Kobe vs Nash — Who do you take to start a team?

[70sFan]

Nash was a guy who was probably exposed by iso ball, but you can build a better team defense around a high effort PG defender than you can a medium effort SG/SF defender with decent tools. You can still target the weak link in a scheme surely, but I believe Nash would thrive in a high effort scheme.

We have seen that it doesn't work in reality though. Celtics defense suffered a lot by having Kemba/Thomas guards a few years ago and they had to get rid off them to succeed. Nash wasn't good defensively even when he tried.

Strongly disagree with equating him to Thomas (especially at productivity peak) on D.

On the underlined, technically I would agree ... but I think I'd disagree with the impression that I got beyond the specific words (hopefully reading the context, but maybe faulty intution). Not good, but arguably not bad either. I'd guess this DRAPM was circa average for a starting pg https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/97-14-rapm-2 and surely not substantially worse than that. Phoenix despite the impression of their pace, were more below average than outright bad defensively (arguably circa average in their apex 05-07 or 08 run) and though the Suns are in raw terms worse defensively with him on (https://www.cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/2660/onoff#tab-team_efficiency) it tends more in the below average range than genuinely bad.

As far as I can tell, whilst it's true to say Nash wasn't a good defender, [I'm presently inclined to think] he was only a small negative, and not substantially impactful either way on that end. I'm open to better evidence showing this view to be wrong.

I didn't equate Nash to IT on defense, it was just an extreme example of my broader point.

About data - you just posted RAPM studies showing that Nash finished 1138th out of 1648 players included in 1997-2014 studies. That puts him into 30th percentile and these are not only starting players, but also plenty of roleplayers coming from the bench.

I am well aware of how overrated Kobe is defensively, but he finishes the studies 780th or 53th percentile. As you may see, Kobe is ranked above average even including his non-prime seasons and he was considerably better defender in his prime years (excluding 2005-07 period).

To me, that's not a small edge. Nash wasn't all-time bad defender for all players that played during that period, but for a high minutes players that's not a good look at all.

[70sFan]

Nash isn't equal to Kobe defensively, that's ridiculous take.

I also strongly disagree with longevity. Kobe became a superstar in 2001 and ended his prime in 2013. Nash was in his prime for 2005-12 period at most.

If 2012 and 2013 are prime Kobe it says very little of his actual prime.

Kobe kept the volume up on those years. The shot quality and all-around quality of his game diminished greatly.


He pretty much spent 2012 doing a poorer, lower motor impression of his 08-10 years, and then dipped even further in 2013 by putting defense on the back burner just to have the back burner to maintain his prime volume and efficiency, all incohesively I might add.



2010 Kobe was the very end. It was subtle drop off but very steep despite that.

You can exclude these years if you want, he still had considerably longer prime than Nash

[laronprofit9]

Nash isn't equal to Kobe defensively, that's ridiculous take.

I also strongly disagree with longevity. Kobe became a superstar in 2001 and ended his prime in 2013. Nash was in his prime for 2005-12 period at most.

If 2012 and 2013 are prime Kobe it says very little of his actual prime.

Kobe kept the volume up on those years. The shot quality and all-around quality of his game diminished greatly.


He pretty much spent 2012 doing a poorer, lower motor impression of his 08-10 years, and then dipped even further in 2013 by putting defense on the back burner just to have the back burner to maintain his prime volume and efficiency, all incohesively I might add.



2010 Kobe was the very end. It was subtle drop off but very steep despite that.

Kobe was still at an elite level though in 2013, even if diminished from his championship years. Nash was done in 2013 , and Nash was closer to 99-00 level Kobe while he was a Maverick. Kobe made his super star leap in 00-01, while it took Nash until 04-05 to make his leap.

Kobe just gives you roughly 4-5 more years of elite play. That’s too much career value giving up

[ShotCreator]

I think its odd that so many people keep citing defense here. Sorry but if you think Nash is better offensively, you should probably take him, because for the bulk of Kobe's career he simply didn't have a significant amount of defense impact. Odd to use the worst part of his game to be your deciding factor. Especially since as Owly points out, positionally the defensive value gained is minor at best.


