Current Anthony Edwards vs Peak Manu Ginobili

[1993Playoffs]

I’d take my chances on ANT after seeing his playoffs last year.

Your limited with Manu, brilliant player, but limited minutes compared to other players, durability issues and straight up inconsistent play that isn’t talked about enough

[tsherkin]

I’d take my chances on ANT after seeing his playoffs last year.

Your limited with Manu, brilliant player, but limited minutes compared to other players, durability issues and straight up inconsistent play that isn’t talked about enough

Ant shot under 40% FG over the last 8 games of the playoffs and had 4 big stinkers in 5 games bridging the Denver and Dallas matchups. If anything, I think the 2024 postseason showed how much more work he needs to do, particularly when his 3 isnt falling. That Dallas series was rooough for him, apart from the last game.

I hope to see a strong RS from him in 2025 though. Maybe he will start getting himself sorted.

[McBubbles]

Hot Take - Manu is somewhat overrated in these parts on account him ticking off the PC Boards strongest biases. Unselfish, elite passing, elite defending dood with a huge Per Possession non-boxscore impact profile. These are good biases to have obviously because they're biases based on things that have proven to be correlated to racking up W's BUT they also lead people to overlook Manu's flaw, which people know that he has but gloss over anyway which I feel like has been perfectly exemplified in this thread.

Let's look at Prime Manu from 2005 to 2011. Whilst playing on one of the slowest teams in the league mind you with an average pace of 89.7 and an average pace ranking of 23rd, whilst also averaging 69.7 games a season and 42.2 starts a season, Many only averaged 29.0 MPG. Other players in this timeframe;

Lebron - 40.2 minutes.
Kobe - 38.5 minutes.
Wade - 37.9.
Dirk - 37.0.
Dwight - 36.0
KG 35.
Nash 34.

Manu had comparable minutes to 2005 to 2011 Shaq, who averaged 28.7 minutes.

Manu is playing 8-10 fewer minutes per game than the calibre of players he's being compared to (and the players that he out performs statistically) which will obviously somewhat inflate how good his impact numbers look due to his lower volume of possessions.

Everything I've just said has already been acknowledged. My issue is that people will pay lip service to what I just said being an issue but then obviously not care lol. They'll say what I just said and then go "But if you take his numbers with a pinch of salt / at face value / with the benefit of the doubt / with the luck of the Irish then he's actually a superstar that could have played about 33-34 minutes per game today"

What the **** ?

So Manu routinely playing 15% to 25% fewer possessions than his superstar peers isn't a result of his very well documented durability issues, but is actually a result of Greg Popovich being an idiot. So much so that despite Manu only playing over 30MPG TWICE in his entire career, and playing nearly exactly the same amount of minutes per game internationally without Popovich as he did in the NBA with Popovich whilst also having worse teammates, he could actually now average more minutes than his career high in the pace and space era?

It is just casually implied that the most ridiculously optimistic evaluation of Manu human possible should actually the baseline evaluation for him and I see absolutely no reason why this should be the case. No other player on this board gets treated this way

If anything evidence suggests that he'd play 25 or fewer minutes per game, not play more minutes.

[eminence]

Manu looks like a statistical stud *after* accounting for the lower possessions as well.

Possessions * Impact Estimate will give us Manu as somewhere in the 5-10 range for most valuable player in the league over multi year periods in the late 00s.

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah, San Antonio got exactly what they needed from him, and it worked out extremely well.

I disagree. I think it's a mistake to think that winning X titles means you couldn't have done better.

That... isn't what I said at all.

I said they got what they needed from him and in worked out well, not that it could not have been better.

I do apologize if what I said is unfair, but to me when you say "got exactly what they needed" you imply that that they couldn't have benefitted from getting more from him.

I think they would have benefitted from getting more from him.

If the 2000s Spurs had had a 2010s-Spurs level offense, there's every reason to think they win more than 3 titles in that time period.

Suuuuure, but in the 2010s, they had wildly different rosters, so I'm not sure I'm connecting with the relevance.

