70sFan wrote:I know the voting is over, but I didn't have a chance to respond to a lot of things Doctor MJ said here and I feel obligated to make a longer response.
Doctor MJ wrote:- 2003 Spurs more defensively-oriented, thus not offensively-oriented. It's true, but Duncan was also playing on a team with Manu Ginobili. I won't go so far as to say that in Ginobili's first year in the league he was a more capable offensive player than Duncan, but once he got his sea legs in the NBA, he was. Hence, I'd frankly be inclined to say that one of the reasons why the Spurs were not more offensively-oriented in general was Pop's insistence on playing through a low-post scorer as his main option.
Now, you can throw that back at me in this conversation because we're talking about another post big here, but my point here is that in general, the idea that Duncan played with weak offensive talent when he wasn't even the top offensive talent on his team, doesn't really resonate with me.
Duncan didn't play with Manu Ginobili in 2002 and the Spurs posted identical offensive results, while being anchored by Duncan. If you think that Manu was better offensive player than Duncan in 2003 (more on that later), what do you think about 2001/02 season? Do you think that Spurs should have played through different player in that year as well? If not, then wouldn't you say that Duncan didn't do too badly as an offensive anchor of defensive oriented team?
Well, I'd point back to the Spurs' offensive improvement over the course of the '02-03 season as a phenomenon in its own right with the '01-02 season overall to contextualize what "identical offensive results" at the season level means here.
Also, since we're focusing on Duncan's leading, I'll focus on his On-Court ORtg:
Duncan '01-02 On-Court ORtg: 107.2
Duncan '02-03 Pre-AS On-Court: 103.5
Duncan '02-03 Post-AS On-Court: 113.1
So from this what we see is that there's no question that the Spur offense late in the '02-03 season was doing better than the overall '01-02 did with Duncan out there. ftr, Duncan's rating improved over the course of '01-02, but not to the same degree.
So then, since I'm already talking about the '02-03 transition over the course of the regular season with respect to Ginobili's come-up, to me that makes the question:
Why did the Spur offense fall-off over the 2002 off-season?
If we look at the Offensive On/Off in '01-02, we note that Terry Porter is the guy with the highest marks on the team and that he retired before the next season.
Now, Porter was a bench player so it's easy to be skeptical that his presence could be so related, but Porter was largely paired with Duncan in his minutes, which largely came with Tony Parker on the bench, and the team did better in those Duncan-Porter minutes than in the Duncan-Parker minutes by a good margin by these sort of numbers.
Adding in my recollection that Tony Parker felt quite green those first couple years and that he seemed to be played with an eye toward the future, I'd say that part of what's going on here is that the old veteran point guard Porter was probably more skilled at running a team offense than the young proto-star in limited minutes, and his retirement was a bit of a "push the baby bird from the nest" thing. At first the team sank, then they found a new way to fly, and fly higher than before. The new way certainly included an improving Parker, but the more dramatic thing from what I see is Ginobili.
70sFan wrote:- "Duncan's lack of horizontal game wasn't an issue at the time, so it doesn't bother me here". Fair enough. My stance where I struggle with the obsolescence of how these older players won is something I think everyone should ponder, but you're free to ignore it for the purpose of a project like this.
Just understand the difference between what we're saying here. I'm saying a flaw doesn't bother me because I saw it seem to become irrelevant when smarter coaching tactics were used. You're saying a flaw doesn't bother you because at the time, smarter coaching tactics were not being used.
I don't think there is any reason to be concerned with peak Duncan horizontal game in modern NBA. He wasn't as quick as Hakeem, but he didn't have any problems guarding perimeter players.
Feels like you're trying to say "He's be good enough on the perimeter to not be a negative", but even accepting that, it doesn't mean that a quicker player wouldn't have an advantage. I think pretty much definitionally they would.
Beyond that, Duncan wasn't at his most effective against pace & space. Against the Nash Spurs across the series they played over that period in the playoffs, the Spurs got outscored with Duncan out there where they didn't with Parker or Ginobili. The same was true in the '12-13 series against the Warriors with the gap between Ginobili & Duncan being particular stark here.
And beyond that, everything was easier for classic rim-protecting bigs back in Duncan's prime, so whatever issues that seemed minor back then would likely be more significant today.
