r/nba • u/Frosty_Salamander_94 • Sep 06 '26
Combining Math + Film Study: The Top 25 Single-Season Peaks Since 2000
This is a follow-up to my post discussing the best players of the 2025–26 season from a few months ago.
Several people asked in DMs where the top players from this season fit historically. Since this project evaluates every NBA season using the same underlying framework, I figured it would be useful to post my highest-graded single-season peaks of the 21st century. This is a project I started working on over a decade ago, which I've just recently updated to reflect the inclusion of the 2026 season.
The central question remains the same:
How much does this player increase a typical good team’s probability of winning the championship?
As in the original post, these estimates are produced through a synthesis of statistical evidence and film study. I will not make traditional arguments for players, and the goal is not to reward awards, big box score stats, team success, narrative, longevity, or career accomplishment.
It is to estimate the predictive championship value of a given season’s version of a player.
The methodology is identical to the one described in the original post (see link), so I will not repeat the full explanation here. This ranking uses the same offensive, defensive, and net-impact framework, calibrated to approximate added championship probability and adjusted for playoff portability, scalability with other talent, and contextual factors such as teams, schemes, coaching, etc.
Each player is listed in the following format:
Player (plausible ranking range) (OFF, DEF, NET)
The ranking range reflects uncertainty. A range of (2-8), for example, means that while I have the player ranked at a particular spot, I could construct reasonable optimistic or pessimistic arguments that would place him anywhere from second to eighth overall.
The point estimates should be read as estimated central values rather than exact measurements. Many players have overlapping probability distributions and are difficult to separate cleanly.
This year’s version of the list has two new entries: Victor Wembanyama and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who moved up from last year. We also have a new candidate -- Cade Cunningham -- who I do not have on the final list, but who belongs in the next category of players with a reasonable argument to be on it.
General interpretation of NET estimates
- 7.0+ — GOAT-level peak; roughly a top 2 peak since the 1977 merger
- 6.0+ — All-time great peak; roughly a top 10-12 peak since 1977
- 5.4–6.0 — Strong MVP-level season
- 4.6–5.4 — Solid MVP-level season
- 4.0–4.6 — Weak MVP-level season
- 3.0+ — Solid All-NBA-level season
- 1.5+ — All-Star-level season
Ex. ‘XX–‘YY Player Name (plausible ranking range) (offense, defense, net)
- ‘13 LeBron James (1–2) (5.6, 1.6, 7.2)
- ‘00 Shaquille O’Neal (1–6) (5.2, 1.4, 6.6)
- ‘16 Stephen Curry (2–9) (6.2, 0.1, 6.3)
- ‘25 Nikola Jokić (2–9) (6.2, 0.1, 6.3)
- ‘04 Kevin Garnett (2–9) (2.8, 3.4, 6.2)
- ‘03 Tim Duncan (2–12) (3.0, 3.1, 6.1)
- ’26 Victor Wembanyama (3-14) (2.3, 3.6, 5.9)
- ’09 Dwyane Wade (3–12) (5.1, 0.7, 5.8)
- ‘22 Giannis Antetokounmpo (5–17) (3.2, 2.5, 5.7)
- ’08 Kobe Bryant (6–17) (5.1, 0.5, 5.6)
- ’16 Kevin Durant (6–17) (5.0, 0.6, 5.6)
- ‘24 Joel Embiid (5–18) (3.8, 1.8, 5.6)
- ’17 Kawhi Leonard (7-18) (4.2, 1.3, 5.5)
- ‘26 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (7–18) (5.0, 0.5, 5.5)
- ‘16 Chris Paul (8–20) (4.5, 0.8, 5.3)
- ‘07 Steve Nash (8-20) (5.6, −0.3, 5.3)
- ‘09 Dirk Nowitzki (9–20) (4.9, 0.3, 5.2)
- ‘20 Anthony Davis (10–22) (2.2, 2.8, 5.0)
- ‘24 Luka Dončić (15–23) (5.1, −0.3, 4.8)
- ‘03 Tracy McGrady (15–24) (4.6, 0.2, 4.8)
- ‘19 James Harden (17–24) (4.9, −0.3, 4.6)
- ‘05 Manu Ginóbili (18–25) (3.5, 0.9, 4.4)
- ’16 Draymond Green (19–29) (1.1, 3.2, 4.3)
- ’11 Dwight Howard (19–29) (1.6, 2.6, 4.2)
- ’25 Jayson Tatum (22–32) (2.9, 1.0, 3.9)
Honorable Mentions: Jason Kidd, Russell Westbrook, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Damian Lillard, Deron Williams, Pau Gasol, Baron Davis, Cade Cunningham, Jalen Brunson, Allen Iverson
In my view, all of these players have a case to make the list if I take an optimistic, yet still reasonable, view on their uncertainties while holding everyone else constant. Kidd, Westbrook, Butler, and George were my toughest cuts; I think they could reasonably be placed as high as #22 or #23. The remaining nine I could see at #25, but not higher than that.
Happy to answer any questions, as always. Some were asked in the original post, feel free to check that out as well.
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u/LeftSide208 Sep 06 '26
Curry and Jokic being #3 and #4 just off of their offense is pretty impressive
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u/rorank Rockets Sep 06 '26
Yep, I noticed they were the only players with a 6.0+ rated offensive season. They’re fucking monsters.
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u/GrenScrin Sep 06 '26
Each player can appear at most only once? (Otherwise LeBron should appear a few more times?)
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26
Yup, one peak per player. Otherwise we'd have a list dominated by the top 6 guys, especially LeBron.
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u/GrenScrin Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
You should make this clear in your above post. Otherwise it's confusing as to why LeBron appears only once, and Ginóbili and Draymond Green appear at all.
(And personally I would prefer to just see the best player-seasons. Instead of having this "one peak per player" rule.)
