Wallace does not make his greatest impact as an individual defender, especially not in this day and age with a few good offensive center, individual defenders are the Bruce Bowen type, Wallace is a Duncan type TEAM defender. I don't know if they got that much better with Rasheed offensively, all I remember is them winning games scoring in the 70s on their way to that championship. Their defense was incredible though, and Rasheed played a big hand in that, but they were already amongst the best defensive teams without him. I'm not about to mess with those stats either... All I know is that the Pistons won with defense and rebounding, they improved a little with Sheed on offense, but overall they were still awful on offense. Especially in the Finals against the Lakers their defense was spectacular... I also don't understand how you can simplify defense and offense so much, either shot goes in or shot doesn't go in, that's way too easy. You're not going to score on Ben Wallace or a Ben Wallace team as much as you usually do or rebound as much as you usually do. You might get him a few times but overall he will make your team worse offensively and in rebounding and that goes a long way in determining who wins and loses ball games.
This is really the only part of your position with which I have had huge problem. I'm not even sure how you can seriously say this. How can you when the person you're talking about is taken out of important close games because of his major weakness? It is indisputable that Dream was more well rounded than Shaq. You can't even argue that. Also it is indisputable that Shaq has been removed specifically in close late important game situations BECAUSE of this. How then you can come to your conclusion is beyond me. And that his FT misses kept games close (or caused losses) when they might otherwise have been not close more than cancels out your assertion about early dominance in games putting them out of reach. As far as comparing rings, Dream was 2/3 in the Finals while Shaq is 4/6. Dream's loss was to an all time great time while neither of Shaq's were, and again Shaq was never able to get a ring without another All Star while Dream was able to do so. Honestly, I don't dislike Shaq at all but I don't think your ranking making sense on this point. Of course, we can always defer to the equitable head to head Finals record .
i don't know what they got better at, but they went from a 50 win team the previous 2 years to a team that finished the year winning 75% of the games rasheed played in and then won a title. he was a huge part of that. and billups and hamilton scoring with sheed hitting outside shots and spreading the floor. now why might that be? ben wallace is nice, but billups has led that team in PER each of the last 3 years. except from prince, the other 3 starters pretty much hover in the 16-17 range. last year, billups flew up to 23 and that is why he got some mvp talk and wallace didn't (wallace was 4th on the team). claiming he is somehow obviously the best player when he's a complete zero on one end of the floor and the numbers don't bare it out that he's the best is silly.
Of course... But I think he helped their defense... Didn't they hold teams under 70 for a record number of games? I'm pretty sure they were scoring in the 70s too. Yes, they were the role players on that team. Their roles were scoring... But again, they won on defense and rebounding, therefore Ben Wallace was their MVP. Last year you could make a case for maybe Chauncey because they didn't have problems scoring during the regular season. Because Chauncey is the only guy that can create for himself, with Rasheed not playing up to his ability, Rip needing his teammates to get open, and Prince, he's just not that good of an offensive player. Flip's offense made them look good as a team, but that was just fools gold, when everything tightened up in the playoffs they went back to their sub 80 scoring, their bread and butter has always been defense. And obviously you want to imply that the offense stunk because of Ben Wallace... Basketball is not a one on one game, everyone had problems scoring on that team and not because of Ben Wallace, this 4 on 5 stuff is garbage, you will always have to keep a body on Wallace or else give up an offensive rebound. They needed a guy that could score on his own that doesn't need a perfect system like Billups, or a bunch of screens like Rip, or a kick in the butt like Rasheed, or a broken play like Teyshaun. I'm starting to really dislike this PER stat.. It obviously rewards offense heavy players, but it has no way of rewarding defensive contributions, so it's a stat that measures offense, which is only a third of the game. He's not a complete zero when he can be a force on the offensive boards and is very good at finding open teammates once he does secure the board. Next season will prove how important Ben Wallace was to the Pistons, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they score less without Wallace.
