RealGM Top 100 List #8

[therealbig3]

You expect to see a drop off defensively without your best defensive player, but there's absolutly no way I can buy that the little time the league leader in minutes is off the court, that small amount of time amounts for such sub par defenses for 10 years straight. That's ridiculous.

01 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 102.9 (14th)

02 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 104.2 (14th)

03 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 102.4 (10th)

04 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 98.5 (5th)

05 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 106.6 (13th)

06 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 104.7 (10th)

07 Wolves DRating with Garnett on the floor: 106.2 (13th)


They were an above average defense every year from 01-07 with Garnett on the court...it was usually when he was off the court that things went bad. In 05 and 06, those are really the years that seem like Garnett's defense drops, but in 07, he's the only reason they even finished 21st instead of dead last.

Meanwhile, compare this to the Spurs with Duncan OFF the floor.

01 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 104.9 (21st)

02 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 103.6 (10th)

03 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 103.2 (15th)

04 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 97.5 (3rd)

05 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 103.4 (7th)

06 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 100.3 (1st)

07 Spurs DRating with Duncan off the floor: 104.6 (7th)

In this 7 year stretch, the Spurs with Duncan on the bench are BETTER defensively than the Wolves with Garnett on the floor 5 times. All 5 of those times, the defense without Duncan is good enough to rank top 10 in the league. Even in 01 and 03, they're not that far off from the Wolves with Garnett on the floor.

So we can give Garnett crap for not anchoring great defenses while in Minnesota, but it's clear to me that he was good enough keep that team above average basically by himself...meanwhile, Duncan's teams without him were already much better than average for the most part. Of course they're going to become insanely good with him, and of course they'll destroy Garnett's teams defensively, because clearly, the supporting cast (or coaching...probably both) is far superior defensively.

Those Minnesota teams didn't have a lot of plus defenders outside of Garnett. The Spurs were full of them.

The numbers cited sited have absolutly nothing to do with my point. Because the early 2000 Spurs were an elite defensive team that was anchored by great defensive bigs. I wasn't comparing the Wolves to the 2000 spurs, because most years they weren't even an above averge defense. It's like me comparing the Wolves to the 2004 pistons, there's no point.

And again just like when across stated the rating when KG was on the floor, that is still not elite, that's slightly above averge at best most of the years you cited. For a player who is supposed to have Russell impact on that end of the floor I'm not seeing it

I doubt you'll be convinced in that case, but I do see it. I see a guy without a lot of good defenders around him dragging a team to above average defenses (the net result was below average defenses, but again, that was due to when KG was on the bench).

My response was directed at the idea that a big man with GOAT-defensive impact SHOULD make his team great defensively by himself. But nobody has ever done that. The easiest comparison is Duncan, because he's another GOAT-level defensive anchor that we actually have on/off data for, and we see quite clearly that he's got a fantastic supporting cast (and coach) in place, so he's adding to an already strong defensive situation. That's why the Spurs were fantastic year in and year out defensively. Because they didn't just have the anchor, they had the supporting cast and the coaching in place.

Minnesota had the anchor (Garnett), but they didn't have the supporting cast or coaching (Flip Saunders was an average coach at best, there are some legit criticisms you can throw his way as well).

[Purch]

Yeah, it was just Boozer...not Noah, Gibson, Asik, Deng, Butler, etc. He had fantastic defensive personnel in Chicago too, and fans have noted how he sacrifices offense by playing his defensive role players more. Nobody's denying that he's a great coach, but he's definitely had the personnel in both Boston and Chicago.

And we've seen Boston's defense remain elite with Garnett after Thibs left.

Sacrificing offense is the thing you do, when your best offensive played is injured 3/4 of those seasons. And when they were at their best defensively was also when they were at their best offensively in 2011.

Your argument about the Celtics being great defensively would be great if, they weren't running the exact same defensive schemes that they inherited from Thibs(you can check the tapes) I know it's a radical idea that you don't stop running whats working. It's like arguing that Kawhi was still effective after Pop left, when his assistant are still running the same system


Like I said, bigs are your most Important position defensively, and when you are playing a big who is a defensive liability 30+ minutes it is Extremly hard to be a great defensive team

I know, I've seen it with both Boozer and Jefferson on the Jazz

Well yeah, it worked, but the guy that masterminded it isn't around anymore to make adjustments to it, or to advise his players on how to run it. This is what I mean when the guy left...he's not there to oversee it anymore. Things aren't static, coaches make adjustments. But Boston's defense didn't have Thibs making adjustments anymore, and they were still elite defensively. Meaning there was more going on than Thibs.

And if we're going to give Thibs this much credit...then what about Popovich? Extremely hard to be a good defensive team when the big is a liability, kind of like your Bonner+Duncan example. I guess the coach deserves a lot of credit for that.

BTW, you CAN cover up a liability, if you're strong at every other position, and yes, you have a strong defensive system that allows a player to fit a certain role. Bogans/Brewer/Butler, Deng, Noah, and Gibson/Asik off the bench is an excellent defensive cast that can cover up a lot of flaws and keep a team elite defensively.

He didnt have to oversea it, because the league never adjusted to it. In fact the Miami heat ran a lot of the same trapping and matchup zones that Boston did in 08, and teams still had problems with it.

See your point about Pop has no relevance to what I'm saying, because I'm not arguing that Duncan has the defensive impact of guys like Russell or Hakeem. If you're going to make that argument your player has to elevate your team defensively much more than KG did in his prime.

Yea convering up a liability is hard, if you're facing any team with any semblance of a coherent ball movement based offense

[therealbig3]

Also, I don't know about the other people supporting Garnett, but I contended for a while that I don't think Russell could single-handedly transform a defense in a later era the way he was able to in the 60s, due to the nature of that era. I feel like Russell on the Timberwolves instead of Garnett wouldn't have made them elite either. Better than Garnett was able to, because Russell was better defensively, but still not best in the game level, because the rest of the team just wasn't there for something like that to happen.

