Brick by Brick: Methodology
Written by Isaac O’Neill and Chris Howson-Jan
Isaac: If you’ve ever talked basketball with me, I’m sure you’ve recognized that I am just as fascinated with the history of the sport, and not just what happens night to night. But I don’t mean getting into arguments over where James Naismith invented basketball, or trivial points like who scored the most points in the first ever match-up between the Celtics and Lakers. I like to contextualize what is happening in today’s game versus how it measures up to players, teams, outcomes of the past. We know what Luka Doncic is doing (well, did) in his sophomore season is special. But how special? Has it ever happened before? If he doesn’t continue at a reasonably conservative upward trend, will he be an outlier among other players who put up similar numbers as a 20 year old? How do Steph Curry’s last 5 years measure up against other top point guards? As a guy who hasn’t actually played much basketball as a top-tier NBA player, where would we rank Kawhi if he retired tomorrow? What other players had similarly short careers that we can measure him against? This is the type of historical context I like to delve into. Putting every player under a microscope and measuring them against each other is part of what makes watching games fun for me.
This is why Chris and I are going to attempt to measure current and recent players who we think may be deserving of a spot on our Top 100 list. There will be future articles, and possibly accompanying podcasts, to analyze who has earned a top spot.
Chris: Much like Isaac, I like delving into the nitty-gritty of the league’s history. I like tracing the arc of a career, especially for a player I didn’t get to see while they played. I also absolutely love digging into stats. I think all the trivia and numbers were part of what attracted me — someone who had never watched or played sports until I was in high school — to the game in the first place. I love finding weird outliers and discovering things I didn’t know about great historical players. These articles are very much an extension of conversations Isaac and I were already having about our favourite players and how they stacked up in a historical context.
Isaac: This perspective on how to look at the game is heavily inspired by Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball, which I got for Christmas in 2014. There are few inflection points I can recall in my life that inspired such a great interest on any topic; it is basically the Bible for an NBA fan wanting to gain a greater understanding of the league and its history. Simmons goes through every year in which the wrong player was voted MVP, and corrects it. He provides a brief history of all the most important events and decisions that shaped the league we know today. And most importantly, he created a list of the Top 96 players of all time (leaving room for new players to be added in an updated version I am now scared will never fully come to fruition).
Simmons is a bona fide superfan who has been going to NBA games his entire life. His father has had Boston Celtics season tickets since 1974; because of that privilege he has been witness to a slew of historic Celtics moments, teams, and players. Due to his NBA adjacent job, and subsequently money, he has also been able to experience many other great NBA moments live, and had to be able to talk about them at length. He also spent at least 3–4 years studying for his book, including watching old footage the average person doesn’t have access to. I have been watching basketball heavily when I can for probably six years. I think it is safe to say I will never have the contextual grasp he does on previous eras, and not just because I don’t get paid to watch.
No sport, including basketball, can ever be fully understood by reading a box score. You have to watch games to see a player’s true impact, and even that can be misleading. It’s hard to know how close in skill two teams were, or if the better team won. Saying “X beat Y in 5 games” is not enough. History gets misremembered. Few recall that in 2012 the Thunder were favoured over the Heat. The narrative went something like this: LeBron was an unclutch player who took the easy way out, but still couldn’t fit in with Wade or the rest of his shallow team properly, while simultaneously causing Bosh to be underutilized. Meanwhile, the Thunder were an athletic, tough, and deep team, spearheaded by a player who was a better pure offensive player than LeBron. The Heat managed to win in 5, and now many remember one of the top two players ever beating up on a young but-not-quite-ready team, led by a guy who would later replace LeBron as the poster boy for a soft free agent move in order to win a championship. The Heat won handily in some respects, but my point here is that these things are often closer than you might think.
Chris: That series in particular is a huge pet peeve of mine. It’s also an example of double-revisionist history, and how much bias can affect what eventually becomes historical consensus. People are always very quick to point out that the Thunder didn’t really have three MVPs on their team, something no reasonable person has ever argued. They downplay just how good James Harden (one of the great all-time seasons by a bench player) and Serge Ibaka (very narrowly missed out on Defensive Player of the Year) were at the time, to say nothing of the team’s two stars. Throw in a polarizing figure like LeBron, and suddenly people have a vested interest in moving the facts around to suit an invented narrative.
