Vote players into our alltime top 160, etc.

[Mike G]

I think maybe the difference of opinion is that some voters are apparently going off of PER, while others (such as myself) are using a blend of Win Shares, History, and Subjectivity.

I'd be surprised if anyone is using PER as their sole or primary basis of comparison. I've referred to it a few times because it's there on b-ref.com, and it often diverges from what WS tells us.
It's less dependent on team success, more a measure of productivity than WS. If a player is more or less productive in playoffs, for example, it tends to corroborate that.

It's nice to see how others make their decisions. Decisions based upon evidence tend to carry more weight around here. Not that it's likely to change very many minds.

[mark kieffer]

I was assuming people were using PER because PER puts guys like Bosh and Webber up pretty high similar to what other voters are thinking... Like Top 50..... The thing is PER is dependent on shot volume; Bosh scored a lot on a crappy Toronto team; Webber always shot the ball too much, especially that ugly jumper.

[Need To Argue]

I think Kidd is the modern equivalent of Wilkens just to word that correctly.

I too don't see Bosh as an all-time great, but chose to go at the guys that made less sense to me. Howard is a losing battle because he's the shiny penny in a position of poverty. Mike mentioned the recent all-star centers and I thought about the great days of Neal Walk and Elmore Smith and others similar to today's crew.

The guys like Bosh, Brand, Marion etc. are more like Charles Smith territory than all-time greats.

Even the guys that are truly great today get a little overrated. I put Kobe and Duncan in the top 25 easily, but KG I'd make top 50. That's not a huge difference, but it becomes a domino effect.
Wade moves up more than he should but he's at least close to where he belongs. Kidd is a little high, but again not drastic. Gasol is a little high, not drastic.
McGrady is different. He is above where he belongs by much more. Carter too is way too high. Countless others. Not sure what they did to be this high, maybe they were on the View.
Rodman and Wallace are rewarded for defense which is great, but not top 100 great. My two cents.

[MW00]

I think Kidd is the modern equivalent of Wilkens just to word that correctly.

I too don't see Bosh as an all-time great, but chose to go at the guys that made less sense to me. Howard is a losing battle because he's the shiny penny in a position of poverty. Mike mentioned the recent all-star centers and I thought about the great days of Neal Walk and Elmore Smith and others similar to today's crew.

The guys like Bosh, Brand, Marion etc. are more like Charles Smith territory than all-time greats.

Even the guys that are truly great today get a little overrated. I put Kobe and Duncan in the top 25 easily, but KG I'd make top 50. That's not a huge difference, but it becomes a domino effect.
Wade moves up more than he should but he's at least close to where he belongs. Kidd is a little high, but again not drastic. Gasol is a little high, not drastic.
McGrady is different. He is above where he belongs by much more. Carter too is way too high. Countless others. Not sure what they did to be this high, maybe they were on the View.
Rodman and Wallace are rewarded for defense which is great, but not top 100 great. My two cents.

On Marion and Brand being in Charles Smith's ballpark http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y3=2013
Marion and Brand were much better for much longer and collared many more accolades (All-NBA, All-Star, MVP votes etc). So unless you just mean that they're closer to Smith than Jordan, Abdul-Jabbar and Chamberlain et al (because those absolute elite guys are so far above everyone else) I can't agree with that.

For what McGrady ever did. Well you're a Maravich fan right. Near his appex (we don't have turnovers for his top scoring year) Maravich scored 27ppg with exactly 5 turnovers. McGrady at his appex scored 32.1ppg with 2.6 turnovers. So whilst McGrady would cough up the ball once in scoring to give you 12.35 points, Maravich would so each 5.4 points.

Mitigating arguments
1) Maravich gave you more assists.
True, but not by a lot. 6.7 to 5.5. Even if we added those to the points totals to create a points created (or added 2x assists and suggest the assister gets full credit for creating the basket) the numbers are still way in McGrady's favour.
2) McGrady's peak versus Maravich's near peak is not quite like for like.
True, but, taking '77 Maravich's assist numbers would actually trail McGrady's. I would want to use Maravich's best season but the turnovers number isn't there. But take McGrady's second best season, you get 28 points 2.7 turnovers. Maravich is still turning the ball over roughly twice as often.
3) Maravich didn't have the 3 point line.
This is probably the best argument for Maravich being closer to McGrady than stats suggest. At least in basketball ability terms. That said if we stick to the original criteria

Now my challenge is to phrase the poll question. Who among these had the best pro careers? Which of these were the best players? I'll go with the less subjective one.

then we should go on what did happen rather than what might have been (though both these players are fairly high on the what might have been list).

