When your team is as good as ours is, it’s fun to keep daily tabs on all stats, simple or advanced, cumulative or per season. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ws_career.html With the OKC win last night Chris Paul leapfrogs Jerry West and Hakeem in one fell swoop to solidify his place among the top 20 players all time. Advanced stats have always loved Paul: he’s #1 in win shares per 48mpg as well, just ahead of Jordan. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ws_per_48_career.html There have been only three times in NBA history two of the top ten players in that stat have played together. Magic and Kareem. Harden and CP3. And inexplicably a few seasons where KD was being backed up by this young SG from ASU. At the time I might have thought Tyreke was going to be the better player...
Wonder where CP3 is going to end up, assume he plays 5 more years, 28 MPG, 60 games, with his WS/48 declining by .02 every year, and I think he ends his career at around 11-9, Ahead of Shaq but not ahead of Dirk.
Forgive me, but seeing Reggie Miller ahead of Dream I can't help but give the sideways eyes to that stat.
Reggie was no scrub, He also never struggled with any season ending injuries and his play didn't take as sharp of a decline as he aged. 30 year old Hakeem >>>> 30 year old miller, 37 year old hakeem < 37 year old miller.
Some of y’all already pit Harden against Hakeem and now y’all tryna pit CP3 against Hakeem??? @tinman go to work.
Dream was still basically a 19 and 10 guy on a good team at 36. You can make an argument he did more after 36 (only by a little, if at all), but I have trouble believing those 3 years when neither guy was an impact player made up for 15 years of Dream being on an entirely different tier.
A Center can never get that much control of the ball like a guard or a point guard can......he has to be fed. We had good shooting PGs but not the best passing PGs in the game when Hakeem was around. Hakeem has to earn his points like a work horse more often than not and does not have that kind of easy shots Capela now is taking. Chris Paul is great. They can't be easily compared to one another. Like in the Skills Challenge, you can't expect Bigs to win it but sometimes they do. They do other things than control the tempo of a game.
It depends on how many good teams you were on too. Chris Paul has always been on good to great teams - certainly he had a lot to do with that. Hakeem was on some really mediocre teams, a few of which he was basically the only guy doing anything on the court. Take the 87-88 squad for example. It's Hakeem and McCray and then scrub central. The next year - Hakeem, OT, Sleepy Floyd and then scrub central. Similar story in 89-90. Hakeem spent a lot of the time between the 85-86 squad and and 92-93 squad on some really miserable teams.
I think it's not a difference in usage that puts Chris Paul in this vaunted level with the all time greats. In fact, the career win shares stat actually penalizes your high usage chuckers like Kobe and Carmelo. It's efficiency that win shares highlights. Win shares loves Chris Paul (and James Harden). Back to the basket centers that may not have put up shooting percentages as good as others because of their extensive time shooting high degree of difficulty shots on the low block might also be penalized. I think that's what you see with Hakeem. When everyone was at their best, Hakeem got the shots to go in that nobody could defend. But against the scrubs over an 82 game marathon, the folks who could exploit them the best stand out. For example, I will never stop penalizing Shaquille O'Neal for having the ugliest style of winning basketball in the history of the sport (aside from Houston Rockets Charles Barkley)--and they did end up officiating him out of the league by the time he was done--BUT under the constraints of the rules as they were at the time, O'Neal is one of the most efficient players in history as well. It's Kobe Bryant that the advanced stats really expose as being just a high volume guy who was closer to Chauncey Billups than he was MJ. Or Russell Westbrook for instance who has only 88 career win shares compared to Harden's 104, despite Harden being a year younger and coming into the league a year later.
According to advanced stats.... Robert Horry is more of a winner than Kobe, MJ. Lebron. Magic. Etc I’ll take him over anyone.
But if you are an all time great player, and your team stinks, isn’t a lot of that on you as well? History will look back on CP3 a lot more favorably than we do I feel. Credit will gradually shift from David West, Tyson Chandler, Blake and Deandre and Redick, onto CP3 as being far and away the primary reason those teams went from sub.400 teams to perennial contenders. And only with time we’ll begin to realize how important it’s been for James and Chris to finally get the chance to play with another star on their level.
I like WS as a general stat (beats the hell out of WP) but it's important to know its limitations. IMO it overweights scoring efficiency, and it manifests with stuff like Robinson having a ~40% higher per-minute rating than Hakeem based mainly on being +3% on true shooting. It also struggles with cross-era comparisons ... George Gervin would have adapted to the modern game just fine but without 3s in his arsenal he's rated about the same as Lowry or Aldridge. Chris Paul makes his shots count and so WS loves him. Still cool to see CP3 climb the ranks though.
I have CP3 as the second best PG to ever play the game - there was a thread from a year or two back where I made the same claim and people thought I was nuts. But Hakeem is also a top 5 center. You're really comparing the best of the best at this point. I've always said it's harder for a pass-first PG to will his team to victory than just about any other role on a team. In that context, what CP3 accomplished prior to this year is just stunning. All respect to Dream though. He's still a top 10 all time player. Not sure where CP3 will fall.
Hakeem at 29 yo, peak age for basketball players had a season with .178 WS/48. Rockets missed the playoffs. Very embarrassing for an all time great to miss the playoffs in his prime. Even Harden got Rockets to the playoffs in his first season despite weak supporting players. Chris Paul has never had a season with WS/48 worse than .178 in his career.
Hakeem also delt with missing most of his best season due to injury, something @FearTheBeardJH either failed to notice or outright omitted for hawt teak reactions.