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u/Over_Army_2877 Sep 08 '26
its pretty obvious by the word "peak" and the fact that multi time MVP's aren't on there multiple times.
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u/xbhaskarx Spurs Sep 06 '26
Can you post that other full list as well? Even if it is dominated by LeBron
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u/AtmaWeap0n 17d ago
can you do a top peaks including repeats for the same player? pretty sure that would be more relevant
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u/contigency000 Sep 06 '26
'05 Manu at 22nd show how much of a wild card he was, when everyone else on the list was MVP tier at their peak
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u/Proper_Glass8308 Sep 06 '26
Manu was absolutely one of the best players in the world at his peak. His scoring, playmaking, and defense were all top notch. If he played for any other team in the NBA, he would have started.
Notice he has the highest defensive rating on the list of any guard. Sneaky good with his hands, really good with positioning.
If you give him a starting role with star usage, he would have put up MVP type numbers
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u/lialialia20 Timberwolves Sep 06 '26
ginobili started every single game of the 05 regular season and his 26.3 usage is equal to shaq's 04 usage.
usage in a 2 stars team is never going to be as high as a team with one clear star. but also tony parker was getting way more possessions than he shoud've because pop was a traditionalist and pg gets the ball.
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u/notcrowsmad Spurs Sep 06 '26
It's really interesting that this says that 1, Draymond was a borderline MVP level player in his prime and 2, That his defense was as valuable as all time great defensive centers.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I love some Draymond appreciation but it's such a massive disconnect from general consensus. If I went into any sub and said Draymond was an MVP level player and that he was better than offensive stars like say Anthony Edwards I would be told I don't know ball or called a troll by half the comments section.
In general though there is this interesting relationship between how much a person "knows ball" (I can't think of a better term) and how highly they rate Draymond. I consistently see that the more of basketball historian is and the more of an analytics nerd a person is and the more film a person watches the higher they rate Draymond.
I cannot think of a single other athlete where the correlation between how much a person studies the game and how highly they rate the athlete is so strong. I guess it makes sense because none of the things Draymond is great at really make big box score numbers, and that kind of player is usually underrated.
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
I couldn't agree more.
There's a famous concept in cognitive science called the tyranny of the quantifiable. The idea is that we choose to track things that are easy to track, and the more we track something the more weight we give it in our minds. We give it all-importance and allow it to shape the way we view the sport, even though it was an arbitrary choice to track some things and not others made back in the early 1900s by people we've never heard of. And when we allow these ideas to take root in our heads, all we want to do is track them more; and so they grow even more important.
One example is the (defensive) rebound, which simply doesn't provide much informational value in today's NBA. More than ever, rebounds fall into a player's hands with no contest (i.e. a replacement-level player would grab that same rebound, so no value is added), and whether a player is in position to collect rebounds is highly dependent on their role, the coach's scheme, whether the team likes to leak out, etc. Yet we look at a 30/10/10 box score and say that that player must be better than the player who averages 30/5/10.
But it's all the things we don't track that are critical to evaluating Draymond. Much like KG, he's a threat detection system unto himself, essentially a home alarm system. It's hard to see all the things that don't happen on a play. When the PG gets blown by on the perimeter and James Wiseman, or even great defenders like Dwight Howard, react a step too late and have to commit a foul because they're out of position, it's difficult for the casual fan to observe what would've happened if it were Draymond reacting with the ball-handler, rather than to the ball-handler, instead. Likewise, when Draymond makes an incredible anticipatory play by playing chicken with drivers in a 2v1 with a big in the dunker spot, we don't see the lob that would've been thrown over a less aware defender. Perhaps if we could track these plays and called them something cool like "saves" and stuck them in the box score instead of rebounds, we'd give them more import in our minds. But it's difficult both in data and in film to see these things to the untrained, or unwilling, eye.
To answer your question more precisely, I do think he's a historically great defender. Gun to my head, I'd probably have him 2nd among all defensive players since 2000, to the aforementioned KG. Certainly no lower than 4th or 5th, as I think Wallace and Duncan are in the mix too. And he's a revolutionary short roll big man on offense, since there is almost no historical comparison of someone who is big enough to set the screen, fast enough to preserve the 4 on 3, and a good enough passer to make every pass out of that action. He's a ceiling-raising type of offensive player, much like a toned-down Jason Kidd on offense.
In my evaluation of him, I had him as the 6th best player in the league in 2016, just breaking into that low-level MVP range where you will occasionally see someone (with bigger box score stats, of course) win the actual award.
Most plus-minus signals will corroborate this; for example, over 3-year samples, he has the 15th-best pure RAPM peak since 1997. If you zoom in on a stat like EPM that takes in some more tracking data as well, he was 5th in 2016.
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u/notcrowsmad Spurs Sep 06 '26
All true. It also helps that the warriors are the perfect kind of team for Draymond's strengths to matter a lot.
Related to that, here's a kinda weird question that's hard to answer.
Who's the best player since say the merger where replacing Draymond with them would make the 2017 warriors worse?
Usually people will assume replacing a dude who almost averages a triple single with an all time great offensive player will massively improve a team essentially regardless of context, but there's a case to be made the warriors needed Draymond more than they needed even more offensive talent.
If I had to guess your answer I would guess that the best player where replacing Draymond with them them clearly makes the 2017 warriors worse is Harden and the best player where you could maybe argue replacing Draymond with them could arguably make the warriors worse would be the best offensive players ever who aren't good defenders, maybe Jokic?
Maybe I'm totally wrong though with those guesses IDK. I'm curious though.
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
That's such a great question!
I think I can do better than Harden. Adding another small guard, especially a super ball-dominant guard like Steve Nash would make them worse -- I'm pretty confident in that. Similarly, SGA. Shai is the ultimate pinnacle of that Allen Iverson idea, where if you have no other good offensive players and need one guy to do all the heavy lifting, he's almost as good as you can get. But I think if you surround him with Curry and Durant, I'm sure you're not gaining the marginal value on offense you'd need to make up for the defensive loss.