is that why almost every championship team except those pistons has had a dominating, can't stop, must double team scorer while not everyone has had a dominating rebounder/shotblocker? they all were the man. to say ben wallace wasn't a role player but the other are when he is even more one-dimensional is crazy. billups got so much more respect for MVP because he had a significantly better season, end of story. no, hell no, no, and no. why don't i just say wilt was the best along with russell since i'm sure he dominated quite a bit on D. they may not have won without him but they did have the 2nd best record in the league the year before he got there. also, during the first ten years he was there, their average finish was having the best record in the league by 6 games. meaning compared to whoever finished with the next best record (even if it was a different team each year), they averaged finishing with the best record by 6 games. that is a pretty damn big advantage. even 3 or 4 game differences at the top (assuming relatively equal health for the given teams) show a significant separation of the teams. it's definitely arguable. i can't help how the meida works. kareem, wilt, and russell are treated as these gods who no one can touch for the rest of eternity and to even suggest it is blasphemy. it's the same way past baseball idols get built up into untouchables. lets even say hakeem wasn't as good as russell (he was) and only won 5 or 7 titles with the celtics (no way you can argue for less) in a media darling market like boston, and even say russell somehow won the 2 titles with the rockets Hakeem did, are you saying hakeem wouldn't then be considered the bigger legend and have the bigger status as russell, even as a lesser player? it's not like hakeem can help where he played or how much the media decided to build him up (whether a player is better than another or not, these things are huge in overall perception of a players career). what are you talking about? he was in the damn finals and went to game 6 against one of the all-time teams there's ever been. just because he didn't run into a team like this years mavs or the nets from a few years ago or the knicks in 1994 doesn't mean he couldn't win. his wildness somehow got 27/12/3.5 in the playoffs, which are just huge numbers, and got him past another all-time team in the showtime lakers. it seemed to do just fine, even though his teams were outmatched. of course not, a 6-10 athletic freak made of steel couldn't hope to do what a 6-10 athletic freak like russell did. what basis is there for hakeem not rebounding like russell because i don't see it. what's the basis for that, though? hakeem dominated the boards and blocked shots and set up the fast break at UH. if he ever played on a team where he didn't even have to be the first or second option in the nba (which would basically mean he had jordan on his team) who says he wouldn't have done the same? he never played on a team that didn't need him to score as the #1 option to win. there was quite a bit of parity in the records but the celtics had the 2nd best record in the league before he got there. they coudn't have been that bad. "like Hakeem" meant as the sole post and scoring option, not "like Hakeem" as in Hakeem won more. so russell wasn't definitely the best defensive player of his era then? i really don't see how you're going to sit here and argue he won't go down as the best of his era? so they don't have hakeem's stats but i'm just supposed to accept that they'll be considered equals? by what rationale? those guys are like wilt to hakeem's russell. really nice, but not on that level. you are just slighting hakeem's versatility way too much and pretending he'd come into the celtics and just hog the ball until they couldn't win. they'd have all the blocks, steals, and rebounds they need from hakeem, and instead of getting whatever russell got on "x" number of shots, they'd get more from hakeem. or their jobs would be even easier if hakeem was drawing more attention (though without the double teams that exist today that might be somewhat moot). nevertheless, extrapolating that a guy brings the same D and better O and then saying the team would do worse seems wrong.
