inherently made for playing this sport. To me, from the very outset, those guys have an advantage that smalls don't. So I have to get past that. Then, I'm somewhat of an "era comparer". I cannot wrap my head around Russell for sure, and Mikan to an extent. If you wanna compare guys without any era bias, Russ rates high. I wasn't alive to see his ass play, but I'm sure all the talk about his defense and intangibles isn't a lie. As I've said numerous times, the old 60s footage available to today's fans who actually WANNA watch it is minimal at best. I think he's rated high because of the 11 titles, primarily. Forget the context, forget that they played fewer rounds during some of his career. I don't believe a team can 4-peat today. Too many games wear every team down. With all the questioning of the deficiencies of the old eras, I'm not even sure about those 11 rings. Makes me wonder how wide open that league was for a truly competent team.

At any rate, even if Pelton doesn't care about era, his ratings are wacky. It's not just Bron and Hak. If part of his analysis is influenced by box scores as A.H. says, then you chuckle when you consider what the hell Hakeem did wrong enough to be ranked at 19 under another center he slayed 1:1. Hak had a quadruple double once. Malone at 10 is weird. Bird at 9? C'mon. I'll take your word that you haven't seen him being downgraded, but I have and it's usually by the post-Gen X kiddies (Bernie voters). They look at Bird with the same disdain which I have for Russ. I am seeing a tearing down of the Magic-Bird mythos, how they saved the sport. It took a looong time, but it's finally here. No way in hell they would be ranked 8/9 on any list from 2010 backwards.

This post was kinda rambly, not directly a rebuttal to what you said (your contrarian opinions as others derisively call them) , so take anything you want from it.
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Theseus
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:51 pm    Post subject:

L4L wrote:
Mikan once dropped 30, in the playoffs, with a broken leg. Literally. A broken leg.

Quote:

For the first time since Mikan had begun playing professional basketball, his team did not win a championship. Minneapolis fell to Rochester in the Western Division Finals, three games to one, largely because Mikan hobbled through the series with a fractured leg. "The doctors taped a plate on it for the playoffs," Mikan told Newsday in 1990. "I played all right, scored in the 20s. I couldn't run, sort of hopped down the court."




Wow, I didn't realize Gary Vitti was the trainer back then
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 3:56 pm    Post subject:

non-player zealot wrote:
At any rate, even if Pelton doesn't care about era, his ratings are wacky. It's not just Bron and Hak. If part of his analysis is influenced by box scores as A.H. says, then you chuckle when you consider what the hell Hakeem did wrong enough to be ranked at 19 under another center he slayed 1:1. Hak had a quadruple double once. Malone at 10 is weird. Bird at 9? C'mon. I'll take your word that you haven't seen him being downgraded, but I have and it's usually by the post-Gen X kiddies (Bernie voters). They look at Bird with the same disdain which I have for Russ. I am seeing a tearing down of the Magic-Bird mythos, how they saved the sport. It took a looong time, but it's finally here. No way in hell they would be ranked 8/9 on any list from 2010 backwards.


I took a look at Pelton's methodology. I won't bore you with the details, but he made some debatable assumptions, starting with the use of Win Shares as the primary stat. I like a lot of Pelton's work, but I've seen better attempts to generate a sabermetric system for all time rankings.

Magic is probably lower than expected because most box score based stats discount assists. There are sound reasons for doing this, but the discounts have always struck me as arbitrary. Box score measures tend to undervalue PGs as a result. For example, Magic ranks only 14th in career PER, and the best season he ever had was a 27. Box score stats reward scorers, so Chris Paul actually has a higher career PER than Magic, and he had a 30 one year. You can justify that if you are looking at things purely from the viewpoint of efficiency, but this is an example of how one particular type of stat cannot capture everything.

Bird had a short career, compared with the other all time greats. This is also true for Magic. Bird never generated exceptional PER scores, either. This may be due to the assist discount, but in addition he was not exceptionally efficient as a scorer.

I'm still not sure why Pelton's model downgrades Hakeem so much. His career PER was about the same as Magic and Bird. By the way, I am not saying that Pelton used PER. It's just a similar stat to Win Shares. Both stats take box score stats and attempt to turn them into a measure of efficiency, though in different ways.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 4:09 pm    Post subject:

kikanga wrote:
non-player zealot wrote:
LeBron at 3.

Hakeem at 19.



That pretty much sums it up.


I thought it was cute that he had Robinson ahead of Hakeem, first time i've heard that argument since 1995
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 4:31 pm    Post subject:

I'm convinced these guys purposefully throw wrenches in these type of discussions in order to generate hits.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 4:43 pm    Post subject:

jonnybravo wrote:
I'm convinced these guys purposefully throw wrenches in these type of discussions in order to generate hits.

of course they do!!
if you notice the trends, any "proof" that the lakers suck, or kobe sucks, or anything along those lines is going to be tremendously appreciated by all the fans of the other teams. we've been holding them down for 30 years, it's their chance to break out...so if I were to write an article, hell yea, i want to piss off the lakers...that immediately garners universal interest. if i bash, say, the timberwolves...who really cares? pass.

and the data analytics is just reinforcing all this...hence it is increasing.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 5:11 pm    Post subject:

non-player zealot wrote:
activeverb wrote:
non-player zealot wrote:
People hem and haw about Mikan being on these lists because of era conflicts, but Russell started his career in the 50s league.


Russell began a new era. The NBA (or NBL) that Mikan played in was significantly different than the one Russell played in. Mikan was a king in the early and mid 50s, but even if he had stayed healthy I think he would have declined significantly by the late 50s because of the improvement in competition.

non-player zealot wrote:
If Mikan gets points deducted for being mysterious, how is Bill Russell's career so well-known besides the obvious?