Those are players I'm pretty certain would make them worse. If I want to make an argument that they'd be worse... I could easily make the argument for Wade, but we can do better. Jokic is interesting, but I think he would be a better fit than Magic Johnson; with Magic I think there's a really good argument they'd be worse.
But I think the home run argument is Shaq. Of all the all-time greats, he's easily the one I'd be most concerned about playing in the modern era. I think he'd get destroyed defensively by all the spread PnR and pull-up shooting in today's game. He would have the potential to be such a massive negative defensively that I kind of think I actually would make this argument that they would be worse. I can't imagine him trying to guard the '17 or '18 Rockets, I think Harden would absolutely rip him to shreds. Or the '17 Cavs with LeBron-ball. He just would not have the motor or mobility to get out there. Think of big lumbering centers today who are weak on the perimeter like Jokic or Embiid, and scale it up by an order of magnitude.
Offensively, they'd of course be great with Shaq, but I don't know how much he's adding with that post offense in an era in which running through the post is such a relic, especially in such a read-and-react system. I'm sure he'd still be a great offensive player, but especially considering that you're taking away Draymond's passing, you might also have a fairly weak passing team, which isn't a good formula for that type of motion offense. Shaq + Steph is commonly cited as an all-time offensive pair, but I also wonder what gravity really looks like when it goes in both directions.
Just for the sake of the thought experiment, I think it's highly unlikely they'd improve by more than a handful of points per game on offense in a playoff sample (if much at all), while I could reasonably see the defense going from the #1 defense in the playoff field to a poor, and perhaps terrible, unit.
I think Shaq, who I literally have as my 3rd-highest graded peak ever, would be the answer to both questions (could make an argument, and would make an argument).
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u/notcrowsmad Spurs Sep 06 '26
So basically you're saying Shaq couldn't play defense in the modern NBA because, to oversimplify it, to slow.
I never in a million years thought the answer to the question would be an all time great center who led the league in blocks multiple times and was a runner up for DPOY.
Ok, totally different questions.
When people make all time starting 5's, The general first thought is you take the general consensus goat by position. Which gives you a lineup up Kareem, Duncan, Lebron, MJ, Magic.
Then people replace Kareem with Shaq because Peak Shaq has a reputation as the most dominant player ever, and then they replace magic with Steph because he's a better fit.
That leaves you with Wemby's starting 5 and what's probably the most common all time starting 5 of Steph MJ Lebron Duncan Shaq.
So question is, do you think that all time starting 5 is good? I know that answer depends on the era, so I would ask if it's good in the context of the 1990's NBA and the 2020's NBA, since it's probably 2 different questions and answers.
I've always questioned that lineup a ton in the context of the modern NBA because it has 2 players who can't shoot 3's at all. And TBH I'm not to sure on MJ and Lebron being great 3 point shooters either. Frankly outside of Steph the whole lineup is mediocre from 3.
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
This is interesting too.
I think Wemby's lineup is a really good 5-man lineup, for sure, and especially in the 90s. In the 2020s, we might have some more problems because we have two drop coverage bigs who are essentially redundant. Duncan can do more in terms of movement, but even he was getting cooked in the PnR by Nash in '07, so he'd be in some trouble too (but to a much lesser degree than Shaq). LeBron is not what you need in that case; you'd want a guy who can really get out there and hound guards at the PoA, more like a Kawhi or Paul George. Not another backline defender.
Offensively, I think it's incredible in the '90s and still very, very good in the 2020s. The lack of 3pt shooting isn't ideal and we certainly can improve the lineup, but I'm probably not as concerned about it as you might think. Because Shaq can pass well out of the post and because of his gravity, he synergizes incredibly well with dynamic slashing guards like Jordan/Kobe/Wade. (If it were a lesser version of his archetype like Dwight Howard who couldn't pass at all, this wouldn't work so well.) I really the Curry-Jordan-Shaq trio. LeBron may not be ideal, but if I take the '13 version of him, I could totally see him slotting in as an opportunistic mismatch attacker / extra passing / some of the primary ball handling. We really just want to replace the Duncan spot on both ends on the court, redundant defensively and offensively.
I don't think it's ideal in either the '90s or 2020s, but I'd say it's an extremely good two-way lineup in the '90s and that's where it's a better fit. In the 2020s, I still think you'll have a very good offense (even if we can do a bit better), but I have a lot of concerns about defending at the point of attack and on the perimeter. Same issue, how do we guard the Morey-ball Rockets, or '17 Cavs, or '17 Warriors?
Alright, let's try to do better. We'll prioritize extremely scalable skills that retain their value next to other high-end talent: size, shooting, passing, IQ.
For that reason, in the '90s, Curry, Jordan, and Bird are staples in the lineup. All being great off-ball players, with Curry and Bird being 2 of the 3 best ever (hello Reggie Miller). I do think Shaq is a great fit. Then we need one more guy, ideally a forward can defend on the perimeter and at the PoA, and provide maybe some shooting and/or passing on offense. Scottie Pippen would be a candidate here (but I want more shooting), Kawhi (but I want more passing), and Kevin Garnett (but I want more PoA defense). I kid you not, I think I'm picking Paul George and transporting him back to the '90s. Incredible at hounding guards on the perimeter and navigating screens for his size, provides some extra rim protection because he's huge, has the freaky shooting for the era, and gives you more passing and aforementioned rim protection than Kawhi.
I think my best submission for the best possible '90s lineup would be '16 Curry, '91 Jordan, '86 Bird, '14 George ('14 version -- peak defense and slashing too), '00 Shaq. There are other avenues, but this is the best I can think of, I think, off the top of my head.
