lol. you can't use projections if you're evaluating the success of top picks. AD will probably be great, but at this point he hasn't done anything to be ranked over Yao.
Then you have to take out all the guys currently playing, which makes for a really boring article that no one will read.
If you punish yao for injury punish Davis for injury. Yao played WAY more than Davis at his age and was never injured. A big man often injured at 21 is a BAD sign.
Davis needs a sports medicine and nutrition guy to work with him on his exact biology so he doesn't get injured so often.
Of course you can or else you could only evaluate players who have finished their career (you have to assume they'll be healthy). So you extrapolate the data you have and AD last year 20.8 10 guy with 3 blocks 26.5 PER = great player - Franchise guy or maybe all timer Yao 2nd year 17.5 9 23 PER (Yao got injured a lot afterwards that lowered his rank)
Yao wasn't in the league at Davis' age. I think a big part of it that Yao never made 1st team all NBA or a major individual award. Fair or unfair, he only won 1 playoff series.
I remember Yao was in the running for MVP for 2 seasons before he gets injured That injury era is something that gives me nightmares. No matter how good you are if you are THAT injury prone you don't belong with the greats
This thread doesn't have a lot of Yao nut nuggers. What are you talking about? No one said Davis isn't a beast.
Well, I'm going off all the posts saying that it's abhorrent that Davis is getting more props than Yao by Simmons, when we all know how Yaos career ended up and he's only projecting how good AD's career can/will be.
Let's talk about projection then. Would you have projected Yao at his second season higher or lower than Davis at his second season?
I would say on par both looking toward franchise - all timer player status. Maybe Yao would be a bit higher due to health. It's hard to project, though, without bias, as I know what happened to Yao's future and Davis' future is still untold. If I were building a team with either a rookie Yao or Davis, I'd probably choose Davis, because I'd rather take a risk with a player that may be an all time great, than settle for Yao whose peak was too short lived to rival the Shaqs and Hakeems.
That's hindsight, though. You're basing it off the knowledge that you know Yao would be as injured as he was. To be fair, the MCL sprain his rookie year could have happened to anyone, as it was a collision. It didn't randomly happen without contact. His hand fracture, I'm not really sure what happened / I can't remember exactly, but I don't think Davis is brittle or anything like that.
Yeah, I agree. I think this article also uses hindsight. My original point was that the OP didn't read the article properly and everyone got upset that Simmons gave a better ranking to AD than Yao, but this is the only way (projection) to predict ADs future. While on the other hand, we already know Yao's future. But the article, like myself, both have to use hindsight and extrapolation to decide where the players sit in terms of history now. Quote from article: "I weighed the entirety of their careers over any short-lived peaks — so Yao Ming, Brandon Roy and Amar’e Stoudemire weren’t “franchise players” because they didn’t carry a franchise for long enough"
I agree with Yao not being an all timer. But he has to be in the franchise category despite his injuries. If Rose is in the franchise category with a much shorter career so far then Yao deserves to be there. And Blake Griffin...seriously?! He's very good, but I mean c'mon. Yao is low on accolades because he is a center that played in a NBA driven perimeter league. But, Simmons has been a well documented Yao hater so it makes some sense.
You guys want a center that was neutralized by a simple fronting defense and could never figure it out, a big that got abused by the Mighty Okur and Boozer the loser on both ends of the court in a playoff series to be on the All-timer list? I can count on one hand the number of good playoff games (games, not series) he has had in his career. The league isnt 10 years old. Simmons is 100% right. Regarding Griffin....IMO, Blake Griffin of the past season was better than Yao and he is still improving. Lets keep it real.
Not that this really means anything, but Griffin came in 3rd in the MVP voting and the highest Yao ever ranked was 12th ...food for thought