McGrady was also, I would subjectively suggest, a better defender and was a more efficient scorer, more so, I think after adjusting for era.
Even without the numbers McGrady was consitently getting MVP consideration, Maravich wasn't.

[Mike G]

In one more effort to fix my bookkeeping mishap, I've replaced 2 players with no votes -- Ron Harper and Blaylock -- with 2 that I've ranked higher: Daugherty and Westbrook. Along with Rondo, they're out of alphabetical order.

In this 100-150 range, there's not a lot of separation between the candidates, the way I've measured them. Some have short and brilliant careers, and others were workhorses for a long time. And everything in between. We try to appreciate the blue collar workers and the superstars.

The guys like Bosh, Brand, Marion etc. are more like Charles Smith territory...

Nope. All-NBA is not the same as a guy who was never an all-star and had just 5 years at over 1800 minutes. Of course the statistical differences are innumerable.

Rodman and Wallace are rewarded for defense which is great, but not top 100 great.

I agree with this. Ben Wallace I had at #143, Rodman at 189. Lots of guys in that range were very, very good. These guys did good-to-great when their teams didn't need another scorer. And both had a medium-short tenure as transcendently good defensive players.

The thing is PER is dependent on shot volume; Bosh scored a lot on a crappy Toronto team; Webber always shot the ball too much,..

Well, if Webber had a weakness, it was his shooting. If he'd been a great shooter, we'd be debating his qualifications for the top 30 or 20.

Bosh, however, has a career TS% of .571 .
How many guys have taken 10,000 FGA with a TS% of .570 or better? Just 29. Jordan, Wade, Bird, Gervin, and King are below .570.
How many of those 29 have a TReb% as good as Bosh's 14.4 ? Just 10 them.
Of these, who are better shotblockers? -- Kareem, Gilmore, Shaq, Robinson, Parish.

Is it easier to hit a high percentage for a crappy team? I think it is not.

[MW00]

Well, if Webber had a weakness, it was his shooting. If he'd been a great shooter, we'd be debating his qualifications for the top 30 or 20.

Agreed. But perhaps it wouldn't have to be shooting.
Elvin Hayes made our top 50 with worse shooting. He has better career totals by playing huge minutes, but significantly worse advanced stats (career and peak). Hayes has better accolades but against weaker power forward competition (though Hayes did also fare better in MVP votes). I suspect the main difference is that Webber doesn't have a title.
My point is not that Webber should be higher but:
(a) that he perhaps could be had he won a title (though not deservingly)
and
(b) why is Elvin Hayes who never posted a PER above 20, and peaked at 6.6 offensive win shares per season (DWS seem quite noisy to me), typically getting much less, in our top 50?

[Need To Argue]

Elvin Hayes is someone I picture when I watch Tim Duncan. As far as I'm concerned, I only recently switched these two. Two great players who played forward and center. Without being misunderstood about his later days, he did hang on too long and people remember his last days which were unfortunate. I'd have Hayes above KG and Mailman. Quite a few guys between these guys and Webber and then quite a few before Bosh.
The other thing I completely disagree with is that he played inferior competition. I know he wasn't well liked that also could effect his legacy. You could say the Rockets drove him to the airport and teammates were grateful to get Jack Marin despite his best days behind him. Sometimes deals like that work opposite (McGinnis-Jones for different reasons though).

[Mike G]

Elvin Hayes, per minute over his career, looks like these guys:

Code: Select all

diff   career per36      Sco    Reb   Ast    PF   Stl    TO   Blk
.00   Elvin Hayes       18.5   10.9   1.7   3.2   1.0   2.6   2.1

.04   Robert Parish     17.5   11.4   1.5   3.4    .9   2.5   1.8
.06   Harry Gallatin    17.7   11.3   2.1   3.4   1.1   2.6   1.8
.06   Willis Reed       18.4   10.8   1.9   3.9   1.0   2.6   1.7
.09   Elton Brand       19.6   10.2   2.4   3.2   1.0   2.2   1.9
.11   Jermaine O'Neal   18.5   10.1   1.8   3.8    .6   2.5   2.4

.15  Zydrunas Ilgauskas 18.2   10.7   1.5   4.4    .6   2.3   2.0
.16   Al Jefferson      19.5   11.4   1.6   3.2    .9   1.7   1.6
.18   Larry Foust       18.5    9.8   2.2   4.3   1.1   2.6   1.5
.18   Andrew Bynum      18.3   11.6   1.4   3.7    .5   2.1   2.2
.19   Dan Roundfield    16.3   10.7   2.3   4.0   1.0   3.0   1.7

Now, this conflates scoring and shooting%, but besides volume scoring, Big E was a heck of a rebounder and shotblocker. Once they started counting turnovers, he was low (good) in that area.