they held 5 straight under 70. and then lawrence frank fouled them at the end of the 6th game to get the ball back and score to give nj 71, which was kinda deserved because detroit was letting the air out of the ball all 4th quarter during that streak because they were blowing teams out. i think they averaged in the mid 80's during the streak. and so was big ben. he rebounds and blocks shots, then gets out of the way on O. everyone was a role player in a sense, but everyone was an above average player just short of all-star caliber or just above all-star caliber. that's how they won, with 5 really good starters, none all that much better than the others. so it's everyone's fault but ben wallace's? if you have a guy who is **** on offense, your offense will suffer, end of story. it's not like their D was only good b/c of big ben. having prince and his stretch armstrong arms out of the perimeter making it tough to drive helped (or making drives hard and making it easier to block the ensuing shot). having rip chasing people all over helps. having rasheed be as versatile a defensive player as there is with his ability to affect jump shots and also guard the post and affect those shots helps a lot. is big ben the centerpiece of the D? of course. but all of those guys made the defense better. just like all of their limitations hurt the O but big ben was the centerpiece of making it bad. yes, ben wasn't keeping a bunch of michael jordan's from scoring, but he wasn't helping the non-michael's any. it's garbage? aside from not leaving him completely open right underneath the basket, you basically don't have to account for him. just like ryan bowen (yes wallace can grab a board easier, but the effect is the same, you don't have to worry about him). he doesn't spread the floor and you can double team off of him assuming someone is within 5 feet of the basket to rebound. [qote]I'm starting to really dislike this PER stat.. It obviously rewards offense heavy players, but it has no way of rewarding defensive contributions, so it's a stat that measures offense, which is only a third of the game.[/quote] i'll grant that PER may not be perfect, but it is probably the truest all-in-one stat there is for basketball and is pretty good. it accounts for a bunch of different things and has a formula that has like 8 components, which include blocks, steals, offensive rating, defensive rating, and a bunch of other stuff that i can't even remember. true, PER makes david robinson look like a god among men and shaq managed to lead in PER for a long stretch (even in 1999 when he had 10.7 rpg and 1.7 bpg and was definitely not the best player in the league), and yao's PER last year was higher than hakeem's in his mvp season, but it's a good stat. it may be off 2-3 points here or there, but it accounts for a lot. i was not at all surprised that most of the pistons starting 5 was right around the same value for 3 years running, with billups at the high end and prince at the low end, and that all were slighly above league average (well prince was right at average). it's basically right in line with how they've been for these last few years. it also picked up on billups big season last year as he spiked from about 19 to 23. okay, ryan bowen is a complete zero. but ben is at most a 2. and i wouldn't be that surprised if they scored less either. they went way up last year while just humming along to 64 wins. even with everyone back i would've guessed they would slightly drop. however, since they completely cratered starting in game 3 against cleveland and started averaging 79 ppg the rest of that series and seem to have completely lost their mojo, i definitely see them dropping off around the board next year and think they would have even with everyone back.
Check out : http://www.databasebasketball.com/leaders/leadershof.htm (I got this link from the espn sports guy). It has a formula for figuring out the top players in the history of the nba (formula here: http://www.databasebasketball.com/about/abouthofm.htm) here are the top 15 players of all time, with Hakeem checking in as the 6th center: 1. Kareem Abdul-jabbar 833* 2. Michael Jordan 731 3. Wilt Chamberlain 639* 4. Bill Russell 628* 5. Magic Johnson 549* 6. Larry Bird 529* 7. Karl Malone 501 8. Bob Pettit 460* 9. Moses Malone 449* 10. Oscar Robertson 409* 11. Tim Duncan 407 12. Bob Cousy 364* 13. Shaquille O'neal 361 14. Hakeem Olajuwon 338 15. Jerry West 317* Hall of Fame worthiness (around 135) No formula can factor in all of the intangibles, but this one gives it a decent shot.
i think considering what hakeem as done he can be a valid candidate for the one of the top 5 centers of all time. it's hard to compare era's because basketball was so much different then. back then you could play no defence and get away with it, in hakeem's era defense was actually focused upon and he still got his. i dont think its fair to compare wilt's stats because you have to remember if he were in his prime now, he would not have been able to score his 40+pts a season and crazy 20+ rbs.
I think we need to start treating this like the Bible, and divide the NBA into two eras. With so much to consider it's just too difficult to gauge what players could do if placed in different eras, rules have changed, players have changed, coaching has become more advanced, defenses have improved dramatically, games have been added, playoffs intensified, we could go on. When do we make the break? Is The Larry,Magic,Michael era the way to go? 1978 onwards?
