Now that Stephen Curry is a top 10 player, where will he end up on that list?

[green4407]

Another top 10 thread, yeah I'm in. Here's the definitive list and Steph clocks in at #7 at the moment, no need for any further debate:

1. Armon "The Hammer" Gilliam
2. Stacey "Plastic Man" Augmon
3. Vlade Divac
4. Larry Johnson
5. Bonzi Wells
6. J.R. Rider
7. Stephen Curry
8. The Matrix
9. Magic Johnson
10. Moses Scurry

Just on the outside:

Draymond Green
Greg Anthony
Luka Doncic
Bryan Emerzian
Jarvis Basnight

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[cardsharkk]

Karem, Wilt, MJ, Lebron, Bird, Magic, Kobe, Tim Duncan, Shaq, Durant.... Thats 10....
Prob questionable if hes even top 10-12

I'd put him 11 right now personally.

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by cardsharkk

Karem, Wilt, MJ, Lebron, Bird, Magic, Kobe, Tim Duncan, Shaq, Durant.... Thats 10....
Prob questionable if hes even top 10-12

I'd put him 11 right now personally.

it's either post opinions without support, or support them with an all-bases-covering treatise, there's no in between

[tennelson55]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

I'll grant Lebum some credit and a really lazy and complacent warriors team that year that allowed the Cavs to come back in the series.

But playing himself out of the playoffs this year was really, really pathetic.

And his usual defer the ball on the last possession of close games is unforgiveable.

He really isn't there mentally.

Do we really need to break out the stats for end of game shots for the king again?

Originally Posted by pete2345

Kyrie got him that one you need to follow the program junior. He only joins teams that he hand picks hes soft and unimpressive far from a top 10 player the GOAT would agree and WTFAY?

Who got Kyrie to the finals? LeBum did; not Kyrie.

Kyrie isn't leading any team during the regular season. LeBum swings franchies win totals by 40 games.

[GOATcards]

Bill Simmons:

[GOATcards]

A few days ago, Bill Simmons listed this as his top 16 players ever:

MJ
LeBron
Russell
Kareem
Magic
Bird
Duncan
Wilt
Kobe
Steph

KD
West
Oscar
Hakeem
Shaq
Moses

He thinks that Steph could move past Kobe but would settle at #9. That top 8 is really hard to break into, it's also Clayton Crowley's top 8 (as in my .sig). I note that he also has Steph and KD together. I think it is undeniable that those two teaming up made them unbeatable if/when healthy, and their 2 titles against a very stacked (at least in '17) Cavs team are always going to have those mental asterisks: "How much do these rings count for on their individual resumes vs. pretty much all the other rings in basketball history that were at least competitive?" But neither on their own individually was at Bron's level individually. He is the player of the decade for the 2010s, no question. The real and interesting question would be where KD could end up relative to Steph. How does one really set the two apart, they're both scoring menaces.

[armoursave]

In what universe is Kobe a top 10 all-time player?! RIP, but come on.

[Ericc5Bears]

Originally Posted by GOATcards

A few days ago, Bill Simmons listed this as his top 16 players ever:

MJ
LeBron
Russell
Kareem
Magic
Bird
Duncan
Wilt
Kobe
Steph

KD
West
Oscar
Hakeem
Shaq
Moses

He thinks that Steph could move past Kobe but would settle at #9. That top 8 is really hard to break into, it's also Clayton Crowley's top 8 (as in my .sig). I note that he also has Steph and KD together. I think it is undeniable that those two teaming up made them unbeatable if/when healthy, and their 2 titles against a very stacked (at least in '17) Cavs team are always going to have those mental asterisks: "How much do these rings count for on their individual resumes vs. pretty much all the other rings in basketball history that were at least competitive?" But neither on their own individually was at Bron's level individually. He is the player of the decade for the 2010s, no question. The real and interesting question would be where KD could end up relative to Steph. How does one really set the two apart, they're both scoring menaces.

Pretty simple, Steph has won a championship before, during, and after teaming up with KD while KD has won 1 finals game in 11 years without Steph while being on very strong teams for the majority of his career. Not to mention they matched up head to head in the Western Conference finals with fairly equal teams and Steph significantly outplayed KD while leading a 3-1 comeback.

