Kobe vs Lebron: Who is the better player?

[valade16]

BigMoves

Statistics are too complex to use and you using them means you are too simplistic. That's why you should use my methodology:

RINGZ BABY!!

[Big Moves03]

First Bolded: No, you prefer to use a flawed, simplistic methodology which clearly is inferior at assessing what you're measuring. (You know it's factually and statistically inferior which is why you pointedly avoid actually analyzing the veracity of using rings on a statistical level)

Second Bolded: Name me a single person who said Giannis should be 10-15 all-time?

Third Bolded: This is again where you're wrong. Anyone who said Giannis is 10-15 all-time because of regular season stats (if indeed anyone did) is not using stats correctly. If they'd have looked at postseason stats (as I've advocated doing for awhile now and you continually ignore) you'd know Giannis is nowhere near Top 10-15 all-time. So the stats actually support the conclusion you reached (except they are far more specific in explaining why).

Fourth Bolded: Except it doesn't take much evidence at all to convince you. All it takes is the number of rings on a person's hand.


It's truly laughable you waive away any differentiation in teams with "eh, it all evens out" (especially given your claims of being a statistician) and then accuse us of using a simplistic measurement, especially when you called statistics too complex.

You're all over the place. If I had a championship ring for every time you've contradicted yourself, you'd consider me the GOAT.

To your fist point, this is, as far as I can tell, false. We just had a discussion about how it's an empirical and open question as to which method would lead to better predictions. If you've come across models that have tested this question, please refer me to them, I'm definitely open to being proven wrong on this (and I may very well be wrong).

Go back and look at the all-time rankings list recently. There were some throwing his name in there and Harden as well. It also does seem to take a lot more evidence to convince me. By your own admission, using my method it will take me a lot longer to reach the same conclusion as some of you guys have reached, and it's because I'm holding out for more evidence. The complexity of the models is generally viewed as a negative. If you have to include more variables and parameters to make your data fit it suggests there's likely an issue with the model.

Every time you guys have to point to another statistic to explain a short coming with one approach, that is essentially a degree of freedom that you are using and each of those counts against the model. I don't want to get too technical here, but it's logically true that you can make any model make accurate predictions if you include enough variables and parameters, but that's not a useful model. At any rate we simply just prefer different methods of assessment.

[Big Moves03]

Kyrie wasn't even that great in that series lol. Its an incredibly terrible basketball thought to consider. He's a terrible defender and had 10 pts in game 1.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

I've never heard anyone really make this argument seriously though

[Big Moves03]

Thats perfectly fine and I have no problems with that. If thats the case then Lebron wont pass some guys in your eyes until he at least ties or passes them in titles.... but with that same stance its also possible(unlikely however) for Lebron to still become the GOAT.

No, I don't think LBJ can do anything plausible at this point to become the GOAT. I mean, maybe if he won like 4 consecutive titles as a top 3-5 player then it would make it debatable, but short of that I just don't see a legitimate argument for LBJ being the GOAT. I think he has a good shot at top 3 with another two titles and a case can be made for him being number 2 in that situation, but given MJ's double 3-peat in basically a 13 year career, I dont see LBJ catching MJ.

[MarkieMark48]

I've never heard anyone really make this argument seriously though

it was extremely popular take, especially during that offseason. Obviously its died down some since it was over 4 years ago and Kyrie is what he is today.

[MarkieMark48]

No, I don't think LBJ can do anything plausible at this point to become the GOAT. I mean, maybe if he won like 4 consecutive titles as a top 3-5 player then it would make it debatable, but short of that I just don't see a legitimate argument for LBJ being the GOAT. I think he has a good shot at top 3 with another two titles and a case can be made for him being number 2 in that situation, but given MJ's double 3-peat in basically a 13 year career, I dont see LBJ catching MJ.

I dont think he can catch MJ no matter what metric youre using but I mean if youre simply using championships.... I mean 7 is more than 6(obviously thats probably not going to happen, but just making the point). I know theres Bill Russell, but I think everyone pretty much agrees that it was a little different back then.

