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Lionel pregame today
If he'll shake this off and get them back to work, I think they'll be fine. Probably a lot of us fans and the local media were reading too much into a couple of losses and some of his comments.
Damning with faint praise to be sure, but the Lakers can only dream of matching the 'Cats level of suckitude.
As to the Memphis deal, I think trading Gay makes some sense from a purely analytical perspective, but I think it is also quite understandable that Hollins and the core players would see Gay as a crucial part of the team and react to it emotionally. They did, of course, pull off the big upset over San Antonio that put them on the NBA map without him--something for all concerned to remember, perhaps.
So did Harden: 35pts, 13/16FG, 4/5 from 3, 5/6FT, 7reb, 11ast
That LeBron shoots "only" 74% from the line is his only real weakness.
DEN 32-18
MEM 31-18
EDIT: In other news, MIA has moved up to tied for 10th in D-Rtg, which is the first time they've been in the Top 10 this season, I believe.
Is Hakeem the best other all-around comparable? Hakeem has > 25000 points, 12500 rebounds, 3000 assists, 2000 steals and 3500 blocks
1. He doesn't have nearly as much jewelry as Duncan and Bryant have.
2. A lot of people think he's a serious ########.
3. His best skill is probably team defense, which is IMO the least-understood and least-discussed aspect of the game in many quarters.
Michael Jordan
Hakeem Olajuwon
Larry Bird
Julius Erving
LeBron James
Oscar Robertson
Tim Duncan
Karl Malone
David Robinson
Kevin Garnett
Moses Malone
John Havlicek
Charles Barkley
Elgin Baylor
Patrick Ewing
Elvin Hayes
Chris Paul
Scottie Pippen
Clyde Drexler
Bill Russell
1. He doesn't have nearly as much jewelry as Duncan and Bryant have.
Garnett and Bryant seem like an interesting comparison to me, as a casual-at-best fan. Kobe, as mentioned, has an ever-so-slight advantage in titles won, but he's also had better supporting casts. KG's '03-'04, taking a team whose second- and third-best players appear to be Cassell and Sprewell to the 1 seed and the conference finals, seems like it should be worth at least as much as one of Kobe's titles alongside Shaq.
So how would some people who know a lot more basketball than I do rank Kobe/Duncan/Garnett against each other?
Also, their careers aren't over yet - I wouldn't be surprised by one of them surprising us.
Garnett
Kobe
I can see the argument for KG over TD if someone wanted to make it, but Kobe is clearly last for me and I personally think a tier below the other two. Most fans will likely tell you Kobe is the best and definitely better than Garnett though.
Edit: I think some of the Duncan > Garnett is "ringzzzz", which again goes back to teammates. I wonder how much perception swings if Garnett wins that second title with the Celtics.
I think that is probably in part because of people making a point of voting against him, and I would also think that ELO rater is, as you suggest, a geek thing more than cazh fan thing.
Duncan certainly has done a good job of deflecting reputation from his teammates, for whatever that's worth, positive or negative.
Edit: I'll admit, I have some ringzzz bias in my own thinking.
Defense matters.
I think there's value in playing a style that allows one to be "clutch" -- that is, getting your "best" player able to create their own shots when it matters.
If I am bringing one of them onto an existing team, it depends on who else is on my roster and what my coaching hire options are.
Also, Nowitzki is not at all far behind Duncan and Garnett in terms of many of the basic metrics.
Yeah, this is what I meant.
EDIT: Looking through my link, still sure TD is the best of the era. Also sure that Pierce is 6 and Nash is 5. Bringing up Dirk just further complicates what is now a Kobe/Dirk/KG toss-up.
In my head, I'm still writing Garnett/Robinson/Popovich fan-fiction.
Maybe the differentiating stat is Crazy-Eye-Glares Above Replacement? Nope. Too close to call there too.
Don't think he's saying there's anything necessarily "wrong" just that his preference is Duncan's.
Nah. I am an actually an admirer of Garnett the player. But looking at 15+ years, I would prefer a less volatile/more bland guy at the center of the team.
Magic's not in the top 20?
Amazingly, they just got even in home/road games. With tonight's win, they have played 1 more road game.