The argument for Kobe should be that he was good 5 or 6 years earlier in life than Nash, that he could play huge minutes that Nash never could. That Kobe was invested in being the best player he could be immediately whereas Nash was 30 years old before he gave up his party lifestyle and put in the necessary work on his body. Nash apologists blame Nellie(lol, just lol), one even claims that Nash was better than Jason Kidd in the two years they played together(I mean cmon now), and think the only thing holding him back was everyone else. Which of course is completely false. Dallas gave two first round picks for Nash, immediately signed him to a big contract, and turned over the offense to him from day 1. He just wasn't ready. That's on Nash.

In terms of impact once Nash ramped up, he takes no backseat to Kobe imo, but you just get so many better non-peak years out of Kobe that this really isn't a question for me to take Kobe.

Probably the most reasonable take. Completely unconvinced Kobe peaked higher than Nash.
Completely unconvinced Kobe was ever better than Nash again in his entire prime from 05 to 12.


But Kobe started off relatively strong for his age while Nash didn’t.

I’m general I’m heavily biased in favor of guys who are in the 99th-100th percentile in what they do. In any skill or ability, on either end of the court.

Especially when those things they do are shoot, dribble, and pass at the highest levels ever ever ever in the sport. You can build some teams centered around Nash that would dominate much more than Kobe’s IMO, and be much more resistant to just raw athleticism or scheming because he figured out and mastered the whole playing offense thing.

And Kobe was just never ever a significant defender IMO. I think his bad defensive years were more bad than his good years were good. So if any significance it’s the other way.

Nash was a blunted negative, and then seemed to get into some stingier defense as Phoenix got worse in the later years. Judging by the metrics.

But Kobe’s defense in even a year like 03 was just not impressive. I saw a random video of Steve Francis and the Rockets wings just blowing him by with ease all game this morning.

[Black Feet]

I think its odd that so many people keep citing defense here. Sorry but if you think Nash is better offensively, you should probably take him, because for the bulk of Kobe's career he simply didn't have a significant amount of defense impact. Odd to use the worst part of his game to be your deciding factor. Especially since as Owly points out, positionally the defensive value gained is minor at best.


The argument for Kobe should be that he was good 5 or 6 years earlier in life than Nash, that he could play huge minutes that Nash never could. That Kobe was invested in being the best player he could be immediately whereas Nash was 30 years old before he gave up his party lifestyle and put in the necessary work on his body. Nash apologists blame Nellie(lol, just lol), one even claims that Nash was better than Jason Kidd in the two years they played together(I mean cmon now), and think the only thing holding him back was everyone else. Which of course is completely false. Dallas gave two first round picks for Nash, immediately signed him to a big contract, and turned over the offense to him from day 1. He just wasn't ready. That's on Nash.

In terms of impact once Nash ramped up, he takes no backseat to Kobe imo, but you just get so many better non-peak years out of Kobe that this really isn't a question for me to take Kobe.

Probably the most reasonable take. Completely unconvinced Kobe peaked higher than Nash.
Completely unconvinced Kobe was ever better than Nash again in his entire prime from 05 to 12.


But Kobe started off relatively strong for his age while Nash didn’t.

I’m general I’m heavily biased in favor of guys who are in the 99th-100th percentile in what they do. In any skill or ability, on either end of the court.

Especially when those things they do are shoot, dribble, and pass at the highest levels ever ever ever in the sport. You can build some teams centered around Nash that would dominate much more than Kobe’s IMO, and be much more resistant to just raw athleticism or scheming because he figured out and mastered the whole playing offense thing.

And Kobe was just never ever a significant defender IMO. I think his bad defensive years were more bad than his good years were good. So if any significance it’s the other way.

Nash was a blunted negative, and then seemed to get into some stingier defense as Phoenix got worse in the later years. Judging by the metrics.

But Kobe’s defense in even a year like 03 was just not impressive. I saw a random video of Steve Francis and the Rockets wings just blowing him by with ease all game this morning.

oh you watched a video of him being blowed by with ease this morning? guess that settles it lol. Also it was mostly fisher guarding Francis in 03 but nice try though. Also Kobe has the most All-D selections of any guard I think but apparently never played good defense, makes sense.

