lessthanjake wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:
I appreciate the back & forth. Responding to your points:
1. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the statement that a drop in 3% TS from RS to PS is something we should see as a major drop off. I'll grant that Wade's change looks better, but from a perspective Garnett effectively dropping something like a tier because of it, I dunno man.
These are good responses, and I’ll just respond to several things.
Regarding the above, I think 3% TS% is pretty significant. Garnett was taking about 24 true shot attempts a game in those playoffs. If he had a 3% higher TS%, he would’ve scored about 1.5 extra points a game. Which, roughly speaking, amounts to about 1.5 extra points of a impact per game (missed shots can be offensive rebounded and the team can score afterwards, which somewhat mitigates the effect of a lower TS%, but at the same time, making shots makes it easier on the next defensive possession, which exacerbates the effect of missing shots, so we can probably roughly say those things cancel out). From the perspective of player impact, I actually do think that that amounts to a tier of impact. And I think it certainly does if we add in the extra turnovers, as well as the lower per-possession output.
So, I certainly don't want to argue that an X% change in TS% over a volume Y doesn't translate to Z points on the scoreboard. That's certainly the arithmetic of it.
Consider though:
a) In addition to the presumably tougher playoff defense making it very possible that an X% change is what we should expect in the situation, there's also the natural variance of things. Over the splits of KG"s '03-04 RS, we see his TS% vary between 49.8 to 58.8. If a player's shooting efficiency varies + or - 4-5%, then why are we looking to draw a specific conclusion of something changing in the playoffs when he isn't even outside that RS range?
To put another way: If a difference in performance can be explained with normal variance patterns, while that doesn't mean that the bounce of the ball with good/bad luck isn't making a critical difference which can be linked to a players accomplishment, it does mean we should be cautious about insisting on a narrative explaining that normal variance as if we're in a fable requiring a moral takeaway.
b) Let's say KG being worse was costing them 1.5 points in every game. How many games in the playoffs would 1.5 point swing from a loss to a win for the 2004 Timberwolves?
The answer is zero. The Wolves never lost a game by less than 6 in that run.
This then to say that while over a large enough sample a 1.5 point loss in impact will swing games, in the course of an NBA playoff run, it oftentimes wouldn't.
And if we're actually interested in how KG looked in the closest games of those playoffs:
Game 4, MIN at DEN, W 84-82: Garnett 27 pts on 57.2% TS
Game 3, MIN at SAC, W 114-113: Garnett 30 pts on 55.6% TS
Game 7, SAC at MIN, W 83-80: Garnett 32 pts on 57.5% TS
Game 5, LAL at MIN, W 98-96: Garnett 30 pts on 53.9% TS
We note that Garnett was always scoring above normal volume, and doing so with higher efficiency than the average playoff game.
Now I'm not looking to say that these 4 games prove anything about Garnett's peak - super-small sample of course - but just from the perspective of X% dip in efficiency must be treated as damage that held his team back, I really don't think the evidence actually bears that out.
Yes the team would be better if Garnett just made more of his shots, but that doesn't mean we should be quick to downgrade a player's playoff performance relative to his regular season estimation as if there's a clear meaningful failure at play throughout the post-season span.
lessthanjake wrote:I'll also say that when you say he dropped to negative rTS, you're just comparing him to the regular season average TS, right? Because Garnett is still above playoff average TS in 2004.
I got Garnett’s playoff rTS% from the Thinking Basketball website. I’m virtually certain that they compare it to the opponent’s defense’s regular season TS%, rather than any league average.
Okay, that makes sense.
I would point out that generally for any given team they're going to be trying considerably harder on D in the PS than in the RS, and if you don't factor that in in 2004, you'd probably end up concluding that the PS offenses all forgot how to play at the same time, which I would not say is what was going on.
lessthanjake wrote:We should also note that this is 2004 we're talking about, so while Minny having a PS Ortg of 101.9 sounds owful, it was actually good relative to other playoff teams that year.
So for example, Minny loses a series largely without one of their only 2 all-star level players with an ORtg of 104.0
The prior round, the Spurs lost to the same team while achieving an ORtg of only 95.2.
Now, leading a better offense than the Spurs doesn't make you a tippy top tier offensive player, but if what we're asking is instead about whether we should be dropping Garnett a tier because he only led an offense that was 8.5 points better than the Spurs seems a bit harsh.