The 2000s Spurs had a very different, very much lower-ceiling roster for the purposes of offense. Later, they'd add a lot more shooters AROUND the core. And Parker got better. years of George Hill, significantly improved Parker, some decent years from RJ killing it from 3, a lot of Matt Bonner, some quality bench seasons from Boris Diaw, a whole lot of Danny Green, and a crap ton of Kawhi.

So yeah, I don't really see how that has anything to do with Manu and the 2000s rosters at all, to be honest. And even less with what I said.

Seems like you're saying:

"They didn't have enough shooting in the '00s and so that's why it was optimal for them to under-utilize their best shooter, playmaker, and best offensive talent."

Doesn't make sense to me.

And I would argue that was basically no reason the 2000s Spurs couldn't have run those offenses earlier. The only reason they didn't is because they thought running the offense through Duncan was their best option. Understandable why they thought that at the time, but they were wrong.

That is quite possibly the case, though again, disconnected from anything I said at all.[/quote]

Okay. I apologize my confusion.

[JimmyFromNz]

Hot Take - Manu is somewhat overrated in these parts on account him ticking off the PC Boards strongest biases. Unselfish, elite passing, elite defending dood with a huge Per Possession non-boxscore impact profile. These are good biases to have obviously because they're biases based on things that have proven to be correlated to racking up W's BUT they also lead people to overlook Manu's flaw, which people know that he has but gloss over anyway which I feel like has been perfectly exemplified in this thread.

Let's look at Prime Manu from 2005 to 2011. Whilst playing on one of the slowest teams in the league mind you with an average pace of 89.7 and an average pace ranking of 23rd, whilst also averaging 69.7 games a season and 42.2 starts a season, Many only averaged 29.0 MPG. Other players in this timeframe;

Lebron - 40.2 minutes.
Kobe - 38.5 minutes.
Wade - 37.9.
Dirk - 37.0.
Dwight - 36.0
KG 35.
Nash 34.

Manu had comparable minutes to 2005 to 2011 Shaq, who averaged 28.7 minutes.

Manu is playing 8-10 fewer minutes per game than the calibre of players he's being compared to (and the players that he out performs statistically) which will obviously somewhat inflate how good his impact numbers look due to his lower volume of possessions.

Everything I've just said has already been acknowledged. My issue is that people will pay lip service to what I just said being an issue but then obviously not care lol. They'll say what I just said and then go "But if you take his numbers with a pinch of salt / at face value / with the benefit of the doubt / with the luck of the Irish then he's actually a superstar that could have played about 33-34 minutes per game today"

What the **** ?

So Manu routinely playing 15% to 25% fewer possessions than his superstar peers isn't a result of his very well documented durability issues, but is actually a result of Greg Popovich being an idiot. So much so that despite Manu only playing over 30MPG TWICE in his entire career, and playing nearly exactly the same amount of minutes per game internationally without Popovich as he did in the NBA with Popovich whilst also having worse teammates, he could actually now average more minutes than his career high in the pace and space era?

It is just casually implied that the most ridiculously optimistic evaluation of Manu human possible should actually the baseline evaluation for him and I see absolutely no reason why this should be the case. No other player on this board gets treated this way.

I agree with most of what you said, the projection and benefit of the doubt is incredibly strong and definitely not afforded for other players to the same extent.

I'd still take Manu's single season peak playing 30mpg over last season's Anthony Edwards.

Just a smarter, more fundamentally sound player if comparing these points of their careers. Where scoring is close based on basic boxscore statistics (accounting for era/pace), the advanced analytics are incredibly one sided and I think from everyone that watched Manu during that time it remains a more accurate reflection of who he was as a player at his peak.

[tsherkin]

I do apologize if what I said is unfair, but to me when you say "got exactly what they needed" you imply that that they couldn't have benefitted from getting more from him.

No, I don't think at all.

I think they would have benefitted from getting more from him.

Yes, I believe it's possible.

"They didn't have enough shooting in the '00s and so that's why it was optimal for them to under-utilize their best shooter, playmaker, and best offensive talent."

Nope.

My remarks about the 2000s roster were basically "they didn't have the pieces to play offense the way they did later." And it wasn't league-norm. You're basically asking Pops to have been the innovator for contemporary offense like a decade plus too early, and without the SSOL Suns as a precursor.

