Thinking Basketball ep.6 Manu ginobili

[dhsilv2]

I don't get people comparing Manu's mins to today's players either. Here were the mins leaders in 2006, for example:

Manu 27.9

And people are arguing Manu didn't benefit from playing way less mins, and against inferior bench players no less????

Manu's prime was 05-11 and he was hurt/misssed a huge chunk of 2009. 2006 and 2007 were outliers for Manu in terms of minutes. he was just under 30 the two years prior and was at 31.1 in 2008.

Also this board is obsessed with the playoffs. Manu never in his prime was under 30 a game in the playoffs and was on average at about 33 minutes a game. It's less, but you're overstating it.

[VanWest82]

If that were the case would we not expect his RPM type stats to drop in the seasons he started and go up in the ones he came off the bench?

But the numbers don't really show that. Manu was 3rd in 2005 starting for example. He was 1st in 2008, mostly off the bench. And really year to year he was up and down more dependent on injuries than starting.

Year-to-year RAPM and RPM stats are very noisy so I'd be careful taking too much away from that.

Manu was a star so it doesn't surprise me he did well in impact stats. But again, he averaged 29 mpg in 2005.

Lebron 42.4
Iverson 42.3
Arenas 40.9
TMac 40.8
Kobe 40.7
...
...
Manu 29.6

Manu was 27 in 2005 and 30 in 2008. It's entirely possible (likely?) his level of play night-to-night slipped some over that period but was masked by playing more mins against worse (bench) competition where he fared better comparatively.

At the end of the day, your supposition rests on the ideas that Manu wasn't actually better against inferior players, didn't benefit from the substantially greater rest compared to other stars, and Pop underplayed and held back Manu for his entire career to Spurs perennial detriment.

[Doctor MJ]

Wait, so Manu playing a higher percentage of mins vs bench players isn’t relevant now because we don’t see similar impact numbers from the Crawford types?? I liked Manu too but C’mon.

It's not that it's not relevant, it's that it's relevance isn't the end to the analysis and people have been going further in their analysis for many years.

If it were a massive +/- advantage in general, we'd see it for 6th men in general, but we don't.

We'd also expect the effect to get smaller in the playoffs, but with Ginobili it gets bigger.

So, while it's still relevant the details of how Ginobili was used, such concerns don't actually explain Ginobili's data the way many expect they would.

Playing more mins against inferior players isn't a big advantage? There is no analysis you can do that corroborates that, and if you think there is I'd suggest you need to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate your assumptions.

The reason Manu was unique is because he wasn't really a 6th man. He was a star player who Pop convinced to come off the bench and play less mins. There are no other examples of this, at least not to this extreme, so comparing it to 6th men in general doesn't work.

Have you considered that perhaps playing off the bench against inferior players and playing less mins overall allowed Manu to not only perform better in those mins but conserve more in the tank which boosted his playoff performances? Don't you think the differences in regular season vs playoff mins is evidence of this?

I'm not suggesting Manu wasn't a star player because he was 6th man or played less mins, just that it defies logic to think it didn't help him from an individual performance and impact standpoint. Or put another way, why do we think Pop chose to do this? Wasn't part of that calculus that Pop believed Manu to be more effective, and therefor the team was more effective? And Pop didn't just try this out for a season or two. At some point we're basically arguing we're smarter than Pop and he erred in not playing Manu much more and against better players because he would've been just as effective and therefore Spurs would've been better. Seems highly dubious to me.

Well I mean, to the extent you're playing more against inferior players, the expectation is that you're also playing WITH inferior players, and whether or not these things are actually true, whatever amount of such normalization that could be done gets done automatically by regression stats.

Now, there are some factors that go beyond the normalization. To me the biggest one is always this:

Is this a guy whose game works really well against bench level players but really falls off against starters and playoff level competition?

Players like this absolutely exist - Montrezl Harrell is the guy probably most known for this in recent years.

