tsherkin wrote:Very good passer, meh scorer now but he was killing it in-era. A DPOY candidate. Very, very jumper heavy (like a third of his shots were long twos), so I don't envision him suddenly and dramatically increasing his draw rate in today's game. A little boost for transition play, though. He was a 54.7% TS guy (which was +3.1% rTS at the time), but even with a boost to his 2FG% and even assuming he still plays like 40 mpg, and even if you give him a mediocre 3pt shot, where would he be?
In 04, Garnett shot 50.6% inside the arc, which is about 4% below current league average. KG was always knocked for being largely allergic to contact and preferring fades over going hard to the rim and such, and his shooting distribution is reasonably consistent over his career. So let's preserve that, but give him a 33% 3pt shot on 3 3PA/g while boosting his 2FG% by 4% due to pace and magic, yeah?
Let's round his 19.6 FGA/g up to 20 for simplicity's sake, then bring us down to 17 FGA/g at 54.5% FG (league average today), then add those 1/3 3P shots and his .289 FTr and 79.1% FT. And that brings us to 53.5% TS. So let's give him another 4.5% boost to his 2FG, since he was about 4.5% above league average in his own time. We'll say that raw change is actually 8.5% now, because Reasons (TM). This, mind, has him shooting 59% inside the arc. Now we're talking about a 56.9% TS player. Now let's take the 83.5% FT from his final year as a volume scorer in Minnesota. 57.4% TS (0.7% below league average today).
Okay. Let's tweak the 3pt shooting. Let's give him a 35% 3pt shot (57.5% TS) and then change the volume to 5 3PA/g. 54.6% TS, so let's back away from that, we've worsened. Okay. Let's be generous. Let's say that even though we actually see a lower overall draw rate and KG was a jumper-heavy guy who didn't initiate/create contact very well in reality, let's say he increased his draw rate dramatically. Let's use his best Minny-era draw rate, which was .411 from 2006. That seems reasonable, because that's a little after the rules change (although in the first 2 seasons, where the refs were going bonkers). 59.2% TS, or +1.1%.
Okay. Now we've reached someone who is at least moderately worth 20 FGA/g. And all it took was an extra 8.5% FG, the best FT% and FTr of his career' (neither from the season we're discussing) and a 35% 3pt shot.
If we got THAT version of 2004 Kevin Garnett translating into today, he'd be an okay first-option scorer who passes really well for his size (which increases his overall offensive utility, obviously) and a DPOY candidate.
That smells like a top 5 guy to me. I'm not very high on his scoring. I wasn't during his actual career and I don't think his game translates super well today. I think a much better option would be to have him shooting a lot less and focusing more on his utility as a playmaker. Of course, as I alluded to earlier, 04 Garnett was playing 40 mpg. In today's game, that's very unlikely. Miles Bridges is topping the league at 37.9 mpg right now. You have to go back to 2016 to find 38+ mpg, and 2011 to find 40+ mpg. Garnett was an 18 FGA36 guy, which given his dubious intersection with scoring efficiency still isn't awesome, but somewhat more tolerable (particularly with his passing and defense). And I think he'd be amenable to using himself more as a decoy than as a volume scorer, he never really evidenced a DESIRE to shoot all the shots in his career. Quite the opposite, really. Which is good, because it really wasn't his forte.
Top 5, though, for that passing and that defense.
And I get whatever pushback from my stat heavy takes. None, absolutely none of basketball works like this. This is like determining what team will win on a specific night based on literally what they average on offense and defense.
Any single assumption that has KG basically playing offense - and especially producing offense statistically, the same way in this era of 6'5 shooting guards getting center minutes, a pace of over 96 on average, and an average ORTG, not even PPG, ORTG of 117.7(!), is categorically absurd. On every single level.
This is like saying he'd be a worse defender because his defenses would give up **** loads more ORTG today. Regardless of the defenses rank compared to the league.
BTW - Don't get emotional from this post I'm not attacking you. God could've posted this and I'd have the exact same response word for word.
Swinging for the fences.