I really don't think some of you guys value what russell did as a player. when jumpman argues that he changed the game defenisvely, that is an understatement according to what older generations say. unfortunately that's what we have mainly to rely on. he basically invented the blocked shot a lot of you guys have been talking stats lately and possessions. a guy like russell with his rebounding and block shots took away an insane amount of possessions, and when you consider how poorly teams shot back then, the impact was that much greater. russell also had his freakish feats, I believe had a fifty rebound game. its a lot easier for his teamates on offense when they don't have to expend the energy on defense. and they don't have to expend it offense, because he started so many fast breaks. he also makes it easier when he probably gonna grab a miss. when you compare him to hakeem, his knowledge of the game is what separates the two. you guys deride his offensive skills, he averaged over 4 assists a game in his career. he averaged over 5 some years. he absolutely made his teamates better. hakeem may have been hampered with weak teamates through the late eighties, but hakeem was definitely a bull who did not pass out of double and triple teams much till the the late eighties and he probably didn't make the correct passes till the 92-93 season. russell just looking at the numbers was always the smarter passer. looking at his numbers I'm surprised that isn't mentioned more. ben wallace is really an unfair comparison, because its obvious russell had more offensive skills. ben isn't even a threat.
Why would Hakeem pass when he was hitting over 50% and his team mates were below par. I'm sure the coaches gave Hakeem the green light to go to town.
That's precisely why I'm using adjusted plus/minus (WINVAL) rankings - they measure how much impact he has on the team's performance when he's out there, and it seems, net of his offense, that while he is unquestionably valuable to the team, he is just not of the same value as the true superstars (and not as valuable as Rasheed was in his stint with the pistons that year). I also don't think Wallace is of the same calibre defensive intimidator as a Mutumbo, Eaton, Olajuwon, since he doesn't really change shots (due to the fact that he appears relatively undersized in the paint) so much as dare people to shoot then block them anyway.
There haven't been that many dominating rebounder/defenders. Russell, then Deke (who overachieved in his career), and Ben Wallace right? Then again, none of those guys were nearly as good as Russell. The bread and butter of the Pistons was defense and rebounding, Ben Wallace brought that, the other guys were there to score just enough to win, but the main thing was keeping the other team's point totals down because they were never going to win high scoring games. Because he wasn't... Wilt worried about his offense for too long, it wasn't until later in his career that he accepted the fact that defense and rebounding will help him win more than scoring 30 a game. That was not shown in the playoffs where teams were a missed shot here and there away from beating Boston. No it's not, why did the Pistons win? Winning is the goal in basketball, your talent is reflected in the amount of games you win even more than the amount of points you score or rebounds you grab, so yes, Hakeem would be the better player if he won more. But he didn't so there's no point in arguing that... Nobody needs to build up Russell, 11 rings and 5 MVPs should say it all, or Wilt, his stats, 4 MVPs and 2 rings should say it all. Yes, but he didn't really know what he was doing IMO, just pure talent and athleticism plus Ralph played a huge role in that run, opponents sometimes had answer for Hakeem or Sampson, but never for both. Well, Russell rebounded as well as Chamberlain, the best in his era, Hakeem was not as good as Dennis Rodman, the best in his era. I'm pretty sure he led those teams in scoring, with the Celtics he wouldn't have to, would he be ok with that? There were no #1 options on the Celtics for the most part, just a team on offense. And again, their roles were very specific, you can't take away from them and give to another guy without screwing up their balance and chemsitry. They weren't, they had Cousy, Sharman, Ramsey, and Ed Macauly (all Hall of Famers, Cousy an MVP), they could score like crazy but they were never going to win a championship because they were horrible defensively and in rebounding. For all that talent, did they ever get to the finals or even advance one round in the playoffs during those years? If you think about it the 60s were full of high scoring teams, everyone could score, what seperated everyone was defense and rebounding, if you could do that you were championship material, if not you were just going to lose to Russell or Chamberlain. He shouldn't have been with Wilt there but he was because Wilt cared too much about his numbers, even leading the league in assists was about him trying to prove that he can. I'm not going to argue for either of those guys but other people can make good arguments if they wanted to... I would say he was the best defensive player of his era, but that doesn't make it so, and it doesn't make him a better defensive player than Russell. You act like I think he would do that on purpose, Hakeem is just the type of player that thinks everything should go through him, Wilt was that type too, but that type was not needed on the Celtics. They wouldn't need him to score or draw attention for them, I think that would screw up the team chemistry, which is extremely important. He would have to do exactly what Russell did on the court, and be a leader off the court, which is something that Hakeem was not for the majority of his career. What about when Rasheed wasn't there? Or when Chauncey was Chauncey Billups the bust not Chauncey Billups one of the best point guards in the NBA. Or when Teyshaun was a rookie. Or when none of those guys were there. Ben Wallace helped in his own way, making them better scorers by giving them second looks, setting screens, but he was not the only player lacking offense. To this day they don't have a player that will give them 20 easy points a night or create a shot for someone else on command. Prince, Rip, Rasheed, and Chauncey were not there when the Pistons started winning 50 games a year. I can't see that... Rasheed Wallace being more important than Ben Wallace, they don't win the championship without him, but they don't even get close without Ben. Ben is the best of the best right now... Whatever he's doing is not as good as those guys, except for Eaton I would imagine, but what he does gets results, his team has been top three in defense for years now.
