How Great Was Kevin Garnett?

[Jonny Blaze]

That's easy to say when one has much superior teammates. Minny had no business being anywhere close to Dallas's level. The fact that they were one only seed apart shows the difference between KG and Dirk. Van Exel was coming off the bench for Dallas and he averaged more PPG in Denver (pre-trade) than Szczerbiak. After KG and Dirk, Nash and Finley were the next two best players. If you switch KG and Dirk around, what stops KG from doing what he did with Cassell and Sprewell? wtf is Dirk going to do starting next to Sam Mitchell instead of Finley?

Fact is that no one in the history of the NBA would have gone anywhere with KG's Minny cast aside from the one year where KG took them to the WCF only to have Cassell Injured.

Basically, what we've seen is that every time you gave KG something, he delivered. Whereas a guy like Dirk was given some talent year after year and only delivered once on the back of his teammate's being able to hold their ground defensively (with Dirk being like the 5th best defender).

Oh brother.

What stops KG from doing what Dirk did? Imho that's a simplistic view. Feel free to tell me what version of KG could go 8 of 11 from 3pt land like what happened in 2002? Or what version of him ever had a 30+ppg playoff series?

Both teams lose something big if they're to swap places. They're vastly different types of PFs. Spare me all the excuses you want about talent vs talent, he wasn't on a island on his own in that series vs Dallas. While he's not the reason Minny lost, Dirk still played better than he did that series.

How about you explain his efficiency falling in the playoffs and being unable to assert himself offensively vs a doormat defensive team that year instead?

And KG has to be held somewhat accountable for who he played alongside.....he's the one who demanded to be the highest paid player in the NBA, which limited who they could afford bring alongside him. He had Chauncey Billups a future Finals MVP when many on here are claiming he had nothing but riff raff in Minny before his MVP 04 season. Wally Szczerbiak who is getting derided here offered more when healthy than any SF Karl Malone ever played with in Utah.

Kevin Garnett was fantastic at putting up empty stats in the regular season against crap teams. Guys on this website eat that regular season stuff up. Once the post season came around he almost always shrank because he was not a dominant enough scorer.

Kevin Garnett never, ever scored more than 40 points in a playoff game. Kevin Garnett only won two playoff series in 12 years in Minnesota.
The biggest reason why Kevin Garnett did not have more post season success was that he had the unfortunate luck of playing teams in the Western Conference with better superstar players.

The revisionist on this website will blame KG lack of post season success on his teammates when the truth is that the T-Wolves were consistently playing teams that had more dominant superstar players.

PERIOD.

Kevin Garnett was an elite playoff performer for a grand total of three seasons 2002-2004 and maybe 2008. Kevin Garnett at his peak as a playoff performer was not as good as Dirk, Shaq, Duncan or Kobe. No shame there. The shame is listening to the same revisionist try and act like if life was different that Kevin Garnett would be a different player.

His post season resume is severely lacking compared to other players he is compared to like Dirk, Barkley or Karl Malone. The revisionist on this site will also make it seem like Dirk, Barkley and Malone were playing no defense at all while they were averaging 25-30 PPG and 12-15 rebounds in the post season.

You will have guys like DRZA write these novels full of half truths, big words and propaganda on how KG averaging 18 points and 13 rebounds in a playoff series actually trumps his contemporaries averaging 30 and 15.




Kevin Garnett never had post season success until he got to play on A super team in the Eastern Conference facing 40 win teams in the 1st and 2nd round.

Look at the teammates that Dirk had in 2009 when they upset the San Antonio Spurs. I don't ever want to hear that Wally Szerbiack (All Star) or Chauncey Billups (NBA FInals MVP) were not good teammates, or why Kevin Garnett could never lead a team to an upset in the playoffs.

If Kevin Garnett was as great as people on this website make him out to be then he would have post season runs like Hakeem, Dirk, David Robinson, Lebron or Tim Duncan. All of these players have taken horrible rosters deep into the playoffs. KG does not have that on his resume.

