trex_8063 wrote:Overall, Dirk clearly the better playoff performer, Malone was clearly the better rs performer. And then Malone's got the three additional seasons on him (none of which could be classified irrelevant, imo), plus about one additional season worth of games played due to his durability--->this is very relevant, that the team can so reliably count on their star being there at tip-off time. As a for instance: Dirk missing 29 games in '13 basically cost the Mavs a playoff berth. The Jazz never had to worry about anything like that from Malone, not once in 18 seasons.
The way you're framing this is kinda skewed. While malone is the poster boy for durability across multiple seasons, dirk is fairly impressive, too. Yes, he missed those 29 games in 2013 as you noted, but from 01-12, he only missed an average of 3.5 games per season. Dirk has had great durability overall. 2013 was an outlier.
That said, I still haven't made a decision on my vote, and your breakdown definitely helped, thanks.
ThaRegul8r wrote:That post raises a question for me, though.
Is the mark of the goodness of a stat that one's player of choice ranks highly on it? I'm just curious. Because I see some stats are said to be the best and they just so happen to support a player that person happens to be advocating for, and then other stats are bad, and a player they advocate for just so happens to score poorly in it. So how does it work?
I can see looking at a stat and thinking, "That doesn't pass the redface test . . . what do you mean Bill Russell is a below average defender. That stat is worthless." I do agree the particular way that criticism was put made it sound very fanboy.
In terms of your goodness rating, how much goodness do you take away for off (or on) court behavior that leads to teammates being less effective even if not negatively impacting the player being analyzed directly. I am thinking of things like MJ destroying Kwame Brown's confidence, Barkley taking young players like Jayson Williams out drinking the night before playoff games so they were playing hungover, Derrick Coleman blowing off practices so there is less team cohesion without necessarily lowering his individual stats, etc.
“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination,” Andrew Lang.
ThaRegul8r wrote:That post raises a question for me, though.
Is the mark of the goodness of a stat that one's player of choice ranks highly on it? I'm just curious. Because I see some stats are said to be the best and they just so happen to support a player that person happens to be advocating for, and then other stats are bad, and a player they advocate for just so happens to score poorly in it. So how does it work?
The quantity of erroneous readings (aka a widespread lack of resonance with established valuations) is a big deal. If there are only 1 or 2 seemingly "out there" data points in a list of 30, 50, 100 names, the stat probably has a lot of use. When half of the readouts provided by the metric seem to not make sense, it absolutely does call into question the discovery-based utility of a given statistic or formula. Unless you believe that ...
1. Kevin Garnett - 9.7 2. LeBron James - 9.5 3. Tim Duncan - 7.9 4. Chris Paul - 7.4 5. Dirk Nowitzki - 7.4 6. Manu Ginobili - 6.9 7. Steve Nash - 6.0 8. Paul Pierce - 5.9 9. Amir Johnson (Small Sample Size) - 5.8 10. LaMarcus Aldridge - 5.8 11. Shaquille O'Neal - 5.7
In any way approximates an accurate top 11 players of the last 14 years you should probably throw the data out or ONLY use it in conjunction with a plethora of other calculations, weighing this particular metric with a grain-o-salt. Shaq being 11th immediately jumps off the page, and then of course there are the omissions of Kobe & Wade, who are clearly (much) better players than half the names on that list, and those are problems with only the first 11 data points. That's probably the issue ardee is taking with using that list as any kind of "evidence." At best it needs to be part of a MUCH larger argument, it in no way stands on its own merits (again, unless you find this to be a plausible readout).
Also if people keep voting Karl over Chuck I would hope I see those same posters vote for Stockton over Nash, it's almost the same exact comparison except they weren't full-on contemporaries the way Sir Charles and The Mailman were.
Doctor MJ wrote:I'll also note that if you just took the offensive part of this metric, Kobe certainly shows up:
1. LeBron James - 7.2 2. Steve Nash - 6.6 3. Kobe Bryant - 6.2
I find it extremely interesting that Kobe as a defender is worse than Nash. Whether that is a reflection of the stat and that we should be hesitant or reflective of Kobe's actual defense I don't know. But I would have never thought those two were close, let alone Nash ahead. Interesting.
Okay Brand, Michael Jackson didn't come over to my house to use the bathroom. But his sister did.
D Nice wrote:The quantity of erroneous readings (aka a widespread lack of resonance with established valuations) is a big deal. If there are only 1 or 2 seemingly "out there" data points in a list of 30, 50, 100 names, the stat probably has a lot of use. When half of the readouts provided by the metric seem to not make sense, it absolutely does call into question the discovery-based utility of a given statistic or formula. Unless you believe that ...
1. Kevin Garnett - 9.7 2. LeBron James - 9.5 3. Tim Duncan - 7.9 4. Chris Paul - 7.4 5. Dirk Nowitzki - 7.4 6. Manu Ginobili - 6.9 7. Steve Nash - 6.0 8. Paul Pierce - 5.9 9. Amir Johnson (Small Sample Size) - 5.8 10. LaMarcus Aldridge - 5.8 11. Shaquille O'Neal - 5.7
In any way approximates an accurate top 11 players of the last 14 years you should probably throw the data out or ONLY use it in conjunction with a plethora of other calculations, weighing this particular metric with a grain-o-salt. Shaq being 11th immediately jumps off the page, and then of course there are the omissions of Kobe & Wade, who are clearly (much) better players than half the names on that list, and those are problems with only the first 11 data points. That's probably the issue ardee is taking with using that list as any kind of "evidence." At best it needs to be part of a MUCH larger argument, it in no way stands on its own merits (again, unless you find this to be a plausible readout).
