The Best of the Best. The rarest statistical achievement in basketball.

[midnightpulp]

(maybe not the absolutely rarest, but the rarest that has any meaning. Quad doubles and 60 points games during the regular are nice, but they don't amount to anything aside from a day of media headlines).

Maintaining a +10 or greater RAPM in the playoffs over a title run. It's only been done 7 times and only 4 players can boast the accomplishment. It's such a rare feat, that even fantastic individual runs like Hakeem's 94/95 and 3 peat Shaq's didn't achieve such lofty domination. Now, I'm not saying Jordan, Bird, Duncan, and Lebron are the set-in-stone top 4 players of all-time, just highlighting the kind of transcendental greatness it takes to dominate to this extent over 18-25 games enroute to a title (although I do contend that these could be the top 4 players of all-time depending on your POV. Bird was head-and-shoulders above his competition from 80-86, even Magic, but back injuries did cut Bird's prime off and Magic eventually soared ahead as the era's best player. If Lebron dominates the Finals, even in a loss, I think he moves up into the top 4).

http://oi62.tinypic.com/2rwkbjl.jpg

In any event, these are "the best of the best" individual title runs.

[Mori Chu]

+/- is a shit stat and you know it. Worthless.

[Silver&Black]

Where's Kirby at?

[RsxPiimp]

Man, you should just post using this account tbh.

[midnightpulp]

+/- is a shit stat and you know it. Worthless.

It's not. +/- correlates highly with team success and holistically measures a player's impact rather than just arbitrarily cutting it up into "categories."

It's actually the only stat that can kind of quantify what we see in the "eye test." For example, peak Shaq's RAPM isn't particularly dominant compared to other all-time greats. For YEARS, Lakerfans complained about his pick-and-roll defense. Well, +/- has shown they were right. Shaq's defensive +/- were pretty average-to-mediocre. +/- also corrects PER's ignoring of passing and playmaking, which is why we see Bird place twice in the +10 club and Magic 3 times in the +8 club. Contrast those two players, who made their teams better with smart playmaking, to John Stockton, a player more astute fans have been calling an assist whore for years. His peak playoff OPM is well below that of Magic and Bird's. It's even below Kidd's and Paul's.

It's not a be-all, end all stat of course, but it measures player impact more accurately than PPG and other such obsolete stats.

[midnightpulp]

Where's Kirby at?

His best is +7.48, good for the 113th best of all-time. :lol

Old Man Duncan's 2014 run was actually more impactful at 7.72 than "peak Kobe's."

Not to diminish Kobe. That is an impressive mark, just not "Best of the Best tier" or even top 10 great tier.

[AlexJones]

+/- is a shit stat and you know it. Worthless.

Unless it's +/- over an entire season and not just single games.

[midnightpulp]

I find it funny how those who have long rallied against advanced stats (Lakerfans, primarily) would be quick to dismiss +/-, which is all about trying to measure a player totally, taking into account such qualitative things as: Leadership, chemistry (Laker favorite Magic Johnson is 4th all-time in average post-season +/-), determination/will-to-win (hustling for loose balls, making the extra play. These are things that don't show up in the stat sheet, but still contribute to the overall bottom line, sometimes much more so than a scored basket), pick setting, defensive presence, etc, etc.

On a side note, Curry is currently at 9.5 during this run. He could very well join the Best of the Best Club this year. And those of us "who watch the games," understand just how much presence Curry has. Just the threat of him shooting the 3 disrupts defenses and opens things up for his team.

[Splits]

This thread only shows the depths Laker fans have fallen. Their franchise is so godawful and shitty, they have to desperately establish what is and isn't a dynasty in order to remember how great it was years ago. They know full well that the death of Jerry and the retirement of Fuhrer Stern has changed everything, and that everyone else in the NBA is going to hold them down and fuck them in the ass and shit down their throats for the long foreseeable future, and there isn't a goddamn fucking thing they can do but clutch their antique metal trophies and reminisce about their "dynasty".