Didn’t this site have Nash outside the top 25 all time? and now a lot of you would take him over Kobe? Nash couldn’t even lead his team to the finals, put Kobe with Dirk and that’s multiple championships guaranteed.

[Doctor MJ]

But Kobe started off relatively strong for his age while Nash didn’t.

So, I'll take the opportunity to point out that while I agree with this statement in terms of what was actually achieved by each player, I don't think it's a given that Kobe actually earned more of that early opportunity than Nash did.

Through their first two seasons, Kobe and Nash both came off the bench. Why? Because Kobe was behind Eddie Jones on the depth chart while Nash was behind Jason Kidd. These are all great players and it's really no shame to be behind them, but since these are guys we know became all-time great, it makes sense that one of them would outperform those ahead of him and force that guy to be traded, while one may fall short of that and end up getting traded.

And one of these guys had end up with a better WS/48, considerably better shooting, and better +/- than the guy who was starting over him, while the other did not.

But the guy outperforming the starter was Nash over Kidd, not Kobe over Jones.

In LA, Jerry West was sold that Kobe was the future and so even though he clearly was not playing as effectively as Jones, he traded Jones to give Kobe the runway he needed to take off.

In Phoenix, while there were voices within the organization who said that Nash was the one to keep rather than Kidd, they traded Nash only to pine for him for years afterward until they finally got him back within the franchise.

Here's another fun nugget on the topic of Nash coming into the league much older than Kobe.

The first time Kobe led his team in +/-, was his age 27 season ('05-06).
By Nash's age 27 season, he'd already led his team in +/- twice.

Of course, Kobe played with Shaq through '03-04, so I'm not going to pretend that's the most damning thing in the world, but Nash achieved what he did by beating out Kidd in Phoenix and Dirk in Dallas.

As I say, none of this changes the fact Kobe was able to blossom as a superstar earlier than Nash despite also starting younger...but I think it's important not to think that anyone capable of being X will naturally be granted the opportunity to be X, and thus that anyone who takes longer to get there it must have been because they were fundamentally "too raw".

[Owly]

We have seen that it doesn't work in reality though. Celtics defense suffered a lot by having Kemba/Thomas guards a few years ago and they had to get rid off them to succeed. Nash wasn't good defensively even when he tried.

Strongly disagree with equating him to Thomas (especially at productivity peak) on D.

On the underlined, technically I would agree ... but I think I'd disagree with the impression that I got beyond the specific words (hopefully reading the context, but maybe faulty intution). Not good, but arguably not bad either. I'd guess this DRAPM was circa average for a starting pg https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/97-14-rapm-2 and surely not substantially worse than that. Phoenix despite the impression of their pace, were more below average than outright bad defensively (arguably circa average in their apex 05-07 or 08 run) and though the Suns are in raw terms worse defensively with him on (https://www.cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/2660/onoff#tab-team_efficiency) it tends more in the below average range than genuinely bad.

As far as I can tell, whilst it's true to say Nash wasn't a good defender, [I'm presently inclined to think] he was only a small negative, and not substantially impactful either way on that end. I'm open to better evidence showing this view to be wrong.

I didn't equate Nash to IT on defense, it was just an extreme example of my broader point.

About data - you just posted RAPM studies showing that Nash finished 1138th out of 1648 players included in 1997-2014 studies. That puts him into 30th percentile and these are not only starting players, but also plenty of roleplayers coming from the bench.

I am well aware of how overrated Kobe is defensively, but he finishes the studies 780th or 53th percentile. As you may see, Kobe is ranked above average even including his non-prime seasons and he was considerably better defender in his prime years (excluding 2005-07 period).

To me, that's not a small edge. Nash wasn't all-time bad defender for all players that played during that period, but for a high minutes players that's not a good look at all.