As for where Dirk fits in that group, don't his defensive inadequecies knock him down a peg?
I'd probably go: Duncan, Garnett, Bryant, Dirk, Pierce, Nash.
Would love to put Garnett first, and I think it's very close. But it seems like Duncan's probably the best, if only just.
And yeah, Duncan is in the same boat as Kobe. Great as he was, Popovich, Robinson, Parker, and Ginobili are a lot more than KG had until he got to Boston.
You all forgot Kidd. I'd slot him ahead of Pierce and Nash.
Kobe isn't quite as overrated as Carmelo and Iverson to me, but I do think he gets rated higher than he should. Maybe I'm crazy though.
It's clear that he's not say.... David Robinson or Michael Jordan, but the difference between him and Garnett is relatively minimal at best even if you think it goes in favor of Garnett. (those 2 are the most interesting to compare though, both were highschool draft in very close succession, and both are kinda similar personality wise.)
Garnett is the only player with at least 80% of that value in each category, although the inclusion of blocks and steals limits it to recent players (neither was measured until 1973).
Karl Malone and Abdul-Jabbar each beat Garnett in 4 of the 5 categories (Garnett has more blocks than Malone, and more steals than Abdul-Jabbar).
If we include Kidd he's definitely up there, too. Seems a little underrated, though maybe that's changing as he continues to contribute in the latter stages of his career.
Argument against int'l expansion by the NBA
Not sure on Duncan v Garnett. Think I take Big Fundy, but you can't go wrong - both amazing dudes.
If you go by the numbers, that is pretty much what it is. Duncan has slight statistical edges in PER as well as WS/48.
As far as Bryant, as we have covered at length, his value and the weight of his contribution tends to be overstated by the MSM and a lot of Lakers fans, and understated by stat guys and a lot of opposing fans, for very obvious reasons. Here are the basic metrics for the four guys in career terms:
WS/WS48/PER
Duncan 182/.214/24.8
Garnett 186/.189/23.2
Bryant 170/.184/23.4
Nowitzki 170/.209/23.5
Bryant and Nowitzki's O/D WS breakdowns are pretty much identical:
Bryant 121/49
Nowitzki 120/50
Also, here are Duncan's and Garnett's career TS and EFG:
Duncan: .552/.508
Garnett: .549/.503
Nowitzki's TS is .580, due to the 3s.
It is an unprovable counterfactual, but I am pretty sure that if Garnett had played in San Antonio and Duncan had played in Minnesota and then Boston, the ring counts would be the same. To actually separate them, I think you would need detailed play-by play breakdowns of 4th quarters over 8 or 10 years, video, tracking data, etc, which is why I am generally not that into assertions about who-was-better-than-who.
Of course, Duncan didn't play in the NBA when he was 18,19, 20, or 21. This increases his WS/48 relative to the other three (while decreasing his traditional stats and total WS.)
[252] Part of my Duncan over KG argument is post-season performance. I realize that Duncan has had more chances to play in the post-season but I feel Duncan's definitely performed better there. Of course some of that may be due to the ages at which they played their postseason games.
Correct. But even if you look at peak years, rather than career totals, you get a similar picture. Garnett's best PER and WS/WS/48 (2004) are actually higher than any one year that Duncan has had.
Kobe vs. Duncan is interesting. My gut says Kobe, but I'd have to really look at it.
Yeah.
I have been a Lakers fan since I was a kid, but I don't see it that way. I also am not sure that comparing Kobe to three 6'11" guys is the best way to evaluate him, although I of course did it myself.
Is it sexist to claim that women's basketball has better fundamentals than the men's game? I think it is - which is not at all a knock on that game, but a function of resources, history, and so on.
Duncan over Kobe.
I really like part of rr's take on Bryant, how (paraphrasing badly) deceptively remarkable that he's managed to do as much as he has as a player with his 'merely great' tools.
Not necessarily? But whenever someone says "this basketball competition has better fundamentals than that competition" I wonder what they mean by fundamentals. For all I know, when they say "fundamentals" they mean "less dunking" or something.
Parity (in college in particular): I think that's separate and driven by larger roster sizes and a relative lack of future opportunities to play pro, among other things. There's more incentive to be just another cog at a powerhouse.
