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Originally Posted by JPSeraph
I'm not either. There's quite a bit of room to speculate how good Pettit would be in today's league without declaring him one of the top 5 of all time.
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Yes, and my speculation is that he's one of the five best power forwards of all-time.
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This is why applying PER in this case as the chief means by which to assess Pettit's effectiveness in today's NBA is a flawed approach. You have to understand how the game was played and how it has changed.
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I do understand a lot about how the game was played and how it has changed, from reading about past eras. That said, do you feel it would be insane to place Bill Russell in a similar top-five list for centers?
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With Bird, we have loads of highlights, games, personal experiences, players to compare him to who played well into the 90's etc. We also have PER that isn't an estimate.
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You're missing my point. I'm not comparing Pettit to Bird in terms of what we know. I'm saying that Bird illustrates that you don't need to have amazing athleticism to dominate modern basketball. If you have top-level skills, you can dominate. From what I've read of Pettit (and what his atstistics suggest) is that he had that type of incredible skill.
Such skills are just as valid today as then. What has mostly changed is the power and athleticism of the game. But Pettit didn't dominate by banging inside...back then, the game wasn't a physical one, so big men didn't dominate by blasting their way to the hoop. Therefore, Pettit didn't have a game dependant on overpowering smaller, '50s/'60s opponents that he couldn't hope to sustain today. His game was more about footwork, technique and shooting skill. All those things would allow him to be great today, as McHale or Duncan were/are great in modern basketball.