In the 2020s, Curry is still a lock for the team. Shaq is out for the reasons I talked about last time, defensive problems. Duncan is out too, losing defensive and offensive value from his peak. I'm hesitant with Bird because of the lack of foot speed. Let's take him out, and use that slot on a guy who can guard out there. We're gonna go smaller and put Kevin Garnett at center. Very scalable on offense, has the shooting and passing, and likely the best defender of the 2000s (until Wemby, probably). Wemby himself is a candidate here, but I prefer KG on offense in this context. I still think we should get Michael Jordan on the team. So we need to fill the two forward spots. I do think 2013 LeBron becomes a really strong candidate now -- let's put him on since he fills our needs: an all-time passer / extra passer and a great cutter who can fit in a motion offense with Curry, provides some extra slashing and backline defense, and can do the IQ mind-meld with KG. Now we need a movement shooter, since LeBron had a great shooting season that year, but he's not the type to run around screens. Again, Kawhi Leonard is a serious option, since he gives us the shooting and perimeter defense -- but I don't want another isolation scorer. I'm going back to the well for Paul George, and we get a second movement shooter after Curry, a second dominant perimeter defender with Jordan, and some more size on the backline which gives us great positional versatility. Durant was an option if I took this a different direction, but not with this construction since we need perimeter defense and PG mauls guards at the PoA. Except for this team construction, we are taking '19 Paul George, trading off a bit of perimeter defense for the maxed-out movement shooter that he became. We still have Jordan for PoA, '19 George is still quite good at it, and LeBron and KG can easily switch onto the perimeter as well. So I care more about the shooting for this version of the team.
So my final submission for the 2020s is Curry '16, Jordan '91, Paul George '19, LeBron '13, KG '04.
Who knew I'd have Paul George in my all-time lineups? Lol
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u/notcrowsmad Spurs Sep 06 '26
Often times I have thought that with the incredible amount of talent that an all time lineup has, 1 of the players would be somebody who is less talented but has a skillset that can fully be useful even if they don't have the ball, the kind of player who would be a candite for the greatest role player ever if they weren't so good they don't even qualify as a role player.
In the 90's I have thought that player might be Rodman. In the 2020's I thought it might be Klay Thomson. Never in my life did I even think of Paul George lmao.
I do wonder how a lineup that is absolutely stacked with 3 point shooting and passing talent would do in the 2020's. A lineup like Steph Klay Lebron Bird Jokic.
Taking the highest 3pt% season of all of those players all 5 of them are 40% 3pt shooters and the average between them is like 42%. And then 60% of the lineup is maybe the 3 best passers ever that aren't point guards.
Speaking of I'm surprised Klay hasn't been mentioned to any capacity during this conversation, You would think he would have came up by now in some way. How high do you have him ranked in 2016? Is he close to Draymond at all?
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Haha!
Yeah, that's definitely a great offensive lineup. Probably almost as good as you get get offensively. To get a little more slashing and even better shooting I'd replace Klay with Reggie Miller, and I think Steph, Reggie, LeBron, Bird, Jokic is one of the best offensive lineups you could put out there in the 2020s. Maybe replace LeBron with Jordan (we already have the guy who's very likely the best passer ever with Jokic, and Bird who's in the mix for top 5) and that would be my submission for best possible offensive lineup? Curry, Miller, Jordan, Bird, Jokic.
I'm admittedly not the biggest Klay guy. I think he's a good perimeter defender at his peak, but I don't love his awareness or team-level defense, so I don't think he's a great defender. I'd have him as a positive, but not an All-Defense candidate or anything.
Offensively, he's a great shooter, but I was always a bit frustrated with his shot diet; he took a lot of midrange shots and rarely got to the rim or the line, and that kept his efficiency from getting to that crazy 'blippy-ness' I would want to see in a perfect offensive situation like he had. His best scoring stretch was about 22-23 pts/ 75 possessions (per game, essentially, adjusted for pace) on maybe +5% or +6% rTS relative to the league average. That's good, but I'm not blown away. Then, passing is a weakness for him, and he offers little rim pressure even at his peak.
Again, his shooting is really good, but it's heavily influenced by the offensive context he played in: his best three-year stretch of 3pt shooting is 43%, which is a home run and stacks up well against everybody. But to illustrate what I'm saying, from 2015 to 2019 with Steph on the bench, he took over 1000 threes and hit them at... 38%. Then it's also a strange signal that such a great shooter only peaks around 85-86% from the line over a decent sample. I love his movement and the way he gets into his shot, his quick fire release, etc. but all of this is to say I think he's more like a top 15 or top 20 all-time shooter (relative to era) rather than a candidate for the best shooter ever.
Pretty similar as a player from 2015-2019; if I had to pick a peak year, I'd pick 2016, and I personally had him 12th in the league that year with an argument to be as high as about 8th if you take a bit more optimistic view than I do.
That year, I graded him at +2.5 off / +0.5 def / +3.0 net, so right around the area of being an All-NBA level player. Surrounding seasons in '15 and '17-'19 are perhaps a bit off that but not much worse at all.
I don't see any argument that he was as good or impactful as Draymond was, though. To me, Draymond is in a different tier of impact, breaking into that low-level MVP zone at his peak.
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u/notcrowsmad Spurs Sep 06 '26
It's funny to see you write like 3 paragraphs justifying you being lower on Klay than most people and basically giving the most negative view of him you reasonably can, and then you rank him as the 12th best player in the league.
I know it's been repeated a million times but it just shows how insanely talented the 2017 warriors were. The pessimistic view of their 4th best player is he was the 12th best player in the league. And the more optimistic view is they had the 2nd,3rd,6th, and 8th best players in the league.
Also you say that 6.0+ is arguably a top 10-12 peak since the merger and Wemby is at 5.9. It's nice to see that people who actually know stats and math and stuff are on the Wemby hype train. If he keeps improving he's on pace to have a top 10 peak post merger in approximately 2 months. At the ripe old age of 22.
