I do (but I'm biased towards Dirk obviously).

I agree on the championship point in general but I will make two observations. First, in basketball defense has huge value and is difficult to measure. By all accounts Russell had great impact on that end. And second yes the team was chock full of hall of famers but more than one are undeserving who only got in because they rode coattails to rings (the past version of Robert Horry if you will).

I think the mistake to make with Duncan when looking at stats is two fold. First, his stats were always lower because the Spurs always husbanded minutes for their top players. Making decisions based on fantasy stats is absolutely silly. Second, (and again on the defensive point) he is the best defensive power forward ever to play the game (even though he's really been a center since Robinson retired) and maybe one of the top 5 all time. You say he benefited from the system. Well he was their system. People focus on Bruce Bowen but the only reason their defense worked like it did especially with suboptimal D from a number of point guards after Avery is because Duncan is an absolute beast of a defender in the middle.

I can easily explain this and it is about career lengths and whether you value peak verses longevity. Basketball win shares favor accumulators and recently especially it has been easier to sustain a longer career. I also think they don't do a good job of adjusting for the sweltering pace in the 60s.

Note for the first three stats he also plays more minutes per game in the playoffs. I suspect his per minute performance drops (most players drop). Dirk is one of the few NBA superstars whose number go up on a consistent per minute basis in the playoffs.

All win shares systems favor accumulators. Not sure what they do about the pace, but they should be normalizing all eras so that all eras are on equal footing. Don't forget that players back then will do a little better than modern players simply because they played more minutes in those days. Wilt averaged over 48 minutes a game one season. Most stars played over 40 minutes a game in the 50s and 60s and even the 70s. In modern times the stars play like 36-38 minutes a game.

It's the same reason that pitchers from many decades ago get more win shares and WAR than modern pitchers, they just pitched a lor more innings back then.

I'd love to see number of playoff games played next to the names here. Because Kobe is not that far ahead of Dirk and he's played a shit ton more games.

That's the list I wanted to see. As I thought Dirk is quite high.

And Kobe is not. He's just behind the legendary Vern Mikkelsen...LOL.

48. Vern Mikkelsen* 0.1588
49. Kobe Bryant 0.1578

and both Oscar Robertson and Bill Russell are below Baron Davis...

Yes, but it's a rate stat and Davis has only played in 46 playoff games.

so what do you say we throw that stat out, we know baron davis isnt better than oscar or russell, and kobe is better than the guy ranked ahead of him, lets use a different criteria.

Vern Mikkelsen was an all-time great who played on some great teams, though. I can see the flaw in Win Shares/48, though.

On Bill Russell, I'm not sure how any pre-1974 stat can account for defense at all.

We're only using this for one thing, to determine the best players in the playoffs, per minute. It's very possible that Barron Davis has been great in that regard. That's one reason why the 67 win Mavs lost to Golden State in the first round.

Think of it like post season ERA for pitchers. We know that Jack Billingham was not a better pitcher than Greg Maddux, but Jack's post serason ERA is much better than Greg's. Billingham was 1.93 in 42 post season innings.

As for defense, here's how they calculate defensive win shares for the yeras that Russell and Oscar played.

B. 1951-52 to 1972-73 NBA
Prior to the 1973-74 season, the NBA did not track defensive rebounds, steals, or blocks, so allocating defensive credit is a difficult task. Nevertheless, here is the process for crediting Defensive Win Shares in those seasons (once again using Robertson in 1964-65 as an example):

Calculate team marginal defense. Team marginal defense is equal to 1.08 * (league points per shot attempt) * (team field goal attempts + 0.44 * (team free throw attempts)) - (opponent points). If you're wondering why we're using team shot attempts as opposed to opponent shot attempts, the answer is (a) we don't have opponent shot attempts prior to 1970-71 and (b) the system works better using team shot attempts. For the 1964-65 Royals we get 1.08 * 0.9578 * (7797 + 0.44 * 2866) - 8952 = 417.854.
Calculate the player's share of the team's marginal defense. The player's share of the team's marginal defense is equal to 0.25 * ((minutes played) / (team minutes played)) + 0.5 * ((total rebounds) / (team total rebounds)) + 0.25 * ((assists) / (team assists)). How did I get those weights? Modern Defensive Win Shares are most dependent on minutes played, defensive rebounds, steals, and blocks. I regressed DWS on those stats and then found the relative importance of each regressor (approximately 25% for minutes played, 35% for defensive rebounds, 25% for steals, and 15% for blocks). Since those defensive statistics are not available for past seasons, I used total rebounds as a proxy for defensive rebounds and blocks; and assists as a proxy for steals. A couple more notes: (1) prior to the 1964-65 season, team minutes played were not an official statistic, so for those seasons estimate the team's minutes played using the formula 5 * 48 * (team games) + 125; and (2) prior to the 1967-68 season, team total rebounds included team rebounds, so to account for this multiply the team total by 0.875. Getting back to our example, Robertson's share on the 1964-65 Royals is equal to 0.25 * (3421 / 19325) + 0.5 * (674 / (0.875 * 5387)) + 0.25 * (861 / 1843) = 0.2325.

Calculate marginal defense for each player. Marginal defense is equal to (team marginal defense) * (player share). For Robertson this is 417.854 * 0.2325 = 97.151. Note that this formula may produce a negative result for some players.

Calculate marginal points per win. Marginal points per win reduces to 0.16 * (team points per game + opponent points per game). For the 1964-65 Royals this is 0.16 * (114.2 + 111.9) = 36.176.

Credit defensive Win Shares to the players. Defensive Win Shares are credited using the following formula: (marginal defense) / (marginal points per win). Robertson gets credit for 97.151 / 36.176 = 2.69 Defensive Win Shares.