But we look at the data and see what it says on a case by case basis, and when your numbers only get stronger in the playoffs, I think it's pretty hard to argue that your game is tailored toward the lesser "82 game" competition.

Re: consider playing against inferior players let Ginobili conserve energy? This seems pretty unlikely to me as a general phenomenon as it implies that guys playing primarily against bench units are purposefully putting in less effort for the bulk of the minutes they play. Seems like a good way to ruin your career. I think in general the only players who seriously coast are big minute guys.

Re: consider playing less let Ginobili conserve energy? I think we all see this as true as a given, it's just a question - which we'll never be able to answer definitively - of how significant/essential this energy conservation was for him.

What I'd really urge people to focus on here are the more granular specifics rather than just defaulting to a "yeah he was extremely impactful per minute, but he got to conserve energy, so it's not that impressive". However good Ginobili was, he was more interesting than he was good.

Re: arguing we're smarter than Pop! I would push back hard against the temptation to make this about us vs the coach, and thus fall back to appeal to authority fallacies that assume an optimality to all decisions - and thus ironically can venerate the most problematic choices especially.

In a nutshell:

1. It's not debatable whether pace & space is more effective than post-up offense in general. This is just an answered question now (pace & space), and almost all coaches who thought the opposite were making strategic mistakes as a matter of course. Doesn't mean they don't know more than us, doesn't mean they aren't brilliant basketball minds...but they were wrong.

2. It's not actually debatable statistically - from what I've seen - that Duncan post-ups were more effective than Ginobili-led pick & roles or other attacks, so the argument that Duncan was an exception to the rule doesn't pan out there.

3. It's not actually debatable that the Spurs became a better offensive team after Duncan left his prime, which is not what you'd expect if that player was the team's best offensive player.

4. It's not debatable whether Pop understood Ginobili's impact and the value of his improvisational tendencies from the jump - everyone involved with the Spurs including Pop say quite loudly that he did not.

5. I don't think that most 6th men play less minutes than starters because of endurance issues. I think it's mostly a matter that their playing time gets deprioritized relative to whoever the fulcrum of the starting lineup is.

6. I do think 6th men who are purposefully staggered so that they can take on more primacy without impinging on the team's offensive alpha are pretty much doomed to play less than that alpha.

7. I do think it's possible not only that Ginobili had less endurance - particularly at the motor he played at - but that Pop & co were able to tell in real time that Ginobili was tiring and needed a rest, and and this led organically to Ginobili playing the right number of minutes for him, but points 4-6 could actually be what was driving Ginobili's minutes more so than any such observation.

8. I also think it's likely that concerns about durability rather than endurance were more what was front-of-mind for Pop, as we know he was obsessed with thinking like this with all of his stars as they aged. Here the thing is that Pop could be generally right, but still just be guessing as to how many MPG was the right amount.

Re: end up arguing that Spurs could have been better; feels dubious. I'm seeing a similar push back from a lot of folks who seem to feel it's crazy to assert that the Spurs could have been better than they were. I think it's clear that the 3 chips in 5 years are what drive this push back. Can you really do better than that?

To that I'd point out that you 5>3, and even if it were 5 chips in 5 years, there's no reason to think that the team in question was doing everything perfect.

In fact I'll say flat out that every single team in that era was "doing it wrong". That's what it means to be pre-paradigm shift, and so when you see a paradigm shift hit an industry like this, I don't think the question is if teams could have been better with different strategies, but simply what the improvement would look like.

And yeah, I don't actually think it's that hard to look at Spur strategies in those earlier years and see what should probably have changed. I think you could say the same for most teams to be honest, and I think it's only the chips that tend to make us blind, as if beating the competition assuages all concerns, even if that competition used inferior strategy because they were ignorant of the same stuff you were.

[JimmyFromNz]

Loved Manu's game for the most part (flailing aside).

Though one player I don't think we have reached a reasonable middle ground on.