Do recall that this is an average, and Shaq (for one) had a lot of over-the-hill years in that sample, and less than half of his prime.
What established valuations are you referring to? Statistical ones, or general public consensus?
Here's the top players by Win Shares over that period. Sort by WS/48 to get the analogous list. http://bkref.com/tiny/wnEnL
It matches pretty well, to tell you the truth. Win Shares still misses a bit of defense, but that's to be expected due to the limitations of the box score. The eyeball test lines up very well, in my opinion.
D Nice wrote:Also if people keep voting Karl over Chuck I would hope I see those same posters vote for Stockton over Nash, it's almost the same exact comparison except they weren't full-on contemporaries the way Sir Charles and The Mailman were.
That's a very interesting point, honestly I'd never thought about it. Before the project (you can see it in the pre-lists thread), I had Malone at 18, Nash at 20, Barkley at 21 and Stockton at 26, so Malone over Barkley but Nash over Stockton, but I think I'll have to reconsider it.
ronnymac2 wrote:I want to talk about the Mailman because he hasn't quite gotten the amount of representation that other players on this level have received. I voted for KG in this thread, so this isn't exactly my argument for Malone, but it's information and a perspective. I invite you to receive it and then do what you feel.
Early Years
Malone emerged as a 20-10 threat in his 2nd year in the league, but it was his 3rd year in 1988 where you can see the quantum leap to being a legit star player. Utah was the best defense in the NBA (their strength being eFG% Against) thanks to Mark Eaton's dominant defense.
Malone certainly helped though. He led the team in defensive rebound rate (10th in the NBA that year) and was named All-Defense Second Team. He also averaged 27 points on 52 percent shooting and got to the free throw line almost 10 times per game (56.8 percent True Shooting..Got his FT shooting up to 70 percent this year).
Then in the playoffs, Utah faces the defending champion LA Lakers (#3 in SRS at 4.81) and loses in 7 games, with Malone dropping 28.7 points and 11.7 rebounds on 53.5% TS. Malone seemed able to handle LA's defense better as the series wore on, putting up 27/11 (10/20 FG, 7/7 FT) in a Game 6 Elimination Game victory, and 31/15 (14/21 FG, 3/9 FT) in a Game 7 Loss.
Early-years Malone...from say 1987-1991...looks like prime Amar'e Stoudemire with slightly less offense but MUCH better defense and rebounding. Amar'e was built like a SF; Malone was built like a mack truck and actually pursued defensive rebounds. Early Malone turned the ball over more than prime Amar'e and didn't score quite as efficiently, but Amar'e got to play C and had a ton of shooters next to him while Malone had a giant negative at C (Eaton was a horrendous offensive player and clogged the paint) and did not have as much shooting around him. The only constant is Nash and Stockton were great at feeding the bigs.
Around '91-'93, Malone's passing from the mid-post, off the pick-n-roll, and with his back-to-the-basket improved to the point that it made his offensive utility greatly outstrip anything Amar'e has ever been capable of providing on that end. Mind you, Malone remained a strong defensive rebounder and defensive player.
RAPM
I've seen questions regarding Malone's longevity based on his RAPM scores post-1998. I get the impression that the skepticism is not extreme by any means, but more along the lines of "Malone does indeed have excellent longevity, but the boxscore stats saying he's a 20+ PPG player post-98 hide the fact that he most certainly is not a strong fulcrum for a successful team in a 20+ PPG role, and that he cannot provide significant lift in this role, which seems to be the only way Malone can be utilized."
Compared to somebody like KG, Malone does indeed look like he ages far less gracefully based on RAPM.
The way I see it, however, is that as Malone's body and raw talent declined, his role did not change. His coach did not change. His minutes and games played did not change. His USG remained high when on the court.
Here is KG's and KM's scoring average, MPG, and USG relative to other's on their respective teams from 1996-2003 and 2006-2013. I chose these years because we get to see when each was a prime-time MPG/USG/Scorer and see how they get to decline from that level.
Malone is giving superstar PPG, USG, and MPG, but not superstar impact for the Utah Jazz. It's fair to question why Malone's role/minutes did not change if he wasn't capable of providing significant lift after 1998. My response to this would be:
1. Malone was healthy. No reason to manage minutes any differently based on injury concerns. 2. The team clearly did not have a Plan B. Malone certainly wasn't holding a burgeoning star back. This clearly wasn't a team in any of these years where Sloan could pull a Pop and platoon guys and find equal or superior success. Whatever lift Malone was capable of providing for 35+ minutes was necessary to make the playoffs, in reality and in the eyes of Coach Sloan. 3. Stockton/Malone worked in Sloan's system in the REG SEA for over a decade. Changing things up would have been a huge adjustment for all parties involved and quite risky (likely not successful either in my opinion).
This should not be read as an indictment on Kevin Garnett. KG's focus was (correctly) pushed to the defensive side in his later years, and he excelled in a way that Malone wouldn't have defensively even if Malone were put in an optimal setting. This is actually part of the reason why I vote KG in this thread.
This should be read as an explanation for why Malone's decline might look more precipitous as measured by RAPM than it actually was. Malone didn't get to specialize or decrease his role/minutes the way KG and David Robinson and his teammate John Stockton did in their decline years.