What are fundamentals: not dunking is probably part of it. Um, making the right pass, boxing out, shooting form, and so on. Part good technique, part code for playing like it's 1958. (Meant as joke, critique of WBB, and slam on male commentators - a capacity I'm acting in with this post)
****
The Clips are too busy shooting videos and commercials to *watch* TV.
Also, I'm more of a prime guy, than career. So maybe that is why I think Kobe is a little overrated.
Should the one playoff series in 1995 when they played each other head-to-head that Hakeem dominated really carry so much weight? Or is it that Olajuwon won his titles in his prime as the undisputed best player on the team whereas Robby didn't get any until he took a backseat to Timmy D? (though they were actually a lot closer in 1999 than people seem to remember)
Yeah, the "play like it's 1958" is what I often wonder when I hear people talk of fundamentals (usually when someone is a saying men's CBB has it, and the NBA doesn't). I don't know any of the games well enough to know the state of women's fundamentals as in good technique, but I think I know what you're getting at when wondering if it's sexist. It's used as a back-handed compliment. "She has a good personality" sort of thing.
For what it's worth, Olajuwon had a great half decade before Robinson entered the league, including a Finals trip. By the time Olajuwon was gone, Robinson was a clear #2 behind Duncan. It's like Olajuwon added Howard's career to date to an otherwise comparable career. I think that's a better argument than one playoff series.
When I look at stats, I see things that are indicative of a lower relative calibre of play (more TO-STL, for one) but it can be heard to disentangle strategy and the fact that the players are closer to each other in size as factors.
But, yeah, you've captured a lot of what I was getting at. (And to be clear - I think this is okay. We shouldn't expect the women's game to be a copy of the men's game - it's its own thing.)
Mainly 4->5, but we've seen it across the board, position wise, I think.
Magic was an interesting case of this, of course.
I take Robinson, but there's good arguments both ways.
EDIT: Watching the ESPN/ABC studio crew and one of the most interesting things about broadcasting to me is if/when guys choose to dumb down their analysis. I have no doubt that Simmons is more knowledgable than everyone he is on the panel with and I wonder how difficult it must be for him to bite his tongue at some of the stuff they throw out as analysis. Similarly, I wonder what goes through Lowe's mind at times when he is on the podcast with Simmons.
EDIT 2:
Edit: I meant with counting stats, due to the longer career. Admiral is much higher on the advanced stats. Maybe they're not as similar of players as I thought. It's a peak vs career argument.
SAS: 10, 11, 8, 5, 3
BOS: 1, 2, 5, 2, 1
Lotta variables, of course, and SAS is up so far this season. Still, might be worth factoring in.
SAS has, of course, had a vastly better offense for much of that stretch.
No, but I think it's inaccurate :-)
Yeah, this is an inconvenient fact for me as well.
Bill Simmons and pretty much all writers prefer a narrative to rigorous analysis. And the easy narrative is that Olajuwon owns Robinson because of one series. (Edit: This isn't to say it isn't close. It is, I just think a lot of people/writers think it isn't close in Olajuwon's favor.) Olajuwon did legitimately have better stats in the playoffs over his career, while Robinson's stats were worse.
I was young back then and I watched a lot of the Spurs, being in San Antonio. I didn't see nearly as much of Houston, but I don't think people truly appreciate how bad his supporting cast was pre-Duncan. It was an awful team. They were a 20 win team before he joined and they were a 20 win team when he missed the full season. They were a 50-60 win team in between. None of the other all-time greats have something that drastic on their resume. I wish there were +/- stats back then. He carried that team. Olajuwon had a pretty weak cast as well, but it felt better to me at the time.
Robinson's prime TS% was significantly better than Hakeem's. Hakeem was great, and I'd rather have Hakeem or Robinson than Shaq. But I think Hakeem has developed some mythic legend, especially about his offense, that wasn't really accurate.
1. He's bigger. In his prime, he was able to often guard Shaq. Garnett is a great interior defender, and got the max out of his slight frame. But I think in one-on-one low post defending, I'd take Duncan.
2. Better playoff resume. Garnett I think had a fairly earned reputation as being a guy who would play hot potato with the ball in the late stages of the playoffs. I think that Boston is/was a perfect team in that he never had to have the offense run through him in late game situations.
