Rainier

+1 I would also definitely have Hakeem and and Kareem in front of Shaq and Wilt.

Watched the first episode of the Celtics documentary on Max. It’s called Celtics City. Seems well done. You obviously have to be able to stomach a lot of Boston homerism. First episode deals with Auerbach, Cousy, Russell. Learned some stuff I didn’t know.

Thanks

No. Was a Sonics fan as a kid. Then mavericks and spurs.

How do you buy Kyoto Financial? Is there an ADR?

Agree on getting back to LeBron. And I apologize, didn’t mean to derail the thread so much. Shaq definitely doesn’t need this much attention.

Hey, I don’t hate him at all!!! I’ve got him 29th. Of course he’ll be 30th in a couple of years once Luka has a title!

If I were drafting today, knowing the trajectory of all of those players and their injuries and work ethic and everything…I would take everyone I have ranked above Shaq before Shaq, with the possible exceptions of Walton (injury), Kawhi (injury), Dr J (hard to evaluate due to ABA competition). So, maybe I’d move him up three spots to 26. But I would absolutely take Wade over Shaq. Unless I was drafting in like 1950 or something. Anytime from 1980 onward, he’d be drafted around 25 on that list. Now if it was the idea of Shaq, the version going out of LSU, that I was drafting. Then yeah, he’d be higher. But knowing what I know, I wouldn’t want a decade of fat Shaq. Fat Shaq with the Lakers benefitted from some extreme tailwinds when it comes to narratives for the league (i.e. favorable calls in the playoffs) and the level of competition in the league at that time. There were basically three teams with any hope from year to year - the Lakers, Spurs, and Kings. And no one in the East. JKidd’s nets and Iverson’s 76ers were not a lot of competition in the finals. All of the real contests were in the WCF. So, all Shaq had to do was get through the west and had smooth sailing. Plus, he had a top 10ish all time player with him in Kobe. A top 3 all time coach. And one of the best supporting casts of role players in the last 30 years. I know I’m in the minority with this opinion, and that’s fine. I’m good with living solo on anti-Shaq island. But it’s not debatable to me. Shaq is one of the all time most overrated players. Still, I’ve got him 29th on that list! That’s not bad at all! And, honestly, pretty impressive he’s that high given his (again, self-admitted) laziness.

I just mentioned 75 because the league did a top 75 list recently. I did this quick from my own memory / opinion. The lower on the list the less conviction I have about the order (except for Shaq haha!). Obviously subjective. Probably missing people. But I’ve got him I think at 29 on this list. With his natural talent, he should have been in the top 10, easily. The only others on this list who underachieved given their natural talent and size and longevity/health are Wilt, Robinson, Karl Malone, Chris Webber, Carmelo, maybe Dominique, maybe Giannis (tbd). Almost everybody else got just about everything they could out of their talent and brains. Not the Big Diesel though. Jordan LeBron Kareem Russell Bird Duncan West Magic Hakeem Steph Robertson Kobe KD Havlicek Wilt Baylor Dr. J Pippen Jokic (probably ends up top 10) Barkley Walton Dirk Garnett Isiah Thomas Giannis Wade Kawhi Worthy Shaq Moses Malone Nash Stockton Frazier Robinson Karl Malone Unseld King Jkidd Iverson Westbrook Harden Miller Payton Rodman T-Mac Ginobili Dominique Gervin Drexler CP3 Carmelo Gasol Hill KJ Webber Mullin

Yeah, Luka isn’t a defensive force. That’s his one downside. Disagree hard regarding Shaq. From a physical gifts standpoint he was a unicorn. But he was the definition of a diva, lazy, poor leadership, etc. He refused to play in a small market, despite the fact that he 1) had another star and 2) the team was well managed and built a very good contender around him. Poor teammate with Kobe. They won and they both had dominant personalities, but when you read stuff about how that relationship early on…it doesn’t reflect well at all on Shaq. I’m not one of these people that put Kobe on a pedestal, but Shaq didn’t cover himself in glory regarding the way he handled his LA years. He realized how badly he screwed up the Kobe situation and made a huge PR effort when he went to Miami to support Wade. He admits that he was lazy and didn’t work hard. Refused to practice. Didn’t want to strategize. This isn’t speculation. This is all well documented by himself on TNT and his podcast. A big part of his identity early in his career was that he wanted to be considered the GOAT. Not in the way that all players probably want that, but he was kind of in the same boat as LeBron of doing everything he could in a calculated way to position himself as a challenger to Jordan’s status (he’s talked a lot about this and how much this colored his decisions). But unlike LeBron, he was lazy. He didn’t want to practice or condition himself or manage his weight or make teammates better or really anything other than that which came naturally to him (bully people in the paint). Let himself get super fat. This is a big part of his legacy for me. Completely ridiculous how fat he was. And was sensitive about being called out on it. Created a huge ordeal with Walton (who was shaq’s biggest supporter and who was genuinely concerned about shaq’s feet) and created bad blood over it for years. He also refused to practice free throw shooting despite the fact that teams exploited it. Since being on TNT he’s sort of exposed himself as being extremely petty and a bad teammate and employee. It’s come out gradually over the years. As an example, he has talked about how the role players on teams are not important. Even Jordan who was as psycho as they come has mostly sung the praises of his role players in retirement. Recently he said that Jimmy Butler was doing the right thing by not living up to his contract and mailing it in every game and faking injuries because of pride/pettiness. It’s just a legacy of laziness. Was he dominant, yes. Is he a top 75 player all time, yes. Is he a superstar at self-promotion / marketing, yes. Should he be mentioned in the same vein as Jordan, LeBron, Bird, Duncan, Russell, Magic, West, Hakeem, Kobe, Walton, Step, etc….absolutely not. In my opinion, his peers are people like Wilt and Karl Malone. Still good, but somewhat flaky, company. Again, I admit I’m biased.