Of course the counter to this is that Malone's skillset doesn't allow him to specialize in anything but volume scoring. To that, I must emphatically disagree. Cut his skillset down to the bone and he's very much a Horace Grant type...a mini-Kevin Garnett actually. KG/Horace/older Malone connect the goodness/impact of the players around them because of their spacing effect, passing, screens, off-ball movement, ability to run the floor, and IQ.
Despite being 40, and despite being oft-injured, I'd argue that Karl Malone, like Horace Grant in 1995, was the most valuable player on the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers. HoGrant and Malone were the third-best players, but the most valuable based on the team construction (Though Penny could be argued for Orlando because the Magic had no PG). Malone gave Kobe his first great pick-n-roll partner and gave Shaq the best or second-best entry-passing big man he ever played next to. And Malone's man defense in the 2004 playoffs was amazing, as he stifled Yao Ming, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Rasheed Wallace by shoving them 20 feet away from the basket, beating up on them, and stripping them cleanly of the ball or making them take tough shots. Even at age 40 and injured for half the season, 2004 Malone proved to me that 1999-2003 Malone could have shifted his role from volume scorer to role playing big man and been extremely impactful and great on a contending team.
A look at the common playoff narrative, broken down by Elgee:
Spoiler:
ElGee wrote:
tsherkin wrote: I don't mean that, in general, Malone was bad for their offense. I mean the way that he performed in the playoffs put a serious damper on their ability to win, which is true. When he floundered that badly, yes, I am very sure that it caused them problems because they relied upon him to carry their offense. They were a team that relied a lot on precision of execution, and if you were able to disrupt their offense with length and athleticism, or by swarming Malone, then they had issues.
It's pretty clear that Utah had a great deal of offensive success with him, Stockton and Hornacek in the RS, that' is an irrefutable point, but you can see pretty clearly that when he struggled, it was a big problem for them. And he struggled frequently in the postseason.
Think about what you're saying: The Jazz relied on Malone, when Malone couldn't carry them, the team struggled. This is supposed to be bad??
Of course, Malone couldn't carry them to the degree that Dirk or Barkley could (we speculate) because we believe those two players to be a notch above on offense. This doesn't mean they are worlds better, just that there is a clear difference.
Similarly, I completely reject the notion that you can determine someone "struggled" by looking at their TS%. If you are arguing that the offense swayed with Malone and that he had a huge burden that he sometimes couldn't fulfill, then isn't it incredibly supportive of Malone's offense that the Jazz PS ORtgs were so good. Re-posting from an old project:
That said, Malone and KG had their shooting decline. But, as I've said, the playmaking and pressure on the defense increased. Here are Utah's PS ORtgs. In parens is the change from their RS number, then their opp DRtg in the PS and their ORtg relative to that. The final number is Malone's TS%:
And, during Malone's best years, his teams offense look A-OK (92, 94-98), with the exception of 1998. So, what happened in 98? Isn't that the year Utah brutalized the West? The Jazz posted a 96.1 ORtg vs. Chicago, mostly from the infamous G3 meltdown...in which Malone was the only decent Utah player. (Other Jazz were 13-59 for 22% and 32 total points.) EDIT: That game alone cost them 3.5 ORtg points.
So, Malone's Jazz are posting 110 ORts against 103 defenses with him shooting 53% TS. Obviously, this isn't something that's hurting the team, and from perspective watching them, he was carrying a huge load and helping them achieve that on a team level. Sometimes, the TS% dips because of harder shot selection (dictated by defense). Sometimes, you just don't shoot quite as well. With Malone, I think it was a little of both, but he was drawing a LOT of defensive attention, and especially later in his career was a phenomenal passer.
Finally, as I've noted before, inconsistency in the playoffs when you aren't on a stacked team can actually be GOOD. Data suggest that it's better to go 2-20 3x in a series and 20-20 for 4x than go 12-20 every game...IF you're team isn't loaded. Utah wasn't. We see this pattern in Malone's deep playoff runs, and sometimes the bad games butcher his TS% (he literally has a 2-20 game).
There's this.....
Player POY Shares 1. Bill Russell 10.956 2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 10.221 3. Michael Jordan 9.578 4. Wilt Chamberlain 7.818 5. Magic Johnson 7.114 6. LeBron James 6.652 7. Tim Duncan 6.248 8. Larry Bird 6.147 9. Shaquille O'Neal 5.910 10. Julius Erving 5.046 11. Karl Malone 4.649 12. Bob Pettit 4.466 13. Oscar Robertson 4.413 14. Kobe Bryant 4.380 15. Hakeem Olajuwon 4.380 16. Jerry West 3.795 17. Kevin Garnett 3.571 18. Moses Malone 3.478 19. Dwyane Wade 2.601 20. David Robinson 2.431
Some other statistical footprint stuff (I like to glance over this kind of stuff, as it's basically the product of quality * time * durability): Players with 30,000+ pts Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (voted in at #2) Michael Jordan (voted in at #1) Kobe Bryant (voted in at #13) Wilt Chamberlain (voted in at #4) Karl Malone (yet to be voted in)
Players with 30,000+ pts and 10,000+ reb Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (#2) Wilt Chamberlain (#4) Karl Malone (?)
Players with 30,000+ pts, 10,000+ reb, and 5,000+ ast Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (#2) Karl Malone (?)
Players with 30,000+ pts, 10,000+ reb, 5,000+ ast, and 2,000+ stl Karl Malone (?)
My vote goes to Karl Malone.
As trex has said, he is with some of the top 10 in so many categories. His only fault, it's not to win a tittle. With one, he would have been voted around 10, no doubt. More if he'd won vs Jordan.