[Big Moves03]

I dont think he can catch MJ no matter what metric youre using but I mean if youre simply using championships.... I mean 7 is more than 6(obviously thats probably not going to happen, but just making the point). I know theres Bill Russell, but I think everyone pretty much agrees that it was a little different back then.

Yeah totally. That's actually why I don't really know how to rate Russell cause winning titles back then was a lot different due to the structure of the league, wherein the best team would often get multiple round byes and so I definitely don't really weight those in the same way as I do titles closer to the 70s and 80s or so, since that's when the playoff structure was at least very similar to what we see today

[valade16]

To your fist point, this is, as far as I can tell, false. We just had a discussion about how it's an empirical and open question as to which method would lead to better predictions. If you've come across models that have tested this question, please refer me to them, I'm definitely open to being proven wrong on this (and I may very well be wrong).

Go back and look at the all-time rankings list recently. There were some throwing his name in there and Harden as well. It also does seem to take a lot more evidence to convince me. By your own admission, using my method it will take me a lot longer to reach the same conclusion as some of you guys have reached, and it's because I'm holding out for more evidence. The complexity of the models is generally viewed as a negative. If you have to include more variables and parameters to make your data fit it suggests there's likely an issue with the model.

Every time you guys have to point to another statistic to explain a short coming with one approach, that is essentially a degree of freedom that you are using and each of those counts against the model. I don't want to get too technical here, but it's logically true that you can make any model make accurate predictions if you include enough variables and parameters, but that's not a useful model. At any rate we simply just prefer different methods of assessment.

First Bolded: Sorry, but you're the one claiming it's a more accurate measure, so you have the onus to prove it is. "Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Since you have no evidence for your claim it's more accurate than statistics, I dismiss the claim.

Second Bolded: This isn't a good thing if you require evidence far in excess of what rationally is needed. I saw 5 people enter a building and all of them died immediately upon entering, it doesn't make you better because you would still go in to the building disbelieving you'd die until you saw it happen 30 times...

But I agree with your main premise: we simply prefer different methods of assessment. Me rational, empirical, factual and logical methods. You, subjective, emotional, hypocritical, opinion-driven methods.

[valade16]

No, I don't think LBJ can do anything plausible at this point to become the GOAT. I mean, maybe if he won like 4 consecutive titles as a top 3-5 player then it would make it debatable, but short of that I just don't see a legitimate argument for LBJ being the GOAT. I think he has a good shot at top 3 with another two titles and a case can be made for him being number 2 in that situation, but given MJ's double 3-peat in basically a 13 year career, I dont see LBJ catching MJ.

What a shock. The LeBron hater won't consider LeBron the GOAT even using by his own methodology.

[ldawg]

lebron continues to prove he will let the other star on the team shine if they Rise up to the challenge.

[Big Moves03]

First Bolded: Sorry, but you're the one claiming it's a more accurate measure, so you have the onus to prove it is. "Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Since you have no evidence for your claim it's more accurate than statistics, I dismiss the claim.

Second Bolded: This isn't a good thing if you require evidence far in excess of what rationally is needed. I saw 5 people enter a building and all of them died immediately upon entering, it doesn't make you better because you would still go in to the building disbelieving you'd die until you saw it happen 30 times...

But I agree with your main premise: we simply prefer different methods of assessment. Me rational, empirical, factual and logical methods. You, subjective, emotional, hypocritical, opinion-driven methods.

I never said it was a more accurate method, I said that I prefer it. I said that it was unclear which was more accurate, which is true. It's not as though there is an agreed upon consensus as to how players should be assessed. You just like advanced analytics. That doesn't mean it's a better method...and my approach is far more consistent with how great player have been evaluated and still probably the more common method of assessment among current and former players, along with coaches and several GMs.