I'm not buying the idea that a .480 TS% in the '70s is equivalent to a .540 shooter like Duncan now.
Of the first 69 we voted in, Hayes shot worse than anyone since Thurmond. Ben Wallace shot worse, but not very often.

Is Al Jefferson an apt modern equivalent? Al isn't known for his D.
Jermaine?

[MW00]

Elvin Hayes is someone I picture when I watch Tim Duncan. As far as I'm concerned, I only recently switched these two. Two great players who played forward and center. Without being misunderstood about his later days, he did hang on too long and people remember his last days which were unfortunate. I'd have Hayes above KG and Mailman. Quite a few guys between these guys and Webber and then quite a few before Bosh.
The other thing I completely disagree with is that he played inferior competition. I know he wasn't well liked that also could effect his legacy. You could say the Rockets drove him to the airport and teammates were grateful to get Jack Marin despite his best days behind him. Sometimes deals like that work opposite (McGinnis-Jones for different reasons though).

Webber's career coincided with Malone, Garnett and Duncan, and to a lesser degree Nowitzki and Barkley. Now that's just the top end (all from our top 25), we could go further. But who did Hayes face of that calibre?
Haywood? : Four and half good years in the NBA (not voted in yet)
McGinnis? : Four good NBA years (peripheral to our top 100)
Both of the above have poor reputations with regard to intangiables.
Or perhaps the likes of Silas, Hairston, Mix, Mickey Johnson, Kupchack, Kenon, Wicks, Washington and Robinson
Solid players but hardly much Hall of Fame material.
Only if you conjecture that Hayes was center (and that he primarily played that position) can you suggest he was facing strong, rather than weak, competition.

[Mike G]

This is a reasonable contention, though. Hayes in San Diego was a defacto center, and then he joined Unseld in Baltimore, where he would be F-C for many years.

But whom did the opposing center guard? Or shall we say, who would be the assignment of the opponent's defensive big man? The 6'7" Unseld who shot 7-8 times per game? Or the 6'9" Hayes who shot at least twice as often?

[Mike G]

McGrady is different. He is above where he belongs by much more. Carter too is way too high. Countless others. Not sure what they did to be this high, maybe they ...

Maybe they were perennial all-NBA and all-stars. Maybe they rank highly in multiple categories. People do keep track of these things, and it's up to you to avail yourself of the information, or not.

Side by side records for Carter, English, Gervin, Greer, Wilkins, Havlicek:
http://bkref.com/tiny/GVAEC

Any reason Carter should be singled out for exclusion from this company?

[Mike G]

Though we've already voted on Elvin Hayes and others now being debated, the subject of strength of era -- at a given position or the NBA as a whole -- is a fascinating one.

Hayes won his first all-NBA (2nd team) in 1973. He'd had gaudy numbers with the Rockets, but successfully teaming with Unseld and the contending Bullets may have been a pleasant surprise.
For this exercise, I'm sort of averaging some metrics: PER, Win Shares, and WS/48 -- basically multiplying them together, then taking the square root.
In the ABA of 1973, Erving and McGinnis were emerging as superstars. Both played forward, rather differently than Hayes. But Elvin was making all-NBA as a forward, so that's what matters.

There is no adjustment for ABA numbers; but by 1973, the conversion would be rather minimal. In the new "xyz" stat, best forwards of 1972-73:

Code: Select all

xyz    NBA       PER   WS/48   WS       xyz    ABA       PER   WS/48   WS
6.9   Walker    20.3   .213   10.9      7.2  Cunningham 24.7   .176   11.9  1
6.6   Silas     17.9   .210   11.5      6.5   Erving    27.7   .157    9.8  1
6.2   Havlicek  18.6   .172   12.1  1   6.5   McGinnis  22.7   .164   11.4  2
5.9   Haywood   22.7   .150   10.2  1   4.8   Wise      18.8   .136    8.9
5.8   Barry     20.4   .159   10.2  2               
5.1   Hudson    19.0   .148    9.3                  
5.0   Lucas     17.3   .188    7.8                  
4.2   Kauffman  18.4   .124    7.9                  
4.2   Dandridge 16.2   .136    8.1                  
4.1   Rowe      15.6   .132    8.3                  
4.0   Hawkins   16.2   .129    7.5                  
3.8   Hayes     17.5   .109    7.6  2                

According to xyz, Hayes was just about the 12th best F in the NBA, and 16th in the two leagues. Ironically, Paul Silas in his best season missed the boat.

