Lebron James and NBA Discussion!

[lancerman]

where is greg odom in all of these discussions?

GOAT Jiangsu Dragon

 

[TB_Helmet]

Not really. Without ranking them, this is what you're looking at for the top power forwards of all time.

McHale
Malone
Duncan
Nowitzki
Barkley
Hayes
Pettit
Garnett (I put him in center in an earlier post, because the thread seemed to call for it, but Garnett's a PF.)


So when you're slotting a "Best team", you have to take a more holistic approach than just loading up on one position. The Lakers and Celtics have both had tremendous players all across the squad, and any comparison of the two teams is one where worthy arguments can be made in both directions.

I agree but this thread has three different arguments going on with a lot of cross talk so it’s not very constructive.

If you just take a starting 5 using the top players at each position from the list I posted you get this:

Magic (5)
Kobe (9)
LeBron (2)
Gasol (n/a)
Kareem (4)

Cousy (22)
Hondo (15)
Bird (6)
KG (23)
Russell (3)

So the take-homes are:

-- Lakers might have more upper-echelon talent, with 4 of their guys top-10 all time.
-- LA suffers by never having a dominant power forward (for the purposes of this exercise you can't just swap in another big man like Wilt), which makes the McHale debate on here relevant (although KG is ranked higher).
-- Between the two teams, there is an insane amount of talent; 6 of the top 10 players ever with Wilt (7) and West (10) on the bench.
-- My guess is these teams are very evenly matched but if they played 10 times the Lakers would win more than 5. Again that's without me ever seeing the older Celtics play.

These are obviously based on Simmons's rankings only (and assumes that LeBron will be the same guy for a few years), so you can either take issue with the rankings or you could make a different argument that the Celtics are a better team overall because they don't have to deal with Kobe Bryant .

 

[PatriotsNumero1Fan]

Rondo in a lakers uniform makes me sick but not shocking.

Pelicans just signed randle.

 

[Deus Irae]

If you just take a starting 5 using the top players at each position from the list I posted you get this:

Magic (5)
Kobe (9)
LeBron (2)
Gasol (n/a)
Kareem (4)

Cousy (22)
Hondo (15)
Bird (6)
KG (23)
Russell (3)

I don't buy the list, though. Two obvious points make delving deeper a waste of time (no offense to you, but I'm talking about the list).

Russell is the G.O.A.T.. If your list doesn't start with that, your list is worthless. Also, the idea that Magic should be rated higher than Bird is absurd. In any L.A./Boston comparison, I always start there. Simmons gets them both wrong.

 

[maust]

where is greg odom in all of these discussions?

Handing out towels

 

[Deus Irae]

Rondo in a lakers uniform makes me sick but not shocking.

Pelicans just signed randle.

That makes sense for the Pelicans, actually. They'll have a full season to integrate Randle.

 

[TB_Helmet]

I don't buy the list, though. Two obvious points make delving deeper a waste of time (no offense to you, but I'm talking about the list).

Russell is the G.O.A.T.. If your list doesn't start with that, your list is worthless. Also, the idea that Magic should be rated higher than Bird is absurd. In any L.A./Boston comparison, I always start there. Simmons gets them both wrong.

Fair enough. Like I said the all time team discussion has to first rank players, then compare teams. So there are actually two debates, neither of which was going very well the past few hours

ETA if we update with the rankings you propose for those players, it wouldn't change the composition of the all-time teams. In fact I bet those teams are both pretty fixed with a couple quibbles (Wilt vs Kareem, KG vs McHale, Kobe vs West, any of which could go both ways).

 

[Ras-IR Dowling]

Guess cousins will be looking for a new home after this Randle news.

 

[IcyPatriot]

I think Robert Alvarez lands Lebron.

 

[TheRainMaker]

Guess cousins will be looking for a new home after this Randle news.

He'll join LeBron in LA on a one year prove it deal. Cousins has wanted to play for the Lakers for years.

 

[TheRainMaker]

Please tell me you're not a Patriots/Lakers fan...