The Timberwolves had a -1.2 rORTG in the playoffs, with the rORTG being calculated relative to the opponent’s regular season DRTG. Granted, I wouldn’t say playoff rORTG is a flawless measure (I talked about that some in this thread, with regards to Jokic), but I do think the Timberwolves being a subpar offense in the 2004 playoffs is consistent with what we might expect given Garnett’s offensive struggles.
I'll just reiterate that if you do this for everyone else in the 2004 playoffs, you're going to see similar stuff, and looking to specifically make "Garnett has playoff issues" but not applying that to the whole league doesn't make sense to me.
lessthanjake wrote:2. More MPG means less production per minute in this case. That's true, and I'm not trying to suggest that there aren't stats that Garnett goes down by so much as I'm focusing on the "played worse in the playoffs" statement. If you're just seeing your stats go down a little bit against the tougher defense of the playoffs, to me this isn't really "playing worse". Fine to celebrate the rare players who seem to be an exception to the rule, but if a guy is largely doing what was reasonable to expect him to do in the playoffs, then we shouldn't be looking to classify that as a disappointing drop off.
Yeah, this is definitely a fair point. I do think that if someone’s production drops off in the playoffs due to playing tough defenses, then it may be understandable but it also has a good chance of meaning that the guy’s impact was lower than in the regular season. And that’s especially the case when the drop in efficiency is actually seen relative to the quality of the specific opponents (which is what is the case with rTS%, and I’m sure is the case with the turnovers too).
I also think that we shouldn’t lose sight of Garnett being compared to 2006 Wade here. Even if we assume for argument’s sake that Garnett was more impactful in the regular season than Wade was and Garnett’s impact didn’t actually drop off in the playoffs, it definitely doesn’t necessarily mean he was as good as Wade was in the playoffs. After all, Wade was pretty clearly better in the playoffs than in the regular season. And if we excuse Garnett’s drop in production in the playoffs because he played playoff defenses, then that same logic should equally make us think even more highly of Wade’s playoff stats. So, while this factor about playoff defense might be able to move the needle in a comparison between 2004 RS Garnett and 2004 Playoff Garnett, this factor can’t really move the needle here in a comparison between playoff Wade and playoff Garnett.
Could it mean he had less impact than in the regular season? Yes.
Is that what his playoff On-Off indicates? Not at all.
Were there other issues with the team that included missing their other all-star against the team that "upset" them in part by having drastically more talent on their roster than the Wolves? Yup.
Re: Wade improved in the playoffs. To be clear, not looking to argue against that. Wade's super-simple game of driving into the interior and getting fouled proved to be a better offensive strategy than most of what the rest of the league's strategies of the time were doing, and even today I wouldn't really be looking to insist KG would be Wade's offensive equal.
lessthanjake wrote:3. Re: "but Kobe didn't have a good 2004 playoffs". My immediate thought here is:
Kobe was in his prime in the 2004 playoffs and roughly healthy, so what we see from him represents a reasonable Kobe-level of play.
Meaning, this whole thing where we imagine players are getting tiers better or tiers worse from RS to PS from season to season within their prime is, I think, largely a trap we fall into. The reality is that the players were the players, and while some seasons end up looking narratively immaculate and some don't, that doesn't mean that it was primarily about the player becoming fundamentally better or worse.
Now as I say that, I recognize that 2004 was an odd year for the Lakers and it’s certainly not a coincidence that Kobe scored less that year than, say, in 2006. I'm not trying to argue that 2004 was Kobe's best season, but any idea of "but that wasn't Good Kobe" smacks of bit of that perfectionist bias I've been alluding to.
A couple responses to that:
1. I think there are real differences in how good players are in different seasons and different playoffs in different years, even within their primes. Some of that is just matchup related in the playoffs, and a lot of it is also health. For instance, just because a guy plays in two playoffs doesn’t mean his body was doing equally well both times. There’s also mental factors. People aren’t always as checked in at all times (which I think was probably the case with 2004 Kobe). That said, I do agree that sometimes things are just random.