I would say

We have seen that it doesn't work in reality though. Celtics defense suffered a lot by having Kemba/Thomas guards a few years ago

Is equating the two. It might be a semantics thing. But saying we have seen this approach doesn't work (not "might not work") using a player as a proxy for another player is equating the two. Nash must in some way be an equivalent or it's just a non-sequitur. And, unless I missed something, at no point at the time was it suggested that this was "an extreme example".

My post didn't reference Kobe. Fwiw, I'd note that the sample contains non-prime Nash years too and the bad Kobe years are relevant too.

On to the main point. I'd say percentiles aren't relevant here distribution is. As noted my categories were guesses but I haven't seen anything yet saying they don't hold up (nothing on positions, nothing on distribution). Edging in to the Kobe stuff, though as before that wasn't there in the above post there are 357 players between the two, but 191 have less than 4000 possessions
...

Spoiler:

(the 5 players above this line
Chris Morris
Mickael Gelabale
Hasheem Thabeet
Cody Zeller
Jason Collier
the the next 5 below
Qyntel Woods
Kyle O'Quinn
Sean Williams
Bernard Robinson
Eddie Gill
Nikoloz Tskitishvili

My guess is we'd expect a bunch of nobodies are in that mild negative range. If this is the case the percentile difference will be inflated.

There was no argument for "a good look" but among high possession 1s (looking at the top 100 possession players)....

Eric Snow 1.19
Jason Kidd 0.93
Derek Fisher 0.77
Kirk Hinrich 0.67
Tony Parker 0.48
Baron Davis 0.11
Gary Payton -0.16
Sam Cassell -0.22
Andre Miller -0.34
Steve Nash -0.81
Chauncey Billups -0.81
Deron Williams -0.97
Jason Terry -1.01
Mike Bibby -1.12
Damon Stoudamire -1.13
Jason Williams -1.42
Stephon Marbury -1.7

I could include Wesley but he was more the 2 with Davis. I could exclude Terry he's maybe more a 2 but a small combo guard playing significant chunks and starting at 1 during his prime. And just the rank hides the gap between Miller (who's close to Kobe) and Nash (who's basically tied with Billups). Nash is below average. Take out the role players who didn't have high levels of playmaking responsibility (arguably 3 of the top 4) and in some instances shared some ball handling duties and he climbs a little.

In the context of him rating as a +3.6 on O is he, as before, below average on D, yes (some could go further). Is he more than merely not an "all-time bad defender". Yes.

[G35]

I think if Kobe and Nash had been a couple of years younger when they paired up they could have been beautiful together.....

Doubt it. Those two were never positioned to play well alongside one another. Not a condemnation of either player, just playstyles which didn't mesh.

If Shaq and Kobe did not play with other, then you could say the same thing...their playstyles don't mesh.

You could surmise that Dirk and Nash did not play well together since they had a lot playoff failure.

I think Kobe is able to play with a lot of players...CP3 and Kobe should have played together if not for the league preventing that trade. Kobe's ability to play with elite players is one of the more underrated points when debating his playstyle.....

[tsherkin]

If Shaq and Kobe did not play with other, then you could say the same thing...their playstyles don't mesh.

You could surmise that Dirk and Nash did not play well together since they had a lot playoff failure.

I think Kobe is able to play with a lot of players...CP3 and Kobe should have played together if not for the league preventing that trade. Kobe's ability to play with elite players is one of the more underrated points when debating his playstyle.....

I didn't mean it as a dig at Kobe, G. I just meant that they both occupy the perimeter a lot. Playing with Shaq, yeah there were some congestion issues at times but Shaq wasn't troubled by Kobe playing on the ball. They figured it out. Nash is best deployed on-ball, spamming PnR and all that kind of stuff. You CAN run him around screens and everything, but his high-end efficacy comes from ball control. Kobe can at least post a bit, cut, run curl screens. He demonstrated a lot of the time in the triangle that he could get off-ball more effectively because he was more of a scorer than Nash. So yeah, I mean, you CAN play that team, but it's not to best efficacy for either of them. And again, it isn't intended to diminish either player for it.

[G35]

If Shaq and Kobe did not play with other, then you could say the same thing...their playstyles don't mesh.

