I actually like Durant's game, and he has played well at the olympics. However, with a good defender like Pippen on him, he isn't going to be shooting wide open 3's.

As for the rest of your post about Paul sharing the ball? You go ahead and say whatever you need to try and justify your losing side of this Paul vs. Ginobli debate.

+1

You're right that my last sentence doesn't follow, it was 2.30am when I wrote it and apparently I wasn't thinking straight. The other part is very significant though.

You talked about filling the extra roster spots with players who are on average worse than those in the ABA, which would be fair enough except that you're not taking players at random from the NBA, you're taking only the best of them. Unless you actually believe that the without the bottom 28% of players the NBA would still have been worse than the ABA then the average level of player being added the league was higher than that in the ABA and so the average player in the combined league was better.

Sure, nice apple-apple metric.

First year of merger 5 of top 10, and 10 of top 20 PER were from ABA.

I'll take that as true, and I have no dog in this ridiculous ABA/NBA fight, but top talent being equal does not imply top-to-bottom talent being equal.

That Andrew Luck would've been the best quarterback in any conference does not mean Pac-10 football > *

BTW NBA top 10 PER average drop was 1.7 year-over-year.

I don't either, but let's at least use some reasonable stats to back up our claims.

Doesn't this help prove Iggy's point? He was saying that the league improved with the merger and hence the PER of the best players would reduce from the year before the merger. The fact that the PER of the top 10 players in each league reduced fairly significantly from pre to post merger implies that the merged league was indeed stronger than either of the individual ones.

Iggy was saying nothing about the relative stronger of the NBA vs ABA pre merger, only the ABA pre merger vs NBA post merger.

I'M NOT DEBATING ANYTHING....

just wanted to say, I know I got criticized before for talking about the "tail-end" too much, but aren't the players we're debating (GOATS) also pretty big outliers? I mean, I know a rising tide lifts all boats and everything, but these guys are mega-yachts, in any era.

If you think picking the top 10 performances of anything and expect repeat performances (and if not then making some inference) then no that would not be correct.

About outliers, when people try to make a case describing one event as an outlier, maybe. When it becomes multiple "outliers", then that deviates from the basic definition of the term.

Can you post a picture of yourself?

that's a good point. 4th SD is top or bottom .25% though, right?

if you look at the population of NBA players, then NBA All-Star players, then NBA HOFers, then NBA all-time greats, I still wonder if we're getting there.

even then, I see your point.

Yeah, but it usually doesn't drop anywhere near that much. FWIW, after I'd already written out my entire post, I thought of that argument so I checked the 10 median ABA players too, and of those, the PER went down the next year for 7/10. There's really no question that the merged NBA was tougher than its two predecessors.

I agree NBA post-merger was more competitive than NBA pre-merger. But it is a bit disingenuous to compare ABA pre/post, for one reason the rules differences. I would suspect that NBA post was more competitive than ABA pre, but using same logic of the top 10 PER 1977, 5 were from ABA, and their PER went up a full point the next year(1978).

If you want to substantiate your point you need better stats than what you have provided.

I did a quick check of the last 2 full seasons (2010-2011). Top 10 PER dropped average of 1.4. I don't see a big difference between that and ABA/NBA. I welcome somebody calculating average PER drop for the top 10 one year to the next since 1977.

FWIW took a glance at olympic weightlifting record progression. 3 of the current 8 men's total weight lifted world records were established more than 12 years ago, and all records prior to 1998 were nullified due to weight class changes.

As it turns out, 75kg record in 1987 exceeds 77kg modern record, 60kg record in 1988 exceeds modern 62kg record,, and 82.5kg record from 1972 exceeds 85kg modern record. Also, the 56kg class record dates to 1984. So in reality only 2 of the 8 current weight classes are held by recent performers.

For the greatest team ever assembled the 2012 squad sure does spend a lot of time in 2nd half competitive games.

the usa's offense is straight garbage - dribble, dribble, dribble, jumpshot, dribble, dribble, dribble, jumpshot. contrast that with australia's offense.

usa's offense is straight 1-on-1 on probably 75% of the possessions. what a joke. not sure what the coach even showed up for.

and their defense is equally as bad, actually worse.

for the zillionth time, this team would get destroyed by the dream team.

50% USA covers 32.5 here. They are def. playing to impress oddsmakers (ha ha).

USA's offense is more like "dribble, dribble, dribble, score 125 points per game".

The one on one thing is definitely true. With the athletes the US has with a little pasing and positioning they can get super easy shots almost every possession, but the number of ridiculously awful forced shots they take is absurd.

TYVM. Had no idea what in game odds were when USA was up 22 with 4:00 left. I would assume < 50%.

yawn....my usa -32.5 bet was never in doubt

(they were up 14 with 6:16 left lolz)