2. Even if we say Kobe was in his prime and maybe just randomly didn’t have as good of results in the 2004 playoffs as he usually did, I think you’re comparing to Kobe in that particular year and then drawing a conclusion that compares to prime Kobe in general. If he played worse in the 2004 playoffs than he normally did, then there’s ample room for someone to have put up numbers as good as 2004 Kobe specifically while still being worse than prime Kobe in general. To take a fairly extreme example of this to illustrate my point, I wouldn’t say that since Dirk was better in the playoffs than 2011 LeBron, and since LeBron was in his prime in 2011 then we should conclude that 2011 Dirk was better than prime LeBron in general. In any event, I’m not sure it really matters much for purposes of this discussion, since Kobe’s rTS% in that series was better than Garnett’s.
So, where we appear to be diverging is in our perspective on season-to-season variance. Is a player having a relatively down season in the midst of his prime actually not playing like his prime self? or, is he basically the same guy but a confluence of factors is giving him a less impressive footprint?
With Kobe in '03-04 what we can definitely say is that he reduced his shooting volume as part of the team's incorporation of Malone & Payton, and given that a) Kobe's best years are always associated with high volume scoring, and b) the team didn't win the chip and frankly got embarrassed in the finals, it makes sense why none of us are going to talk about that season as if it was his best.
But Kobe was absolutely prime Kobe that year and it doesn't make sense to look at that entire season as if Kobe was, say, injured. What you got from him that year is what is basically what you should expect from any prime version of Kobe placed on a team with Shaq/Malone/Payton and Jackson as coach.
Now to be clear, if I was looking to favor someone else by scoring volume as if that represented a ceiling of what they were capable of, it would be wrong to judge Kobe based on '03-04, but his efficiency was perfectly normal that year by his own standards, and so treating it like "not really prime Kobe" just doesn't make sense to me.
Also to be clear, '03-04 was an anomalous year for Kobe also because he was constantly flying back & forth to Colorado for trial, and you might argue that this made him play worse on the court... but this was the opposite of the narrative. The narrative was about how incredible it was that he could handle that disruption without it seeming to affect his play at all.
k, just summing up here with a broad point:
On the PC board we all know there are various types of threads. One type of thread that I mostly avoid is of the time "How many seasons was X better than Y in the year 2001?". Why? Because I think threads like this effectively encourage people to magnify narrative nitpicks. You'll get stuff like:
1. X in '03 - perfect
2. Y in '01
4. X in '02 - he made that one mistake and his team got eliminated
5. X in '04 - he made that other mistake and his teammates saved him
X was the basically same guy for 3 years, but now we're not just ranking those years, but finding a place for a wedge between seasons based on another player based on little bits of randomness like this, implying that one bad day out of 365 is the difference between better or worse than Y. And while this is literally possible from a value-add perspective, it's quite unlikely that some small moment is determining who contributed more throughout the year.
Re: Dirk & LeBron in 2011. Just to address quickly:
LeBron was the better player, but Dirk was the more valuable player.
From a POY perspective, I see Dirk as the clear #1 for the year, but LeBron's value was being held back by the fact that he was playing with 2 stars who fit poorly next to him and then a bunch of scrap and hence, from a goodness perspective, no reason to argue LeBron was a worse player in 2011 than he'd been in 2009 or 2010.
I like everyone else will tend to favor the years in which a guy was able to max out value in this project over the years in which he didn't, but I see it largely as a kind of tiebreak. The fact that 2011 wasn't the most glorious for LeBron doesn't mean we can't do talk about his play that year as prime LeBron.
lessthanjake wrote:4. Re: Talking through bad schemes involves speculation, but to avoid here.
So let me make a few distinctions here:
a) It's one thing to talk about scheme issues to elevate a player who otherwise looks unremarkable, and another thing to talk about scheme issues as another reason to be cautious about small sample size theater changing our regular season assessment dramatically.
So from my perspective, I'm using a conservative approach here not overreacting to individual playoff data in a way that would lead me to say the player was a worse player in the playoffs simply because he was dealing with a greater degree of difficulty.
To be clear, I’m not really thinking that Garnett was systematically worse in the playoffs. I just think that in the small but very important sample of the playoffs, his performance wasn’t quite up to the level he was at overall in the regular season. If those playoffs were played over again, maybe that wouldn’t have been the case. But what happened in the playoffs is what happened, and I do see a significant gap between 2006 Wade’s playoff performance and 2004 Garnett’s playoff performance, even though I don’t actually think Garnett was bad at all in the 2004 playoffs. He just was clearly not as good as 2006 Wade, which there’s no shame in.