[Doctor MJ]

Now, you might take that point and say "Okay, and isn't that something worth talking about as something Dirk might be better at?". Absolutely it is, but it's also a part of other things. We can absolutely talk about it, but it's not really very useful to try to split and split and split things down for the sake of finding some small little thing that Player X is better at imho.

One of the places where we are disagreeing is that some of us don't see Dirk's ability to distort defenses by his mere presence on the court "some small little thing". If you feel like it is, then that explains a big part of our disconnect.

Planning to respond here and not to your previous post. The other one was responding to a response from me where I was trying to take a step back and express the frustration I'd had with someone else's post, and you came back with more of the same argument. Not saying that argument is a bad one, but I was trying to step away from that argument not double down.

To this particular point: I don't mean to imply that defense distortion is an unimportant thing, it can be a very big thing. It is however something that's a function of other things. If Dirk can't hit a shot, then he can't distort the defense using the exact same techniques he's using right now. It's all interconnected, and so it just seems weird to me to try to insist on these things being separate for the purpose of having separate things to point to and say "Dirk is better here".

But to the extent I oversimplified matters and implied Dirk was a one-trick pony, I apologize and accept the correction.

[Purch]

5. "Duncan had a near identical role in '14." Hmm, I'll go with you there. Duncan played the Celtic Garnett role on a team that didn't win because of anything like the reasons why the Celtics won. That's the difference.

If you look at any of the +/- data from the year, you'll see a stark contrast. Here's the pure raw stuff:

Duncan +452
Garnett +921

1. In no year of the Heat's run, did they every have a collection of bench players as talented as House, Pj Brown, Tony Allen, James Posey and Powe.

2. Why is there no reason to think Thibs could work that same Magic elsewhere? If anything there's more reason to think Thibs could replicate it than KG, looking at those T wolves defenses. Thibs has been able to create elite defenses the past 4 years, with clearly inferior defensive personel. Thibs has been able to create top defenses in the league, whiles playing Carlos Boozer significant minutes.

3. Teams have adjusted to the overloading, the trapping, and the "matchup zone" principles that have evolved out of that era. Dont get me wrong obviously it would be difficult for the Spurs, but the offense they've evolved over the past four years is the perfect counter to that. The triangle offense, was not.

4. There's a difference between costing, and playing 28 different starting lineups throughout the season. The thing is.. The spurs did both, and were only 4 games behind the celtics. A 16-10 playoff record, and 2 consective 7 game series against inferior teams whiles having home court doesn't impressive me.

5. Timmy played less than 30 minutes per game, and was 6 years older than him during their respective runs.

Cutting most of my post to spare real estate but leaving the last part in for emphasis.

1. I'm not as impressed as you are by those guys, but I won't belabor the point. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that you think the Celtic bench is significant here.

2. I'll put it slightly differently:

The Miami defense in '10-11 was excellent. I have no doubt that Thibs could have made it excellent too, but there's no reason to think he could have made it an order of magnitude better, and there's no track record at all to think of him as more impressive on offense than we saw from Spo the following year. I'm sure Thibs could do a good job in Miami, and I think he did a better job in Boston than I'd expect Spo to be able to do, but that does not mean we take the presumptive edge in Boston and simply apply to Miami as some kind of "better coach advantage".

3. But the Boston defense only worked with Garnett out there, and much of that was based on his unique agility and decision making. You don't stop the pick & roll the same way with him not out there, and no matter what the offense is it's a pretty huge value to the defense if they have a guy watching it all with keen insight and commanding his teammates to do the right thing.

I realize there was innovation to what Boston did, and you have a point there, but when you present the strategy as a kind of gimmick to be solved I think you did it a disservice. Most of what we're talking about here is just defense getting smarter. And offenses have gotten smarter too which will help against the smarter defense, but it doesn't make dumber defense look better.

4. Now you're just looking for reasons to dismiss them. Forget about the comparison for a second. When those Celtics were on, they were jaw dropping. Do you not remember this?

5. Okay no, and this is why I'm leaving my part of the quote in there. You trying to pivot into an excuse is absurd here. Look at the difference between those numbers. It's off the charts insane. You bring up Timmy's minutes - did you even bother to think in terms of whether adjusting for that would make a dent in the numbers? (Hint: It's negligible compared to how huge that gap is.)

Timmy's age? Look I"m not the one who brought him up. I'm not saying Garnett's better than Duncan because he was vastly more dominant in '08 than Duncan was in '14. You brought up '14 because YOU thought it provided a fitting analogy. To go back now and essentially say, "Well sure he wasn't anywhere as good then but he was old", makes the entire analogy just bizarre.

If the argument is that there's something wrong with Garnett compared to Duncan because Duncan's best team was better than Garnett's, and the fact that Duncan was a shell of himself and nowhere near as important to that team as Garnett, then why stop at Duncan? Why not use the '14 Spurs to argue Matt Bonner > Kevin Garnett?

The '14 Spurs are better than the prime Duncan Spurs precisely because there's a whole hell of a lot of stuff going on now with the team that have nothing to do with Duncan's basketball play, and any argument that incorporates any of that into an argument over Garnett is wrong from the get go.

5. What are you even talking about. Youre attacking 50 strawmans that never existed.

1. I never said Duncan produced at the same rate as KG.
2. I never even implied that 14 Duncan was as good as 08 KG
3. My words were that Duncan played a similar role on a more dominant team, not that he was better in that role than Garnett. The funny thing is, you're the one always trying to connect them in conversation.
4. The only reason I brought up age is because you for some weird reason decided to bring up +\- stats when I never said 14 Duncan was as good as 08 Garnett. So I responded that due to age it's obvious Garnett would be more productive.
5. When did I ever say that the 14 Spurs were Duncan's best team? This is another strawman you've created for no logical reason

I'm not even gonna respond to the rest of your post, because your attempt to argue with yourself over a point as I never made, is honestly an insult.