How does he compare to other players this young or near this young? Like rookie MJ or third year Lebron?
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 08 '26
I think Wemby's aging curve is interesting in that players who get most of their value from defense tend to peak earlier (defense usually peaks younger), so the rate at which Wemby improves offensively is going to determine where his ultimate peak lands. That is to say, I could easily see a world where he improves significantly on offense in the next 1-2 years and has what I would consider a GOAT-level peak; but I can also see a world where he's actually close to his peak right now if he's not too far from his offensive ceiling already, meaning that even if he makes improvements they could be (partially) offset by a defensive decline over time. Both of these outcomes are highly plausible to me, although I think the former is probably a bit more likely.
As it stands, '26 Wemby already has my 12th-highest graded peak since the merger, with a plausible high-end evaluation of about 4th or 5th and a plausible low-end evaluation around 21st or 22nd. (Confidence intervals look really wide when we take all the legends since the merger and throw them into the same pool -- the NBA is getting to be an old game with a lot of greats!)
He might have the best age 22-or-younger peak since the merger. I'd consider him quite far ahead of rookie Jordan (solid All-NBA level for me) or fourth-year '07 LeBron (weak MVP). I think Shaq, at age 22 in 1995, was already a strong MVP level player in a similar range to Wemby. Larry Bird probably has my nomination for best rookie season ever; he breaks into my strong MVP level as a rookie, but he was 23. I had Tim Duncan in '99 as a solid MVP at age 22, then a strong MVP the next year at 23. Those are probably the best peaks around that age range, unless I'm missing someone off the top of my head!
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u/fatkamp Warriors Sep 06 '26
You’re right, and being a warriors fan you see it clear as day yet people think you’re being biased
Level one is thinking he’s more impactful than Klay ever was
Level two is thinking he was more important than Wiggins in the 2022 run
And level 3 is knowing in 2016 he was arguably a top 5-6 player in the league. The analytics adore him because he makes 5-10 game changing plays a game, constantly sets up better offensive players, and pre 2018 was actually a multi level scorer
The hate for the person, the lack of scoring, and recent fall due to age cloud peoples judgment
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u/sctthuynh [GSW] Stephen Curry Sep 06 '26
The reason 2016 Draymond is ranked so highly is because he was one of the best team and individual defenders in NBA history.
It was also the one and only season he actually was a good 3 point shooter.
But perhaps most important was his synergy and perfect partnership with Steph. Draymond minutes (on/off) were nearly identical with Steph. This makes it very hard to accurately differentiate his impact.
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u/amashouse Warriors Sep 06 '26
Honestly, I use people’s opinion on Draymond, as a player, to gauge for how well they truly know ball. He’s a terrible person, but he is almost as important as a pioneer of the modern day small ball 3 point era as Curry, because of his defense and playmaking skillset. Man’s ball IQ is crazy high, it’s just too bad that he has low EQ that causes him to punch teammates and kick nuts lol
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u/Mental-Turnover-3842 Sep 06 '26
people don’t think rubio was a top 15 player itl in 2014-16
people don’t think manu was the best player on the spurs from 05-07
people still don’t think franz is better (understatement) than paolo
people don’t think guys like george hill, eric bledsoe or nikola mirotic had AS level peaks
people don’t think a lot of stuff2
u/lialialia20 Timberwolves Sep 06 '26
ginobili wasn't really the best player of the spurs until 08-11.
his rise over duncan in 05 (more than obvious during the playoffs) has got more to do with duncan recovering from the injury he picked mid season.
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u/TreeLankaPresidente Lakers Sep 06 '26
08 Kobe was better bc he was contributing to winning, but 06 Kobe was just a fucking demon. Triple teamed the whole game and still giving people 50.
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26
To be honest, I think '06-'08 is all really similar for Kobe. Most of the difference in style of play, I think, is more about team construction and the limitations/strengths of the players around him than any change in his own skillset. That is, if you took '06 Kobe and put him on the '08 Lakers team to replace '08 Kobe, I think you'd get essentially the same player and results. Just took on more offensive load in '06 because it was what the team required of him.
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u/mr_mope 76ers Sep 06 '26
I guess I’m confused at the methodology. Do you, OP, select the uncertainty rank? How is this “film study” done, with tracking data or do you watch the film which is inherently biased (even if well informed)? How is this list any more insightful than some “eye test” or any other less involved statistical approach that gets posted on here? I feel like I could have made almost this exact same list with the same constraints and much less statistical analysis. I don’t have any quibbles with the order, mostly since I only find so much joy in ranking the same players over and over again, just curious. Also I read your other post and still don’t really know.
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u/McScroggz12 Lakers Sep 06 '26
This looks very much like the thinking basketball list plus Wemby. How does it compare?
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u/Baluba95 Sep 06 '26
Who are the players with the biggest difference in offensive and defensive peak timing/impact, and how higher would an offensive peak + defensive peak be? I assume Kawhi and Giannis would be materially higher if we could combine their offensive and defensive peaks separately, and maybe Kobe too?
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u/NotUrAvgShitposter Warriors Sep 06 '26
Why do you value defense so much? That 5-10 range is absurd. Also Harden at 21 and being able to be placed as low as 24 is an obvious outlier considering how he compared against his peers during his prime
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Funny, I just answered a comment saying I don't value defense enough.
The short answer is that I'm not arbitrarily assigning value. Ultimately, I value what is valuable as revealed by decades of adjusted plus-minus data. Turns out that for the best defenders, defense is quite valuable. There's a little bonus effect, too, in that you don't need to worry so much about redundancies like you do on offense, where there's only one ball and diminishing marginal returns are a bigger factor.
