Cousins-Duncan debate (split)

[CelticsFan]

You understand this thread is comparing the two players right?

 

[KingsFanGER]

Of course I do. But what would a GOAT discussion be, without the one guy spoiling the whole thing with "just not comparable" statement...

 

[CelticsFan]

Of course I do. But what would a GOAT discussion be, without the one guy spoiling the whole thing with "just not comparable" statement...

Well KingsFanGER you did it, you're the guy. Congrats!

 

[Bricklayer]

Maybe this is the problems with the Kings organization. People putting Cousins on the same playing field as one of the greatest players to play. Cousins has never won more than 29 games in a season. Basketball is a team game Cousins putting up good stats on bad teams doesn't necessarily translate into the the greatest player of all time. Would Cousins stats be better or worse if he was on a contending team?

Cousins is a great talent no doubt but until he sniffs a .500 record in his career let keep the comparison to a minimum.

Look, this can only be said so many times. People have to get that DeMarcus Cousins DID NOT win 29 games. And Tim Duncan did NOT win 60.

The Kings won 29. The Spurs won 60.

Once that reality sets in, you then begin to sift through the hows and whys, and what you find is that the San Antonio Spurs of Duncan's peak era (when he was the unquestioned #1 with primary winning responsibility) were a +.500 team even without Duncan. Duncan went down, they kept on winning. That doesn't mean Duncan was irrelevant, far from it. But it means that Tim Duncan's impact was to turn a 45win team into a 60 win team. NOT to turn a 15win team into a 60 win team.

Meanwhile DeMarcus Cousins' impact was to turn a 14 win team into a 33 win team. The dramatic difference in their fate is not because they weren't adding a comparable number of victories, its because the talent of their underlying teams was dramatically different.

There has never been a player in history who was singlehandedly going to add 45 wins to a team. I doubt there has ever been one who was singlehandedly going to add 30. The Kings have a single player who adds near 20 wins a complete season to the team. A team so bad without him that he singlehandedly more than doubles their winning percentage/total.

And yes, if he remains healthy Cousins is a near lock for the HOF. If we don't spin things in the next 18 months he will have to do the winning part of the tour for another franchise, but people are ridiculously uninformed about just how remarkable Cousins; talent and numbers are. Maybe even more remarkable given that he has put them up in era so hostile to his style of play. If this were 1985 and not 2015 he would be facing single man coverage every night in extremely high paced games with 10 more possessions in them. Instead he is often doubled without the ball, and has played for a succession of coaches desperate to be a cool kid and smallball with the times.

Even if you assume he continues to miss time every year, by the time he's 30 Cousins is likely to have racked up somewhere in the range of 10,000 more points, 5,000 more rebounds, 4-5 more All Stars, and 4-5 more All NBA teams. That would likely do it itself, even if he retired immediately. If he carries on at all, even if he slid back to a mere 20-10, he would hit 20,000pts 10,000reb by his early 30s, which is something only 17 guys have done, all of whom are in the HOF or will be soon (Dirk, Shaq, Duncan, Garnett).

Of the 17 20k/10k guys, at the same age (age 24, last year, since this year is not finished yet), Cousins ranks:

Age 24, Points:
O'Neal 9355
MMalone 8548
Garnett 8280
Abdul-Jabbar 7779
Nowitzki 7394
Bellamy 6887
Cousins 6618
Barkley 6579
Duncan 6351
Chamberlain 5740
KMalone 5250
Pettit 5070
Olajuwon 5044
Hayes 4583
Ewing 2354
Robinson 1993
Baylor 1742
Parish 1722

Age 24, Rebounds:
MMalone 6214
O'Neal 4331
Garnett 4271
Bellamy 4170
Chamberlain 4090
Abdul-Jabbar 3847
Cousins 3726
Barkley 3674
Duncan 3463
Pettit 3195
Nowitzki 2994
Hayes 2792
Olajuwon 2613
KMalone 2559
Parish 1223
Baylor 1050
Ewing 1006
Robinson 983


Age 24, Last Season #s (just to check for likely future production):
Garnett 22.0pts 11.4reb
Cousins 24.1pts 12.7reb
Duncan 22.2pts 12.2reb
Nowitzki 25.1pts 9.9reb
Olajuwon 23.4pts 11.4reb
Ewing 21.5pts 8.8reb
Abdul-Jabbar 34.8pts 16.6reb
Chamberlain 38.4pts 27.2reb
Hayes 27.5pts 16.9reb
KMalone 27.0pts 12.0reb
MMalone 25.8pts 14.5reb
O'Neal 26.2pts 12.5reb
Barkley 28.3pts 11.3reb
Baylor 24,9pts 15.0reb
Bellamy 27.0pts 17.oreb
Parish 12.5pts 8.3reb
Pettit 24.7pts 14.6reb
Robinson 24.3pts 12.0reb

Then just to cap things I ran a check just to confirm that there weren't a whole bunch of people putting up those numbers and then missing on the hall.

So all players to have 6618pts 3726reb by age 24:

Howard (will be HOF)
Kareem (HOF)
Shaq (will be HOF)
Bosh (sadly probably will be HOF, doesn't deserve it)
Garnett (will be HOF)
McAdoo (HOF)
Brand (no)
Bellamy (HOF)
Cousins (?)
Robsinon (as in Cliff Robinson early 80s? That was a pretty shocking entry, but irrelevant given he never averaged 20ppg in a single season in his career)