therealbig3 wrote:drza, I'm offended. You had time for that great post, but you won't expound on why you would take 11 Dirk over 08-10 Dirk.
Lol. Last night, when it might have been more relevant since other years of Dirk were on the table, making an in depth post was just NOT happening. Baby La La was absolutely not having it.
Now, I really SHOULDN'T be posting in depth since I'm at work and am actually pretty under the gun right now. But I've been wanting to put something with some substance down for awhile and haven't been able to, so I just took the time. But since now it's only down to Dirk 11 and West 68 on the table, I decided to focus there.
Where I was going to go last night, though, was a) we know Dirk took a huge RAPM boost in 2011 and b) we're not entirely sure why. The prevailing sentiment in this project has seemed to be that, in the absence of being able to fully explain it, we should almost disregard it. I don't really see it like that, though, because a) we know that Dirk was already very consistently among the top-5 +/- performers in the NBA for the previous decade (so it's not like him hitting a 1st place peak is completely out of left field) and b) the very POINT of the +/- measures is that they are able to capture elements/aspects of what impacts a game that we may have trouble noticing with the naked eye (without knowing to look for it) and/or that might not be captured in the box scores.
In Dirk 11's case what do we know? Well, we know that he wasn't producing volume-wise (scoring, minutes, 3-pointers or minutes) what he was in '06 or '09. But we also know that he was displaying a more aggressive scoring mentality with more diverse scoring options in '11 vs '06 (and I'd argue vs '09 as well, though it's not as clear-cut). We also know that in '11 Dirk was playing next to the best rebounders that he ever has at center/SF. We also know that outside of Terry, the supporting players on the Mavs in '11 tended to have their strengths in areas besides scoring to a larger extent than what we saw in '06 or '09 (e.g. Josh Howard).
So, knowing these things, can I see a reasonable explanation for why Dirk 11's RAPM values might be so much larger than Dirk 06 or 09? Yeah, I could. The 11 vs 06 argument has been reasonably made and reasonably received here, so I won't continue with that. But the main argument for 09 that I've seen you make is that in the postseason '09 Dirk was scoring at a slightly lower volume and turning the ball over less but also putting up better rebounding numbers as well. And you attributed this to decline's in Dirk's athleticism. But could I counter that Dirk's increased volume/turnovers in the '11 postseason were a result of him taking on a larger creating role than he ever had before, and that with that additional pressure/responsibility he was still able to produce beautifully in 11 at the highest levels? And couldn't I also argue that with Marion at SF and Chandler at C Dirk didn't HAVE to rebound as much, which allowed him to put more energy/effort into positional and help defense, and that in the end that additional defensive effort turned out to be more valuable than the additional rebounding? And that THOSE things contributed to why Dirk measured out as such a better impact player in 2011 than in 2009?
I don't deny that fit could have played a role in Dirk's big increase in RAPM and overall impact level in 2011 vs previous years...however, I also don't think we can just throw out the 2011 peak because of it. We're looking at a measure that's designed to capture things that we might have missed...you can't then, IMO, say that because we might not see entirely what the measure is capturing we therefore should disregard it. And though I'm the last guy to just look at the championship scoreboard, you can't really ignore that Dirk DID lead a championship caliber team in 2011 when the cast wasn't demonstrably better than it had been in 2009. It may have fit better around Dirk, and maybe the Dallas front office and coaching get SOME of the credit for that, but Dirk should get some as well. Enough so that I almost see it the opposite of you, that 2011 Dirk has demonstrable and quantitative (and qualitative) impact positives that 2009 Dirk didn't, and it's more incumbent upon YOU (or perhaps better, it's up to the skeptic) to prove why we should ignore those results. And just noting that Dirk may have rebounded more in 2009 or that his impact increased late in his career aren't strong enough pieces of evidence to convince me. Those are circumstantial pieces of evidence in our trial, but they aren't really meaty enough for me to throw out the other evidence.
at the double standard, West is an elite defender because he was getting steals but Dirk had to shut down an elite scorer in the playoffs to be a great defender ? no matter man defense is overrated, even overlooking the fact that Dirk actually shut down everybody he guarded in '11 postseason (though I'm pretty shocked by your ignorance here, the least you could do is check that, really solid analysis on your part...), why didn't you apply the same standard to Jerry West ? who did he stop ? from what I've read Oscar consistently torched him in their h2h matchups, Frazier was posting his best playoff series vs West, West didn't even guard the toughest assignment usually, what evidence is there to even think West was a good man defender ? so right there, you can take your argument out of the window - you can't complain about Dirk not being elite man defender without doing the same for West.