It's true. I have lived in the LA area my entire life so I'm a Lakers fan. Became a Pats fan during '96 season as quite a few of their games were televised locally and found out Willie McGinest was local playing in the NFL. They had the coolest names on defense and I liked their swag so I became a fan.

 

[lancerman]

I don't buy the list, though. Two obvious points make delving deeper a waste of time (no offense to you, but I'm talking about the list).

Russell is the G.O.A.T.. If your list doesn't start with that, your list is worthless. Also, the idea that Magic should be rated higher than Bird is absurd. In any L.A./Boston comparison, I always start there. Simmons gets them both wrong.

The problem is you are going to be hard pressed to find lists that rank it differently from someone who is considered either a former player or an insider. Generally the consensus on Magic vs Bird is that Bird had the better peak but Magic had the better overall career. Feel free to argue that, but generally when you hear former players and insiders talk about it, Magic gets the nod. And I'm not getting into the Russell vs Jordon or Wilt thing again. You will be very hard pressed to find a list that doesn't start with Jordan 1, and that's all I'm going to say. Feel free to disagree with it, but that's not the overall consensus.

 

[Jackson 2]

He'll join LeBron in LA on a one year prove it deal. Cousins has wanted to play for the Lakers for years.

So did Paul George.

 

[TheRainMaker]

So did Paul George.

The difference is that Paul George couldn't turn down that $40M for that extra year. If everything was equal, he would've gone to LA.

Cousins is injured and won't get a max deal anywhere.

 

[maust]

Also to be fair today's professional athletes are the product of a time where the quality of sport science far outpaces that of yesteryear for both physical and mental training/prep.

So in a lot of ways it makes what people like Bo Jackson or Bill Russell did all the more impressive but at the same time it also means that they wouldn't stand out as much, if at all, if they were time traveled into modern day.

So with these top 10 lists you have some people looking at all pros irrespective of their era and yeah, a 6'8" 265lb Lebron is going probably going to mop the court with guys from the 90s and earlier. But then you have some people wanting to judge Jim Brown relative to the time in which he played when he was an absolute monster.

I don't think you can chalk it all up to recency bias, though. I'm not trying to take anything away from Larry Bird, for instance, but he wouldn't be considered an all time great if he was just coming out of college now.

I understand the perspective of 'guys back then vs today's athletes' and all that but I think it ignores the simple fact that if anything the best players from 'back in the day' could be nothing but beneficiaries of today's sports science and be all the better for it. In an era like the 60's & 70's with fewer teams and thus more competition for fewer available jobs the guys that dominated the game were for the most part doing it against a higher quality of opponent for their time. I have always held to the belief greatness mostly transcends era but I'm not sure it's realistic to think LeBron would 'mop the floor' with players from an era when the game was played faster and palming the ball was seriously frowned on and charging was called with regularity. Likewise while Jordan would be great in any era the Air Jordan stuff would have landed him in the emergency room in the 60's even as he was being called for travelling. So really the era stuff cuts both ways and for the purposes of sports debate we kind of need to leave it at the door.

My comment about recency bias regarded it as being somewhat forgivable in a macro sense and was in response to another poster saying "The point is, you put Wilt, Magic, Kareem, West and Shaq behind people you saw last week because you apparently never saw a basketball game before 2010." Recency bias is understandable in the context of younger people talking about what they know and is an inherent stumbling block in a generational sports conversation with them.

 

[maust]

Every player we are talking about besides Shaq (the others being Kareem/Magic/Wilt/West vs McHale) all had the prime of their careers in the 80's or earlier. In fact McHale and Garnett would benefit the most from recency bias. Again this is something that wouldn't even be a discussion anywhere else.

Graceless child, please get your unnecessarily argumentative head out of your derriere and look at the comment you are responding to in the context in which it was made and who it was being made to.

 

[Deus Irae]

Fair enough. Like I said the all time team discussion has to first rank players, then compare teams. So there are actually two debates, neither of which was going very well the past few hours

ETA if we update with the rankings you propose for those players, it wouldn't change the composition of the all-time teams. In fact I bet those teams are both pretty fixed with a couple quibbles (Wilt vs Kareem, KG vs McHale, Kobe vs West, any of which could go both ways).