Malone had really bad luck. It's not his team was worse than some of the teams that beat them in playoffs. I mean, they lost vs Hakeem, and Hakeem Drexler in 94 and 95, but they won vs them and Barkley in 97 and 98. They lost vs Payton's Sonics in 93 and 96, but they won them in 92 or 00. They lost vs Blazers in 91 or 92, but they won them in 88 or 96. They lost vs suns in 90, but won them in 91.
And of course, they won Robinson in 94 and 96, and Duncan-Robinson in 98. They won vs Shaq-Kobe-Van Exel-Jones in 97 and 98.
Even they won in RS vs Bulls 2-0 in 98...
I mean, Malone made Utah Jazz conteders for over a decade. He posted superstar numbers from 87-88 to 99-00, and still post allstar numbers until 03. He is one of the greatest worker in his game and his body. He was with 3% body fat even in his late 30's. He played for years and years and still he was posting amazing numbers and defender couldn't stop him.
2 times MVP, in a era still with a dominant Jordan, and dominants Shaq and Duncan.
He was top 5 in MVP shares in 9 seasons, top 10 in 14 years. He played with almost every top 15 player of all time. (Jordan, KAJ, Hakeem, Magic, Bird, Dr J, Shaq, Duncan, Kobe...) And other greats like KG, Robinson, Barkley or Dirk.. to be a top 5 consistently with those players around it's really impressive.
D Nice wrote:Also if people keep voting Karl over Chuck I would hope I see those same posters vote for Stockton over Nash, it's almost the same exact comparison except they weren't full-on contemporaries the way Sir Charles and The Mailman were.
Karl, Chuck, and Nash all won MVPs.
Stockton was never considered a top-5 player in any of his seasons.
D Nice wrote:The quantity of erroneous readings (aka a widespread lack of resonance with established valuations) is a big deal. If there are only 1 or 2 seemingly "out there" data points in a list of 30, 50, 100 names, the stat probably has a lot of use. When half of the readouts provided by the metric seem to not make sense, it absolutely does call into question the discovery-based utility of a given statistic or formula. Unless you believe that ...
1. Kevin Garnett - 9.7 2. LeBron James - 9.5 3. Tim Duncan - 7.9 4. Chris Paul - 7.4 5. Dirk Nowitzki - 7.4 6. Manu Ginobili - 6.9 7. Steve Nash - 6.0 8. Paul Pierce - 5.9 9. Amir Johnson (Small Sample Size) - 5.8 10. LaMarcus Aldridge - 5.8 11. Shaquille O'Neal - 5.7
In any way approximates an accurate top 11 players of the last 14 years you should probably throw the data out or ONLY use it in conjunction with a plethora of other calculations, weighing this particular metric with a grain-o-salt. Shaq being 11th immediately jumps off the page, and then of course there are the omissions of Kobe & Wade, who are clearly (much) better players than half the names on that list, and those are problems with only the first 11 data points. That's probably the issue ardee is taking with using that list as any kind of "evidence." At best it needs to be part of a MUCH larger argument, it in no way stands on its own merits (again, unless you find this to be a plausible readout).
Do recall that this is an average, and Shaq (for one) had a lot of over-the-hill years in that sample, and less than half of his prime.
What established valuations are you referring to? Statistical ones, or general public consensus?
Here's the top players by Win Shares over that period. Sort by WS/48 to get the analogous list. http://bkref.com/tiny/wnEnL
It matches pretty well, to tell you the truth. Win Shares still misses a bit of defense, but that's to be expected due to the limitations of the box score. The eyeball test lines up very well, in my opinion.
That's a good point re: Shaq, wasn't really thinking very deeply.
And it would have to be the former rather than the latter since the latter depends on which "statistics" you're even talking about. I've never found WS to be very useful (and since it's a PER derivative this is unsurprising) so I'm not going to check that filter but I trust what you're saying is accurate.
Karl, Chuck, and Nash all won MVPs.
Stockton was never considered a top-5 player in any of his seasons.
Which is a function of perception and competition. And just like Stockton was never seriously considered a top 5 player Malone was never seriously considered a peer of '88-'93 Barkley outside of Utah and the random scattered Barkley haters (of which they were many). Shaqattack has pointed this out multiple times over the course of the past few threads better than I ever could or would, read his posts on the matter.
D Nice wrote:Also if people keep voting Karl over Chuck I would hope I see those same posters vote for Stockton over Nash, it's almost the same exact comparison except they weren't full-on contemporaries the way Sir Charles and The Mailman were.
I truly think Stockton was better than Nash, still it's not the same kind of comparision. I can understand that some people will say Nash was the franchise player and the guy with 2 MVP and Stockton without Karl wouldn't have been as great. You can use the deffense card... that Stockton in his prime scored more or less the same than Steve and passed still more. I think it's a fair comparision.
Malone and Barkley had more similitaries, but altough Charles had a great peak, he was not as consistent as Malone, their teams did not better, even with two more superstars (drexler and Olajuwon). You can't talk about age, because Hornacek, Stockton and Malone were more or less as old as them. You can't tell about how Barkley scared Jordan in 93, because Jazz got them a lot of troubles in 97 and 98. Karl was as good in offense as Barkley (less creative, but he was more resolutive in more seasons than Chuck) and he was pretty better in Deffense.
Karl was more durable, made his team contender for more years than Barkley.
Chuck Texas wrote:I think its fair to look at the Mavs' postseason results in the Dirk era and question them a little bit. A title, another Finals trip, and a WCF appearance is good but hardly overwhelming team success. The question then becomes did Dirk personally do all that he could in the series in which the Mavs were eliminated and to maybe look at the teams the Mavs lost to.