You might be right about timing with Luka. To play devils advocate though, I would encourage any Luka doubters to look at his offensive stats to date for the same period of the careers of Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Wilt or any of the all time greats offensively. He’s on track to have offensive peers of only Jordan, LeBron, Wilt, Kareem. And this is for someone who is average or below average in terms of physical traits (compared to other nba players generally and especially compared to other phenoms like KD, Garnett, LeBron, Vince Carter, etc). Hyper competitive (even among nba standards) and plays better in playoffs. Plus already has two WCF appearances and a Finals appearance on not the best teams. You’re right that it’s early, but it’s a scorching start. We will have to agree to disagree on Shaq. I’m also the opposite of a Shaq fan, so I might be biased.

Yeah - I don’t disagree with any of those inclusions in terms of talent. My only argument would be that I don’t think Malone or Shaq or Kemp were known for their basketball IQ / scheming / strategy / play calling / mind games / time management / ref manipulation etc. Effectively on-court coaching. Those guys (Shaq, Kemp, Malone, etc) were more just generational physical talents whose bodies and coordination were elite among the elite. In a lot of ways, those types of players were kind of known for frustrating their floor generals because of mental lapses (especially Kemp). Good example - what would Vince Carter’s career have been like if he’d had the devotion to studying / managing the game like other elitely talented 2/3 swing players like Jordan or Kobe or LeBron? Luka and LeBron (especially LeBron) are obviously physically gifted. But they’re in rarified air in terms of all-time basketball IQ. The only other players on the league on their level are Jokic, decrepit Chris Paul, and Draymond. Of course basketball IQ is obviously the most subjective thing ever and can’t be quantified at all. More of a know it when you see it trait I guess. Bird, Jokic, Chris Paul, Stockton, Payton being prime examples. Physically not impressive and may not even score much in a game, but routinely control the entire flow of the game by themselves. Russell / Cousy / Havlicek is the biggest omission. But I was initially keeping it to the last 50ish years because I just don’t have any experience watching those guys or Jerry West or Oscar. I do think they get short shrift today though. Russell, Havlicek, West should probably be in everyone’s top 10-25 list. Especially when you hear about all of the off the court hardships guys like Russell and Jerry West had to deal with.

It will be interesting to see what they do in the playoffs. I don’t like to root for the Lakers, but this situation is something really unusual. I hope LeBron can hold up in the playoffs and they can get a lot out of Austin Reeves. Would be nice to see a western conference second round of Lakers, Warriors, Nuggets, Thunder. Also, the combo of LeBron and Luka is in the very upper stratosphere in terms of highest basketball IQ superstar duos of all time. Will be fascinating to see what they’re able to do in seven game series’ when strategy and endurance really take over. For the last 50ish years I would rank star-level duos on basketball IQ as the following (IQ only, I’m not saying most talented duo - although #1 would be the same, also excluding short stints like Gary Payton playing with Kobe). 1. Jordan / Pippen 2. Bird / McHale 3. LeBron / Luka (and this is close - they probably are #2, but I’m reticent because of recency bias and short tenure together) 4. Duncan / Ginobili 5. Magic / Kareem 6. Steph / Draymond 7. Rondo / Garnett 8. Kobe / Gasol I’m probably forgetting some obvious combo. It’s painful to leave guys like Jokic, Chris Paul, Stockton, Payton, Nash, etc off that list. But it’s rare that you have two star-level players who are that micro focused on offensive and/or defensive strategy on the same team. Probably a lot of reasons for that now that I think about it. Essentially all of those duos have a clear spotlight guy and a clear dirty work or subordinate guy, even if they’re both equally intelligent strategically. Corporate analogy I guess fits - that it’s rare to have two all-time great CEO caliber executives in one company (one would typically leave to be the man somewhere else). Buffett / Munger (and maybe Ajit too) being an obvious exception.

I don’t know anything about this company, but will do some research. Anyone know anything about it? It just came up as I was researching BIRG and came across this guy’s twitter. Irish Continental Group (also, can anyone tell me how to embed a twitter post so it can actually be seen in the body of my forum post here on cobf?)

Thanks; sorry I should have picked up that it was NextEra. And thanks for the analysis on it from a few weeks ago - I didn’t know anything about it prior to that. It’s interesting and I’ve been thinking about a small position. I do wonder what stops them from just getting themselves back into the same situation again over the long-term (over leveraging with CEPFs). Maybe they’ll be more disciplined. But I guess the reality is that this is probably a 2-5 year story with constant re-assessing, not something to buy and put in a coffee can.