[Texas Chuck]

it just seems weird to me to try to insist on these things being separate for the purpose of having separate things to point to and say "Dirk is better here".

Do you honestly think I'm guilty of doing this?

Im confused why we break down players into all kinds of nuance, but suddenly when it Dirk v KG in offense its us simply trying to have separate things to point to? Especially since we did so in light of your fairly outlandish claim that the only thing Dirk does better offensively is score.

Essentially you lured us into making those posts and then chide us for doing so. Its pretty frustrating.

[therealbig3]

See your point about Pop has no relevance to what I'm saying, because I'm not arguing that Duncan has the defensive impact of guys like Russell or Hakeem. If you're going to make that argument your player has to elevate your team defensively much more than KG did in his prime.

I see things differently...I have KG, Duncan, Hakeem, and Robinson on the same tier defensively, with Russell a little bit higher than any of them. I don't see Russell in his own untouchable tier anymore, but he's still the best defensively.

And yes, I use some equivalences there, if KG and Duncan are pretty much equal, that means KG is pretty much equal with Hakeem and Robinson.

ElGee made a great qualitative post about KG that didn't really have anything to do with advanced stats, where he actually talks in detail about why KG was so great defensively...I don't think you could say the same things about Hakeem (not sure he had the leadership, intelligence, or understanding of angles that KG did defensively...he was stronger, a better rim protector, and a better ball hawk though, so that makes up for it).

If you don't see the same things when you watch KG, fine...but my question is: why denounce RAPM so much as valid evidence for KG's defensive impact...but then cling to team defensive ratings as valid evidence? One stat is better than the other? At least RAPM attempts to separate the team from the equation and give an individual player's impact. Team DRating is obviously heavily dependent on your team, it's pretty much meaningless to me when I want to know how good a defender is.

[Doctor MJ]

Doctor MJ, I'm happy to dig up film of the 2011 Playoffs and break down for you exactly HOW MUCH Dirk was doing for the Mavs offense without even touching the ball.

The number one factor for the Mavs title was not Dirk scoring 28 ppg on 60+% TS, but rather the fact that BECAUSE he did that, opposing defenses gave a LOT more space to his teammates.

If this ability of his lead to a title, I don't see how it's a 'small thing'. It's arguably the single most impactful thing that either Dirk or KG does.

See my last response to Chuck, see also if possible another post where I specifically pointed to Dirk's improvement to '11 in this regard. I'm not saying this is an unimportant thing, I'm saying it's an interconnected nuance.

Put another way: Say some kid watched Dirk and figured out his exact decision making. He goes out on the court and tries to implement it. Does it work?

You're probably thinking, "Well that all depends", which is the point. You can't suck the defense in if they don't respect your scoring threat, and it makes little sense to try to get them to do it based on a set of responses they're never going to use on you. So how do we compare the stuff Dirk learned to do in the years after becoming a scoring superstar to other people who don't have the scoring abilities?

There's no apples-to-apples way to do it. I'm not saying we ignore what Dirk does, but when having a conversation about what each guy does better some things are just too interconnected to isolate.

As I've said, the real objection y'all probably have here is that you feel I'm painting Dirk as a one-trick pony, and I'm sorry about that. That's not how I see Dirk. On the other hand though, clearly if you take away Dirk's shooting, there's not any kind of debate between Dirk vs KG - so when you make a post fixating on that one aspect and then skimping over the plethora of relative strengths KG has, to me that's pretty ripe for caricature.

In the end though, we're both guilty of oversimplifying and the thing to do now is just understand where each is coming from and move beyond it. Do you understand where I'm coming from?

[Doctor MJ]

Now, you might take that point and say "Okay, and isn't that something worth talking about as something Dirk might be better at?". Absolutely it is, but it's also a part of other things. We can absolutely talk about it, but it's not really very useful to try to split and split and split things down for the sake of finding some small little thing that Player X is better at imho.

One of the places where we are disagreeing is that some of us don't see Dirk's ability to distort defenses by his mere presence on the court "some small little thing". If you feel like it is, then that explains a big part of our disconnect.

Exactly and a major selling point of shaq was his goat level distortion so we cant just throw it out the window now

For the life of me, I don't understand how it came to be understood that I was advocating ignoring part of the game here.

[Texas Chuck]

On to other things.

My official vote is for Magic Johnson

As per usual, its not an advocacy, nor will it be stat-centric as others do that better. Merely to explain some of why he gets my vote.

IMO, Magic is one of the 3 best "basketball geniuses", for lack of a better term, we've ever seen along with Russell and Bird. Magic just saw the game in away maybe no one else ever did. And he had the talent to maximize his vision.

A tremendous rebounder for his position, a very efficient scorer, and of course arguably the greatest passer of all-time. You want spectacular, jaw-dropping full court bounce passes, or no-look, between a guys legs passes MAgic is the man. You want a fundamentally perfect entry pass to Kareem, he's your man. He does it all.

Not a traditionally great shooter like Nash, but made himself into a pretty solid spot up guy. A tremendous playoff performer and of course he had a ton of team success.

I considered Dream here, but ultimately I believe Magic to be the best player left.

[Purch]

See your point about Pop has no relevance to what I'm saying, because I'm not arguing that Duncan has the defensive impact of guys like Russell or Hakeem. If you're going to make that argument your player has to elevate your team defensively much more than KG did in his prime.