[rms13]

I think he’s a boarder line top 10 at end of his career. And then you need to figure out how long NBA lasts after he retires and how many better players come along to pass him.

[pete2345]

Originally Posted by armoursave

In what universe is Kobe a top 10 all-time player?! RIP, but come on.

Anyone that knows the game knows he is top 5.

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by pete2345

Anyone that knows the game knows he is top 5.

What about the game is bill Simmons ignorant of? Which of his/Crowley's top eight is below kobe in your ranking and why? Magic, Tim, Russell, MJ, Kareem, Bron, Larry, Wilt...

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[oldgoldy97]

Originally Posted by pete2345

Anyone that knows the game knows he is top 5.

Lesson one.

[Kobefan]

Originally Posted by GOATcards

What about the game is bill Simmons ignorant of? Which of his/Crowley's top eight is below kobe in your ranking and why? Magic, Tim, Russell, MJ, Kareem, Bron, Larry, Wilt...

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Why do you keep on referencing crowley like it's a bible or something? He's not absolutely right, cause there are no definitive ways of comparing players, especially across different eras. Almost everybody has a different list that is based on their own statistical preferences. Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think his 8 making the case clips are meant to indicate that those 8 players are his top 8. He mentioned that he didn't include Kobe because Kobe plays like MJ, and has qualities and achievements that can be easily compared to MJ; therefore, there's no reason for the GOAT argument. He thinks that the other 7 have qualities (strengths and weaknesses) that are different enough to warrant a discussion.

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by Kobefan

Why do you keep on referencing crowley like it's a bible or something? He's not absolutely right, cause there are no definitive ways of comparing players, especially across different eras. Almost everybody has a different list that is based on their own statistical preferences. Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think his 8 making the case clips are meant to indicate that those 8 players are his top 8. He mentioned that he didn't include Kobe because Kobe plays like MJ, and has qualities and achievements that can be easily compared to MJ; therefore, there's no reason for the GOAT argument. He thinks that the other 7 have qualities (strengths and weaknesses) that are different enough to warrant a discussion.

that's all fine and good, although I was more curious as to how Simmons and/or Crowley are ignorant of the game according to pete

[mfw13]

I think that making lists like these is very difficult for several reasons:

1) The size of the league has changed.....Wilt/Russell/West/Oscar were dominant players in their era, but the NBA was a 9-14 team league in their era with no foreign players. Today's league is 30 teams, and many of the best players are foreigners.

How would Wilt & Russell have done if they had played against the likes of Kareem/Malone/Olajuwon/Ewing/Robinson/Shaq/Duncan, etc.?

2) Career length.....with players being fitter these days, guys like LeBron and Curry are going to have longer careers than many of the greats who came before them.

Wilt - 14 seasons
Russell - 13 seasons
West - 14 seasons
Oscar - 14 seasons
Bird -13 seasons
Magic - 13 seasons
Jordan - 15 seasons (13 with Bulls)

LeBron is already at 19 seasons and still going strong.
Curry is at 13 seasons and still going strong.
KD is at 14 seasons and still going strong.

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by mfw13

I think that making lists like these is very difficult for several reasons:

1) The size of the league has changed.....Wilt/Russell/West/Oscar were dominant players in their era, but the NBA was a 9-14 team league in their era with no foreign players. Today's league is 30 teams, and many of the best players are foreigners.

How would Wilt & Russell have done if they had played against the likes of Kareem/Malone/Olajuwon/Ewing/Robinson/Shaq/Duncan, etc.?

2) Career length.....with players being fitter these days, guys like LeBron and Curry are going to have longer careers than many of the greats who came before them.

Wilt - 14 seasons
Russell - 13 seasons
West - 14 seasons
Oscar - 14 seasons
Bird -13 seasons
Magic - 13 seasons
Jordan - 15 seasons (13 with Bulls)

LeBron is already at 19 seasons and still going strong.
Curry is at 13 seasons and still going strong.
KD is at 14 seasons and still going strong.

1) Since we don't have any really good idea how competitive players from one era would be if time-machined to another era, so we go by how well they dominated over their peers compared to how others dominated over theirs, and then try to adjust reasonably for league and talent pool sizes & compositions.

2) So things like making adjustments for career length as that is affected by era is another part of trying to compare across eras.