70sFan wrote:Re: not convinced you couldn't have the best defense with Duncan today. Oh sure you could. I mean Marcus Smart just led the best defense today, so surely Duncan could.
The question is how Duncan would stack up today compared to the very best on defense, and what role we'd expect him to play on offense.
Do you have any doubts in how his defense would translate today? If so, why? We've seen him doing extremely well against very modernized Mavs lineups in the early 2000s.
You mean like the '02-03 Mavs who shot 20 3's per game? I would say that that was nothing even close to trying to keep up with a league where the average team shoots 35.
70sFan wrote:The latter is the key part to me. Simply put, the best offenses Duncan was apart of came when he was an old man playing as an offensive role player.
That's true, but it's caused by the shift in team building strategy. Pop relied heavily on defensive specialists for the majority of Duncan's prime. When Duncan got old, Spurs had more offensive talent than ever before.
I can understand that you have doubts about Duncan's offensive game today, but what you show here as a proof isn't really a proof.
Far enough that you don't feel the arguments I give amount to a proof.
Re: defense-oriented team building early on. The interesting thing here is that having a player like Bowen felt at the time as a pure-defense move, but ended up being the start of 3 & D role players. As a result, the Spurs' core 5 playoff lineups in their 3 prime Duncan title years always had 3 adept & ready 3 point shooters to play alongside Parker & Duncan, which was how things were in 2014. The offense chose to use those 3 point shooters more in 2014 (though still nothing like teams do today), but fundamentally, they had the talent for pace & space back in 2003, and while they didn't make great use of it by modern standards, it was definitely ahead of the curve in some ways.
70sFan wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:It's good for you to bring up successful guys of the present who resemble Duncan.
Some points on the Duncan vs Embiid comparison:
Re: Weaker jump shooter to a degree. Duncan mostly shot in the 60s% from the foul line while Embiid shoots north of 80%, and the thing worth asking here is how Duncan would scale to the 3, because Embiid's threat from the 3 is essential to his success today.
Re: Possible he wouldn't draw as many fouls. I mean, he didn't shoot as many free throws as Embiid back in the day, and he also sucks at shooting free throws, so I don't think he'd be changing things up to better approximate Embiid.
Additionally, Embiid is doing more of his attacking from transition and from the perimeter (where he's a threat to score unlike Duncan), and gets a lot of his fouls doing this.
Also, I was always under the impression that Embiid was bigger, stronger, and more capable of bullying than Duncan. Perhaps I'm getting biased because I see Embiid in a smaller era? I know that both guys are listed as having the same wingspan, and length is more important than anything else as a shotblocker, but on offense it's less big of a deal.
A counter point to Embiid's superior shooting and foul drawing is that we've never lived in an era that forces offensive superstars to be a smart, dynamic playmakers. Duncan is significantly better passer than Embiid, this is something I doubt you can argue against. Duncan also was never nearly as ball-dominant as Embiid and he likely wouldn't force everything through him, so he could have a bigger impact in a smaller role.
Completely agree that Duncan would ideally be playing in a smaller role.
70sFan wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Re: playmaker/facilitator/screening. Fair enough. This has been discussed some and my response isn't much of a rebuttal - it doesn't bother me so much because I'm convinced you can run a great offense with Hakeem in the middle.
You don't see that as a concern, even though you always take into account how players would play in modern era? Hakeem's passing limitations were concerning during illegal defense era and Tomjanovic minimalized that problem, but it would be amplified to significant degree in modern game, when coaches are happy using various ways to attack offensive creators.
Hakeem's passing would be a huge problem against semi-zones and soft helping, shutting down passing lanes schemes.
You think Hakeem's limitations aren't a big deal, because it worked, but you have concerns with Duncan's defense - which worked significantly better than Hakeem's offense.
Oh to be clear, I'm not saying Duncan's defense wouldn't be great today, only that the shift in the game would diminish it, and diminish it more than it would for more agile players.
By contrast, while new defensive approaches could be thrown at Olajuwon, he'd have considerably better spacing around him than ever before. Fine if you think the novel defense would hurt Olajuwon's ability to function on offense more than the spacing would help him, but when I'm saying I'm not that concerned, I'm thinking about that extra spacing which in general is going to benefit a player making use of agility and footwork more so than power players.
70sFan wrote:Re: more willing to take an auxiliary role. That's an important thing for career, but I'm expecting anyone voting for Duncan at this stage doesn't think he should have been doing that in his prime.