Either wildly underrated by the majority, or wildly overrated by the minority.

One of a small special class of players through NBA history that fit this.

[dakomish23]

Most underrated player ever, not even close.

One of my favorites hands down. Just a joy to watch

[VanWest82]

There weren't enough good shooters from distance in the 00s for every team to optimally play pace and space, so it isn't so simple to suggest Pop was scheming sub-optimally.

As ridiculous as I find the no difference between bench players and starters argument, the mins discrepancy is a bridge too far.

But under the notion of "anything is possible" I will acknowledge it's possible that Pop (greatest coach of the modern era) monumentally screwed up to the point where he actively subverted his team's chances to win every single year by massively underplaying Manu and assuming that getting Duncan involved offensively was a net win given his added buy-in and impact on defense and on the boards. It is possible.

The problem with that argument is you have to assume a whole bunch of things that didn't happen whereas we have a bunch of evidence of what did happen; mainly, that Pop chose to play Manu more against bench players and less overall, and that he succeeded mightily in that role, especially in the context of the playoffs where he seemed to have lots left in the tank.

Manu wasn't materially better against bench players. He didn't benefit from playing 800-1000 mins less than other stars each year. Pop was a certifiable idiot when it came to Manu. The pillars of that argument are just shakier than the other side.

[Doctor MJ]

There weren't enough good shooters from distance in the 00s for every team to optimally play pace and space, so it isn't so simple to suggest Pop was scheming sub-optimally.

As ridiculous as I find the no difference between bench players and starters argument, the mins discrepancy is a bridge too far.

But under the notion of "anything is possible" I will acknowledge it's possible that Pop (greatest coach of the modern era) monumentally screwed up to the point where he actively subverted his team's chances to win every single year by massively underplaying Manu and assuming that getting Duncan involved offensively was a net win given his added buy-in and impact on defense and on the boards. It is possible.

The problem with that argument is you have to assume a whole bunch of things that didn't happen whereas we have a bunch of evidence of what did happen; mainly, that Pop chose to play Manu more against bench players and less overall, and that he succeeded mightily in that role, especially in the context of the playoffs where he seemed to have lots left in the tank.

Manu wasn't materially better against bench players. He didn't benefit from playing 800-1000 mins less than other stars each year. Pop was a certifiable idiot when it came to Manu. The pillars of that argument are just shakier than the other side.

Oh, I don't buy for a minute that there weren't enough Bruce Bowen-level shooters to populate the league in 2004 (and I think Pop deserves a great deal of credit for using recognizing that an inept shooter like Bowen could still be trained to do this).

I also don't think it really matters given that we already have data that suggests that Duncan post-ups weren't more effective than other more pace & space-y types of attack. The Spurs didn't really need to train up a ton of new players, they just needed to change their priorities, calling certain plays less, and other plays more.

Re: problem with argument is you have to assume a bunch of things that didn't happen. Hmm, I might say that the problem with your argument is that you have to ignore what we've learned over the modern era in the name of venerating the "greatest coach of the modern era".

Re: Pop idiot when it came to Manu. So now you're not only insisting on appealing to authority to make it seem unreasonable that Pop could be wrong, you're saying that if he were wrong, he must have been an idiot...which of course isn't true, therefore he must not have been wrong. QED!

You're not going to really get anywhere new with analyses of the past if you don't look to apply what we've learned since to reflect on what came before. Pop was great, but that doesn't he had no misconceptions.

[dhsilv2]

If that were the case would we not expect his RPM type stats to drop in the seasons he started and go up in the ones he came off the bench?

But the numbers don't really show that. Manu was 3rd in 2005 starting for example. He was 1st in 2008, mostly off the bench. And really year to year he was up and down more dependent on injuries than starting.

Year-to-year RAPM and RPM stats are very noisy so I'd be careful taking too much away from that.