Harden being that low comes down to methodology and the question I'm answering. If the NBA were like a pennant race and all that mattered were the regular season, I could see him being 10 (!) spots higher, just because he absolutely destroys the bottom half of the league. But since I'm trying to answer the question of who is most likely to win a championship when placed on a random team, I have serious questions about both his extreme ball-dominance and his scoring in playoff contexts, when a coach can scheme against him for a full series. (I can talk plenty more on this, but check out his drop from games 1-3 to games 4-7 in playoff series.) Part of this is the difference in physicality and the whistle he gets, part is his limitations as passer going right to left (although he's an excellent passer in general), part is his lack of elevation on jumpers and inability to get to an in-between game, etc.
If you want a +/- data point, his 3 year AuPM/g peak in the playoffs is +4.8, which is 24th since 1997. Certainly reflective of a superstar-quality player, but not an especially high peak in this historical sense.
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u/TheRealPdGaming Mavericks Sep 06 '26
Statistically, isn't 2009 LeBron way above 2013.
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u/Basic_Mastodon3078 Knicks Sep 06 '26
In some ways yes, in some ways no. It's kinda a deadheap between the two. And I think 2013 LeBron was someone who was more of a winner in the eye test because he had a more complete skill set. Becoming a far greater playmaker, defender and jump shooter to combine with his still insane athleticism and general scoring.
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u/iggymcfly Sep 06 '26
Seems a bit overweighted toward offense to me. I find it hard to believe 16 of the 25 guys have offensive peaks that are more valuable than the best defensive season. Draymond does seem a little bit low too so that gibes with an overly strong offensive emphasis.
Overall it looks like a very good list though. I did my own list of the top 15 or so this century a few months ago, and I feel like the general shape of your list is pretty similar to mine. Looks like you put in some real effort to get it right.
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Thanks!
On your first point, we have some significant historical research that shows that in any given season, the defense of the best defensive player is roughly equivalent in value to the offense of maybe the 8th-10th best offensive player, and the defense of the 8th-10th best defender equivalent to the offense of maybe the 30th-best offensive player.
If you look at historical adjusted +/- studies, you will see a similar trend. Adjusted +/- data that can be found easily at nbarapm.com has 15 offensive players having a better 5-yr O-RAPM than the leader in 5-yr D-RAPM, Kevin Garnett, for a quick example. That's been tracked since 1997, a timeframe similar to the scope of my list.
Likewise, the historical ceiling of offensive RAPM exceeds 1.5x that of defensive RAPM. My valuations have the best offensive players ever just clearing +6 points per game of value, with the best defenders of the 3pt era approaching +4.
In my view, this tilt towards offense is unsurprising and in fact exactly what you'd expect based on all the data we have access to. A superstar offensive player has a much higher offensive load than any player has defensive usage, since the offense controls who has the ball. In the case of a star player on offense, you put the ball in their hands; you want to keep the ball AWAY from a defensive star.
Draymond seeming a bit low is a refreshing take to hear. I seemingly always get the opposite, so you might even be higher on him than I am.
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u/freshprince44 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Elite defensive bigs impact the entirety of most defensive possessions though. Like, you have elite offensive players not on here due to having poor teammates around them, but those same players showing up highly when surrounded by elite teammates and defenders. If offense really was so much more important then that wouldn't really be the case, right? We give way too much credit to the guy controlling the ball and collecting the stats vs the holistic team dynamic that requires elite defense the vast majority of the time for a team to perform at an elite level
i think this bias is more in line with how statkeeping and casual analysis works in general. Offense is much easier to track, so we rate it as more important, while defense is more nebulous and lacking in hard statistics, and thus not considered as important
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
The tyranny of the quantifiable! You stated it exactly -- a major pillar of cognitive science, a hobby of mine.
Completely agree that what we choose to track, and what can easily be measured, influences what we give weight to in our minds, and in turn that leads us to track it even more. Rebounds in the modern game are a great example of this. Because we added it to the traditional slash line, we give it all-importance in our minds and over time value it even more despite it being less valuable than ever.
I agree with you entirely on the substantive point about statkeeping, but I think adjusted +/- data across decades and player archetypes is our best anchor for knowing exactly how much to value, say, elite rim protection in the 3pt era vs. elite offensive creation. We do have a body of data that tells us roughly how to value these things independent of the box score, and I think the evidence is strongly against the idea that the best defenders have comparable impact to the very best offensive players.
Elite defensive bigs can influence possessions without recording anything. They deter attempts at the rim, change driving angles, alter where offenses initiate actions, allow perimeter defenders to play more aggressively, and generally affect the geometry of the possession. A box score is obviously going to miss a lot of that, but that doesn’t imply that the best defenders should necessarily be as valuable as the best offensive players.
That part is an empirical question, and adjusted plus-minus is useful precisely because it does not require the value to appear in traditional statistics. And across a large historical sample, the upper tail of offensive impact is larger than the upper tail of defensive impact.
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u/freshprince44 Sep 06 '26
cheers, what a wonderful response!
this makes me curious then if there is just more of a gap in impact between elite elite offensive players vs great/good/average and elite elite defensive players vs great/good/average
or is it scheme and fit and chemistry in combination with these things? appreciate you putting all this together and explaining details so well!
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26
Thank you, and that's a great question! It's an interesting one to think about.
I think in absolute terms there is more of a gap between elite vs good offensive players than elite vs good defensive players because the distribution is wider, but in relative terms I think it's fairly proportional.
This is very rough, but if we look at a stat like raw adjusted plus-minus from nbarapm.com and take the average of the top five 5-yr RAPM peaks on each side of ball divided by, say, the 25th best peak on record on each side, we get a ratio of 1.56 for offense and 1.47 for defense. That would be comparing a GOAT-level offensive player like Curry or Jokic to merely a high All-NBA or weak MVP one.