Just to add another Lakers quibble for you:

Malone v. Gasol

L.A. v. Boston is a debate I've enjoyed having a lot in the past, and L.A. has a clear advantage in the back court. To me, the issue is whether or not the Celtics front court can make up the difference when it comes to the starting 5, because I think Boston ends up running away with it once you're making up a full team. Lebron lovers (and Laker homers) will now be saying that, regardless of the past, James means the answer is no. I'm not sold on that, but it'll be a welcome addition to the debates, moving forward.

Just my take

 

[IcyPatriot]

Rondo in a lakers uniform makes me sick but not shocking.

Pelicans just signed randle.

Rondo and Ball and Fultz on the same team ... not.
Ball will be bounced ..........

 

[lancerman]

I understand the perspective of 'guys back then vs today's athletes' and all that but I think it ignores the simple fact that if anything the best players from 'back in the day' could be nothing but beneficiaries of today's sports science and be all the better for it. In an era like the 60's & 70's with fewer teams and thus more competition for fewer available jobs the guys that dominated the game were for the most part doing it against a higher quality of opponent for their time. I have always held to the belief greatness mostly transcends era but I'm not sure it's realistic to think LeBron would 'mop the floor' with players from an era when the game was played faster and palming the ball was seriously frowned on and charging was called with regularity. Likewise while Jordan would be great in any era the Air Jordan stuff would have landed him in the emergency room in the 60's even as he was being called for travelling. So really the era stuff cuts both ways and for the purposes of sports debate we kind of need to leave it at the door.

My comment about recency bias regarded it as being somewhat forgivable in a macro sense and was in response to another poster saying "The point is, you put Wilt, Magic, Kareem, West and Shaq behind people you saw last week because you apparently never saw a basketball game before 2010." Recency bias is understandable in the context of younger people talking about what they know and is an inherent stumbling block in a generational sports conversation with them.

While a lot of players would benefit from modern sports a lot of great players would find out that they had a ceiling that they didn't know they had, which is what happens to most athletes. They are all motivated like crazy but some workhorses become Julian Edelman's and the rarity becomes Jerry Rice.

The overall era stuff is tough because it cuts in favor of the era you prefer. If you consider today to be softball then yeah a guy like Curry's skill sets will translate horribly in the 60's and 70's. But that's the direction the sport is going in.

Also lets be straight up here, if you are 60 or younger you are too young to have seen Russell or Wilt and put them in any proper context. A 60 year old today would have been 11 in Russell's last playing year. And no offense, I don't really care for someone who was 6 or 7 during Russell's prime telling me about him. So if you are 65 plus, fine give an opinion on him, but anybody else is just going off what they heard, the stats, and the clips they watched like everybody else. So this whole "you didn't watch a basketball game prior to 2010" is such a false shield. I religiously watched Jordan as a kid and even I feel uncomfortable acting like I watched that and was anything but a kid who was amazed by what he saw. But I do know how his stats stack up, I do know how Bird called him god disguised as a basketball player and how even during his playing career guys like Magic and Wilt and Russell were singing his praises. At some point you go far back enough and you are going to hit someone you don't have context for. In football context Otto Graham went to 10 straight championships and won 7 of them and he did it across both relevant leagues. You'd have to be 80 or likely older to have watched Graham in his prime and to have an accurate "I saw it" argument to contextualize his place in history. In yet there are plenty people in the NBA not to long ago who freaked out and made a bunch of excuses when I made the comparison to how Jordan is to Russell what Brady is to Graham. And that's ignoring that much younger people were calling people like Kareem in basketball and Montana the GOAT. So again it's fine line comparing across era's because everyone wants to act like they are knowledgeable and to a certain point everyone isn't and they have to rely on things other than the eye test.

 

[maust]

I think Robert Alvarez lands Lebron.

He's certainly landed everything else today...