Manu was a star so it doesn't surprise me he did well in impact stats. But again, he averaged 29 mpg in 2005.

Lebron 42.4
Iverson 42.3
Arenas 40.9
TMac 40.8
Kobe 40.7
...
...
Manu 29.6

Manu was 27 in 2005 and 30 in 2008. It's entirely possible (likely?) his level of play night-to-night slipped some over that period but was masked by playing more mins against worse (bench) competition where he fared better comparatively.

At the end of the day, your supposition rests on the ideas that Manu wasn't actually better against inferior players, didn't benefit from the substantially greater rest compared to other stars, and Pop underplayed and held back Manu for his entire career to Spurs perennial detriment.

I think Doc mostly covers this in his next post. But by playing less minutes, he's not necessarily playing more against the bench than others. And more importantly if he is running the bench units, he means he's playing with his own team's bench.I don't believe there's any evidence that a player will stand out more AGAINST a bench defense while with their bench's offensive players. Given Manu wasn't an elite iso scorer there's even less here that would indicate the weaker defense wasn't offset by a weaker offense around him.

Again, agreeing with Doc, but I think there's something to Manu played less minutes which allowed him to play better per minute to a degree. I don't see evidence that Manu was better per minute due to a higher rate of minutes against bench. And this again doesn't hold up when we look at the playoffs where the total minutes that starters play increase and Manu's minutes too went up. So when playing more with his starters and against the other team's starters...manu seems to grade out even stronger. The opposite of your hypothesis.

Now I go back however to metrics that look at total minutes and value added.

RPM WINS
05 - 13
06 - 38
07 - 15
08 - 6
09 - injured nto looking that deep
10 - 25
11 - 12

If playing less allows you to be as high as the 6th most impactful player, ADJUSTED FOR MINUTES, so it doesn't make sense than this method would work for others. I'd say it just shows that Manu likely just needed less minutes to hold up. Or at least Pop strongly thought so and I'll go with Pop's judgement. But there's just nothing here that supports that playing against bench units made the impact you're thinking. And it frankly doesn't make logical sense. Generally, a star like AI or Lebron who are over 40 MPG play significantly with the bench and their off minutes often have the other starters in to negate the damage. Manu was often with maybe a Bowen or a Rasha from the starters if any starters at all in some of those units. The spurs were very much seemingly staggering Tony and his minutes because they overlapped in skillsets.

Also the spurs won a lot of games, so if you miss the first rotation and then you aren't in the closer lineup to win the games, that cuts your minutes more than others. And well..it's because your team was just that good. And Manu won something like 70% of his regular season games. By far the higher win percentage of any spur and right near the top for any player in NBA history.

[VanWest82]

Oh, I don't buy for a minute that there weren't enough Bruce Bowen-level shooters to populate the league in 2004 (and I think Pop deserves a great deal of credit for using recognizing that an inept shooter like Bowen could still be trained to do this).

I also don't think it really matters given that we already have data that suggests that Duncan post-ups weren't more effective than other more pace & space-y types of attack. The Spurs didn't really need to train up a ton of new players, they just needed to change their priorities, calling certain plays less, and other plays more.

No one was doing it on scale (i.e. turning non-shooters into shooters), so it doesn't matter what you think the potential of that era of shooters might have been.

Also, we don't have data that suggests when Spurs leaned into Manu PnR > Duncan PUs for an extended period during Duncan's prime that their overall NRTG was better. Their ORTG was better on a per possession basis. We don't actually know if pissed off Duncan might've been a tad less engaged on the other end if the offense had been built around Manu a lot earlier.

Re: problem with argument is you have to assume a bunch of things that didn't happen. Hmm, I might say that the problem with your argument is that you have to ignore what we've learned over the modern era in the name of venerating the "greatest coach of the modern era".

Re: Pop idiot when it came to Manu. So now you're not only insisting on appealing to authority to make it seem unreasonable that Pop could be wrong, you're saying that if he were wrong, he must have been an idiot...which of course isn't true, therefore he must not have been wrong. QED!