Isaac: My greater point is that these revisions surely have occurred time and time again over the course of the league’s history. And unless you were watching as it happened, it’s hard to see the full picture. You probably don’t remember Hall of Famer X’s career becoming greater than Hall of Famer Y’s career because while down 3–2 in Round 2 Game 6, the 9th man on HoFer X’s team hit an implausible 3 at the end of the 3rd quarter that kept his team in the game, when the other team might’ve held on to their healthy lead if he didn’t. X’s team goes on to win the series and eventually the championship, and now we all know that he’s better than HoFer Y. But just because that’s the consensus now, doesn’t mean it was necessarily inevitable. We remember recent instances, maybe because we’re a little more aware of those things now, but more likely just because we saw them live. The Ray Allen shot, the Tony Allen injury (Round 2 vs Warriors in 14-15), or the resurrection of Fred VanVleet Sr. — the outcomes of these games can hinge on the thinnest of margins. Someone like Dirk is revered for his storybook career arc: from prodigy, to disappointment, to winning at the 11th hour. But he very easily could have had the same uninspiring ending as, say, Patrick Ewing. These Sliding Doors situations have happened time and time again, and contextualizing them matter. A guy like Bill Simmons has this experience, the knowledge, and the recall to form that context.
The Pyramid
That is why we are going to defer to Simmons on the background knowledge his Top 96 list contains. How am I supposed to form an educated answer to why I think Dave DeBusschere was better than Billy Cunningham? Chris and I do not have the time or the resources to ever fully answer that question. As you’ll see by the players we analyze, there is a lot of information we consider to be relevant.
Our compromise is to build off of Simmons’ most recently updated list (last published in 2010), make changes and adjustments we feel educated enough to make, and install recent players we deem to have qualified for the list. These articles coincide with Simmons’ recent podcast series The Book of Basketball 2.0 that he is making in lieu of publishing an updated copy of his book. He has installed some new players like Curry and Harden, and will continue to add revisions in the coming months. He has also updated players who’ve upped their standing on the list, such as Dirk, Wade, and Chris Paul. Fortunately, he has already confirmed the specific placement of a majority of the Top 40 players.
In case you haven’t read his book, Simmons calls his Top 96 “The Pyramid”. Players are grouped into tiers, (explained in excerpts located in the Pyramid article) which become more exclusive the higher you go. I find this strategy extremely useful, as it distinguishes between two players despite them potentially being very close together on the overall list. For example: Shaquille O’Neal and Elgin Baylor land fairly close together (12 and 15, respectively), but Elgin is a Level 4 player, while Shaq is a Level 5 Player (otherwise known as a ‘Pantheon’ player). Elgin was one of the three or 4 best players at any given time during his tenure, but he never won an MVP, or led his team to a championship. He was historically great, but doesn’t get to the Pantheon level; that’s saved for the hallowed ground of having multiple rings and multiple MVPs. Dirk is close as well, but one MVP, and one ring keep him out of the Pantheon. And as of right now, Harden is one tier below (in Level 3), because while he has an MVP, he has yet to lead his team to a championship, or even make the Finals. Having this kind of career — putting up amazing individual numbers without winning — is often enough to knock you down to Level 4 (see Barkley or Malone). There are some very fascinating cases of recent players that I’m excited to research to see what level they land in, such as Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, or Kevin Durant. Durant sounds like a surefire Pantheon player, but it’s tough to say how many grains of salt we have to take with the knowledge that he won after joining the Warriors. CP3 is another great case study of what level of superstar he should be considered next to. We know he’s not Tier 1: Kareem, Bird, Hakeem level. But is he in that next category of MVP level guy who needed good teams around him, like an Isiah Thomas or Kevin Garnett?
Chris: Taking a step back and looking at contemporary players in this kind of historical context can also be very illuminating, both in how we view those players and how we view historical players. There’s a tendency, even for me, to think about historical players in the abstract. Off the top of my head, I can probably name the approximate timespan they played, how many All-Star appearances they had, and their general profile as a player. But when it comes to considering their actual greatness, many (myself included) have a tendency to fall back on what we have been told. While we are certainly indebted to Bill Simmons and have an appropriate amount of faith in his knowledge, we don’t want to take his word as gospel either. Evaluating modern players against the Pyramid allows us to see those historical rankings with fresh eyes, and hopefully to gain some new insight on them.
Methodology
Isaac: Now that you understand why we care enough to do something like this, allow me to explain where we are coming from in terms of strategy, opinion, and what we value. There are two criteria we will be measuring against to see if they qualify for the Top 100. The first is by the baseline Simmons set for the Top 96. The bottom five players on his list are: Tom Chambers (PF), Jojo White (SG), Jack Twyman (SF), Kevin Johnson (PG), and Bob Lanier (Center). Simply put: if you think a current player is better than their positional counterpart, they should be on the Pyramid. So, even if you think it may be premature to place Klay Thompson as a top 100 player, you must ask the question; “Is he better than Jojo White.” If the answer is yes, then we need to find a spot for him.
The second method we will be using to contextualize current players is by measuring them against players of the same position or style, or players who had similar careers or roles on their respective teams. For example: though Wade won a title on his own, he won two as a second banana to Bron, while Pippen won six as second banana (but Wade’s 06 as best counts for a couple as second best ). They are similar players in that they were borderline MVP candidates, never quite gaining “best player in the league” status, as well as having relatively short careers. So though Wade was already on the Pyramid, if he wasn’t, he would naturally land in the region Pippen is (mid twenties).