Intuitively, I think that checks out for me. I'm old-fashioned, so I still think about All-Defense teams by position (otherwise it should be all big men!), but usually about +1 point of value per game is where I start thinking about all-league level defensive consideration for wings, a little lower for guards and higher for bigs. In a given season there might be 20 deserving players, which is generally roughly the amount of offensive players I would consider All-Star level (1.5+ in my categorization) by virtue of offense alone, even if they all had neutral defense. think that ratio of roughly 1.5-1.7x value might hold all the way down, on average.
Interestingly, before the 3pt line, it was entirely different. You might be interested to know that for a defender such as Bill Russell, based on WOWY (game-level signals, since we didn't track play-by-play data before 1997) and other indicators, there's good reason to think that alone among all defenders in NBA history, he may have been the one to accrue value comparable to the best offensive players ever. To put a number on it, since the 1977 merger, my top graded offensive players are Curry and Jokic at +6.2, and my top graded defensive is Hakeem nearing +4 in his best defensive season. Because we don't have robust data or film from back then, there's a lot of uncertainty, but my best guess is that Russell was worth about +5.5-6 points per game of defensive value. In my evaluation, he was similar if not slightly ahead of Hakeem per possession, and behind Curry/Jokic offensively per possession, but because they played so many possessions back then he accrues enough value over the course of a game to reach the level near the offensive GOATs.
Lot of rambling, haha. This was an interesting topic!
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u/freshprince44 Sep 06 '26
This is awesome! Very appreciate the rambling lol. That is cool that it grades out pretty evenly for both sides of the ball. Also all about giving Russell more love again, dude never should have dropped on people's alltime lists
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26 edited 27d ago
'Like, you have elite offensive players not on here due to having poor teammates around them, but those same players showing up highly when surrounded by elite teammates and defenders. If offense really was so much more important then that wouldn't really be the case, right?'
On this, I think the takeaway is not that offense isn't more important, but that a supporting cast in its entirety (including coaching, front office quality, etc.) is of more import than the star alone. That is, of all the causal factors that determine the probability of winning a championship, the supporting cast controls more of them than the star does. While many like to say that you cannot win without a superstar, a superstar also cannot win without a team around him. If you put '91 Michael Jordan on a team with a -12 net rating, you don't even get a neutral team; no player has ever been worth more than about 9 points per game of conditional value, even in an ideal fitting context, to any team.
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u/freshprince44 Sep 06 '26
I totally agree and have long held this opinion (wolves fan that watched KG carry garbage teams with bad benches and mediocre coaching really drove that home). Like Kobe wasn't any worse in 06 than he was in 08, but 06 was a borderline playoff team with less statistical impact while 08 was a finals team with much more impact. Same with KG. He was an alltime elite player on both ends for years and years, he just finally got to play with 34 year old Cassell and put up an alltime season even with 2 bad starters next to him lol
this is my biggest basketball bugaboo, results oriented thinking dominates WAY too much. i'm older, but i really remember and cherished how guys older than me would talk about players like oscar and jerry west and nate thurmond (and moncrief and gervin and artis gilmore) and whatnot being alltime greats without just listing their championships and accolades, but by talking about their games and how they played. Like yeah, you play to win, but somebody has to lose too, and its a team game, the whole team contributes win or lose. again, appreciate you and the thoughtful response!
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26
Totally. Winning a championship is like filling up a gas tank or a meter; you need to be ahead of the league by X amount to be a championship-level team, but no star is worth anywhere near X on his own. Statistically, championship winners are overwhelmingly positive net rating teams if you take away their star. If you put KG on a team that may literally be deep in the negatives without him, he cannot elevate that team to a dominant +10 net rating type of team; no player ever has been worth that much. Not even prime Jordan or LeBron could take the 2012 Bobcats to the playoffs.
Of course, and there's so much variance in a series when teams are close, as well. The Spurs not winning the championship this past year came down to one shot here or there, one call, one turnover in a few games. The results-oriented idea that they weren't a championship-level team because they didn't win the championship is absurd. This comes up all the time. If you lose a game 7 in the finals by four points, I am going to think no differently about you as a player or the team as a whole, yet people will talk about you in an entirely different stratosphere based on that final minute of game time.
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u/freshprince44 Sep 06 '26
funny enough, using net rating, pretty sure the wolves without KG on the court graded out at like -13 per 48 minutes. That is equivalent to a 7-75 team. When KG is on the court, they are a +10 per 48 (on pace to 60-22). +23 Net.
so he carried that bobcat team equivalent to the playoffs for years lol
and yeah, completely agree about variance. it drives me nuts how many casual fans act like 29 teams are failures every year. Sometimes shit just happens
totally agree with the first part too, filling up a gas tank is a great way to look at it. It does a good job of demonstrating diminishing returns too, like, one team might have a way bigger tank, but as long as a team has enough, they have a chance to win a series or title
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u/demsouls Raptors Sep 06 '26
On the other hand, your elite defensive superstar in someone like ben wallace or draymond green disappears even further down the lists if they don't have a shit ton of offensive capabilities on the team. And, one person does not make any defense, it is an entire system as well.
So if anything OPs 1.5x multiplier is pretty dead on.
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u/freshprince44 Sep 06 '26
I mean, that is just as true for offensive players? The entire system thing works both ways, arguably even more for offensive players based on this list, none of these guys were carrying bad teams. 04 KG and 03 Duncan stand out as the closest, and surprise surprise, they are alltime defenders as well. 09 Wade maybe too, and he is pretty easily the best defensive guard on the list
the 04 pistons did not have a shit ton of offensive capabilities, and they won it all thanks to an alltime defense led by an alltimer like Ben Wallace. Chauncey/Rip/Sheed weren't at any of these offensive players levels at all
I'm not even really disagreeing with the numbers, they are what they are, just making the point that all of these numbers will naturally favor offensive players, and the list bears that out
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u/demsouls Raptors Sep 07 '26
OP said in an earlier reply, which I agree with. Any one defensive star cannot dominate the game (create value) as much as an offensive star given everyone else on offense/defense roster is equally non-outstanding. That's why you have the hardens and traes and even Brunson hiding as much as they can on defense.