You're not going to really get anywhere new with analyses of the past if you don't look to apply what we've learned since to reflect on what came before. Pop was great, but that doesn't he had no misconceptions.

Look, you're projecting something that didn't happen. You can cite all these things we've learned, which in Manu's case just confirms what people like you and I suspected all along - that he had a star impact while on the court, but you can't make up what didn't happen. You can't pretend away those lost mins no matter how hard you try.

[Doctor MJ]

Oh, I don't buy for a minute that there weren't enough Bruce Bowen-level shooters to populate the league in 2004 (and I think Pop deserves a great deal of credit for using recognizing that an inept shooter like Bowen could still be trained to do this).

I also don't think it really matters given that we already have data that suggests that Duncan post-ups weren't more effective than other more pace & space-y types of attack. The Spurs didn't really need to train up a ton of new players, they just needed to change their priorities, calling certain plays less, and other plays more.

No one was doing it on scale (i.e. turning non-shooters into shooters), so it doesn't matter what you think the potential of that era of shooters might have been.

Also, we don't have data that suggests when Spurs leaned into Manu PnR > Duncan PUs for an extended period during Duncan's prime that their overall NRTG was better. Their ORTG was better on a per possession basis. We don't actually know if pissed off Duncan might've been a tad less engaged on the other end if the offense had been built around Manu a lot earlier.

Re: problem with argument is you have to assume a bunch of things that didn't happen. Hmm, I might say that the problem with your argument is that you have to ignore what we've learned over the modern era in the name of venerating the "greatest coach of the modern era".

Re: Pop idiot when it came to Manu. So now you're not only insisting on appealing to authority to make it seem unreasonable that Pop could be wrong, you're saying that if he were wrong, he must have been an idiot...which of course isn't true, therefore he must not have been wrong. QED!

You're not going to really get anywhere new with analyses of the past if you don't look to apply what we've learned since to reflect on what came before. Pop was great, but that doesn't he had no misconceptions.

Look, you're projecting something that didn't happen. You can cite all these things we've learned, which in Manu's case just confirms what people like you and I suspected all along - that he had a star impact while on the court, but you can't make up what didn't happen. You can't pretend away those lost mins no matter how hard you try.

I think we're reaching the end of our conversation, and that's fine.

I do want to make clear that my main focus is not based on what might have been. My focus is on understanding the value that was there.

Should teams from that era done less post-up offense? Obviously.
Does that mean the Spurs needed to play less post-up offense in order for Ginobili to have superstar impact? No, he was already doing that.

Similarly, I'm not telling anyone to pretend Ginobili played more minutes. When judging what Ginobili actually accomplished, it's his actual minutes that matter. I just push back on the idea that we can use the con of less MPG to cancel out the pro of Ginobili's impact as if all this were a simple equation clearly equivalent to X lesser impact in Y more minutes. I think when you do that, you rationalize to yourself why you don't have to think further about the basketball you've already made up your mind about.

[VanWest82]

Similarly, I'm not telling anyone to pretend Ginobili played more minutes. When judging what Ginobili actually accomplished, it's his actual minutes that matter. I just push back on the idea that we can use the con of less MPG to cancel out the pro of Ginobili's impact as if all this were a simple equation clearly equivalent to X lesser impact in Y more minutes. I think when you do that, you rationalize to yourself why you don't have to think further about the basketball you've already made up your mind about.

To clarify, I don't think it's a simple equation. But I can simply state that if you're consistently playing 500-1000 mins less than your contemporaries, you better have an on court impact that far exceeds those other players. I'm less finicky about that with smaller mins discrepancies.

So if you're going to say Manu was better than KG, Dirk, Lebron, or Nash to name a few in 05, you better be able to show clear evidence that he was much better in his respective mins. This is where it falls apart for me.