A closer look at Dirk's postseason impact
I'm using this quote from (digression:
Spoiler:
has your name always been "Chuck Texas"? I just typed "Texas Chuck" here, before looking at it again. In my mind, your name has always been "Texas Chuck" Have I been dislexing your name for years?
) Chuck Texas as a jump-off point for this post, because he raises the specter of taking a closer look at Dirk's postseason performances. As we're all aware of and have reviewed several times in this project, Dirk's box score stats in the postseason are stellar. That's become a part of his narrative identity (especially since 2011), when folks stopped focusing so much on the 2007 playoffs and realized that Dirk's playoff box score stats are REALLY f-in good.
But, way back in about the 12th thread when I was doing that long Dirk vs. Kobe thread I ran into something in Dirk's playoff numbers that surprised me and kinda bugged me. I didn't really do anything with it then, but last thread when I was looking hard at Dirk vs Robinson it came back up again. Here's an excerpt where I mention it in my Dirk vs DRob ramble from last thread:
Spoiler:
drza wrote:So if that's where I am now, then that leaves me with the question of Robinson vs. Dirk. This has been a much, much harder choice to make than I expected. On the whole, I think that Robinson is more valuable in principle. He's one of the best defensive players ever, he's also extremely valuable on offense, and his presence/absence registers him as one of the outliers in terms of impact that we've seen. Even if we don't have full databall data available on him until 1998, it's easy to see the huge step-function change when he arrives and the corresponding fall off the cliff when he's injured pre-1998. Dirk is also an impact outlier based on the more complete RAPM studies that I've discussed several times here, but I suspect that Robinson's impact tends to be larger.
The problem, of course, is that Robinson has postseason question marks that seemingly Dirk doesn't have. And the questions extend beyond just a drop of a few True Shooting percentage points in the postseason. As we've explored in previous threads, there is some indication that Robinson's defensive impact may not have been as large as expected in the postseason of his peak as we may have hoped. This is somewhat assuaged by what he was able to accomplish defensively in the Duncan era, but when put in conjunction with his scoring difficulties and his role as more of a finisher than an initiator (e.g. no chance to mitigate the shooting struggles with better passing) and...we have questions. And those questions are exacerbated by Robinson seemingly getting outplayed three straight years at his absolute peak in the postseason by other dominant bigs on teams of similar overall caliber, which seemingly contributed to the defeats. Whenever I look beyond the expectation of what a player of Robinson's talent and demonstrated impact SHOULD produce in the postseason, and start looking at what actually happened from 1994 - 96 in the postseason, I find myself given pause.
On the flip side, Dirk seemingly doesn't have those postseason questions (*Though something has been niggling me about his postseason outcomes as well, and I hope to explore that in a separate post*). Dirk has the outlier impact in the regular season (even if not to what I perceive to be Robinson's level), he has the great postseason scoring volumes and percentages, and he hit the impact peak in 2011 that I spoke of that likely WAS at the level that I perceive for prime Robinson. And he put an exclamation mark on that peak with a story-book postseason run where the impact was still evident (postseason on/off +/1 of +16.8 per 100 possessions in 2011, which is outstanding). So again, if I read what I typed here (and gloss over the niggling detail about Dirk's postseason impact that's bugging me) then it seems to me that I should rank Dirk ahead of Robinson.
The "niggling detail" that has been irritating me is Dirk's postseason +/- results. It's irritating because, on the surface, it seems incongruous. But it may be minor (or irrelevent for some), depending on whether you believe there is any value in postseason +/-. There are definite limitations to this approach that can make the signal very noisy, but I feel like in large enough samples (long in-season runs, multi-year samples) we can get some usable data. In the spoiler section below I'll re-paste the "Playoffs" section of the Kobe vs Dirk thread, which includes a reasonably detailed aside on playoff +/-, though I'll be re-touching on some of this playoff on/off +/- stuff outside of the spoiler as well.
Spoiler:
The playoffs
Dirk and Kobe both have reputations for performing on the big stage. There have been box score numerical analyses done in this project to either argue for or against Kobe's performance based on scoring efficiency, and those arguments are worth absorbing and filtering. Kobe apparently did have some efficiency blips through the years against good defenses, which we didn't see with Dirk (who maintains an absurd volume/efficiency ratio from the regular season right into the postseason). I don't really think that individual scoring efficiency is nearly as important as many make it out to be, but for players that are primarily offensive and more specifically primarily scorers, scoring efficiency has to at least be considered. On the other hand, Kobe has also faced off against some of the best defenses in history throughout his time, and that can certainly affect the old true shooting percentage.
(Aside on playoff on/off +/-) One thing that I like to look at when available (but which is considered controversial as a quantitative tool) is the postseason on/off +/- scorers. There was a time (not that long ago) when on/off +/- was the state of the art for "impact" studies, before APM came into being. There are obvious issues with on/off +/- that led to developing APM, such as the potential for big teammate effects, level of competition effects (e.g. there's no correction for playing against a starting unit or back-ups), and skews due to back-up quality or even rotations (shout out to Unbiased Fan). These issues are exacerbated in the postseason, as many stars rarely leave the court and the sample sizes can get vanishingly small.
