Paul Pierce does not have his level of accolades, nor does he have the level of success Isiah Thomas is better all-time than Paul Pierce, so if he isn’t even top 50 all-time, then Pierce definitely isn’t either
it’s a good thing I mentioned more than just rings as opposed to your main argument which was simply “Paul Pierce has more win shares”
The methodology behind the rankings is available. It’s a combo of peak and longevity of production. Some guys longevity of play carried them high on this list. Pierce is 23rd all time in win shares and Thomas is 158th. That they are so closely ranked in this particular exercise with the parameters he laid out is a testament to how much better Isiahs peak was compared to Pierce. Another thing he explains if you listen to the podcast is that while he did come up with a concrete order everyone on this list has a sort of range that they could have ended up at. A 3 spot difference between two guys shouldn’t be taken as definitive statement that one guy was better than the other.
I agree winning back-to-back is very hard to achieve, assists double-double also. But Pierce did make an All-NBA 2nd Team in 09, after having won the FMVP in 08.
Episode 4 of the revisit dropped today focusing on Stockton and Nash Here’s the list after episode 4 23. Steve Nash 24. John Stockton 25. Moses Malone 26. Dwyane Wade 27. Scottie Pippen 28. Rick Barry 29. Reggie Miller 30. James Harden 31. Bob Pettit 32. John Havlicek 33. Jason Kidd 34. Artis Gilmore 35. Patrick Ewing 36. Paul Pierce 37. Walt Frazier 38. Elgin Baylor 39. Isiah Thomas 40. Clyde Drexler
how can ben on one hand critisize harden for his heliocentric style of play but then rank an inferior heliocentric player in steve nash ahead of him. Their is no metric where nash is better than harden in other than media league voted mvps
oops, you’re right…he did manage to make 1 2nd Team but still, IT 2 rings 1 FMVP 12x All-Star 3x All-NBA 1st Team 2x All-NBA 2nd Team 1x apg champ, 2x total assists leader Pierce>Clyde Drexler is baffling to me as well, but oh well
its obvious ben has had an issue with harden for years, probably because hardens career overlaps his boytoy currys he panders to popular players with casual fanbases. For instance if he were to rank harden over wade and kobe like the numbers say he should, he would lose revenue from wade and kobe fans, which is a lot of money. He knows better than to **** talk certain nba players. He can pile on harden because harden is an easy target. Ive never respected ben when he ranked harden as the 8th best player in 2019 after averaging 36 ppg and broke his per 75 scoring metric
I’d say listen to the podcasts and here what he has to say and the numbers he brings up. At the end of the day he has Harden ranked 30th. Everyone in the 20s are retired and can not add anymore to their resumes. Harden still can and will. It’s pretty clear that by the end of his career he would have Harden as having a top 20-25ish career in NBA history. Hard to be too mad at that.
Nash could also play off-ball. Harden has never proven he can do that. A big part of how he grades great players is scalability--how well could their skills scale up with the talent around them? A guy like Russell Westbrook is a perfect example of a star who can't really improve teams with other stars--he has to have the ball all the time, which detracts from the abilities of co-stars. Harden, while a (much) superior player to Westbrook, has a similar problem. Meanwhile, Nash could be the hub of his offenses, but he also had the ability to play and score off-ball, which means he could play alongside other stars without muting their impact too much.
If you listen to todays podcast he actually didn’t believe Nash would be able to add a whole lot of value off ball. Him being so high on the list is more about him being arguably the 2nd best shooter ever and possibly the best passer ever.
That's interesting. I haven't listened to the podcasts yet, though I plan to. I mostly got a sense for his style of analysis from his "Greatest Peaks" series on YouTube, where being able to provide off-ball value (in addition to on-ball value) mattered quite a bit. Nash always struck me as someone who could give you pretty good off-ball value, but it's interesting that Ben Taylor doesn't think so.
You will hear it eventually but what he said was he thought if Nash was stuck with other guys who needed the ball he just wouldn’t have had any chance to reach the peak he did as the main hub.
Which star’s impact has been muted by Harden? Dwight and his post-ups? 17-18 CP3 ate next to Harden…KD and Kyrie ate…Embiid ate
He brought this up in the Harden/Reggie podcast that since the original list was published 5 years ago he thought Harden proved he could scale back his one man offense style to cater to exactly what a team needs and still bring huge positive value. Specifically sighting Brooklyn before it all fell apart how he was able to be the 20/12 guy but if needed could still ramp up to score 30.
harden played off ball in okc, and in brooklyn, nash was a heliocentric player and certainly was not a better player than harden. He was gifted those mvps because stern and the league was trying to move away from the malice in the palace brawl and kobes rape case