1973-74

Code: Select all

xyz    NBA        PER   WS/48   WS       xyz    ABA      PER   WS/48   WS
7.1  Tomjanovich 20.5   .191   12.8      9.9   Erving   25.7   .233   16.5  1
6.3   Barry      22.4   .172   10.4  1   5.7   Wise     20.1   .153   10.5  2
6.1   Walker     18.5   .191   10.6      5.7   McGinnis 21.5   .148   10.1  1
5.4   Haywood    19.4   .153    9.7  2                
5.3   Hudson     19.5   .164    8.8                  
5.2   Hayes      18.2   .142   10.6  2                
5.2   Hairston   17.2   .170    9.3                  
5.0   Havlicek   17.4   .151    9.7  1                

Hayes was about the 9th best F this year. Incidentally, Dan Issel didn't show up in this search, and he was 2nd team ABA F in '73 and '74. He would also rank above Hayes in most years.
No "advanced stats" declared Rudy T's peak.

1974-75

Code: Select all

xyz    NBA    PER   WS/48   WS        xyz    ABA      PER   WS/48   WS
7.5   Barry  23.5   .188   12.7  1   10.7   Erving   26.2   .248   17.6  1
6.5   Walker 19.5   .205   10.5       7.1   McGinnis 25.1   .174   11.6  1
6.4   Hayes  19.0   .173   12.5  1                     

It would be splitting hairs to say Hayes didn't deserve his first all-NBA 1st team. But in a merged league, he might be 2nd team.

1975-76 -- Last year before the merger

Code: Select all

xyz    NBA       PER  WS/48   WS        xyz    ABA     PER   WS/48   WS
7.6   Drew      25.3   .216  10.6      11.5   Erving  28.7   .262   17.7  1
5.2   Dandridge 19.1   .158   9.0       5.8   B Jones 18.9   .172   10.2  2
5.2  Mi Johnson 19.4   .167   8.3       4.9   Barnes  21.6   .146    7.6
5.1   Barry     18.3   .148   9.6  1                 
5.0   McGinnis  21.3   .139   8.5  1                 
4.6   Mix       15.1   .148   9.4                  
4.5   Wilkes    16.8   .147   8.3                  
4.4   Hayes     18.4   .131   8.1  2 

That would be Mickey Johnson and mercurial Marvin Barnes.

1976-77 -- Post merger, Hayes seems to hold his own very well.

Code: Select all

xyz    NBA       PER   WS/48   WS        
7.1   B Jones   21.1   .219   11.0   
6.7   Erving    20.9   .188   11.5  2
6.4   Hayes     19.8   .173   12.1  1
5.5   Dantley   18.3   .167    9.8

David Thompson was 1st team F this year. It isn't just WS that loves Bobby Jones; PER does, too.

In the Bullets' title year of 1977-78, ironically Hayes had a weak year and missed all-NBA. Then he came back in 1978-79

Code: Select all

xyz    NBA        PER   WS/48   WS        
7.1   Dantley    20.9   .199   12.2
6.5   Ma Johnson 21.3   .185   10.6  1
6.4   Drew       23.7   .194    8.9
5.9   Erving     21.7   .179    9.1
5.6   Barry      20.9   .154    9.7
5.6   Jones      19.8   .175    8.9
4.9   McGinnis   20.3   .150    7.9
4.2   Kenon      19.0   .126    7.5
4.2   Hayes      17.1   .123    8.3  1

That's Marques Johnson; 2nd teamers were Bob Dandridge and Walter Davis.

[MW00]

Here's my combined PER(faux-EWA) and WS combined list of those still available down to the bottom, which is 174 (it's a bit less reliable at this end as if players just missed the rankings cut, that is top 250 NBA careers -WS- or top 200 NBA/ABA combined careers -faux EWA-, aren't included)

The underlined are my presently my leading contenders, but I'll look for any feedback and maybe how the voting is going (not to strategically vote) before my final decision (I'm doing this in part because I don't have a solid set of rankings and in part because it's a lot harder splitting a much tighter grouping of players).