I'm aware of these issues, but I'm also convinced that in long playoff runs in a given season (e.g. conference finals or beyond) or multi-year samples we can get large enough samples to be able to get some useful information. I tend to find that really high on/off +/- values over runs or periods help indicate heavy lifting, whereas really negative marks over extended periods don't indicate negatives so much as a lack of a positive drive. Also, I'm less impressed with entire units having high on/off scores (usually indicates a strong unit more-so than a strong individual) but I note when a star puts up a huge number on an island. Reminder: B-R only has this data from 2001 to present.
Examples of some of the best single-season postseason on/off +/- championship runs: LeBron '12: +24.3 per 100 possessions (he also went +24.2 in his 2007 Finals run) Duncan '03: ++23.1 per 100 possessions Shaq 2002: +22.9 per 100 (also went +25.3 during 2004 Finals run) Wade 2006: +22.2 per 100
Famous counter-intuitive counter-examples: LeBron '11: -14.7 per 100 Dwight '09: -12.7 Duncan '05: -5.3
Examples of some of the best 3 - 4 year stretches of postseason on/off +/- Duncan 01 - 03: +27.4 Manu 03 - 06: +21.6 (caveat: came off bench in 44/70 games) Shaq 02 - 04: +21.5 LeBron 07 - 10: +20.4
Examples of some of the best career +/- scores (from 2001 - 2014) Manu Ginobili +11.2 (caveat: 128/180 games off the bench) Jason Kidd +10.2 (+10.2 in Jersey, +14.9 in Dallas, negative else) Duncan +8.9 Shaq +8.6 (+16.3 in LA, -6.4 in Miamii, negative else) LeBron +8.1 (+12.3 in Cleveland, +4.6 in Miami)
Interestingly, for those that give any credence at all to playoff on/off +/-, it's Kobe (even with his lower scoring efficiencies) that tends to look more impressive than Dirk. Dirk's best postseason mark of his career (obviously) came in 2011 with an impressive +16.8 per 100 possessions, and this capped off a run of three positive double-digit marks in four years (thought the first two were for relatively short runs and thus I give them next-to-no weight as single seasons). However, outside of that period his playoff on/offs are pretty pedestrian compared to the other greats of this generation. He was +6.9 in the 2006 run, but pretty meh else for a career playoff on/off mark (from 2001 - 2014) of +1.8.
Kobe measured out with a positive playoff on/off +/- in every playoff run of his career (at least since 2001) in which his team made at least the 2nd round. His best career mark came in 2003 (+17.4), but he was also really strong in 2001 (+14.2 vs. Shaq's -0.3, lending credence to those that say that Kobe was driving the bus for that postseason run) and 2009 (+12.4 vs Pau's +6.8, though Odom measured out best at +16.7). Kobe was also +8.9 in 2008 and +7.6 in 2010, and sports a career-mark of +8.3 that's right in line with Shaq, Duncan and LeBron. [/quote]
Dirk is actually one of the poster-children for +/- analysis in this generation. His +/- results in the regular season are consistently sky high, even better than you'd expect based on his great box score production, which has led to the identification of "spacing" and now "perimeter defensive warping" concepts that add value that doesn't show up in the boxes. As I've pointed out repeatedly, in the 1998 - 2012 normalized PI RAPM dataset of Doc MJ's, Dirk comes in at a virtua-tie with Duncan as one of the most impactful players of the past 15 years. This is also reflected in the 14-year RAPM dataset that DSmok posted, which again has DIrk right there at the top of the heap. Even Ardee, who doesn't like RAPM, posted Dirk's regular season on/off +/- results as an indicator of his dominance in the middle of the decade:
ardee wrote:
Spoiler:
People love to talk up his '08-'12 stretch when he got his post-game and became arguably one of the best Playoff players in the league (with good reason, he put up 27-9-3 on 61% TS and 120 ORtg in 46 PO games in those years), but I think '05-'07 get underrated.
In that timespan, the best teammate he had for a single season was Josh Howard in 2007, who put up 19/7 on 55% TS and was a below average defender. The other 'notable' guys he played with were Devin Harris, Jason Terry (when he was still before his prime) and Eric Dampier. Those teams won 58, 62 and 67 games. Read that sentence again. This only happened because Dirk put up 26-9-3 on 59% TS with a 27.2 PER and .267 WS/48 in those years.
He killed it +/- wise also, going 12.5, 8.2 and 13.5 on On/Off in those years.
'05-'07 Dirk is one of the most impressive team-carrying feats in history, certainly much more impressive than anything Garnett ever did.
The point is, Dirk is a +/- beast just about any way you slice it in the regular season. So how come in the postseason his career scores...frankly...suck? The below chart shows the career on/off +/- results per 100 possessions for Dirk vs most of the other superstars of his generation that are either already voted in or likely to be voted in soon. Pay attention to just how much of a meh outlier Dirk's postseason on/off +/- scores are compared to his contemporaries, and how big of a drop-off it is from his regular season on/off +/- scores (this list sorted by that change):
Player Team Years Reg On/off PO On/off Change Kobe LAL 01 - 14 6.7 8.3 +1.6 Shaq Tot 01 - 11 7.7 8.6 +0.9 Duncan SAS 01 - 14 8.3 8.9 +0.6 Nash Tol 01 - 14 7.5 4.8 -2.7 Paul Tot 06 - 14 9.0 6.2 -2.8 LeBron Tot 04 - 14 11.2 8.1 -3.1 Wade Mia 04 - 14 7.8 3.7 -4.1 Dirk Dal 01 - 14 11 1.8 -9.2
From this chart we see that Kobe, Shaq and Duncan each have playoff on/off +/- for their career in the +8 to +9 range, all slightly above their regular season values. Nash, Paul, LeBron and Wade all have slightly larger drop-offs from the regular season to the postseason (on the order of -2.7 to -4.1). But since LeBron had the highest regular season on/off +/- scores, this drop-off just puts him right into the range of postseason on/off +/- with the other A-listers mentioned here that have already been voted in.