3. All things equal I prefer my big guys to be able to get their points in the post, I think it helps with court spacing.
4. Duncan's not an #######. This means something to me, even if I'm not exactly sure what.
Again, none of this is that big of a deal. But I think the statistics show it as being a tossup, and I think these are fair things to use as a tiebreaker.
LeBron and Cavs.
This is true, but it's also true of many 90's teams. That's kinda just the way teams were built back then; one or two superstars, and then a bunch of filler. Simmons pointed out the lack of depth of several high win 90's teams in his book and used that as a reason to rank them lower than their record says they should be. I don't agree with his doing that, but it does kinda seem like there weren't as many quality supporting players back then as there is now.
as a non-basketball fan i suspect the legend of hakeem is somewhat traced to the fact that he was incredibly elegant and fluid in his play. he was really pleasant to watch
if that makes any sense
duncan is kind of clunky
It doesn't help KG's case that in his eight playoff appearances in Minnesota, four times his teams got kicked by Duncan's Spurs and Shaq's Lakers. There were two true low post monsters in KG's era, and not only wasn't he one of them, he was as helpless to stop them as everyone else was.
In a way, KG's all-around greatness kind of hurts him because it's hard to highlight just one aspect of his game, and his team defensive value is basically invisible to the naked eye.
I think KG's rep takes an unfair hit on that, but seven straight first round exits won't help your rep.
They didn't become good right away, but it's fair to say that Robinson at 24 came into the league and played at an all-time great level right out of the gate. Where as LeBron was still a raw teenager.
To rank the guys mentioned a lot here:
Robinson > Olajuwon > Shaq > Duncan > Garnett > Kobe > Nowitzki > Kidd > Nash > Pierce > Allen
I think the top 5 are very close, though. And last year I'd have probably ranked them a little different. I'm not sure where I'd put Karl Malone here. But to me, the fact that he didn't consistently have better teams than Robinson/Olajuwon despite having John F'n Stockton is enough to know I'd rank him below both of them.
+1
Hakeem was one of the two most-interesting post players to watch of my lifetime, with McHale (Dantley if you go back to my real youth.) After his first couple of years, his footwork was really a thing of beauty. Like McHale (though with different moves and abilities) he had become so sound that he could be creative without losing his balance or advantage. Unlike McHale he had enough spring to develop that little baseline fadeaway that was impossible to guard.
Robinson was to me more brutally efficient. Terrific, probably better, but not more fun to watch. He had great strengths and a great awareness of his weaknesses. Probably all in all, I can take the argument he's better than Hakeem, but I don't fault people for the sense they got in watching Hakeem that he was doing something almost no one else could do. some of this is just the size difference. Hakeem had to be magnificent to get shots off since he couldn't bulldoze people. Robinson had some truly great size (non-Shaq division.)
Duncan is a great, and almost beautiful, post player but just doesn't have the capacity to do the creative things that Hakeem could do. For executing the basics, though, how to pin a man, how to drop step and shield the body, how to step baseline then spin back to the middle for the little hook, he's about as great as you could imagine. Shaq's footwork fundamentals is underrated, in part because he dunked balls in situations where other people would have banked the shot, in part because he didn't have the body to execute the prettier step throughs. But even accounting for his size and strength, he did an amazing job at showing for the ball, giving great targets, pinning men on his ample backside, and moving away from his defender. There were some things he simply could not do, but the things he could do he did the right way almost every time.
But Dantley in my memory had the most-insanely agile post moves. A wizard. The real old-timers said Cliff Hagan--also undersized--was similar, not a great athlete but remarkable at finding angles and spinning the ball crazily off the backboard.
I was referring to the Cavs pre/post-Decision performance. Not as good a fit as Robinson's success from his rookie year though I suppose.
I think LeBron is definitely a fair example to bring up. Part of why it's hard to find a good corollary is normally when you add a great player, at least in the current NBA, you're putting good parts around them. Robinson's prime run being being bookended by terrible performances does strongly suggest that he made that team about 30 wins better over the course of the season. Which is insane.
boy if that's washed up i wnat the equivalent in my life
ha, ha
seems like he's a basketball player. period
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