Bailey Howell
Terry Cummings
Ed Macauley
Amar'e Stoudemire
Eddie Jones
Horace Grant
Chet Walker
Andre Miller
Chris Mullin
Detlef Schrempf
Jason Terry
Sam Cassell
Rod Strickland
Harry Gallatin
Bill Laimbeer
Marcus Camby
Rashard Lewis
Walter Davis
Bernard King
Vern Mikkelsen
Nate Archibald
Lenny Wilkens
Antawn Jamison
Maurice Cheeks
Stephon Marbury
Andrei Kirilenko
Alvan Adams
Carlos Boozer
Bobby Jones
Shareef-Abdur-Rahim
Predrag Stojakovic
John Drew
Calvin Murphy
Yao Ming
Mark Price
Otis Thorpe
Willis Reed
Brad Miller
Michael Finley
Earl Monroe
Gus Williams
Carmelo Anthony
Mark Jackson
Mitch Richmond
Larry Foust
Joe Dumars
Paul Westphal
Jack Twyman
Bob Dandridge
Terrell Brandon
Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Dave Bing
Kiki Vandeweghe
Mark Aguirre
Tom Chambers
Gail Goodrich
Antonio McDyess
Jermaine O'Neal
Baron Davis
World B. Free
Brad Daugherty
Lamar Odom
[Mookie Blaylock
Spencer Haywood
Dan Roundfield
Happy Hairston
Richie Guerin
Fred Brown
Bobby Wanzer
Derrick Coleman
Anfernee Hardaway
Corey Maggette
Christian Laettner
Richard Hamilton
Lafayette Lever
Maurice Lucas
Elden Campbell
Metta World Peace nee Ron Artest
Toni Kukoc
Randy Smith
Donyell Marshall

I think I'm basically looking at the list and then skewing small (advanced stats tend to favour bigs), older era (tended to have smaller careers to accumulate and faux-EWA measures skews against them), defensive (these metrics don't tend to capture this well albeit WS tries, and faux EWA is subjectively defense adjusted) and high peak (the extra value brought in being special for a shorter period relative to being solid for longer, which cumulative metrics doesn't account for).

Given that Howell comes in at 64, and is from an older era (and so is punished for playing in shorter career era and because the faux-EWA actively discredits older careers) my thinking is that he should have been in a while ago. But for whatever reason he doesn't have the legacy or name recognition that his stats suggest he should.

Many of the earliest guys were intially underlined. As before I'm not sure whether to go for early 50s players like Gallatin, Foust, Mikkelsen and Macauley (or the earlier Davies, Fulks, Risen, Feerick). It just seems like it would be hard to rank them fairly. On the one hand I feel they should be aknowledge but on the other if I throw them into the vote and they just end up sitting on the board and going late ...

Anyway, any suggestions?

[Mike G]

Remind us what is EWA, and then what is 'faux EWA' ?

How do you conclude that there is "extra value brought in being special for a shorter period relative to being solid for longer, which cumulative metrics doesn't account for
?
I've honestly seen no evidence for this; nor can I imagine where such evidence is found.
If a player is a truly transcendent talent for a short time -- Bill Walton might be the only such example -- then maybe. But he was also key as a 6th-7th man for a Celtics championship.
Would 14 "solid" seasons have been a better career, or likely to involve more titles? More wins for more teams?

Penny Hardaway was great for a short time, got zero rings. How many such could've-been stories are there? Grant Hill is another.

[MW00]

Remind us what is EWA, and then what is 'faux EWA' ?

How do you conclude that there is "extra value brought in being special for a shorter period relative to being solid for longer, which cumulative metrics doesn't account for
?
I've honestly seen no evidence for this; nor can I imagine where such evidence is found.
If a player is a truly transcendent talent for a short time -- Bill Walton might be the only such example -- then maybe. But he was also key as a 6th-7th man for a Celtics championship.
Would 14 "solid" seasons have been a better career, or likely to involve more titles? More wins for more teams?

Penny Hardaway was great for a short time, got zero rings. How many such could've-been stories are there? Grant Hill is another.

EWA is a PER derived Hollinger stat. But cumulative rather than per minute.
For EWA (on a yearly basis) this millenium see http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinge ... fied/false

VA: Value Added - the estimated number of points a player adds to a team’s season total above what a 'replacement player' (for instance, the 12th man on the roster) would produce. Value Added = ([Minutes * (PER - PRL)] / 67). PRL (Position Replacement Level) = 11.5 for power forwards, 11.0 for point guards, 10.6 for centers, 10.5 for shooting guards and small forwards
EWA: Estimated Wins Added - Value Added divided by 30, giving the estimated number of wins a player adds to a team’s season total above what a 'replacement player' would produce.

