David Robinson vs Kevin Garnett

[JimmyFromNz]

I dont really understand the conversation about 'upsets', particularly with these two players. They are framed as if they are determined by said player which just isn't the reality unless we are talking a very small handful of carry jobs by stars e.g. Dirk, Lebron in modern history.

Regardless, KG (FYI: the Celtics) didn't upset anyone in 2008, irrespective of some pre-season views/odds, that team run through the league beginning to finish, despite making it look very hard along the way for the first few rounds of the playoffs i.e. being far closer to being upset.

I hardly consider 2010 upsets, unless we are confined to reading off the regular season records/performance. Which I think anyone experiencing those years knows it doesn't reflect the approach of the team to the regular season 3 years into their title contention with an aging core.

Honestly, I'd give Robinson's 2-3 peak years plenty of consideration over KG. How far you stretch 'prime' determines where you land, as they are very close.

[70sFan]

Took me a long time to respond (I barely find time for basketball recently), but I hope you'll find time to read it.

Well then it comes down to whether those worse rs records were a result of worse help or worse play(and if both, to what degree). Pretty much every sourced RAPM suggests Minny KG was the 2nd or 3rd best rs floor-raiser of the last 30 years(if you ignore Boston it's probably interchangeable with Duncan).

Yes, it's tough to look at KG situation, his impact and conclude he was the Minny problem. That's not what I even attempted to imply, I just stated that Garnett didn't have many chances to disappoint. Robinson had and we do know that his teams overperformed their talent in the RS, mostly because of his impact (which also look godly in limited data we have).

For WOWY I like to filter at 10-games but that doesn't exist for Minesotta Garnett excepting the year before he was drafted so applying a 3-game filter:


1995(82 games) -> 22-wins, -8.22 SRS without KG(with 80 games(and 43 starts) of 19 yo KG in 96, they are 26-win and -5.16)
1997(5 games) -> 0-5 and -18 net without KG(Over 77 games with 20 year old KG(all starts), they are -0.5 net and 42-35 with)
1999(3 games) -> 1-2, -3 net without KG(24-23, +0.6 net with)
2006(6 games) -> 2-4, -9 net (26-31, -1.6 net with)
2007(6 games) -> 0-6, -19.9 net (32-44, -2.7 net with)

Doing this with the Spurs

1989(82 games) -> 21 wins, -7.5 SRS(56-wins and +3 SRS with 82 starts from 24 yo Drob in 1990)
1992(14 games) -> 5-9(no net available for some reason) (42-26, +4 net with)
1997(76 games) ->17-59(no net here too for some reason) (3-3, -0.6 net with, 59-23 and +5 SRS if we use 1996)

Idk why there's no net-rating for Spurs without on statmuse(you can find that for Jordan in the same time period) and I haven't looked at the full season to season context of each year, but KG's teams do seem to look worse generally without him than Drob's. Some of that expectation disparity was also a result of a stronger western conference: KG has three 50-win teams finish with a 3rd seed. Both of D-rob's sub-50 win teams get the 2nd seed. KG's teams were still worse in general, I don't know that means KG was carrying significantly less in the RS.

Minny teams were worse than Robinson Spurs on average, no doubt about it.

That said, you're right KG's teams didn't really get much chance to disappoint. The trade-off there is he also didn't get much chance to impress(which severely limits him in comparisons to arguably worse rs-players like Shaq and Duncan). Robinson got the chance to do both, and not only did he tend to dissapoint, it was often extremely dissapointing. People focus on 1995, but 91, 92, and 1994 were alot bigger underperformances. It's one thing to ne upset in a competitive series(or even a not competitive series) to the eventual champions. It's another thing to combine for 1 win in 7 games against two teams who combined for 2-wins in 10 tries in the very next playoff series. Losing to the Jazz as 1-point srs favorite is one thing. Performing, by far, the worst against them is another and now we've covered nearly half the runs of said prime.

I agree, Robinson got more chances to disappoint or impress and he did the former mostly. At the same time though, we do know that mid-90s Spurs teams were not really a 50+wins caliber teams. So Robinson losing to comparable teams in record isn't really "disappointment" in my eyes.

By the way, you mentioned 3 years and said it's nearly half of the prime runs, but Robinson didn't play a single minute in 1992 series. I don't think you should use it against him in this context, right?

1991 looks bad, but how much of Robinson's fault is that his teammates shot 11% from the three is tough to me to estimate.