I see things differently...I have KG, Duncan, Hakeem, and Robinson on the same tier defensively, with Russell a little bit higher than any of them. I don't see Russell in his own untouchable tier anymore, but he's still the best defensively.

And yes, I use some equivalences there, if KG and Duncan are pretty much equal, that means KG is pretty much equal with Hakeem and Robinson.

ElGee made a great qualitative post about KG that didn't really have anything to do with advanced stats, where he actually talks in detail about why KG was so great defensively...I don't think you could say the same things about Hakeem (not sure he had the leadership, intelligence, or understanding of angles that KG did defensively...he was stronger, a better rim protector, and a better ball hawk though, so that makes up for it).

If you don't see the same things when you watch KG, fine...but my question is: why denounce RAPM so much as valid evidence for KG's defensive impact...but then cling to team defensive ratings as valid evidence? One stat is better than the other? At least RAPM attempts to separate the team from the equation and give an individual player's impact. Team DRating is obviously heavily dependent on your team, it's pretty much meaningless to me when I want to know how good a defender is.

Personally 90% of the Garnett playoffs highlights/games on youtube are located on my channel. I've went through hours upon hours of tape breaking down his strengths and weakness, so I am we'll aware of who Garnett is as a player. Dont get me wrong, I've always felt he's an elite player, but I was also well aware of times he came up short both offensively and defensively.

About defensive and offensive rating I disagree there's no rating I value higher in point guards and defensive anchors because I feel those two roles on the court have a massive impact on both of these stats. It demonstrates the abilty to either run an efficent offense or anchor an effective defense.


It's not that I denounce them, I've personally just never thought credibility could come out of a +\- stat. Personally Ive never been an advocate of advance stats(even though im forced to use the in this theead)but in particular +\- stats never seem to translate well enough to what I see on the court for me to endorse it.

[ronnymac2]

1987 — Ralph Sampson's injuries begin. The 7'4" big man plays 43 games and plays less than 31 minutes per game. Rodney McCray and Robert Reid are excellent peripheral guys, guys who can start on legit title teams, but after that, not much else. Houston plays at a level slightly above league average (0.6 SRS, 42-40).

Houston is the 3rd-best defense in the league (—2.8 defense). They are 3rd in eFG%, 14th in Turnover% (slightly below league average), 6th in defensive rebounding (above league average), and 11th in ft/FGA (slightly above average). Hakeem plays 75 games for 36.8 minutes per game.

Olajuwon grabbed 7.2 defensive rebounds with 3.4 blocks (3rd in the league) and 1.9 steals per game. Once again, he leads the league in defensive win shares (6) and individual defensive rating (99).

23.4 points, 4.2 Oboards, 2.9 assists and 3 turnovers per game. 55.4 percent True Shooting. Houston's offense was below average (—1.8). The team is a below average 3-point shooting team.

Olajuwon's PLAYOFF RUN: This is special. Against a Blazer team that played better in the REG SEA than HOU, Olajuwon drops 27/9/5/4/2.5 in 36 minutes. 3 turnovers per game. Gets to the line almost 10 times per game. 69.7 percent true shooting. He dominates Portland and Houston wins 3-1.

Houston loses to Seattle 4-2 next, but Olajuwon plays his heart out, including in the final elimination game in what may be the greatest basketball game a man has ever played.

For the series, Dream averaged 30.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 3.8 blocks, .5 steals and 1.3 assists with 4 turnovers per game. He shot 60 percent from the field, got to the free throw line almost 10 times per game, and shot 63.8 percent true shooting.

In the tragic DoubleOT Game 6, with Game 7 set to tip-off in Houston in a few days should the Rockets win, Olajuwon drops 49 points, 25 rebounds, 6 blocks, 2 steals, 2 assists, and 2 turnovers. 19/33 from the field, 11/13 from the line. He played 53 minutes with the most active motor I've ever seen a C play with. I remember rewatching this game a few years back for the RPOY projection. Here's what I wrote about the game.

In the elimination game against Seattle, Hakeem dropped 49 points, 24 rebounds, and 6 blocks in the OT loss. That entire game is on youtube. I recommend watching it; it's a great all-around basketball game, and you get to see Dale Ellis, Tom Chambers, and Xavier McDaniel, too.

Hakeem was amazing in the game aside from production. His defense was great and he did everything he could to keep his team in it. IIRC, Ralph Sampson missed huge free throws down the stretch and played badly late in the game. The whole game, Tom Heinsohn is saying how great Hakeem is and how he's a hard worker, but still needs to work on reading the defenses that keep on tripling him and collapsing on him (no jokes about how Hakeem is the only guy ever doubled, please). They really were swarming him all game. At times though, Hakeem makes beautiful, creative passes to teammates that even make Heinsohn gush.

It is clear that Olajuwon does indeed need to learn some more technical things regarding passing (too many turnovers during the post-season), but his creativity and willingness were there.

HIs transition defense was amazing, and he was truly swarmed when he had the ball like peak Shaq. You could see the creativity in his passing game, too. Tremendous effort.

1988 —

Spoiler:

1988 Hakeem Olajuwon

First off, I want to say this is a testament to Hakeem that he was able to drag this team to being a sightly above average squad in 1988. (46-36, 0.82 SRS)

The team's second best player, Ralph Sampson, played 19 games. Sleepy Floyd post-trade played 59 games and had a major downturn in terms of production after having an All-Star season in 1987 (13.1 points, 6.2 assists, TS% below 51 percent). Robert Reid only played 15 minutes per game this year. Only Rodney McCray is who I'd consider to be a good player on this team.

The Rockets are once again 4th in defensive rating (—2.3 defense), mainly on the back of being the 2nd-best eFG% team in the NBA. They ranked 11th at Turnover% (slightly below average), 16th in defensive rebound% (slightly below average), and 10th in ft/FGA (slightly above average).