OP: In my view, this tilt towards offense is unsurprising and in fact exactly what you'd expect based on all the data we have access to. A superstar offensive player has a much higher offensive load than any player has defensive usage, since the offense controls who has the ball. In the case of a star player on offense, you put the ball in their hands; you want to keep the ball AWAY from a defensive star.
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u/fatkamp Warriors Sep 06 '26
Offensive individual play is generally much more valuable than individual defensive play
I don’t think it’s particularly close either
Bill Russell is the only exception, largely due to the rules and it was a different game. We will see with Wemby for this as well
For everyone else, it’s easier to affect the game individually offensively than defensively as an entire unit.
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u/by_yes_i_mean_no Warriors Sep 06 '26
Draymond Green was arguably a top 5 player in the league in 2016
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26
In my evaluation, I had him 6th that year. I love the spirit of the argument, but I do have a tough time arguing him up to 5th because we had LeBron, Steph, KD, CP3, and Kawhi that year.
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u/MrWakey Warriors Sep 06 '26
Two things I notice: Jokic's and Curry's numbers are identical. Since they're right next to each other in the list, I wonder if one of them is an accidental duplication. Each player is only represented by one season. How did that come about? Did you use your method to come up with the 25 players first and then narrow it down by season? Because it seems likely that an additional season for e.g. Curry (2015?) or Bryant or James or Durant might displace one of the lower-ranked seasons
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u/Tight_Invite2579 Sep 06 '26
In your previous post you say you use a "Bayesian synthesis" approach to combine film, stats, etc. Is this Bayesian in spirit or are you actually creating prior estimates to be fed into a posterior calculation?
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u/Basic_Mastodon3078 Knicks Sep 06 '26
It's only not a bad list. I would criticize 2026 Wemby being here but I think that's only because it feels like recency biased. In a few years, once Wemby is more established, I think I'll be much more comfortable putting him in these convos. (Though 7 is a little rich given everyone below him.)
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u/DuckieTheDuckie Warriors Sep 06 '26
I think this captured it very well putting Wemby as the 4th worst offensively but easily the best defender.
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u/xbhaskarx Spurs Sep 06 '26
Yup Wemby is by far the best defender on here but: Offense the bottom four are 2016 Draymond Geeen (1.1), 2011 Dwight Howard (1.6), 2020 Anthony Davis (2.2), and 2026 Wembanyama (2.3)....
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u/rrtemprr Sep 06 '26
One Question, why does your method put kobe near embiid, if you say it's linked to championship probability?
lol at only having kobe appear once and he's just a 'Strong MVP'
’08 Kobe Bryant (6–17) (5.1, 0.5, 5.6)
OP says he has a final calibration step linked to championship probability.
again with his algorithm only having kobe show up once as a strong mvp....... L O L
OP needs to take another look at how he's 'calibrating'. I'm not convinced his calibration is doing what he thinks it's doing.
kobe by all athletes account is GOATED 1B after jordan.
Yet this algorithm puts kobe next to embid in regards to 'championship probability'...... kobe 5 rings vs embiid 0 rings......
Well, thanks for the laugh i guess.
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u/Chief_White_Halfoat Raptors Sep 06 '26
There's not an all time ranking in which Kobe lands at 1B. He is widely ranked somewhere between 8-12th.
Athletes rank guys stylistically. They like how Kobe looked when he played so naturally they'd rank him after Jordan. Duncan is above him and no one would out Duncan at 1B.
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u/rrtemprr Sep 06 '26
youre saying nba players that competed against kobe, on his path to 5 rings, that he is the best player behind jordan, is because the male athletes were attracted to the way kobe looked? L O L
youre not saying that the past athletes who had first hand on court experience to all the intangibles (say, what latent effects in an model would try to pick up) are probably expertly ranking kobe as 1b because of how great he was when they faced him?
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u/Fabulous_Narwhal3113 Sep 06 '26
Fuck your stats, the best peaks were Miami bron, #8 Kobe, Curry’s year, westbrooks year, and shaq. Delete your except sheet
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u/rrtemprr Sep 06 '26
i've read the names of the posters rng_123_abc and read the content, this is garbage bot post feeding into another bot post trying to prop up stat stuffers..... like take a wild guess whos maybe retiring next? everyone agrees he has no bag he has less rings.
OP post your technical 'methodology' and lets have a debate.
what i see is you're just averaging historical stats publicly availble that are known to be biased towards spamming offense.
care to respond?
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u/Frosty_Salamander_94 Sep 06 '26
No. I prefer discussion that isn't in bad faith. There are plenty of debates to be had, but probably not with you.
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u/rrtemprr Sep 06 '26
no prob, have fun fidgeting your weights to advance your agenda with your professional liscence
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u/Due-Inevitable-6864 Sep 06 '26
Wemby over Kobe is lunacy, and so is having him all the way down at #10. Anchored the #1 offense in the league (cleaningtheglass), top two offensive player in the world, clear positive on D, destroyed one of the best defenses in history in the Finals, ATG postseason, GOAT level skill set, etc. Pure lunacy.
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u/MomomTheBlack Sep 06 '26
You lose credibility quickly when you have Kobe that high.
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u/supalaser Lakers Sep 06 '26
Kobe having the 10th best peak since 2000 is super fair. If anything it’s hard on Kobe
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u/MomomTheBlack Sep 06 '26
Lol. He wouldn't be top 15. Maybe not even top 20.
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u/Due-Inevitable-6864 Sep 06 '26
He's easily higher than where this kid has him. Stop embarrassing yourself.
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u/CrissCrossAppleSos Spurs Sep 06 '26
I probably would have assumed 16 Curry to be higher. Such an outlier shooting year. Fun though, I like when people put a lot of effort into these sorts of things, even if I think player analysis is a bit of a silly endeavor