Jazz series were a huge black mark on Robinson's resume and Rockets series is also an underwhelming one of course. I also think people should be harsher on 1998 Jazz series as well, the Spurs could and should have done better.

As is when KG was in a similarish boat probably once in Minesotta and he comfortably handled who he was supposed to blow-out(probably by more), beat an evenly matched foe, and then, even with his only notable teammate of those Minny years struggling to stay on the court from game 1, his team played against another formidable team pretty close(6 games, 2 mov loss). Maybe it was a one-off and 2003 KG(who looks similarish to 2004 kg in the rs by lineup-data at least) does something similar to what Malone did. But the lack of oppurtunity swings both ways.

Yeah, it's frurstrating to have such a small playoff sample for KG.

Hmm, could you mean here? I'm not saying any of this is comprehensive/definitive but as a starting point comparing a player specifically to himself...

-> KG's on/off goes up for his career and a slightly down in Minesotta(+11.3 to +14 for the former, +12 to +10 for the latter)

His career playoff on/off is not representative, because the majority of his playoff games happened in Boston. Did you try to calculate weighed mean?

-> KG's PER goes from 22 to 21 for his career and 23.7 to 23.3 in Minesotta(up in 01, 02, and 04, down in 99, 00, and 03)
-> KG's BPM goes down from 5.6 to 5.1 for his career and stays at 6.2 to 6.2 in Minesotta
-> KG's WS/48 goes from .182 to .149 for his career and .185 to .162 in Minesotta
-> For his career, KG's points goes from 17.8 to 18.2 and for his Minesotta years it goes from 19.8 to 22.3
-> For his career, KG's assists go from 3.7 to 3.3. For Minesotta they go from 4.3 to 5
For his career, KG's true-shooting goes from .543 to .526. For Minesotta it goes from .543 to .511
For his career, KG's tov% goes from 11.8% to 12.01, For Minesotta it goes from 12 to 13.6%
For his career, KG's rebounds go from 10 to 10.7. For Minesotta they go from 11 to 13.4
For his Career steals go from 1.3 to 1.2. For Minesotta they go from 1.4 to 1.3
For his career blocks go from 1.4 to 1.3. For Minesotta they go from 1.6 to 1.9

All of the Minny stats rely heavily on 2004 postseason - a season when he peaked as a player. He played almost 40% of his playoff games in Minny in 2004 alone. It's expected to his average numbers look good when the huge part of his postseason career is literally his best season.

I do think Garnett has less and lesser underperformances than Robinson though. I don't think he consistently maintained his RS level, although it's extremely tough to conclude anything from 3-5 games samples... again.

-> KG offsets effiency drop-off with volume going up, drob doesn't

Garnett didn't increase his volume in Minny though. He took slightly more shots (less than one per100) and scored less points because of efficiency dropoff. Even in 2004, Garnett's volume didn't go up compared to RS.

[rk2023]

It is Garnett for me. As 1-O pieces, I am a bit wary of how much either can lift a team’s offense. Obviously, they’re fantastic defenders - Robinson being the better rim protector and Garnett more versatile. With that being said, I am looking for how impactful these sorts of players can be while scaling down production (and how conducive their offensive approach is to team play) when evaluating either.

Though Robinson takes the scoring department here (in spite of seeing a much more elastic game depending on defensive faced), I think Garnett’s complimentary skillset is better than Robinson.

[Djoker]

I think I would go with KG ever so slightly just because Robinson's impact went down a lot and below KG's level in the playoffs. Struggling on offense is excusable but Robinson also struggled on D. Hakeem torching him in 1995 isn't a good look. Maybe him jumping for all those jukes and fakes is etched too much in my mind.

KG actually had really strong playoff series like say the 2nd round against the Kings in 2004 that Robinson never did against a quality team. KG had a bad team around him in Minnesota but you can't really look at any of his playoff series and say "Oh that one is on KG being terrible" while you can do that with Robinson. Namely 1994 vs. the Jazz, 1995 vs. the Rockets and 1996 vs. the Jazz. Those years were his absolute peak and he was horrible in those series.

[OhayoKD]

Took me a long time to respond (I barely find time for basketball recently), but I hope you'll find time to read it.

I did!

I agree, Robinson got more chances to disappoint or impress and he did the former mostly. At the same time though, we do know that mid-90s Spurs teams were not really a 50+wins caliber teams. So Robinson losing to comparable teams in record isn't really "disappointment" in my eyes.

Sure.