Olajuwon averaged 8.3 defensive rebounds, 2.7 blocks, and 2.1 steals in 35.8 minutes per game (79 games). He was fourth in the league in total defensive rebounds and total blocks. He was 7th in defensive rebound rate. He led the league in defensive win shares (6.3) and individual defensive rating (98). He was All-NBA first team and All-Defense first team.

22.8 points, 2.1 assists, 3.1 turnovers, and 3.8 OBoards per game, 55.5 percent True Shooting. Quite frankly, the players around him were not quality offensive players, and he had below league average 3-point shooting around him this season. Again, I have no doubt that you give him a perimeter offensive player on par with him, he could average 20-22 points, 2-3 assists, 4 Oboards, 2.5 turnovers, and raise his TS% to 56-57 percent on an above average offense (Houston was slightly below average as is, which is impressive to be considering their lack of talent and fit.)

In the playoffs, Hakeem averaged 37.5 points, 16.8 rebounds, 2.8 blocks, 2.3 steals, 1.8 assists, and 2.25 turnovers per game. Got to the free throw line over 10 times per game. True Shooting = 64.1%. Dallas, clearly an above average team and possessing some of the deepest talent in the league, outscored Houston by just 10 points over the 4-game series. Olajuwon's teammates shot under 42% on the series. Ralph Sampson did not play. Dallas played roughly at the same level as their REG SEA 3rd ranked offense did. Again though, this team was very talented. They did take eventual NBA champion Los Angeles to 7 games in the WCF.

This season more than most is a season where Olajuwon did not have talent or help in the REG SEA or playoffs, and he still carried the team pretty much as far as one could reasonably hope.

1989 —

Spoiler:

Defensively, Olajuwon not winning DPOY isn't as egregious as it was in 1990. Mark Eaton was playing about 35 minutes per game and anchoring the best defense in the league, so it's at least an understandable selection. But Olajuwon was most certainly playing at a somewhat similar level that he did in 1990.

Hakeem played 82 games and played 36.9 minutes per game. He averaged 9.4 defensive rebounds, 3.4 blocks, and 2.6 steals for Houston's 4th-ranked defense (Houston was a —3 defense). He led the league in total defensive rebounds and was 3rd in both total blocks and total steals. He led the league in defensive rebound rate (27.2), defensive win shares (7.8), and individual defensive rating (94.9).

Defensive Four Factors: Houston ranked 8th in eFG%, 10th in turnover%, 5th in defensive rebound percentage, and 12th in ft/FGA. All of these marks were above league average that year, which makes sense since Olajuwon is affecting offenses in every way imaginable (he ends possessions with defensive rebounds, causes a crazy amount of turnovers, and lowers team's efficiencies by blowing up plays on the perimeter and contesting shots in the paint).

Offensively, Olajuwon is scoring 24.8 points with 1.8 assists, 4.1 offensive rebounds, and 3.4 turnovers per game. He shot 50.8 percent and 69.6 percent on FTs. 55.2 True Shooting percentage.

(Just a slight tangent...I hate when non-volume scoring, non-creative players average a ton of turnovers, which is exactly what Otis Thorpe does. The same thing pisses me off about early Charles Oakley. Thorpe is giving you 17 and 2.5 with 2.7 turnovers per game...smh).

Playoffs: Rockets face a decent Seattle team. Seattle clearly isn't a contender, but they do have a 5th-ranked offense, which slightly underperforms against Houston compared to the REG SEA (111.5 in REG SEA, 108.9 in 4-game sample against HOU). Olajuwon does 25/13 with 3 assists and 2.5 turnovers per game. 2.8 blocks, 2.5 steals. True Shooting percentage of 54.9 percent. If anything, he did a little better with his assist/turnovers ratio here.

Houston actually outscored Seattle over the course of the series. Seattle won Game One by 4, Game Two by 12, and Game Four by 2. Houston won Game Three by 19. After Olajuwon, Thorpe, and Sleepy Floyd, the rest of the Rocket offense just wasn't very good.


To me, this season provides more GOAT-level defense (not including Russell) with very strong offense that I think would look even better in terms of impact (but slightly worse in terms of counting stats) if paired with better teammates.

For those who worry about Hakeem not drawing fouls because he's all stepbacks and fadeaways, Dream got to the line a career-high 8 times per game this year. Went over 6 times per game in the 4-game sample we have in the playoffs. We aren't talking about an Al Jefferson case where he gets off clean shots at the expense of not getting to the free throw line for even more efficient, clean shots.

1990 —

Spoiler:

1990 Hakeem Olajuwon is quite possibly the greatest defensive season in NBA history by a player other than Bill Russell. Dream played 82 games for 38.1 minutes per game. He averaged 10.4 defensive rebounds, 2.1 steals, and a league-leading 4.6 blocks per game. He led the league in total defensive rebounds and total blocks.

He led the league in defensive rebound rate (28.3%) and block percentage (7%). For those who like these stats, he led the league in defensive wins shares (8.7) and individual defensive rating (93).

Houston was a —4.7 defense. This ranked as the best in the NBA in 1990. For Defense Four Factors, Houston was 3rd in eFG%, 9th in Turnover%, 6th in defensive rebound%, and 7th in FG/FTA. All marks were above the league average.

Olajuwon was All-Defense first team, but somehow, he finished second in DPOY voting to Dennis Rodman. This is perhaps the most egregious award error in NBA history. Olajuwon played 3,124 minutes that season (again, 82 games for 38.1 minutes per game). Dennis Rodman played 2,377 minutes (82 games for 29 minutes per game). Rodman's Pistons were an inferior defense. None of his defensive stats are really all that close to Olajuwon's. He averaged 3.4 fouls per game. Olajuwon averaged 3.8 fouls in significantly more minutes (Olajuwon was actually 9th in minutes per game that season in the NBA).