Then there's Dirk. His career on/off +/- absolutely falls through the floor in the postseason. His regular season career on/off is right there with LeBron at the top of this list. Why on earth does it drop so much in the playoffs?
My interpretations
So, there are a few ways to take this data. One take (that I don't agree with, but others here likely do) is that it doesn't matter. Star players play a lot in the postseason, there aren't a lot of off-minutes in any given run, and thus there can be a LOT of noise (especially on a year-to-year basis with short playoff runs) in this particular stat. My response to this take is that, as I posted in the spoiler above, when the sample sizes get large enough I think there's usable signal there and the noise gets a lot more manageable. And looking at the results of comparisons to his contemporaries, I find it hard to believe that there isn't some type of effect being captured here.
So, if we assume that this data does mean something, then the question is...what does it mean? What could have caused Dirk's postseason scores to be so surprisingly low?
Well, one thought is that on/off +/- is going to be more dependent upon teammates and rotations than the adjusted +/- approaches that you can do in the season. So maybe if Dirk's teammates tend to be better, his low on/off score could be more of an indication of that than a lack of strength on Dirk's part. The data point that counters that process, though, is the playoff "on" +/- score for Dirk. His "on" +/- in the postseason is only +0.5, whereas if the teems were just so strong you'd think that his on would be higher. Also, his "off" +/- in both the regular season (-3.5) and the postseason (-1.3) also don't indicate that the support is that strong when Dirk isn't around. Thus, my initial interpretation is that Dirk was able to lift his meh cast to great heights in the regular season (on = +7.6 in the regular season) that for some reason didn't translate so well to the playoffs.
Another thought is that maybe it's a level-of-competition effect in the more limited samples of the postseason. The West has been very strong over the entirety of Dirk's career, so perhaps he has just been running into juggernauts that keep him from having the same type of lift in the postseason. This also rings hollow to me, though, because the top-5 players (in terms of smallest negative change from reg to postseason) on the posted list all played major minutes in the West during the same tenure. And since the Mavs tended to be higher seeds in most seasons (a testament to Dirk's regular season work), he shouldn't have been facing an inordinate number of high seeds in the postseason to skew his sample vs. those other 5. So that also doesn't seem explanatory.
One approach that seems to produce usable analysis is to break Dirk's career down into eras. There's the Nellyball era when he teamed with Nash and Finley and acted more as a finisher. There's the Avery Johnson era when the Mavs used Dirk more as a focal point, went to a more defensive philosophy and he had players like JET and Howard as his side-kicks. Then there's the Carlisle era, which had some stylistic similarities to the Avery era except that Carlisle was better at the approach, Dirk focused more exclusively on offense, and the supporting cast was even better at playing the defensive and tough veteran roles.
The results didn't work out quite as perfectly as I'd hoped across eras, as his best stretch actually includes the last year of Avery-ball and then the first three years of the Carlisle era before Dirk started battling more with injuries later in his career. But I do see enough to postulate a definite pattern:
During Nelly-ball Dirk was used as more of a finisher than an initiator, but he was also doing heavy lifting on the glass and posting good steals/blocks numbers as well. Dirk was able to score well at high efficiency, but his personal production didn't seem to translate to team lift in these postseasons the way that it did in the regular season.
During Avery-ball Dirk continued to do everything, and did a bit more initiating than he had before. This resulted in adequate lift as measured by +/-, certainly better than in the previous era, but not up to the level regularly reached by his best contemporaries.
It was right around the end of Avery-ball and the start of Carlisle-ball when Dirk's postseason +/- scores finally started looking about like we'd expect. During this time period his on/off +/- in the postseason (+11.5) started reflecting his career on/off +/- from the regular season (+11). This was when he was able to lead his legendary championship run in 2011. If you look at the boxscores, during this stretch in the postseason Dirk was doing the least rebounding or blocks/steals of his postseason career, and his assist totals/efficiency also weren't all that impressive (seemingly a notch worse than what he did under Avery).
So, what (about Dirk) changed right around 2008 that could have caused his postseason impact (primarily as a scorer) to suddenly go nova?
Well, it was right around 2008 when Dirk developed the post-up game that many here have noted made him so much more unguardable. The difference doesn't show up hugely in Dirk's volume and efficiency (it does a bit, but not ultra dramatic), but it seemingly was a game-changer in his ability to provide postseason lift for his team.
Why might this be? Well, we've always postulated that in the regular season Dirk's spacing and defense warping impact were of major benefit to his team's offenses. What if, though, in the postseason defenses played differently. What if teams were less likely to commit to as much help off of other Mavs in the postseason, more content to play Dirk more straight up (or at times with wings instead of bigs) which nullified some of his usual spacing/warpage team effects. If this were true, it would make sense that Dirk might still get his individual boxscore numbers in the postseason but without providing the characteristic lift that he provided in the regular season.
But then, DIrk developed his post-game enough that he became unstoppable 1-on-1. And his teams were built such that his non-scoring responsibilities dwindled as others were able to handle that. This leaves Dirk able to focus on his best skill, which by the way the other teams can't counter or handle without warping the defense to larger degrees, and suddenly Dirk's non-boxscore numbers return to the level they normally occupy in the regular season.
