Sunday, April 22, 2018

Dropping 10 Guys Down to 46

56 Guys Left - Gotta Drop 10 to get down to 46.  So, how?  I will identify the weakest links from the list of 56.  I have kept 27 guys where I just do not think there is even a fair argument to drop them out of the top 36.  So, guys with weaknesses (expressed quickly):




 2 Ray Allen - no first-team all-NBAs
 9 Bob Cousy - played a million years ago and was pretty one-dimensional
10 Billy Cunningham - never really considered as the greatest player of any one year
11 Steph Curry - hasn't played that much
12 Mel Daniels - WS and VORP are pretty poor.  It looks like he may have been overvalued by MVP voters
13 Anthony Davis - 63 WS
14 Clyde Drexler - one all-NBA win
18 Patrick Ewing - never won anything, not really ever considered the best or even second best player
19 Walt Frazier - played in a pretty bad period in the 1970s, never considered best guy
21 George Gervin - very one-dimensional
22 Artis Gilmore - far better in the ABA
23 James Harden - young, floppingish, annoying, plays one end.
24 John Havlicek -- Advanced stats not great, never considered best player
25 Elvin Hayes - advanced stats very poor, stats padded by years of play
26 Dwight Howard - 6 great years and then fell off a cliff
27 Allen Iverson - low WS, low efficiency, volume scorer
 30 Neil Johnston -- played in the 1950s, short career
 32 Jason Kidd - couldn't shoot or score, stats padded by longevity
33 Jerry Lucas - stats padded by the era he played in
34 Ed Macauley - same as Neil Johnston
 38 Reggie Miller - never all-NBA, stats padded by longevity, played one end.
 39 Steve Nash - one of the worst defensive players ever, shorter period of greatness
 44 Gary Payton - never a top 3 player in the league
  46 Scottie Pippen - without Jordan he never proved to be a truly great player
47 Willis Reed -- is he just "very good" and not truly great?  Advanced stats would say so
51 Dolph Schayes -- played in an era so long ago - is it fair to say he was better than, say, Anthony Davis?
53 Isiah Thomas  - volume scorer, really wasn't a great player when the Pistons started winning.
54 Dwayne Wade - certainly never thought of as the best 1-2 players of any given year.
 56 Russell Westbrook - young, high usage and low efficiency; best ability is his relentless style of play at a very inefficient level.


What is most useful about this exercise is that there are 27 guys (not listed here) who are pretty much a lock for any Top 36 list.  Then, to fill the last 9 spots you can really make an OK argument for the last 9 spots on behalf of 29 different guys!!!


The guys I am going to drop are:  Billy C., Mel Daniels, Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard, Iverson, Jerry Lucas, Easy Ed M,  Willis Reed, Isiah Thomas, Russell Westbrook.


That leaves us with 46 guys left.  I will list them in the next Blog entry.

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