Mikan wasn't downgraded for being "mysterious." He played in an era before they gave out MVP awards. He undoubtedly would have won a few of them, which would have helped him in this ranking system. So if they had the MVp award back then Mikan would have made the top 10.

non-player zealot wrote:
Russ feels like a square peg pounded into a round hole when compared to Chamberlain or Jabbar. With Wilt, you have a reasonable expectation that he would be a superstar in any era. I don't know how true that is for Russ, that's especially so considering the current push to downgrade Larry Bird because of his body/mediocre athleticism.


I haven't seen any push to downgrade Bird myself. I typically see him rated about 5th or 6th best of all time. Anyway, people have been arguing about how good Russell would be in latter eras forever.

That said, this particular list doesn't try to play the time machine game. It evaluates players based on how they played in their era.


I think it's impossible to purely rank players from black and white decades to more contemporary guys, starting with Kareem. It's even tricky to compare legendary centers with smalls. They're just too different. The Wiltons and Shaquilles are inherently made for playing this sport. To me, from the very outset, those guys have an advantage that smalls don't. So I have to get past that. Then, I'm somewhat of an "era comparer". I cannot wrap my head around Russell for sure, and Mikan to an extent. If you wanna compare guys without any era bias, Russ rates high. I wasn't alive to see his ass play, but I'm sure all the talk about his defense and intangibles isn't a lie. As I've said numerous times, the old 60s footage available to today's fans who actually WANNA watch it is minimal at best. I think he's rated high because of the 11 titles, primarily. Forget the context, forget that they played fewer rounds during some of his career. I don't believe a team can 4-peat today. Too many games wear every team down. With all the questioning of the deficiencies of the old eras, I'm not even sure about those 11 rings. Makes me wonder how wide open that league was for a truly competent team.

At any rate, even if Pelton doesn't care about era, his ratings are wacky. It's not just Bron and Hak. If part of his analysis is influenced by box scores as A.H. says, then you chuckle when you consider what the hell Hakeem did wrong enough to be ranked at 19 under another center he slayed 1:1. Hak had a quadruple double once. Malone at 10 is weird. Bird at 9? C'mon. I'll take your word that you haven't seen him being downgraded, but I have and it's usually by the post-Gen X kiddies (Bernie voters). They look at Bird with the same disdain which I have for Russ. I am seeing a tearing down of the Magic-Bird mythos, how they saved the sport. It took a looong time, but it's finally here. No way in hell they would be ranked 8/9 on any list from 2010 backwards.

This post was kinda rambly, not directly a rebuttal to what you said (your contrarian opinions as others derisively call them) , so take anything you want from it.

well said peezy!!

one thing I've noticed lately is that nobody is talking about skill seriously anymore. isn't that a little odd? there is little to no discussions taking place about actual skill. you shoot at a .453 clip vs a .427 clip and that's all there is to it. a very odd place for a game that is so dynamic.
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4stargeneralbulldog
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 5:49 pm    Post subject:

Telleris wrote:
kikanga wrote:
non-player zealot wrote:
LeBron at 3.

Hakeem at 19.



That pretty much sums it up.


I thought it was cute that he had Robinson ahead of Hakeem, first time i've heard that argument since 1995


Very cute indeed.


Anyone that ranks Hakeem lower than Robinson in any of these all time lists, has lost all credibility. Hell, I don't even think Spurs fans would rank Robinson over Hakeem.
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activeverb
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:44 pm    Post subject:

non-player zealot wrote:
I think it's impossible to purely rank players from black and white decades to more contemporary guys, starting with Kareem. It's even tricky to compare legendary centers with smalls. They're just too different. .


It's far from impossible -- people do it all the time. Heck, when they voted for the all-time top 50 team they compared different types of players, across different eras in deciding who made the cut and who didn't.

It's just a game to play for fun (though the game can have a significant impact on players reputation, as with the all-time top 50 vote or the Hall of Fame vote).
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:50 pm    Post subject:

Paul vastly overrated, no doubt about it. Garbage giving love to garbage.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:59 pm    Post subject:

Kobe Bryant is the best brick layer in history. One of a kind, no doubt about it. Won't see the likes of him again. If someone tries this, to the bench he goes.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 10:57 pm    Post subject:

This isn't a ranking where he sat down and subjectively placed one player ahead of another. There's an objective methodology that churned out the rankings. Criticizing the rankings without criticizing the methodology doesn't provide a lot of value.

I'm always surprised when people say things like, "ESPN does this for hits"! Well, yes, but there is no anti-Laker bias in a list that was produced ENTIRELY via numerical calculations. There is no evil fat man twisting his mustache. The methodology behind the rankings is very transparent. You can read it yourself.

The reality is that people are simply too lazy / don't care enough to put in the small amount of time that is necessary to understand the numbers so, instead, they just throw them out wholesale.

Information is just information. You can never have too much information. It's up to people to interpret and discuss that information.

If you think the methodology is poor, explain why.

Personally, I don't understand why anyone would try to create a sabermetric ranking system based primarily on Win Shares. It is far from a comprehensive stat and even the author acknowledges this by trying to include points for various awards and whatnot. I don't think we're at the point, and we may never be, where there is enough information publicly available to do these types of rankings justice without the subjective element.

And that's why you have silly things like Hakeem being #19. Though, frankly, I feel like I can make a pretty good argument for having James very high in these types of rankings. It just depends on your selection criteria. Most people aren't consistent at all with their criteria and rank solely on emotion. If that's you cool, but that method isn't going to hold up to scrutiny, either.
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