Any objective person is by nature skeptical. In science, we require extreme rigorous evidence to provide support (we never ever say we prove anything, we simply find evidence for and against). To give you an example, in the physical sciences, you typically need a result that you would observe by chance in 1 out of 10,000 times in order to accept it as evidence to support a hypothesis and then you need to replicate that effect many times over before we consider it as solid evidence for a hypothesis and even then things change quite easily upon follow-up work. In the behavioral and social sciences, the criteria is a little less rigorous because it's harder to control and isolate the variables of interest but even then the criteria is typically set between 1 and 5 out of 100, wherein you would see the result by chance and then again you need to replicate that result many times over...even in these cases after decades of research and hundreds if not thousands of papers providing mountains of evidence for a theory, we find that things are wrong and that theories we once believed were correct are actually wrong or incomplete.

So yes, I definitely require that type of evidence for extreme claims (which arguing that anyone is in the top 3 all time of any thing) is certainly an extreme claim, which will thus require extreme evidence. Like you said, the onus is on those making the claim...well, another 2 titles is what it will take for me to consider LBJ a viable candidate to enter the top 3. Is that extreme? Of course, it's the freaken top 3 of all-time, it should be super extreme.

I won't respond to the rest of your post because it's frankly beneath me and I won't lower myself to that level so you have a good one my man

[Big Moves03]

What a shock. The LeBron hater won't consider LeBron the GOAT even using by his own methodology.

So I'm a hater because I'm saying that he would need to win 7 titles to make it a debatable topic? How so?? I weight MJ's two 3-peats very, very high (much higher than simply winning 6 titles); hence given that it would literally take LBJ 20 years to surpass what MJ did in 13 (and one of LBJ's titles would have come in a shortened season in 2012) I'd say it's pretty reasonable to say another 4 makes it a debatable topic. Is MarkieMark an LBJ hater because he said LBJ can't catch MJ? For the record, I think kobe would've likely needed 7-8 titles to make it a debatable topic as to whether he was better than MJ. Again, you need extreme evidence to surpass the most elite of the elite. It's mot something that just gets handed out.

[valade16]

I never said it was a more accurate method, I said that I prefer it. I said that it was unclear which was more accurate, which is true. It's not as though there is an agreed upon consensus as to how players should be assessed. You just like advanced analytics. That doesn't mean it's a better method...and my approach is far more consistent with how great player have been evaluated and still probably the more common method of assessment among current and former players, along with coaches and several GMs.

Any objective person is by nature skeptical. In science, we require extreme rigorous evidence to provide support (we never ever say we prove anything, we simply find evidence for and against). To give you an example, in the physical sciences, you typically need a result that you would observe by chance in 1 out of 10,000 times in order to accept it as evidence to support a hypothesis and then you need to replicate that effect many times over before we consider it as solid evidence for a hypothesis and even then things change quite easily upon follow-up work. In the behavioral and social sciences, the criteria is a little less rigorous because it's harder to control and isolate the variables of interest but even then the criteria is typically set between 1 and 5 out of 100, wherein you would see the result by chance and then again you need to replicate that result many times over...even in these cases after decades of research and hundreds if not thousands of papers providing mountains of evidence for a theory, we find that things are wrong and that theories we once believed were correct are actually wrong or incomplete.

So yes, I definitely require that type of evidence for extreme claims (which arguing that anyone is in the top 3 all time of any thing) is certainly an extreme claim, which will thus require extreme evidence. Like you said, the onus is on those making the claim...well, another 2 titles is what it will take for me to consider LBJ a viable candidate to enter the top 3. Is that extreme? Of course, it's the freaken top 3 of all-time, it should be super extreme.

I won't respond to the rest of your post because it's frankly beneath me and I won't lower myself to that level so you have a good one my man

Bolded: Except when it comes to comparing supporting casts, years, and teams then it's "eh, they're all probably about the same".


Glad you're finally bowing out. I guess demanding you prove your claims became too much and since you can't you have no other option but to run.

Be gone you liar. You're no statistician. You're a Kobe Homer.

[Big Moves03]

Bolded: Except when it comes to comparing supporting casts, years, and teams then it's "eh, they're all probably about the same".


Glad you're finally bowing out. I guess demanding you prove your claims became too much and since you can't you have no other option but to run.

Be gone you liar. You're no statistician. You're a Kobe Homer.