Olajuwon's Rockets faced the best offensive team in the NBA that season, Magic Johnson's LA Lakers in the first round, and lost 3-1, with Magic's Lakers performing well offensively. Olajuwon averaged 5.8 blocks, 2.5 steals, and maintained roughly the same defensive rebound rate as during the season. LA was a legitimate title contender that year.

Olajuwon in 1990 also gave you 24 points on 50 percent shooting and over 70 percent free throw shooting as a big man. He averaged 2.9 assists and 3.9 turnovers.

My Opinion: If you meld him onto a team with more offensive talent, I do not doubt he could average 21-22 points, 3 assists, 3 turnovers and replicate his defensive dominance.

[Doctor MJ]

A couple of questions for the KG supporters:

1. Prime vs. prime, do you think KG was the better defensive player than Robinson? Why?

2. Prime vs. prime, do you think KG was the better offensive player than Robinson? Why?

3. Suppose for argument's sake Robinson's prime was better than KG's. How much of a longevity advantage is 1996-2000 for KG?


Some numbers:

NPI RAPM at the same age, starting with the first year we have for Robinson:
Age 32: Robinson +3.8, Garnett +4.4
Age 33: Robinson +6.1, Garnett +2.1
Age 34: Robinson +3.6, Garnett +4.0
Age 35: Robinson +4.0, Garnett +4.4
Age 36: Robinson +3.0, Garnett +2.4
Age 37: Robinson +3.1, Garnett -1.0

Late career Robinson easily stands up to late career Garnett, and remember, Robinson is the one who supposedly declined more sharply past his prime (or more specifically past his 1997 injury).

Interesting note: In 1999 and 2001, Robinson had higher defensive npi rapm numbers than any year in Garnett's career.

We don't know a whole lot about DRob plus minus wise before 1997, but 1992 is an interesting case since he missed his team's final 14 games. Before those games, and with Robinson, the Spurs had a net rating of +4.5. During those games without Robinson, the Spurs were -5.1. That's a swing of 9.6.

Robinson's box score numbers are far superior to Garnett, but I think we all know this. Just to throw a few numbers around though:

Career estimated impact: Robinson +5.8, Garnett +3.6
Career WS/48: Robinson 0.250, Garnett 0.185
Career PER: Robinson 26.2, Garnett 22.9
Career USG &TS%: Robinson 26.2% & 0.583, Garnett 25.2% & 0.547

So what I think it comes down in the DRob vs. KG debate are the the second and third questions I posed (I think most will admit that Robinson was at least KG's equal on defense).

Does KG have the offensive advantage? He's a better passer and better at spreading the floor, but he's not nearly the go-to scorer Robinson is. Robinson has 5 seasons with a pace-adjusted points/36 higher than KG's best season and 7 seasons better than KG's 2nd best. Also, Robinson has 10 seasons with a higher ORB% than KG's best. That may not be an entirely fair comparison because Robinson played closer to the basket, but at worst it serves to offset the advantage KG creates with spacing.

And did KG really do that much in 1996-2000 to give him a huge longevity advantage? I'm not sure. But for me, Robinson's peak advantage is greater than KG's longevity advantage.

So first let's talk about the RAPM stuff. From the stuff you've created and said I take it as likely you know this stuff better than me, so by no means am I looking to prove you wrong, but your use of numbers is very different from how I would present it.

Were I making such a table, I'd use the standard deviation-scaled PI numbers that I put together in my spreadsheet. I could make such a table here, but sufficed to say, I think Robinson looks quite good by that method too. Really I"m more curious your take on your approach and on mine.

Why did you choose NPI here?
What do you think about using the variance of the data in each yearly study to normalize across years?

Okay now getting into how I see Robinson vs Garnett here, I'll say two things that come to mind before thinking on your specific questions:

1) While I think Robinson's late career defense is very impressive, the fact that he was doing it by Duncan makes it less impressive than if I saw him as a lone defensive anchor. It's possible that's not entirely rational of me, but to me it feels like Robinson got to specialize not only to be more defense-oriented but to take on a specific component of his old defensive responsibilities due to the ever-presence of the young and robust Duncan.

Putting Garnett completely to the side, it makes it hard for me to advocate for Robinson as a true DPOY candidate in these years. You understand what I'm saying?

By contrast to be clear: Were missed time not an issue, Garnett seems to me to have a great case for DPOY year after year in Boston.

2) When talking about level of peak and graceful decline, it's crucial to not forget that Garnett was 5 years younger than rookie Robinson when he started, and regression evidence seems to peg him as a superstar level impact-or well before before he reached rookie Robinson age.

Okay, now on to your questions:

1. Better peak defense? I'm inclined to give the nod to Garnett at this point, but it's close and I may change my mind. My guess is that Robinson, like Garnett, saw an incredibly graceful decline on defense as he aged in part because of an ability to focus more on that side of the ball at that point. So I don't have reason to think his defense is going to utterly skyrocket in value as we get more data. It will be phenomenal, but probably similar to Garnett's - particularly if you adjust considering that it may be that back then it was easier to have defensive impact than now due to rule and strategy changes.

Strength vs strength, the thing I just don't feel I can assume about Robinson is that he was the defensive floor general that Garnett was. There are intelligence and personality angles to this I just think there's no reason to assume that guys had just because they had the body to take advantage of such strengths.

2. Better peak offense? I'm inclined to give the nod to Robinson. Again it's close, and I don't think people should brush aside the point forward that Garnett played. In general bigs are considerably less valuable on offense than many thing because they require someone to create for them. Garnett should not be seen to have that limitation, and it's a big deal.