[NBAMythbuster]

I have KG ranked at maybe the bottom of the top 10, so I don't think I'm underrating KG. I also think that's roughly where the plurality (or majority) of people have him. The problem is the extremes on either side who make it frustrating to discuss him. On the one hand there are the guys who don't even have KG in the top 20, which is ludicrous. On the other hand is an equally vocal group of advanced stat junkies who basically think KG was the greatest player to ever play more or less. They don't quite say that, but when you push them that seems to be more or less where you end up. One of the strange things talking to the advanced stats crowd is when you point out the standard reasons XYZ for why advanced stats aren't everything they will agree, and say "oh, of course, I totally get that" by ROTE. But despite saying that, their rankings invariably seem to end up in the exact same order you'd have gotten from just looking at the advanced stats.

KG was a great player, better than Dirk or Kobe. But when I see him getting ranked over Duncan and Shaq, or even Hakeem, then I think things have just gotten silly.

[mtron929]

I have KG ranked at maybe the bottom of the top 10, so I don't think I'm underrating KG. I also think that's roughly where the plurality (or majority) of people have him. The problem is the extremes on either side who make it frustrating to discuss him. On the one hand there are the guys who don't even have KG in the top 20, which is ludicrous. On the other hand is an equally vocal group of advanced stat junkies who basically think KG was the greatest player to ever play more or less. They don't quite say that, but when you push them that seems to be more or less where you end up. One of the strange things talking to the advanced stats crowd is when you point out the standard reasons XYZ for why advanced stats aren't everything they will agree, and say "oh, of course, I totally get that" by ROTE. But despite saying that, their rankings invariably seem to end up in the exact same order you'd have gotten from just looking at the advanced stats.

KG was a great player, better than Dirk or Kobe. But when I see him getting ranked over Duncan and Shaq, or even Hakeem, then I think things have just gotten silly.

Pretty much agreed. I do think that there is utility to these advanced stats (e.g. Ginobelli is better than how most people perceive him to be), but it seems like few of the people take it too far and try to put much more precise meaning to these stats. And this is where it gets problematic. For example, if we just assume that RAPM might have +/-10 error bar at an all time "true" ranking (assuming there is one), then KG can be anywhere from 1 to 20, soley by the advanced stat analysis, which is still damn good. But some of these people put much more faith in the stat to yield something like +/-2 error bar at an all time ranking (unbelievably precise!), which can lead to the conclusion that KG is at around top 5. For example, you will never ever find someone who is really into advanced stats, who puts KG at 15-20 range. This means that these guys are all converging on their subjective answers on the all time ranking, which illustrates how much collective faith they put in these numbers.

[Ron Swanson]

Ask yourself, if you simply swap out Tim Duncan with KG, do the Spurs win more, less, or the same amount of titles during that 16 year span (1998-2014)? Because what it always seems to come down to in judging "greatness" between two players who had similar lengthy and statistical careers, is the rings argument, fair or not.

[lorak]

How great? The best player of his generation: http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/09/26/kevin-garnett-most-valuable-player-of-his-generation/

[Texas Chuck]

How great? The best player of his generation: http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/09/26/kevin-garnett-most-valuable-player-of-his-generation/

As always nice to hear drza weigh in.

[Colbinii]

How great? The best player of his generation: http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/09/26/kevin-garnett-most-valuable-player-of-his-generation/

As always nice to hear drza weigh in.

Whether you believe in the weight that drza puts on +/- and impact stats, you can't deny he is a fantastic writer and very knowledgeable.

[Texas Chuck]

How great? The best player of his generation: http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/09/26/kevin-garnett-most-valuable-player-of-his-generation/

As always nice to hear drza weigh in.

Whether you believe in the weight that drza puts on +/- and impact stats, you can't deny he is a fantastic writer and very knowledgeable.

drza and I definitely disagree on the weight he puts on them, but I always learn something when I read his work and he's certainly influenced my opinions on players(including KG).

[trex_8063]

for '94-'96: use the NPI (rs-only) RAPM provided by colts18
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VSPxw_RVZ-WBOHM5J434efmLjMYGVYi8CrA59WS7GuA/edit#gid=2018314684
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hnhhuQhlY-hp0Qt6xT-cUe2tqBF3TxPjYW8g0mblnmQ/edit#gid=1932503302
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nqWP4Lu7lBjAydga0vrN1Gv4L686iA1AktvFj4vgKSo/edit#gid=1715147358

That's not real NPI and can't be used as NPI or even as estimation of NPI.

Why, exactly?
It seems implied he was using the single-season data-set only (so technically that is Non-Prior Informed). The only thing to haggle about is whether this is actually RAPM (or at least something that can be used as an estimation of same).

