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Originally Posted by BadBaronRudigor
To respond to your two points:
(1) Do a rough survey of any group of wing players and you will find a significant decrease in their rebound rate going from age 21-26 to age 27-32. It is a fact of life, not necessarily an ABA/NBA thing. For that matter watch McGrady's RbR over the next 4 years . . . even though he plays more minutes at 3 and less at 2 than earlier in his career, his RbR will STILL probably go down.
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The difference is pretty large, though. 10+ is excellent for a wing player (McGrady has been one of the best wing rebounders of his generation) while 14+ RbR is simply incredible. And his drop-off was immediate. It's not that he declined gradually over that span of years, he fell off immediately after joining the NBA.
I don't think anyone really believes that the ABA was similarly strong. It wasn't a terrible league or anything, but it was significantly weaker from all accounts.
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(2) The group of forwards that Erving faced as a three is stronger on the average top to bottom than that faced in the 29-30 team NBA that McGrady has faced. Look at the median year for Erving, 1974. Erving faced an 8 team league. In addition to himself, he faced HOF candidates Billy Cunningham, Willie Wise, Roger Brown, and George Gervin. The others were Warren Jabali, George Carter, Wil Jones all very solid . . . and two weak players in Travis Grant (gunner) and Walt Simon (aging defensive specialist). Jabali/Carter and Brown/Gervin are the AVERAGE players. The ABA had few good centers and a relatively weak PG crop but was strong at the forward and wing spots (as you can see from the 1977 All-Star team after the leagues merged).
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I don't see any merit to the argument for Wise and Brown as Hall of Famers. They certainly didn't produce like Hall of Famers. They each had two seasons above 20 PER, and those were just barely above 20. They profile as generally good players who should have made a couple of All-Star games each. Not as anything like Hall of Famers. I don't pretend to have watched them, as they were before my time, but their record isn't strong.
Gervin and Cunningham were both excellent players, but their seasons in the ABA (inflated by being in the ABA) don't look significantly different from players like Vince Carter and Paul Pierce. To say nothing of players like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki (which is McGrady's defensive assignment), etc. I think defending players like Carter, Bryant, James, Nowitzki, etc, is considerably more demanding and difficult than defending Gervin and Cunningham 10 times each or so.
Granted, we're arguing over different things. You're basing this purely on his ABA years, while I'm using purely his NBA years. I didn't see his ABA years, and I'm going from the statistical record and the general consensus that the ABA was weaker.
As far as I'm concerned, judging players by their ABA performance has many of the same pitfalls as judging Sabonis by his international play...we have varying opinion on it's relative strength, we have the statistical record for what was achieved...but it simply wasn't NBA competition.