Still though, Robinson put up huge numbers, and that's not anything I brush aside lightly. It's enough I'd side with him here.

3. Importance of longevity edge? I'll put it this way: When I was looking at that PI RAPM data and seeing that even with LeBron & Shaq I can't really put a tier separation over prime Garnett, that really hit home for me. If those guys aren't on a separate tier, I definitely don't see Robinson on a separate tier. So same tier, and Garnett had 15 years of superstar-type impact? Hard for me to pick Robinson over him.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

What needs to be accounted for in the statistical argument is the fact that the NBA is a long season with virtually half of the teams making the playoffs. Accordingly, top players realize that they can slack off in the regular season (e.g. Shaq in the 3 peat times), save energy, and exert more effort in the playoffs. Now, if the goal of the NBA was to win as many regular season games as possible with the largest scoring margins, then I would have to think that guys like Shaq and Lebron during the Heat era would have played a lot differently

I've brought this exact point up in the past discussing 2010 Kobe. Shaq actually doesn't seem to get knocked for the trait even when it got to the point of exacerbating issues so significantly his teams would under-perform by, you could argue, double-digit win totals. Also really haven't heard anybody knock '14 Lebron for it to the degree that he gets ranked behind Durant (it should and rightfully did however factor into him being MVP).

But yeah, people have a tendency to over-compartmentalize some things when looking at certain guys.

well, Shaq and LeBeon do not have their RS RAPM as their main argument to be ranked so high

[ronnymac2]

Finally, 1986. I'll call this the switcharoo year...Houston's defense is below average (slightly — They are a +0.4 defense)! The offense is above average (5th best offense, +2.9). Houston goes 51-31, 2.11 SRS (good for 6th).

It should be noted that the Rockets have halfway decent 3-point shooting relative to the league (below league average in percentage, above league average in makes). Sampson also plays 79 games, John Lucas is an efficient 15-9 point guard, Lewis Lloyd gives them 17/4 on 53 percent shooting, and Reid and McCray are solid. What do you know...give Olajuwon a decent supporting cast on offense and they are very good.

Olajuwon averaged 4.9 offensive rebounds per game, and Houston was 2nd in offensive rebounding. Pretty crazy. That's 1994 Shaq or 2014 Drummond type stuff. Also did his usual 23.5 points with 2 assists and 2.9 turnovers and 7.9 FTAs and 56 percent true shooting.

Hakeem also averaged 6.6 defensive rebounds, 3.4 blocks, and 2 steals per game. 36.3 minutes and 68 games played. He was 3rd in total blocks and blocks per game.

Playoffs: Houston and Hakeem obliterate a bad Kings team 3-0. Expected. They flatten a meh Denver team 4-2. OK.

Then they faced legitimate championship-contender Los Angeles in the WCF. 6.84 SRS, #1 offense, #7 defense, 2nd best player in the game in Magic Johnson, ALL-NBA first team C Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Olajuwon drops 31 points, 11.2 rebounds, 4 blocks, 2.2 steals, 2 assists, and under 1.5 turnovers per game. Gets to the free throw line 14 times per game. Now, he had help. Sampson, McCray, and Lloyd each had an awesome series. But this is the point...if even prime — not peak, prime — Olajuwon gets good help, he can help his teams compete with legitimate championship-contending team, can outduel his peers on this level individually.

They go into the Finals against maybe the GOAT team and GOAT frontcourt. Parish/McHale/Bird/Walton. Best defense in the league that year. What happens? Sampson, Lloyd, and Reid are stopped. Olajuwon trucks on with 24.7 points, 11.8 rebounds, 3.2 blocks, 2.3 steals, 1.8 assists, 2.7 turnovers, 9 FTAs per game and superb defense on Robert Parish. 52.6% true shooting. Did all he could. No shame in losing to Boston.

1987 —

Spoiler:

Ralph Sampson's injuries begin. The 7'4" big man plays 43 games and plays less than 31 minutes per game. Rodney McCray and Robert Reid are excellent peripheral guys, guys who can start on legit title teams, but after that, not much else. Houston plays at a level slightly above league average (0.6 SRS, 42-40).

Houston is the 3rd-best defense in the league (—2.8 defense). They are 3rd in eFG%, 14th in Turnover% (slightly below league average), 6th in defensive rebounding (above league average), and 11th in ft/FGA (slightly above average). Hakeem plays 75 games for 36.8 minutes per game.

Olajuwon grabbed 7.2 defensive rebounds with 3.4 blocks (3rd in the league) and 1.9 steals per game. Once again, he leads the league in defensive win shares (6) and individual defensive rating (99).

23.4 points, 4.2 Oboards, 2.9 assists and 3 turnovers per game. 55.4 percent True Shooting. Houston's offense was below average (—1.8). The team is a below average 3-point shooting team.

Olajuwon's PLAYOFF RUN: This is special. Against a Blazer team that played better in the REG SEA than HOU, Olajuwon drops 27/9/5/4/2.5 in 36 minutes. 3 turnovers per game. Gets to the line almost 10 times per game. 69.7 percent true shooting. He dominates Portland and Houston wins 3-1.

Houston loses to Seattle 4-2 next, but Olajuwon plays his heart out, including in the final elimination game in what may be the greatest basketball game a man has ever played.

For the series, Dream averaged 30.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 3.8 blocks, .5 steals and 1.3 assists with 4 turnovers per game. He shot 60 percent from the field, got to the free throw line almost 10 times per game, and shot 63.8 percent true shooting.

In the tragic DoubleOT Game 6, with Game 7 set to tip-off in Houston in a few days should the Rockets win, Olajuwon drops 49 points, 25 rebounds, 6 blocks, 2 steals, 2 assists, and 2 turnovers. 19/33 from the field, 11/13 from the line. He played 53 minutes with the most active motor I've ever seen a C play with. I remember rewatching this game a few years back for the RPOY projection. Here's what I wrote about the game.