I don't think you are right here. Plenty of people voted for Bill Russell already and I'm sure nobody thought about him as the main offensive option. Duncan could be your main guy, but he would be even better as your secondary offensive option. I don't know how you can use Hakeem in any better way than what Rudy T did.
Russell's being considered for what he brought to the table, and Duncan's being considered for what he brought to the table. I doubt there's anyone who voted Duncan in who wasn't thinking heavily about his volume scoring his way to the chip.
And while I agree Duncan would have been more valuable in a secondary offensive role at the very least by 2005, that here means that by definition the usage of him as the alpha was actively holding his team back compared to what could have been achieved if other players had been empowered.
70sFan wrote:Re: Olajuwon ballhog. One thing I'll point out: While Duncan was his college team's leading scorer once he got established, and Robinson allowed Duncan to be the main offensive engine from the jump, Olajuwon was not his team's leading scorer in college, and wasn't his team's leading scorer in the pros until his 2nd year when the team blasted through to get to the Finals.
None of that means I'd call Duncan a ballhog or that I'd insist Olajuwon never behaved selfishly, but it's certainly not the case that Olajuwon came to the NBA insisting "The ball goes through me!". Rather, he showed up on a team where a Duncan-like prospect who had been leading his team in scoring for several years already existed, and Olajuwon shockingly proceeded to quickly surpass him as a scoring threat .
Duncan didn't have any concerns to lower his usage during his absolute prime (2004-07), so I don't think it's a good point. I also think you vastly overstated Sampson's profile here - he was only a sophomore during Hakeem's rookie year and he was never Duncan-level prospect.
I didn't say anything about Duncan having issues like this so I'm not sure what point you think I"m making here.
Re: Sampson never a Duncan level prospect? I'm sorry, what? Sampson was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a freshman in 1979 where he was compared favorably to Kareem
and then he proceeded to win 3 straight college POY awards and get himself into the Hall largely on the basis of that college career.
If you want to argue that Sampson never actually had the talent to be that great, I agree with you, but at the time, people saw him as a mega-star prospect, and when the Rockets drafted Olajuwon he was a raw player who had never led his team in scoring. The fact that Olajuwon would quickly become the clear cut first scoring option was certainly not what the basketball world was expecting.
However impressive you think it is that a young, raw Olajuwon was a better scorer than Sampson, it's just important to remember he didn't just have to be better, he had to be enough better that the team changed the pecking order, and as we've seen throughout basketball history, oftentimes teams are very reluctant to do this.
70sFan wrote:I think in general the term "carry job" tends to imply that the team is falling apart without you and you specifically. Let's consider that the term is basically used as a way of saying "Yeah that team wasn't as impressive as some, but have you seen how little he had to work with?", and it's weird when you look at things and there's another guy on the roster that seems to be making even more of a stark difference.
What source do you use for on/off numbers? Duncan was the best in on/off both in RS and in the playoffs in 2003, he was 2nd to Porter in 2002 in RS and by far the best in PS. His numbers were absurd in these two years, suggesting that it was something you could call "carry job". I mean, Spurs without Duncan on the floor were -14.0 in 2003 playoffs.
Arguing that Manu made a bigger difference in 2003 than Duncan is silly and I don't fear using such a strong word.
Ah, I was referring to the fact that Ginobili had a higher total +/- despite playing less minutes. It's understandable that what I said was confusing given that I also referred to on/off along the way.
I think there are issues with using either +/- or on/off as THE approach here so I want to be clear that it's understandable if you prefer on/off, though with Duncan playing so much, there's a ton of noise there.
Additionally Ginobili played so much of his time that post-season with Duncan that there's no real way to distinguish the impact. At the time one would certainly err on the side of the big minute superstar, but given Ginobili continuing to put up numbers like this the rest of his career, it's not so clear cut.
This by contrast to a situation like Olajuwon's where I don't think anyone thinks there was someone else on the roster who was a better offensive player, and who won with a more dominant playoff run than Duncan's prime teams ever did.
I think you can make a very reasonable case that Drexler was more impactful offensive player than Hakeem in 1995. Given Cassell's impact footprint during RAPM era, I wouldn't be surprised if he looked better than Hakeem by the numbers as well.