Other players on similar ground with each other include:
- Westbrook v Reggie Miller
- Paul George v T-Mac
- Klay Thompson v Joe Dumars/Sidney Moncrief
- Curry v Isiah Thomas
- Dirk v Barkley/Malone
- Harden v Nash
This will be called Setting the Bar, and we’ll be using it for all of our analysis of contemporary players.
Before you laugh and say that we’re adding current players who don’t deserve to be there yet — there are lots of guys on this list who had very short peaks, but still made their way onto the list. To say that someone like Thompson has no chance is short-sighted; if he retired tomorrow, he’d have extremely consistent stats, 3 rings, and as many big time moments as anyone. We might be projecting into the future a little bit, and it’s impossible to predict exactly how a player’s career will end up. But NBA players nowadays aren’t falling off a cliff for drugs, injuries, or just no apparent reason (other than Melo), as often as they used to.
Generally speaking, we value periods of greatness more than prolonged periods of goodness. Lots of people have been the 20th best player in the league at one point or another. It’s impressive for someone to do that for fifteen years, but not as impressive as being a top 5 player for, say, five years. Kawhi Leonard hasn’t been an All-Star calibre player for very long, but he has been extremely impressive in those few short seasons. He has multiple 1st and 2nd All-NBA teams, an MVP caliber season, and a Finals MVP — and that’s in addition to the Finals MVP he earned before he reached consistent All-Star level. That level of greatness matters more to us than say, what Alex English accomplished: eight All-Stars, three All-NBA teams, but never really near top 5 player status, and a fairly weak playoff resume. Bill Walton is the classic example of the guy who was great, but for an extremely short period of time. Conversely, Andre Igoudala is an excellent 2-way player who’s been a good starter for 15 years. But one All-Star selection? Are we sure he’s a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame, like many people are saying?
This is a list measuring greatness, which at its essence will be defined as skill X accomplishments. We don’t want to overvalue rings, or what a player did in his best and worst playoff moments, but it’s impossible to get a complete picture without those things. 1st and 2nd All-NBA teams, or seasons as a Top 10ish player, really, really matter. 5 year peaks are a good gauge. Now that does not necessarily mean Top 10 finishes in MVP voting, which are based on regular season statistics, and provide a story for who was the most valuable that season, but not necessarily who the 10 best players are. For example, Damian Lillard finished 4th in MVP voting in 2017–18. He had a very impressive season, carrying a not great Blazers team. He is one of my favourite players to watch. However, nobody, including me, would say he has ever been the 4th best player in the league, nor if we held a draft for a playoff type tournament, would he ever go 4th overall. We instead will try looking more at who we consider the consensus 10 best players were year to year. The back end of the Top 10 of MVP voting is also fairly arbitrary, with many players receiving a throwaway vote from maybe a hometown writer, when that vote could’ve easily been given elsewhere without much thought.
I also want to know how players perform with advanced metrics. Were you efficient in your era? There are tons of players from back in the day who put up empty numbers on bad teams. We will always judge players relative to their era, but the true greats usually transcend their eras in that regard. Plenty of players were perennial first round playoff exits, sometimes glossed over by a late-career championship. Every player is a product of their environment to some extent, but significance to a specific season is important. I’m undecided on whether or not to reward a guy for being a “modern” player or not. Bob McAdoo would be great in today’s game. But how does that affect his relative skill, or his accomplishments? It doesn’t really. Perhaps Chris will help me firm my stance.
We also want to stray away from big game moments and performances. One shot does not make or break a career. At best it has a 50% chance of going in. ‘Clutch’ players don’t always have the best clutch stats. It’s a concept that introduces a lot of conjecture and bias into the equation — they’re called intangibles for a reason. And we don’t want to hang our hats on a guy’s worst moments either. Most great players have a multitude of collapses, and so it’s unfair to hold players to that standard. LeBron should be rewarded for going deep into the playoffs on a regular basis, not punished for an imperfect record.
At its essence, a “Who’s greater?” list is impossible to pin down in completely specific terms. Different play styles are preferred by different people. Older players who played a ‘modern’ game will unfairly be looked at more favorably than those who didn’t. It’s very hard to separate players from their situations. But we want to look at all the stats, performances, teammates, and other context that helped contribute to a player’s winning and losing. Starting from a perspective of tiers is the easy part — it’s not hard to say that Vince Carter could never have been Dwyane Wade. Getting down to the nitty gritty in order to separate players from each other is what makes this endeavor fun. Every player’s career is unique, and unfairly measuring it is what fans do best. We hope you enjoy coming along with us on this journey as much as we’ll doubtless enjoy making it.