And what I'd emphasize is that if your judgment over who the better player is ends up focusing on a player's TS% going through pretty typical variance in small sample size, then you might be over-indexing on things a scout would believe it wise to not conclude much from.
Re: Garnett vs Wade. So, I've largely avoided the actual comparison part of this and just focused on the drop in TS% you alluded to, but I'd note that if you'd think the same about Wade > Garnett even if he had the same TS% as in the RS, I don't think that's absurd. I can quibble about other things of course, but the thing that concerns me isn't Garnett losing the comparison, but the idea of putting a lot of focus on changes to TS% that to me seem largely shaped by variance that is actually the norm in how basketball stats look.
lessthanjake wrote:b) While I allude to all the schemes back then being problematic, they weren't equally so, and it's generally pretty simple to identify who the most obsolete offenses coaches were, because their teams shot the least 3's. There's much more to offense than 3's of course, but if you were a particularly anti-3 coach in an era where no coach's team shot enough 3's, then your players were unlucky to be saddled with you.
I don’t disagree with this line of thinking (though I second your statement that there’s much more to offense than threes). But are we sure that the Timberwolves coach was particularly anti-three as much as that he didn’t have the personnel to produce more open threes? After all, Flip Saunders went to the Pistons a couple years later and the Pistons went from being well below average in 3PA the two prior years to being a bit above average in Saunders’ first year. There’s an element to which focusing your offense on a high-post guy (i.e. Garnett) who doesn’t really have the tools to pressure the rim and isn’t a guy who regularly collapses defenses in the low post makes it really hard to produce lots of threes. Of course, one answer to that might be to orient the offense around a different player on the team that could help you produce threes more. That might’ve been better for the Timberwolves. But at that point we’re getting into a really speculative land in terms of Garnett’s impact, because who knows what happens to his impact and box stats if the team’s offense is reoriented away from him. We have a good data point in that regard on the Celtics, where he was still very impactful with a team that wasn’t particularly offensively oriented around him, but the box stats took a definite tumble and we also just don’t know what that would look like on the Timberwolves.
Well first: It's obviously not Garnett's fault if the Wolves' aren't acquiring good shooters, right? So whether we're talking about a coaching thing or a GMing thing, it really amounts to the same thing as I see it.
But I do think it makes sense to see which teams were taking the most long twos, because those shots have basically all been turned into 3's nowadays.
In '03-04 the Timberwolves took the 2nd most fraction of their shots from 16-3P feet, with them taking up 30.1% of their FGA.
In '03-04 the Spurs took 20.0% of their FGA from 16-3P feet.
And by contrast, the most long-2 prone team in the league right now - Kings - shoot 9.2% of their FGA from the long 2 range.
So to some degree, you might say that the '03-04 Spurs had a strategic maturity about halfway between the '03-04 Wolves and the least strategically mature team of '24-25.
Were the Timberwolves just doing this because they lacked quality shooters? Well, the fact that they had the best long 2 FG% in the entire league in '03-04 says otherwise. They were using that approach because the reasoning of the time was telling them it was a good choice if you had quality shooters on their team, not because they thought their shooters sucked.
lessthanjake wrote:5. Re: title wouldn't necessarily make opinion of Garnett higher. Well and of course, it shouldn't in theory, but I think we all tend to anchor ourselves on types of winning bias we don't even realize.
The idea that there were major issues with a Garnett-led offense in Minny but not a Duncan-led offense in SA is, I would say, precisely that. We're talking about to incompetent offenses by modern standards whose gap in effectiveness at the time wasn't even necessarily that clear, so why do people immediately start talking about Duncan's volume scoring when doing those comparisons?
I think it's the chips.
There’s definite truth to this. That said, to add on to what I said above, I do think that Duncan was better suited to produce threes for his team, since he was a guy who could at least collapse the defense towards him in the low post. Duncan-centered offense wasn’t modern offense by any means, but I do think it was easier for a team to produce more modern shot selection with Duncan than with Garnett.
Re: Duncan better suited to produce 3's for his team because of gravity. So I get the concept, but I don't think the WOWY stats back it up. I'll try to find data later today if someone else doesn't do it first.