Would you change your mind if we get RAPM studies for 1993-95 seasons and someone like Cassell would come out as more impactful player than Hakeem offensively? I don't think that's something hard to imagine, given Hakeem's limitations.[/quote]
I'll certainly continue to update my assessment as new data comes to light.
Re: Cassell '93-95 RAPM possibilties. We do have raw regular season +/- numbers for '93-94 to '95-96. Here's how they look for these two:
'93-94
Olajuwon: On: +7.0, On/Off: +14.5
Cassell: On: +3.2, On/Off: -1.8
'94-95
Olajuwon: On: +5.6, On/Off: +11.9
Cassell: On: +2.6, On/Off: +0.6
'95-96
Olajuwon: On: +4.9, On/Off: +10.3
Cassell: On: +3.4, On/Off: +2.6
Incidentally, Olajuwon led the team in +/- all 3 seasons of those seasons, while Cassell would not lead a team in +/- until '01-02. I'll refrain from going into further details, but in general, I don't see reason to think that Cassell was a secret star in those earlier years. Knowing what we know about Horry, I'd be more curious about his playoff +/- numbers here, but at least regular season wise, he also doesn't top Olajuwon.
Of course you did specify offense specifically and I'm just giving the overall numbers because that's all I got. It's possible Cassell was more impactful offensively than Olajuwon, but I don't see a lot that makes me think that.
But again, as I'm sure you'll agree, it's not about one particular teammate in Cassell, but about anything coming to light that we did not expect and which paints Olajuwon's impact as disappointing, and yes, with all of these players, I'll have to keep re-evaluating once I have more to consider that I didn't previously consider.
70sFan wrote:I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that Ginobili was the MVP of the Spurs in the 2003 playoffs like I would in 2005, but it's worth noting that there's really nothing in the playoff on/off data that suggests that Ginobili in 2003 shouldn't be included in whatever we call his "great playoff run". In his first 4 years in the NBA, Ginobili had a playoff On-Off north of +18 every year - which is just an insane number to even consider. And that's also why despite his limited minutes in the 2003 playoffs, Ginobili still led the team in +/- overall (just like he would in their subsequent title runs in 2005, 2007 & 2014).
As I said, Duncan actually posted slightly higher on/off than Manu in 2003 playoffs and their raw +/- is basically identical.
To lead a team in +/- while playing less minutes you need a much higher On, which is certainly something to be considered along with On/Off.
70sFan wrote:Remember too that Ginobili was 25 as an NBA rookie and had been MVP in his last two years in the Italian league, so this isn't a situation where we should see Ginobili as someone who was a raw like a rookie. To the extent he was considerably below his prime NBA level it probably has more to do with him getting used to a new context, and a new context where he was not the featured player.
Worth noting the splits that year before and after the all-star break:
Ginobili:
Pre-AS: 16.7 MPG, 5.3 PPG, .478 TS%, -0.2 +/-
Post-AS: 25.6 MPG, 10.3 PPG, .615 TS%, +9.7 +/-
Spurs:
Pre-AS: 33-16, MOV +4.3
Post-AS: 27-6, MOV +7.1
Ginobili wasn't the only factor in the improvement, but the phase transition they got out of Ginobili over the course of the season was a big deal.
We have the next year sample though and Manu didn't hit his prime in 2004 either. Manu was already a great addition to the Spurs team as the leader of bench units, but he wasn't close to the best offensive player on that team - let alone overall best player.
Besides, we can always look at Duncan's 2001-02 work without Ginobili and the Spurs didn't look worse without him on offensive end at all.
Another question I have for you: do you think that Hakeem was a better offensive player than prime Manu? If yes, could you elaborate that? If not, then would you expect him to play a smaller role next to Manu? What kind of role would it be?
Again, I think it's critical to distinguish between "prime" meaning "reached maturity as a basketball player" and "reached homeostasis within this particular team". In '03-04, we're now talking about a 26 year old player 3 years removed from his first Italian MVP season whose play the prior season was essential to the Spurs winning the championship, just as it would be for their next 3 championships, and who in less than 12 months time would be kicking Team USA's ass.
If you want to insist that this isn't a prime player based on the actual limitations you see in his skillset or decision making as a 26 year old that were there as a 27 year old, that's great, and please expound on what you see.
But consider me skeptical that that was really the key difference. I think it more likely that this is the continued settling down of how Pop was going to play this new core going forward.