By the way, you mentioned 3 years and said it's nearly half of the prime runs, but Robinson didn't play a single minute in 1992 series. I don't think you should use it against him in this context, right?

Yes. Big miss from me

1991 looks bad, but how much of Robinson's fault is that his teammates shot 11% from the three is tough to me to estimate.

Sure. Playmaking is probably drob's biggest disadvantage on offense relative to Garnett though. Maybe worth tracking at some point. I do feel KG's playmaking gets oversold by some that don't differentiate between creation quality.

Jazz series were a huge black mark on Robinson's resume and Rockets series is also an underwhelming one of course. I also think people should be harsher on 1998 Jazz series as well, the Spurs could and should have done better.

I give Drob a bit of a pass on 1998 because it was post injury, but it's reasonable to weigh it a bit I guess.

As is when KG was in a similarish boat probably once in Minesotta and he comfortably handled who he was supposed to blow-out(probably by more), beat an evenly matched foe, and then, even with his only notable teammate of those Minny years struggling to stay on the court from game 1, his team played against another formidable team pretty close(6 games, 2 mov loss). Maybe it was a one-off and 2003 KG(who looks similarish to 2004 kg in the rs by lineup-data at least) does something similar to what Malone did. But the lack of oppurtunity swings both ways.

Yeah, it's frustrating to have such a small playoff sample for KG.

Agreed.

Hmm, could you mean here? I'm not saying any of this is comprehensive/definitive but as a starting point comparing a player specifically to himself...

-> KG's on/off goes up for his career and a slightly down in Minesotta(+11.3 to +14 for the former, +12 to +10 for the latter)

His career playoff on/off is not representative, because the majority of his playoff games happened in Boston. Did you try to calculate weighed mean?

No, I just looked at what BBR listed for "Minesotta" and "career". I thought BBR did that calculation.

-> KG's PER goes from 22 to 21 for his career and 23.7 to 23.3 in Minesotta(up in 01, 02, and 04, down in 99, 00, and 03)
-> KG's BPM goes down from 5.6 to 5.1 for his career and stays at 6.2 to 6.2 in Minesotta
-> KG's WS/48 goes from .182 to .149 for his career and .185 to .162 in Minesotta
-> For his career, KG's points goes from 17.8 to 18.2 and for his Minesotta years it goes from 19.8 to 22.3
-> For his career, KG's assists go from 3.7 to 3.3. For Minesotta they go from 4.3 to 5
For his career, KG's true-shooting goes from .543 to .526. For Minesotta it goes from .543 to .511
For his career, KG's tov% goes from 11.8% to 12.01, For Minesotta it goes from 12 to 13.6%
For his career, KG's rebounds go from 10 to 10.7. For Minesotta they go from 11 to 13.4
For his Career steals go from 1.3 to 1.2. For Minesotta they go from 1.4 to 1.3
For his career blocks go from 1.4 to 1.3. For Minesotta they go from 1.6 to 1.9

All of the Minny stats rely heavily on 2004 postseason - a season when he peaked as a player. He played almost 40% of his playoff games in Minny in 2004 alone. It's expected to his average numbers look good when the huge part of his postseason career is literally his best season.

I do think Garnett has less and lesser underperformances than Robinson though. I don't think he consistently maintained his RS level, although it's extremely tough to conclude anything from 3-5 games samples... again.

Fair point.

Maybe it looks different if we just went year though lots of uncertainty regardless with that sample.

I probably shouldn't be so definitive with drob vs KG, but I do think cold-logic favors KG probablistically, in large part because the playoffs and regular-season lined up at his apex in a way Drob's didn't. Having a season that wire to wire(rs and playoffs can stack up(at least from an impact standpoint) to any from the likes of MJ, Jokic, Shaq ect helps alot. We also have some extra confidence that isn't there for Drob about KG's regular-seasons thanks to lineup-data/rapm though its curious the kg missing the playoffs period looks alot worse using on/off and on/off derivatives than it does using WOWY(75 Kareem-ish?). KG's conventional box looks really good in 2005 and 2006 so I wonder if maybe there's some lineup-effect at play as opposed to the assumed defensive drop-off(my impresion was he was less active but i've only watched like 18 kg games combined from those 2 years). Small sample though.

-> KG offsets effiency drop-off with volume going up, drob doesn't

Garnett didn't increase his volume in Minny though. He took slightly more shots (less than one per100) and scored less points because of efficiency dropoff. Even in 2004, Garnett's volume didn't go up compared to RS.

[/quote]
Ah, I didn't look per possession.