[dhsilv2]

Similarly, I'm not telling anyone to pretend Ginobili played more minutes. When judging what Ginobili actually accomplished, it's his actual minutes that matter. I just push back on the idea that we can use the con of less MPG to cancel out the pro of Ginobili's impact as if all this were a simple equation clearly equivalent to X lesser impact in Y more minutes. I think when you do that, you rationalize to yourself why you don't have to think further about the basketball you've already made up your mind about.

To clarify, I don't think it's a simple equation. But I can simply state that if you're consistently playing 500-1000 mins less than your contemporaries, you better have an on court impact that far exceeds those other players. I'm less finicky about that with smaller mins discrepancies.

So if you're going to say Manu was better than KG, Dirk, Lebron, or Nash to name a few in 05, you better be able to show clear evidence that he was much better in his respective mins. This is where it falls apart for me.

The first 3 there, I'm not sure anyone would make such a case. Nash...he's a bit polarizing much like Manu so who knows. Though I would just note that KG played 0 playoff games and Manu played 23 games at 33 minutes a game there, and that's another reason Pop started cutting minutes for all his stars before the rest of the league.

But you listed 4 guys who I think are generally seen as top 30 type guys (again nash is debated). Manu is 40-60 range from people like myself, not sure if Doc's as high. I'm not sure anyone has Manu meaningfully higher than my range above.

So I guess my question is how high do you think Manu is actually being rated?

[iggymcfrack]

One of those guys who always seemed to get a ridiculous amount of praise when played well and zero criticism when he was nowhere to be found.

I'm not sure I ever saw a game where Manu was nowhere to be found unless he was hurt. Manu is the KING of finding ways to help his team no matter what.

Biggest Ginobli fan here but there is at least one game, where he was “nowhere to be found” and thats a nice way to put it, it was actually much worse than that. And I always thought he did get criticized for it, but I guess its kinda been forgotten and only remembered as “the game with the Ray Allen 3”.

That entire 2nd half was complete poopoo from Ginobli, Spurs should’ve never lost that game. Missed free throws, turnovers including 2 turnovers at 40 and 20 seconds left in OT down by one (although 2nd one he got mauled and refs swallowed the whistle for a game 7 and more NBA money). I remember his 3rd quarter being just brutal too but I’d have to go back and check for specifics. In the finals the year after, he made a speech to his teammates about it, taking ownership of his failure, which shows great character by him of course.

That post you guys are all responding to is foolish of course, and I guess even after all these years I’m super sour about it and that’s why i remember it so well but Ginobli definitely did choke that one game. And I hate how often that word gets thrown around here by idiots that don’t understand basketball and defensive schemes and so on, but I do think it was that.

But anyways, as for the Op, great video so far, about halfway through it, truly special player, and very much an All NBA level player and NOT a 6th man level player lol.

He was 35 when that game was played. No SGs in NBA history have ever really been effective postseason players at that age. Jordan was in his second retirement. Kobe played 6 games in his age 35 season after tearing an Achilles. Wade had a 15.5 PER on .472 TS% in the playoffs for Chicago. Iverson was playing in Turkey. Drexler had a 14.2 PER on .445 TS% in his final playoffs. Jerry West played a total of 14 playoff minutes with an injury shooting 2/9 from the field in his final NBA game.

[maradro]

I'm not sure I ever saw a game where Manu was nowhere to be found unless he was hurt. Manu is the KING of finding ways to help his team no matter what.

Biggest Ginobli fan here but there is at least one game, where he was “nowhere to be found” and thats a nice way to put it, it was actually much worse than that. And I always thought he did get criticized for it, but I guess its kinda been forgotten and only remembered as “the game with the Ray Allen 3”.