He stated he ran a regression, so at the very least it's APM (and if so, I'd somewhat disagree that that is a bad proxy or estimation for RAPM; EDIT: at least not that bad). However, that he labeled it RAPM makes me wonder if he further performed a ridge regression or other methodology to reduce collinearity issues anyway (which would make it RAPM, no?). But at the very least his data is APM (of rs only).

And at any rate, within the context of a discussion about Kevin Garnett and the stats/rankings I provided in previous post, excluding these three years do not affect his numbers at all, nor would it effect his rank in those listings.

[Rapcity_11]

How great? The best player of his generation: http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/09/26/kevin-garnett-most-valuable-player-of-his-generation/

As always nice to hear drza weigh in.

Whether you believe in the weight that drza puts on +/- and impact stats, you can't deny he is a fantastic writer and very knowledgeable.

Nah, it's all half-truths, big words and propaganda

[lorak]

for '94-'96: use the NPI (rs-only) RAPM provided by colts18
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VSPxw_RVZ-WBOHM5J434efmLjMYGVYi8CrA59WS7GuA/edit#gid=2018314684
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hnhhuQhlY-hp0Qt6xT-cUe2tqBF3TxPjYW8g0mblnmQ/edit#gid=1932503302
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nqWP4Lu7lBjAydga0vrN1Gv4L686iA1AktvFj4vgKSo/edit#gid=1715147358

That's not real NPI and can't be used as NPI or even as estimation of NPI.

Why, exactly?
It seems implied he was using the single-season data-set only (so technically that is Non-Prior Informed). The only thing to haggle about is whether this is actually RAPM (or at least something that can be used as an estimation of same).

It's not, because it wasn't done based on play by play data. And I don't remember exactly how he has done it, but my memory is that it was doubtful from mathematical point of view. Do you have link to original thread?

[trex_8063]

That's not real NPI and can't be used as NPI or even as estimation of NPI.

Why, exactly?
It seems implied he was using the single-season data-set only (so technically that is Non-Prior Informed). The only thing to haggle about is whether this is actually RAPM (or at least something that can be used as an estimation of same).

It's not, because it wasn't done based on play by play data. And I don't remember exactly how he has done it, but my memory is that it was doubtful from mathematical point of view. Do you have link to original thread?

Roughly starts here http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=344&t=1343246&start=100#start_here.
The per 100 on/off data Elgee provided (that colts18's did the regression on) is around this page. I think the links colts18 provides is on the following page(s).

[Fundamentals21]

[i]In his prime, Kevin Garnett was the greatest basketball defender I have ever seen, and my visual memories extend back to Bill Russell in the early 1960s.

I keep wondering about this. KG's defensive consistency is on par w/Bill Russel's legend. Is there a chance that if they switched eras Bill Russell and KG would switch places in everyone's all time ranking? Even if you give Russell an advantage in shotblocking, KG's got a clear advantage on offense. At worst they'd be equal.

People do the Duncan-KG switch, but the Russell-KG switch has stronger impact on anyone's GOAT list.

[dautjazz]

I'm actually legitimately surprised that people would have him out of the top 10. I have him closer to GOAT than I do #10.

Which of these players are Kg clearly or undeniably better than?

MJ
Kareem
Lebron
Wilt
Duncan
Shaq
Hakeem
Russell
Magic
Bird

That's my top 10 too, then I'd probably put Robertson 11th, then he's the mix with K.Malone, West, and M.Malone. Then I'd put Kobe at 15th. 16-20 probably something like Barkley, Wade, Nowitzki, Robinson and Erving. Roughly. Baylor has to be close to that range too.

[magicmerl]

[i]In his prime, Kevin Garnett was the greatest basketball defender I have ever seen, and my visual memories extend back to Bill Russell in the early 1960s.

I keep wondering about this. KG's defensive consistency is on par w/Bill Russel's legend. Is there a chance that if they switched eras Bill Russell and KG would switch places in everyone's all time ranking? Even if you give Russell an advantage in shotblocking, KG's got a clear advantage on offense. At worst they'd be equal.

People do the Duncan-KG switch, but the Russell-KG switch has stronger impact on anyone's GOAT list.

Yes, but you could make the same argument for Hakeem, David and Duncan as well. All of them would have absolutely destroyed in the 60s.

That's part of why people detract from Russell and Wilt's achievements, because it was a less impressive era with much less talent.

