James Harden or Manu Ginobili, for a single year run

[Chokic]

Comparing Harden to Manu is like comparing Josh Allen to Nick Foles. Josh Allen can put up #s but is a perennial loser/choker in the playoffs and Nick Foles is a solid underrated qb that actually carried that eagles team to a superbowl ring yet if you ask most nfl fans they will empathetically state Josh Allen is a much better player/qb.

[The Servant]

Comparing Harden to Manu is like comparing Josh Allen to Nick Foles. Josh Allen can put up #s but is a perennial loser/choker in the playoffs and Nick Foles is a solid underrated qb that actually carried that eagles team to a superbowl ring yet if you ask most nfl fans they will empathetically state Josh Allen is a much better player/qb.

NFL (like the Olympics) comes down to a single game where anything can happen. In a 7 game series the best team usually wins and with an 82 game season the NBA is a completely different animal than the NFL. Comparing them is kind of silly imo. March madness and the NBA yoffs for example, look how different they are.

[Catchall]

It depends on whether you need more on-ball offense or actually care about defense.

[dhsilv2]

The place I always come back to with Harden is that he’s beaten a team in the playoffs with equal or greater talent than his own only 1 time. And that time he famously got carried by Josh Smith & Corey Brewer in Game 6 vs the Clippers.

How fortunate for harden that smith and brewer took a break from their combined 42 TS% in the other 6.75 games of the series to suddenly both become Reggie Miller at the same time and actually help the team for 12 minutes.


Of course, you say harden hasn't beaten a better team but he also doesn't really lose to teams with lesser talent. Until last year's Mavs series where obviously kawhi didn't play and the mavs ended up in the finals, the only home court series harden lost in the previous 10 years was the 2018 WCF, which comes with the kind of obvious caveats that the warriors were obviously the favorites and then cp3 got hurt with the rockets leading. And before that, his 54 win rockets lost to the 54 win trailblazers, so not exactly a legendary upset. Other than the 2018 WCF, hardens never lost as more than a +1 SRS favorite (i.e. a coin flip). And to be clear he's won as an underdog but also in coin flips.

Meanwhile, the spurs twice lost as a +3 favorite with Manu, the 2011 1st round when they lost to an 8th seed and the 2016 WCF when they were a +10 team and lost to OKC.

They were #1 in SRS in 2004 and 2006 and lost and were #2 in those other two examples. And 2012 was basically a coin flip series but the spurs were on a 20 game winning streak and up 2-0 and somehow lost to OKC.

In 2005, 2007, and 2014, the spurs were #1 all 3 years. The only year they won a title and weren't was 2003 when they were #3, but #1 and #2 played each other in the 2nd round (Mavs, kings) and then dirk missed half the spurs series. And even so, Manu was a rookie with his smallest role ever so it's not like he led them.

The spurs were pretty much the prototypical "beat lesser teams/lose to better teams, and sometimes way worse teams" team in that era.

Manu was hurt in 2011 and missed game 1 of that series. Not exactly a great example given Manu was the spur's best player perhaps that year. And Manu was 38 in 2016? I don't think Manu was seen as a key piece that year. So by all means, if you want to point out Manu gets hurt, 2011 is a good example. But qualify that the loss was heavily the result of injury.

[NO-KG-AI]

[*]

So I think we could pretty easily show a strong correlation between good box score numbers and "goodness" and the fact harden does it on like 15% more minutes obviously starts him in a strong position.

But let's set that aside. I've posted hardens impact stuff I think you just posted the playoff RAPM thread (or maybe it was someone else).

Manus best extended playoff stretch is
2003-14: +11.2

Hardens is
2011-2020: +11.9

And it was over 12 over that stretch before he started to play on a torn hamstring in 2021.

Now Manu wins in the playoff RAPM but he also beats everybody not named LeBron or Draymond. So is he over Duncan? And Steph? And jokic? And Giannis? I mean people make threads like this with the obvious implication that harden would kind of be the cutoff for ginobili but why isnt he more like top 10 all time? The RAPM goes back to 1997 so its probably capturing 40% of player seasons given how much larger the league is now. And Manu is 3rd.

But of course no one ever wants to go that far in these forums. RAPMs great when it knocks down the right guys like Kobe and harden but suddenly gets noisy and is too small a sample when it's starts dethroning the wrong guys.

Jokics best stretch is +7.4 (his whole career) and he's below harden in RAPM.

Giannis best stretch is +9.7 (2018 to now) and he's below harden in RAPM.

Butler i cant get above +8.4 even if it's only 8 years (2015 to 2022) and he's literally negative (!!) for his career and he's below harden in RAPM.

Whade is +8.6 up through 2012 and he's below harden in RAPM.

So we would have to move harden above all those guys but I suspect the 60% picking ginobili will get squeamish about that.

We would get squeamish because he’s a massive outlier compared to guys he gets paired against in terms of catastrophic meltdowns in tight series. It’s not just like tough games or poor shooting nights. It’s countless all time bad performances at this point. It might not be enough to sway RAPM or whatever in a major way, but it’s enough to sink entire series. Everyone has bad games. Some guys just have them at worse times and in way worse ways.

Consistently. Over and over again.

Harden is clearly the more dominant player, but his history of not only melting down, but becoming oddly passive and blase in the biggest moments is hard to ignore at this point.

I’m a big numbers guy, and think over enough sample size, clutch vs not clutch is not as impactful as people think, and that over big enough samples, The numbers are usually pretty right, etc.. but something in Harden’s game makes this more of problem consistently and not just in a confirmation bias way that I can’t dismiss it. He’s had enough chances to rectify it as well and never could. It’s one of the reasons I hope he has a real strong run to finish up. I think he’s so good and so influential on today’s game that I’d hate for that to be the crux of his legacy tbh.

[NZB2323]

Comparing Harden to Manu is like comparing Josh Allen to Nick Foles. Josh Allen can put up #s but is a perennial loser/choker in the playoffs and Nick Foles is a solid underrated qb that actually carried that eagles team to a superbowl ring yet if you ask most nfl fans they will empathetically state Josh Allen is a much better player/qb.

I love Nick Foles but this is a silly argument. It’s like saying that Joe Flacco is better than Dan Marino.

[picc]

I think OP giving us the team that we are plugging them into or the parameters for the team would make the question even better. As it is, we have arguments all the way from first option vs first option to arguments that since Ginobili was more successful championship wise his career, he must automatically be the choice, and others in-between, so we're voting based on different parameters.

I mean that's tricky because a team ideal for either probably wouldn't look exactly the same. Or would it?

I said in the OP that the idea is to imagine a general "contender" team. Not an all-time team, but one that you wouldn't be surprised to see in the finals.

Giving a team makeup could and probably would lead to arguments on the fit and roster that aren't as much to do with the real question: which is really just who do you trust more to take your very good and well-constructed NBA team to the promised land knowing nothing else? Mano a mano?