Bottom Line
This went WAY further than I was expecting it to when I started typing. I ended up doing a bunch of first-time analysis, and (as you know if you've read this far) I ended up typing a lot of new words on this. I need to wrap my own head around it further, and also to decide whether a) I buy this theory/explanation and b) what it means to my rankings if I do buy it. So much of Dirk's value (in this level of company) is predicated on his strong post-season performances. This is where he gains traction on Robinson and separates himself from Karl Malone, in my mind. But if Dirk's consistent scoring volume/efficiency weren't consistenly translated to his characteristic lift in the postseasons, then I'm no longer sure that Dirk would still be able to hold off some of the others. I've got to think about it. But I'm glad that I followed through on that nagging issue about his playoff +/-, because I feel like I've learned some things. And I'd love it if anyone else has alternative takes on my interpretation of this data and the subsequent analysis of Dirk's game through the years.
D Nice wrote:Which is a function of perception and competition. And just like Stockton was never seriously considered a top 5 player Malone was never seriously considered a peer of '88-'93 Barkley outside of Utah and the random scattered Barkley haters (of which they were many). Shaqattack has pointed this out multiple times over the course of the past few threads better than I ever could or would, read his posts on the matter.
Karl Malone's peak period of play was 1994-1998.
Pay no mind to the battles you've won It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle Open your heart and hands, my son Or you'll never make it over the river
Stockton was never considered a top-5 player in any of his seasons.
Which is a function of perception and competition. And just like Stockton was never seriously considered a top 5 player Malone was never seriously considered a peer of '88-'93 Barkley outside of Utah and the random scattered Barkley haters (of which they were many).
Stockton still isn't considered a top 5 player for any of his years. His highest rank for RealGM PoY is #7.
Nash on the other hand ranks #2 in 2005, #4 in 2006, #4 in 2007.
D Nice wrote: And it would have to be the former rather than the latter since the latter depends on which "statistics" you're even talking about. I've never found WS to be very useful (and since it's a PER derivative this is unsurprising) so I'm not going to check that filter but I trust what you're saying is accurate.
Win Shares are not related to PER and beat PER soundly in any measure of metric accuracy; Win Shares are the best commonly used box score stat by a pretty decent margin.
D Nice wrote: And it would have to be the former rather than the latter since the latter depends on which "statistics" you're even talking about. I've never found WS to be very useful (and since it's a PER derivative this is unsurprising) so I'm not going to check that filter but I trust what you're saying is accurate.
Win Shares are not related to PER and beat PER soundly in any measure of metric accuracy; Win Shares are the best commonly used box score stat by a pretty decent margin.
There is literally nothing you can glean from win shares that isn't better understood from simply viewing the actual box-score numbers. It is derivative of PER in the sense it uses highly correlated criteria and came later. It helps make lazy analysis a little less lazy. That's about it.
ronnymac2 wrote:
D Nice wrote:Which is a function of perception and competition. And just like Stockton was never seriously considered a top 5 player Malone was never seriously considered a peer of '88-'93 Barkley outside of Utah and the random scattered Barkley haters (of which they were many). Shaqattack has pointed this out multiple times over the course of the past few threads better than I ever could or would, read his posts on the matter.
Karl Malone's peak period of play was 1994-1998.
And even taking this to be true, none of those seasons outstrip Chuck's prime seasons, which is exactly the same case in a Nash vs. Stockton comparison.
Longevity, durability, and defense are his advantages (like Karl), but they don't compensate for the GOAT offense Nash and Charles give you, particularly in the post-season. In fact, Stockton was actually a better playoff performer than Karl, so these criticisms weigh even more heavily against Malone than they do his running mate.
D Nice wrote:Also if people keep voting Karl over Chuck I would hope I see those same posters vote for Stockton over Nash, it's almost the same exact comparison except they weren't full-on contemporaries the way Sir Charles and The Mailman were.
That's my thinking. I do have Chuck over Karl (the Playoff gap is too big) and Nash over Stockton (just a different class of player).
To be fair, Nash was an exemplary teammate; Barkley was not. If you believe in leadership, intangibles, and the like (positive or negative) you might have a different take. As it happens, I do have Malone and Stockton over Barkley and Nash (and am considering Dirk over either of the bigs plus Wade and Frazier rank ahead of either of the other guards for me).
Still up in the air over Karl Malone, Dirk, and David Robinson at the moment though. If I want a ring, I'd rather have David Robinson, playoff slippage or no playoff slippage, but . . . how much more . . . enough to justify a LOT of extra outstanding seasons? Not sure.
“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination,” Andrew Lang.
Really nice break down on Dirk's playoff +/- drza.
One thing I'd suggest for the Nellie/Nash era is that Dirk's primary contributions are always going to be on the offensive end and when you have Nash and Finley with guys like Juwan, NVE, Jamison, etc. sprinkled in then the team was still capable of scoring in those few minutes where Dirk was sitting. The exception in this era was of course 04 where the entire team save Dirk was absolutely horrible against the Kings.
Once Nash left, the team has struggled mightily to score when Dirk sits and thus his +/- numbers look better because the team plays good defenders around him, but when he sat even the other primary offensive guys like JET and JJB struggled to score.
I struggle with knocking Dirk based on the playoff +/- stuff in the Nash/Nellie era because that was an offensive team and while the defense was absolutely worse when Dirk sat, its not like it was good when he was playing and Nash and the gang could clearly still score without him.
ThunderBolt wrote:I’m going to let some of you in on a little secret I learned on realgm. If you don’t like a thread, not only do you not have to comment but you don’t even have to open it and read it. You’re welcome.