That entire 2nd half was complete poopoo from Ginobli, Spurs should’ve never lost that game. Missed free throws, turnovers including 2 turnovers at 40 and 20 seconds left in OT down by one (although 2nd one he got mauled and refs swallowed the whistle for a game 7 and more NBA money). I remember his 3rd quarter being just brutal too but I’d have to go back and check for specifics. In the finals the year after, he made a speech to his teammates about it, taking ownership of his failure, which shows great character by him of course.

That post you guys are all responding to is foolish of course, and I guess even after all these years I’m super sour about it and that’s why i remember it so well but Ginobli definitely did choke that one game. And I hate how often that word gets thrown around here by idiots that don’t understand basketball and defensive schemes and so on, but I do think it was that.

But anyways, as for the Op, great video so far, about halfway through it, truly special player, and very much an All NBA level player and NOT a 6th man level player lol.

He was 35 when that game was played. No SGs in NBA history have ever really been effective postseason players at that age. Jordan was in his second retirement. Kobe played 6 games in his age 35 season after tearing an Achilles. Wade had a 15.5 PER on .472 TS% in the playoffs for Chicago. Iverson was playing in Turkey. Drexler had a 14.2 PER on .445 TS% in his final playoffs. Jerry West played a total of 14 playoff minutes with an injury shooting 2/9 from the field in his final NBA game.

And he came back the following season with a literal vengeance, saving the spurs from humiliation vs the Mavs, closing out OKC and obliterating the heatles, and then had another very strong playoff run 3 years later, closing out the rockets when tony Parker got injured

[Doctor MJ]

Similarly, I'm not telling anyone to pretend Ginobili played more minutes. When judging what Ginobili actually accomplished, it's his actual minutes that matter. I just push back on the idea that we can use the con of less MPG to cancel out the pro of Ginobili's impact as if all this were a simple equation clearly equivalent to X lesser impact in Y more minutes. I think when you do that, you rationalize to yourself why you don't have to think further about the basketball you've already made up your mind about.

To clarify, I don't think it's a simple equation. But I can simply state that if you're consistently playing 500-1000 mins less than your contemporaries, you better have an on court impact that far exceeds those other players. I'm less finicky about that with smaller mins discrepancies.

So if you're going to say Manu was better than KG, Dirk, Lebron, or Nash to name a few in 05, you better be able to show clear evidence that he was much better in his respective mins. This is where it falls apart for me.

The first 3 there, I'm not sure anyone would make such a case. Nash...he's a bit polarizing much like Manu so who knows. Though I would just note that KG played 0 playoff games and Manu played 23 games at 33 minutes a game there, and that's another reason Pop started cutting minutes for all his stars before the rest of the league.

But you listed 4 guys who I think are generally seen as top 30 type guys (again nash is debated). Manu is 40-60 range from people like myself, not sure if Doc's as high. I'm not sure anyone has Manu meaningfully higher than my range above.

So I guess my question is how high do you think Manu is actually being rated?

So I'll make clear that I'm that fringe guy on this, and that VanWest is thus correct to identify me as such.

I'm not really looking to get into excruciating details in this thread, but yeah, I rated him at #1 for '04-05, and yeah, I expect most to find that pretty absurd.

I think him focusing on the question of how Ginobili can make up for playing less time is a quality perspective - though I'd remind that the MVP conversation was really about Nash vs Shaq vs Duncan, rather than focused on KG, Dirk, or LeBron.

And yeah, I have Ginobili higher than #40 all-time.

[iggymcfrack]

To clarify, I don't think it's a simple equation. But I can simply state that if you're consistently playing 500-1000 mins less than your contemporaries, you better have an on court impact that far exceeds those other players. I'm less finicky about that with smaller mins discrepancies.

So if you're going to say Manu was better than KG, Dirk, Lebron, or Nash to name a few in 05, you better be able to show clear evidence that he was much better in his respective mins. This is where it falls apart for me.

The first 3 there, I'm not sure anyone would make such a case. Nash...he's a bit polarizing much like Manu so who knows. Though I would just note that KG played 0 playoff games and Manu played 23 games at 33 minutes a game there, and that's another reason Pop started cutting minutes for all his stars before the rest of the league.