I'm not bowing out of anything, I'm saying I won't engage in petty insults. I'm always happy to give you a lesson in statistics like I have multiple times, including last week (did you go ahead and check with that dude that you said you were going to check with?). As always, I'm happy to point you to literature that supports all of the conceptual points I've made. I offered last week and you weren't interested, but my offer stands either way.

Also what exactly am I supposed to prove? That I don't know which method of assessment is better? You prove your claim lol. I at least have historical precedence on my side. Again, the fact is that neither of us knows which method is better anything to the contrary is simple baseless speculation. The fact is that my method requires more evidence or I would've jumped on this bandwagon years ago.

As to your first point, that is absolutely correct, over the course of a long career, superstar players will generally end up playing with super talented teams and it will usually more or less cancel out. The exceptions are usually when a guy is a superstar and then ends up getting hurt and never really gets back to that level (e.g., McGrady, Grant Hill). Given enough time, things typically self correct via chance, unless there is some specific force working against it. Since superstar players typically end up on fairly talented teams eventually, this usually isn't an issue to really worry too much about. And again, I've already noted that this provides a rough approximation and is far from perfect. Either way, this doesn't apply to LBJ because he's had an embarrassment of riches when it comes to star teammates (probably more so than any player in the history of the league so any adjustments you want to make are going to hurt more than help, which is another point I and many on here have made). If you want to talk about how we need to self correct when looking at guys like Barkley or Malone or Ewing or even Hakeem then that might be worth discussing, but LBJ has no place in that discussion...not unless you want to use him as an example of a player who has had historically great talent during the entirety of his prime, a luxury that no player before or since him has had (except for maybe Russell).

[valade16]

I'm not bowing out of anything, I'm saying I won't engage in petty insults. I'm always happy to give you a lesson in statistics like I have multiple times, including last week (did you go ahead and check with that dude that you said you were going to check with?). As always, I'm happy to point you to literature that supports all of the conceptual points I've made. I offered last week and you weren't interested, but my offer stands either way.

Also what exactly am I supposed to prove? That I don't know which method of assessment is better? You prove your claim lol. I at least have historical precedence on my side. Again, the fact is that neither of us knows which method is better anything to the contrary is simple baseless speculation. The fact is that my method requires more evidence or I would've jumped on this bandwagon years ago.

As to your first point, that is absolutely correct, over the course of a long career, superstar players will generally end up playing with super talented teams and it will usually more or less cancel out. The exceptions are usually when a guy is a superstar and then ends up getting hurt and never really gets back to that level (e.g., McGrady, Grant Hill). Given enough time, things typically self correct via chance, unless there is some specific force working against it. Since superstar players typically end up on fairly talented teams eventually, this usually isn't an issue to really worry too much about. And again, I've already noted that this provides a rough approximation and is far from perfect. Either way, this doesn't apply to LBJ because he's had an embarrassment of riches when it comes to star teammates (probably more so than any player in the history of the league so any adjustments you want to make are going to hurt more than help, which is another point I and many on here have made). If you want to talk about how we need to self correct when looking at guys like Barkley or Malone or Ewing or even Hakeem then that might be worth discussing, but LBJ has no place in that discussion...not unless you want to use him as an example of a player who has had historically great talent during the entirety of his prime, a luxury that no player before or since him has had (except for maybe Russell).

First Bolded: Great! You can start by educating me on the statistical principle that says just assuming all superstar players have had the same level of support throughout their careers is a valid statistical inference.

Second Bolded: No idea what dude you're talking about. Perhaps you mean regarding Box Creation rates? I noticed you shut up about Kobe being a better distributor after that (though no doubt you'll conjure some problem with the stats for why we can't use them: you always do).

Third Bolded: I have. I have consistently shown you your assumptions regarding what the statistics are measuring are false. You have made dozens of completely false claims about how the statistics are measured or calculated and I have dispelled them all.

Fourth Bolded: Yeah, I mean, when you use generalities like that what point is there trying to get into specifics?


Your entire premise is based on the idea that we can't measure the specificity of impact with stats and then say that "all players have played on equally as good teams throughout their careers". It would be sad if you weren't so dead serious.


Honestly, I've never seen someone have to convince themselves of so stupid a premise in order to maintain their opinion.