I agree with you that the Spurs were running what we think of now as non-optimized offense.

But let's set some context, right? 99-04, they were only ever worse than a +1.8 offense twice, and 01-03, they were looking just fine offensively on 58- to 60-win teams, ranking 6th, 9th and 7th. They didn't have a problem with offense, so reinventing the wheel didn't make sense. As Tim got older, as his minutes got more managed, as the league environment changed, it forced Pops to re-evaluate some, so they found their way to a new way of doing things (also as they realized more of what they had in Manu and as Parker evolved). What they needed, and what they eventually got, was a little more support around Tim on O, but it's worth mentioning that they titled twice in 5 years anyway, and they had the Shaq/Frobe Lakers in their way. That's not an easy opponent.

It's technically possible they could have played better on O earlier, but that's true of the whole league, so I don't especially care. The entire league was stuck doing mediocre and counterproductive things on offense from 98-04 (with some exceptions), so that's not really something I hold against San Antonio in particular.

[O_6]

Funny how just a month or two can change perception.

When I started the SGA vs. Edwards thread during Edwards hype season when they beat Denver time roughly, you guys voted Edwards as the better bet over runner-up MVP SGA.

Edwards’ ceiling is def insane. Hopefully he reaches it.

[McBubbles]

Hot Take - Manu is somewhat overrated in these parts on account him ticking off the PC Boards strongest biases. Unselfish, elite passing, elite defending dood with a huge Per Possession non-boxscore impact profile. These are good biases to have obviously because they're biases based on things that have proven to be correlated to racking up W's BUT they also lead people to overlook Manu's flaw, which people know that he has but gloss over anyway which I feel like has been perfectly exemplified in this thread.

Let's look at Prime Manu from 2005 to 2011. Whilst playing on one of the slowest teams in the league mind you with an average pace of 89.7 and an average pace ranking of 23rd, whilst also averaging 69.7 games a season and 42.2 starts a season, Many only averaged 29.0 MPG. Other players in this timeframe;

Lebron - 40.2 minutes.
Kobe - 38.5 minutes.
Wade - 37.9.
Dirk - 37.0.
Dwight - 36.0
KG 35.
Nash 34.

Manu had comparable minutes to 2005 to 2011 Shaq, who averaged 28.7 minutes.

Manu is playing 8-10 fewer minutes per game than the calibre of players he's being compared to (and the players that he out performs statistically) which will obviously somewhat inflate how good his impact numbers look due to his lower volume of possessions.

Everything I've just said has already been acknowledged. My issue is that people will pay lip service to what I just said being an issue but then obviously not care lol. They'll say what I just said and then go "But if you take his numbers with a pinch of salt / at face value / with the benefit of the doubt / with the luck of the Irish then he's actually a superstar that could have played about 33-34 minutes per game today"

What the **** ?

So Manu routinely playing 15% to 25% fewer possessions than his superstar peers isn't a result of his very well documented durability issues, but is actually a result of Greg Popovich being an idiot. So much so that despite Manu only playing over 30MPG TWICE in his entire career, and playing nearly exactly the same amount of minutes per game internationally without Popovich as he did in the NBA with Popovich whilst also having worse teammates, he could actually now average more minutes than his career high in the pace and space era?

It is just casually implied that the most ridiculously optimistic evaluation of Manu human possible should actually the baseline evaluation for him and I see absolutely no reason why this should be the case. No other player on this board gets treated this way.

I agree with most of what you said, the projection and benefit of the doubt is incredibly strong and definitely not afforded for other players to the same extent.

I'd still take Manu's single season peak playing 30mpg over last season's Anthony Edwards.

Just a smarter, more fundamentally sound player if comparing these points of their careers. Where scoring is close based on basic boxscore statistics (accounting for era/pace), the advanced analytics are incredibly one sided and I think from everyone that watched Manu during that time it remains a more accurate reflection of who he was as a player at his peak.

Got so flustered I didn't even answer the question of the thread lol.

To be clear I'd also take peak Manu over anything we've seen from Edwards thus far. At this point in time it'd be easier to say what Manu isn't better at Edwards at than the opposite, as I feel like Peak Manu contributes more to winning on every level than current Edwards.