But you listed 4 guys who I think are generally seen as top 30 type guys (again nash is debated). Manu is 40-60 range from people like myself, not sure if Doc's as high. I'm not sure anyone has Manu meaningfully higher than my range above.

So I guess my question is how high do you think Manu is actually being rated?

So I'll make clear that I'm that fringe guy on this, and that VanWest is thus correct to identify me as such.

I'm not really looking to get into excruciating details in this thread, but yeah, I rated him at #1 for '04-05, and yeah, I expect most to find that pretty absurd.

I think him focusing on the question of how Ginobili can make up for playing less time is a quality perspective - though I'd remind that the MVP conversation was really about Nash vs Shaq vs Duncan, rather than focused on KG, Dirk, or LeBron.

And yeah, I have Ginobili higher than #40 all-time.

There’s really nothing absurd about if you really look at the season in detail. Duncan’s the consensus POY for that season and by almost any objective measure, Manu was equal or better. In the key playoff games and especially the Finals, Manu was MUCH better.

I think Ginobili vs. Westbrook for #30 all-time is a pretty good debate. Both guys were perceived as #2s for most of their careers, but had the ability to step up big time as #1s if necessary. Both guys had incredible peaks with a year where they were arguably best in the world. Both had relatively short primes at their top level followed by a lot of decline years. I’m not sure which side I’d come down on yet.

[picc]

Two things can be true at once. Manu's role and minutes, as well as the Spurs great balance on offense and defense, definitely suppressed his potential statistical imprint. As a starter, playing as the head of the snake, there's no doubt he's a premier NBA player. I can't say he'd be looked at different, because despite his low minutes/role, most fans beyond the super-casual already see him as an elite star level player. No one who's been watching the NBA as long as posters here have would call Manu a role player or even just an all-star.

At the same time, the aforementioned limiters also optimized his efficiency, maximized his strengths and minimized his weaknesses. Things that are going to make your contributions (ie., to +/-) stand out more even as they're deflated by your reduced minutes/role.

The consistency with him, again, is also a non-minutes related issue that was the main reason he was never put into the tier 1 when he played. He didn't average 19 or so a game because he scored 19 points a game. He averaged his numbers because he would score 35 one night and 5 the next. Something he had the luxury to do on the Spurs because of the aforementioned balance and strength of the machine. But wouldn't on a team that ran a different way. From all evidence, if he even attempted to, he wouldn't last the season anyway.

Extrapolating his numbers into a higher role just doesn't work. For many reasons. Where he landed with most of us as we watched his career unfold was pretty much where he belongs. Much better than a casual fan would believe, a superstar within his role, and an all-nba caliber player outside of it.

[picc]

Wait, so Manu playing a higher percentage of mins vs bench players isn’t relevant now because we don’t see similar impact numbers from the Crawford types?? I liked Manu too but C’mon.

FWIW, we saw a similar trend on the Lakers with Lamar Odom after the Gasol trade.

In 2009, he went to a 6th man role with a significant minute reduction, and when he came in the games it was instant juice to both ends of the floor.

In that '09 season, Odom's RAPM skyrocketed to a top 3 league mark, above Kobe, but there's enough noise and inconsistency to muddy the data. However, Odom was exclusively a lower-minute bench player through the '09-'11 playoffs, and his RAPM value saw a nice jump from years prior.

Odom PS RAPM, '06-'08: -0.1 in 40MPG
Odom PS RAPM, 09-'11: +1.5 in 30MPG

Odom PS On/Off Net, '06-'08: -3.4 (40MPG)
Odom PS On/Off Net, '09-'11: +9.2 (30MPG)

Obviously Manu was better than Odom was, but Odom is more of that all-around, versatile mold that Manu fits, where they have skillsets that contribute to every part of the game vs a specialist scorer.