You could surmise that Dirk and Nash did not play well together since they had a lot playoff failure.

I think Kobe is able to play with a lot of players...CP3 and Kobe should have played together if not for the league preventing that trade. Kobe's ability to play with elite players is one of the more underrated points when debating his playstyle.....

I didn't mean it as a dig at Kobe, G. I just meant that they both occupy the perimeter a lot. Playing with Shaq, yeah there were some congestion issues at times but Shaq wasn't troubled by Kobe playing on the ball. They figured it out. Nash is best deployed on-ball, spamming PnR and all that kind of stuff. You CAN run him around screens and everything, but his high-end efficacy comes from ball control. Kobe can at least post a bit, cut, run curl screens. He demonstrated a lot of the time in the triangle that he could get off-ball more effectively because he was more of a scorer than Nash. So yeah, I mean, you CAN play that team, but it's not to best efficacy for either of them. And again, it isn't intended to diminish either player for it.

I understand that but my point is that Kobe has an ability to work with varying talent and in varying roles and still "make it work". You can't say that about a lot of players.

When Nash and Kobe did eventually team up, Nash was 38 years old and was not nearly the player he was in his hey day with the Suns. I think 2011ish is Nash's last year as an impact player. If Nash had joined the Lakers in 2012, he's not going to be playing the same way he did in earlier. Nash would have to alter his playmaking not just for Kobe but for Gasol and Bynum as well. This is not Amare and Marion in their primes.

There would be adjustments on all sides but I think Kobe would be able to make it work, I mean they were starting Ramon Sessions and Derek Fisher at the time.....

[tsherkin]

I understand that but my point is that Kobe has an ability to work with varying talent and in varying roles and still "make it work". You can't say that about a lot of players.

Sure, I can agree to that. I don't see it as salient to my notion that him and Nash aren't well-positioned to maximize their talents alongside one another, though.

If Nash had joined the Lakers in 2012, he's not going to be playing the same way he did in earlier. Nash would have to alter his playmaking not just for Kobe but for Gasol and Bynum as well. This is not Amare and Marion in their primes.

Yes, that was basically my point. In order to function alongside Kobe, Nash would have to work at odds with his best skill set, which would diminish his value. It would not be a good pairing. Particularly if we assume a Bynum/Pau frontcourt.

Could they function? Sure. Would it be a really good idea? No, it would be a waste of talent and there would be better ways to go, particularly with Phil coaching.

[SNPA]

I’d rather give the ball and team to prime Nash. He’d make teammates better, less contested one on one junk thrown up and more team play and open looks. Better shooter too. Defense is in Kobe’s favor but he gets overrated overall and the gap in making a team better offensively leans me to Nash.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Saying Kobe wasn't an elite defender has always been hyperbole. He was LA's best defender during their 00-10 run every year outside of 10', where he was the 2nd best defender. Opposing coaches who actual gameplanned voted him tot hose All-defense teams. Revisionist history will never fly, no matter how many +/- stats are thrown out.

Give Kobe both Marion, and Amare and he wins rings. Nash never even made the FInals with Dirk/Finley and those Suns teams

[KobesScarf]

Lol in what universe are Kobe and Nash close

[ronnymac2]

To start a team, I'm taking Kobe Bryant over Steve Nash. Pretty huge edge in longevity, so they really aren't in the same tier for me. I value longevity of prime and overall longevity a lot.

Quality of prime, I think I'd still take Kobe. Obviously much closer. It's not clear to me how to properly build around prime Nash.

[CLosP]

The fact that people even think this is worth discussing shows the level of disrespect Kobe gets on this site. Really, really baffling.

I’m sorry but Kobe & Dirk win one ring together at the very least.

And no, Nash was not in the same stratosphere of Kobe defensively. You wanna say Kobe was overrated later in his career? Sure. But Nash had to be hidden on defense a lot. It’s absurd to even think it’s not a big difference.

Nash was a very, very good player who benefitted from joining a system that maximized his talents and the rule changes also benefitted him. These two are not ranked close no matter what nonsense people wanna spew lol.