The top 3 centers are: 1. Wilt 2. Kareem 3. Hakeem or Russell Maybe hakeem only because Hakeem was a more complete player. 4. Moses 5. Shaq 6. David Robinson 7. Ewing
Yes, but even close to the extent they were in the 60s and 70s? Didn't think so. Defense was a relatively new concept back then, pace was frantic which increased posessions and most matchups looked like a modern day Phoenix vs. Phoenix matchup, exagerrating stats. Sprinting has and always will be sprinting. Changes in technique, nutrition... they'll give you a plus/minus of 0.5 from your natural ability. You can't compare that to the 60s ERA versus 80s+ ERA. 82 points in one game. He didn't average 50 ppg for an entire season. Kobe Bryant is a perimeter player. Ability to knock down three's, bring the ball down the court and take his own shots... the only big man close to 82 was Robinson, and for him to get 72 the Spurs basically had to cheat the ENTIRE game. LOL, Ben Wallace is overrated. I'll try to dig up the thread where I posted all the stats. He is by no means "great" today, and wouldn't be much more than a Charles Oakley if he played 10 years ago. Obviously Russell's game could work in today's NBA. But would he have the impact Hakeem had? Not saying much when you look at his ERA vs Hakeem's! The same "people" that consider him the best defensive player of all time thought the world was flat once upon a time. They don't know anymore than you or me. One more time: Hakeem had 9 All-Defense selections in the strongest era for centers, when guys like Mark Eaton were blocking 450 shots in a season. So it depends how heavily you weigh that against Russell who was the best defender of the ERA of no-defense. Would he be more than an All-Star if he played 20 years later? Without 9-10 HOF's? Where he would play against athletes on a nightly basis? When defense was much more emphasized by teams?
I dont understand the logic behind people placing Shaquille top 5. He is dominant, yes. But top 5 centers ever? It's kind of hard to give credit to that when he showed up so late to the party. He came into his prime when some of the greatest of the last true centers were on the downfall. So it was Shaq and thats it. Make Shaq a 1985-87 draft when he plays his prime years vs Jordan's Bulls, Hakeem's Rockets, Malone's Jazz, Payton's Sonics, Thomas' Pistons, Kareem/Magic's Lakers, Robinson's Spurs, Ewing's Knicks...Im not discrediting Shaq. But when you're more or less the *only* dominant center in the league (Yao can at least contend for that title now) that doesn't make you one of the best of all time. Hakeem had so much more to him than Shaq ever will. He had outside game, inside game, finesse, clutch shooting, defensive prowess.
Hakeem is also 'recognized' as the best defender of his ERA by those who played with and against him. Not Pippen, not Rodman, not Jordan. When people think of Hakeem they think of the dream shake and his finesse on offense. People don't remember the Hakeem of the 80's and early 90's, who was just a lethal defender. If he didn't have an offensive game, his defense would get alot more talk like Rodman.
He still played against tougher competition than Wilt and Russell, and maintained an extremely high PER from his days in Orlando (when he did face the Ewings, Robinsons and Hakeems).
Sam, I can't believe you use this argument for Shaq after you did the opposite against Wilt in the other thread.