So in 13 seasons, Bill R won 11 rings (along with point #1). Damn.

[GOATcards]

My question now is about Bill S's reasons for moving Bron ahead of Bill R in his GOAT ranking. Bill S was saying about how vitally important winning championships is in his ranking, or more precisely being centrally instrumental in winning championships for purposes of such rankings (so Kareem's last 2 rings aren't much of a credit in that regard), and we're assuming with Crowley that Bill R would have won 7 Bill R Trophies, to compare/contrast with Mike's 6-out-of-6, and then Bron's 4-out-of-10. I'm pretty darn sure that point #1 about the talent pool size+composition has a big effect on the relatively difficulty of winning rings (total or per Finals appearance).

Evidently (?) Bill S thinks that Bron's 4 Finals MVPs are a bigger deal in the 2010s than Bill R's hypothetical 7 FMVPs in the 1960s, but not a bigger deal than Mike's 6 in the '90s.

Anyway, a search on Bill S and his ranking Bron over Bill R didn't turn up promising leads... (Anyway, I have Bron in my top 3 but I just don't envision Mike or Bill R having 7+ minutes worth of Shaqtin' a Fool highlights or anything remotely close to that, or the flopping, or the '11 Finals disappearance (although was either of them as impressive as what Bron did in '18 regardless of the Super-Superteam he faced in the Finals, say?)

[GOATcards]

I'd also like to point out how point #1 (player pool size+composition) might very well obscure how a player like Joker, say, could be top-10-all-time stature already, he'd probably have found a way to flourish the way Bill R did back in the '60s were he time-machined there, he just doesn't have the support levels (yet) as was painfully obvious this last season, and it's maybe about as clear as it isn't that the competition is so stacked nowadays that even the best/most efficient player in the league for a period of several years on end (which Joker is on his way to being, no disrespect to Giannis who might also already be top 10 all-time...) could go for a while without winning rings. It's not like pre-Heat Bron or pre-'90s Jordan were getting much support but they were obviously top-ten-ever talents by then.

(strain today is Slapz )

[GOATcards]

If I'm not mistaken Joker (plus support) already made clear by the '20 season that a healthy Nuggets squad is at least a WCF team, and that's before he enters his late 20s as back-to-back MVP. Seems like this next season they could give anyone a run for their money, based on what we saw these past playoffs. (Looked going in that the Suns wouldn't fold nearly as easily as they did, and the other teams in the '22 playoffs didn't exactly look like 65-win-strength teams either....I mean I suppose GSW was around 60-w-s at its best?)

[GOATcards]

It occurs to me that for a player to win back-to-back MVPs in the present era, they probably are top-10-ever talents after you adjust for era. That might add further strength to the case for Steph as top-10 all-time. But since the competition is so stacked these days with the likes of other back-to-back MVPs in Joker and Giannis, that makes them credible (era-adjusted) top ten candidates. A Bill James of basketball analysis might be able to break this down further, someone with a knowledge of the game's history like Tallboy?

(Tallboy has referred to Joker as an "alien genius," does that mean top-10-caliber based just on what we've seen of Joker so far? Supposing Jamal Murray becomes all-star starter caliber (considering how stacked the G position is in the All-NBA Team selections right now, particularly in the West Conference), are we seeing some rings for DEN pretty soon?)

[GOATcards]

https://www.basketball-reference.com..._active_p.html

I guess this would be a pretty good 12-man roster (assume all of them are in their prime lol), it means Joker has no replacement so he's just like getting a lot of rest down there in the post throughout the whole 48 while the other players all work their magic. Or put Giannis at C/"the 5" for a few minutes I guess.

Anyway, Steph is now above KD's career playoff BPM and there seems to be some agreement that BPM underrates Steph. How much I don't know, but suppose it's around 2 BPM, which would put him around 3rd place on this list. Kawhi might be quite underrated on the all-time lists just because of his limited playing time but his 8 or so BPM in the playoffs does appear to indicate that 2 FMVP is a very worthy accomplishment in his case. But I could see the top 6 here being in the top-10-all-time discussion (but they might also be all tied for 9th or all 4th-tier HOFers (after the first 8 or so) or something).

[pete2345]

What a weirdo.