Faux EWA is how I'm reffering to Hpanic's (no longer online) PER based value added measure. Here's as much of the methodology as was given

I wanted to use, as a template, a basic VORP formula, which, in its most general form, looks like this:

VORP = (PER - ReplacementLevel)*minutes

But I tweaked it in some ways that I felt were appropriate. Firstly, the formula wasn't quite so linear. I made an adjustment to the general form such that if two players had equivalent VORP (as stated above), but one had a higher PER (and those lower minutes), that player had a higher rating. I did this to mesh with my idea of what "greatness" is. I prefer someone like say, David Thompson to someone like Otis Thorpe.

I adjusted each player's PER to reflect his abilities on defense. The question I asked was, "By the standards of a great player, how good was this guy on defense?" If someone's defense was what we'd normally expect from someone who was really good, I left his PER alone. For guys who were just average or bad defenders, I knocked a point off. For very good defender, I gave 1 point. For transcendent, amazing, game changing defenders (Pippen, Olajuwon, Mutombo, Robinson, Frazier, etc.) I gave two points. Bill Russell got 4 points. A difference of even one point made a huge difference in where a player got ranked, so I REALLY gave Bill Russell the benefit of the doubt here.

Playoff PER and minutes were treated similarly, with two exceptions. The first is that I set the replacement level higher for the playoffs. It wasn't enough to just get to the playoffs a lot; players needed to play like stars once they were there in order to get credit for what they did. Those who did were rewarded handsomely, because playoff minutes were weighted three times more than regular season minutes.

We have to remember all of the implications of that last paragraph: Karl Malone's career playoff PER was 21.1. This is quite a bit lower than his regular season 23.9, but it's still damn good, and I'd rather have Karl Malone than almost anyone else, even in the playoffs. It's chopped liver however compared to Hakeem Olajuwon's 25.7, so this was a part of the formula where a guy like Olajuwon could pull ahead.

Also, I need to mention: there was an adjustment made for when a player played. Basically, the earlier his career took place, the more his rating was scaled down. Players in the 50s didn't have to play against blacks, in the 60s they didn't have to play against Southern blacks, and not until the 2000s did they have to play against lots of internationals. I wanted the ratings to reflect that the competition's gotten better.

I call it faux EWA to make clear what it's lineage is, and to show it has been adjusted (including unclear replacement level values, era adjustments, defensive adjustments). Technically it's more faux VA, since the numbers produced are way bigger than win totals. But I think EWA is more recognisable and less generic.

As for the advantage of say a one year 30 PER player over two years 20 PER player (or 20 and 15), the reasoning is simple (those values are for illustrative purposes only and won't reflect an exact 2x difference). There are only so many minutes available, for team whose goal is to win a title, to get not just above average, but substantially above average (as winning a title will usually require). With the one great player your putting youself a significant distance above the pack, with additional minutes with which to deepen that advantage. With a longevity player for two years, you're spreading your goodness thinner. I don't know how/whether player metrics translate to team ones. But say that you could have a team of players giving a 2 point advantage per postion (over the average player) for one year, or a one point advantage for 2. The first team would post an SRS above 10. Of teams with a 10+ SRS, 5 of 6 have won a title (the sixth, the '72 Bucks had the misfortune of playing in the same year as the slightly more dominant '72 Lakers). By contrast 172 teams have posted a 5+ SRS. Even with two bites at the cherry, your chances of winning a title are still fairly slender.
Now there's a chance the team fail to use the extra minutes availed of them by further distancing themselves from the pack, they might even, on occasion fill them with bad players. Then you get something like T-Mac on the Magic. But in a league with a nominal 1/30 chance of winning (though greater in the past), and winning a title is your goal, I'd suggest (given the option) you need to concentrate your greatness.

And that's all leaving aside salary cap stuff (modern era individual player max means great players are by far the best value players), though this is fair enough as it is extrinsic to basketball ability.

Obviously there's a lot of technical issues about what measures to use (that would actually translate into wins) and what it would actually mean being, say, "double" another player (e.g. is it distance from the average, distance from replacement level etc). But the above is a general rationale for why you want short term greatness rather than longer term goodness.

post edited to correct formatting on quotes
Also I note that the faux EWA measure already did bump peak performance, though to what degree, we cannot be sure.