[Texas Chuck]

[i]In his prime, Kevin Garnett was the greatest basketball defender I have ever seen, and my visual memories extend back to Bill Russell in the early 1960s.

I keep wondering about this. KG's defensive consistency is on par w/Bill Russel's legend. Is there a chance that if they switched eras Bill Russell and KG would switch places in everyone's all time ranking? Even if you give Russell an advantage in shotblocking, KG's got a clear advantage on offense. At worst they'd be equal.

People do the Duncan-KG switch, but the Russell-KG switch has stronger impact on anyone's GOAT list.

Yes, but you could make the same argument for Hakeem, David and Duncan as well. All of them would have absolutely destroyed in the 60s.

That's part of why people detract from Russell and Wilt's achievements, because it was a less impressive era with much less talent.

Less depth of talent, sure. But not lack of top end talent and with such a small league you were facing elite players actually a higher percentage of the time.

[Colbinii]

I keep wondering about this. KG's defensive consistency is on par w/Bill Russel's legend. Is there a chance that if they switched eras Bill Russell and KG would switch places in everyone's all time ranking? Even if you give Russell an advantage in shotblocking, KG's got a clear advantage on offense. At worst they'd be equal.

People do the Duncan-KG switch, but the Russell-KG switch has stronger impact on anyone's GOAT list.

Yes, but you could make the same argument for Hakeem, David and Duncan as well. All of them would have absolutely destroyed in the 60s.

That's part of why people detract from Russell and Wilt's achievements, because it was a less impressive era with much less talent.

Less depth of talent, sure. But not lack of top end talent and with such a small league you were facing elite players actually a higher percentage of the time.

The thing is, most teams had one good to great player, maybe a second, and then...trash. The Celtics were loaded, and often times had 7 or 8 of the best 10 players on the court at a time.

[magicmerl]

I wonder how Karl Malone would have done in Wilt's place? He had the stamina to play every minute of every game, and the elbows to let him dunk on all of the 6'6 guys who would be guarding him.

[Texas Chuck]

The Celtics were loaded, and often times had 7 or 8 of the best 10 players on the court at a time.

Well if they were allowed to play 7 vs 3 that explains all the titles.....


Silliness aside, I think we have to be way more careful assuming modern players could dominate in earlier eras. They won't have all the benefits of the modern age, they will be facing the exact same circumstances. It's frankly nothing more than modern bias and time machines.

[FuShengTHEGreat]

Kevin Garnett never, ever scored more than 40 points in a playoff game. Kevin Garnett only won two playoff series in 12 years in Minnesota.
The biggest reason why Kevin Garnett did not have more post season success was that he had the unfortunate luck of playing teams in the Western Conference with better superstar players.

The revisionist on this website will blame KG lack of post season success on his teammates when the truth is that the T-Wolves were consistently playing teams that had more dominant superstar players.

PERIOD.

Kevin Garnett was an elite playoff performer for a grand total of three seasons 2002-2004 and maybe 2008. Kevin Garnett at his peak as a playoff performer was not as good as Dirk, Shaq, Duncan or Kobe. No shame there. The shame is listening to the same revisionist try and act like if life was different that Kevin Garnett would be a different player.

His post season resume is severely lacking compared to other players he is compared to like Dirk, Barkley or Karl Malone. The revisionist on this site will also make it seem like Dirk, Barkley and Malone were playing no defense at all while they were averaging 25-30 PPG and 12-15 rebounds in the post season.

You will have guys like DRZA write these novels full of half truths, big words and propaganda on how KG averaging 18 points and 13 rebounds in a playoff series actually trumps his contemporaries averaging 30 and 15.




Kevin Garnett never had post season success until he got to play on A super team in the Eastern Conference facing 40 win teams in the 1st and 2nd round.

Look at the teammates that Dirk had in 2009 when they upset the San Antonio Spurs. I don't ever want to hear that Wally Szerbiack (All Star) or Chauncey Billups (NBA FInals MVP) were not good teammates, or why Kevin Garnett could never lead a team to an upset in the playoffs.

If Kevin Garnett was as great as people on this website make him out to be then he would have post season runs like Hakeem, Dirk, David Robinson, Lebron or Tim Duncan. All of these players have taken horrible rosters deep into the playoffs. KG does not have that on his resume.

This guy gets it.