In the elimination game against Seattle, Hakeem dropped 49 points, 24 rebounds, and 6 blocks in the OT loss. That entire game is on youtube. I recommend watching it; it's a great all-around basketball game, and you get to see Dale Ellis, Tom Chambers, and Xavier McDaniel, too.

Hakeem was amazing in the game aside from production. His defense was great and he did everything he could to keep his team in it. IIRC, Ralph Sampson missed huge free throws down the stretch and played badly late in the game. The whole game, Tom Heinsohn is saying how great Hakeem is and how he's a hard worker, but still needs to work on reading the defenses that keep on tripling him and collapsing on him (no jokes about how Hakeem is the only guy ever doubled, please). They really were swarming him all game. At times though, Hakeem makes beautiful, creative passes to teammates that even make Heinsohn gush.

It is clear that Olajuwon does indeed need to learn some more technical things regarding passing (too many turnovers during the post-season), but his creativity and willingness were there.

HIs transition defense was amazing, and he was truly swarmed when he had the ball like peak Shaq. You could see the creativity in his passing game, too. Tremendous effort.

1988 —

Spoiler:

1988 Hakeem Olajuwon

First off, I want to say this is a testament to Hakeem that he was able to drag this team to being a sightly above average squad in 1988. (46-36, 0.82 SRS)

The team's second best player, Ralph Sampson, played 19 games. Sleepy Floyd post-trade played 59 games and had a major downturn in terms of production after having an All-Star season in 1987 (13.1 points, 6.2 assists, TS% below 51 percent). Robert Reid only played 15 minutes per game this year. Only Rodney McCray is who I'd consider to be a good player on this team.

The Rockets are once again 4th in defensive rating (—2.3 defense), mainly on the back of being the 2nd-best eFG% team in the NBA. They ranked 11th at Turnover% (slightly below average), 16th in defensive rebound% (slightly below average), and 10th in ft/FGA (slightly above average).

Olajuwon averaged 8.3 defensive rebounds, 2.7 blocks, and 2.1 steals in 35.8 minutes per game (79 games). He was fourth in the league in total defensive rebounds and total blocks. He was 7th in defensive rebound rate. He led the league in defensive win shares (6.3) and individual defensive rating (98). He was All-NBA first team and All-Defense first team.

22.8 points, 2.1 assists, 3.1 turnovers, and 3.8 OBoards per game, 55.5 percent True Shooting. Quite frankly, the players around him were not quality offensive players, and he had below league average 3-point shooting around him this season. Again, I have no doubt that you give him a perimeter offensive player on par with him, he could average 20-22 points, 2-3 assists, 4 Oboards, 2.5 turnovers, and raise his TS% to 56-57 percent on an above average offense (Houston was slightly below average as is, which is impressive to be considering their lack of talent and fit.)

In the playoffs, Hakeem averaged 37.5 points, 16.8 rebounds, 2.8 blocks, 2.3 steals, 1.8 assists, and 2.25 turnovers per game. Got to the free throw line over 10 times per game. True Shooting = 64.1%. Dallas, clearly an above average team and possessing some of the deepest talent in the league, outscored Houston by just 10 points over the 4-game series. Olajuwon's teammates shot under 42% on the series. Ralph Sampson did not play. Dallas played roughly at the same level as their REG SEA 3rd ranked offense did. Again though, this team was very talented. They did take eventual NBA champion Los Angeles to 7 games in the WCF.

This season more than most is a season where Olajuwon did not have talent or help in the REG SEA or playoffs, and he still carried the team pretty much as far as one could reasonably hope.

1989 —

Spoiler:

Defensively, Olajuwon not winning DPOY isn't as egregious as it was in 1990. Mark Eaton was playing about 35 minutes per game and anchoring the best defense in the league, so it's at least an understandable selection. But Olajuwon was most certainly playing at a somewhat similar level that he did in 1990.

Hakeem played 82 games and played 36.9 minutes per game. He averaged 9.4 defensive rebounds, 3.4 blocks, and 2.6 steals for Houston's 4th-ranked defense (Houston was a —3 defense). He led the league in total defensive rebounds and was 3rd in both total blocks and total steals. He led the league in defensive rebound rate (27.2), defensive win shares (7.8), and individual defensive rating (94.9).

Defensive Four Factors: Houston ranked 8th in eFG%, 10th in turnover%, 5th in defensive rebound percentage, and 12th in ft/FGA. All of these marks were above league average that year, which makes sense since Olajuwon is affecting offenses in every way imaginable (he ends possessions with defensive rebounds, causes a crazy amount of turnovers, and lowers team's efficiencies by blowing up plays on the perimeter and contesting shots in the paint).

Offensively, Olajuwon is scoring 24.8 points with 1.8 assists, 4.1 offensive rebounds, and 3.4 turnovers per game. He shot 50.8 percent and 69.6 percent on FTs. 55.2 True Shooting percentage.

(Just a slight tangent...I hate when non-volume scoring, non-creative players average a ton of turnovers, which is exactly what Otis Thorpe does. The same thing pisses me off about early Charles Oakley. Thorpe is giving you 17 and 2.5 with 2.7 turnovers per game...smh).

Playoffs: Rockets face a decent Seattle team. Seattle clearly isn't a contender, but they do have a 5th-ranked offense, which slightly underperforms against Houston compared to the REG SEA (111.5 in REG SEA, 108.9 in 4-game sample against HOU). Olajuwon does 25/13 with 3 assists and 2.5 turnovers per game. 2.8 blocks, 2.5 steals. True Shooting percentage of 54.9 percent. If anything, he did a little better with his assist/turnovers ratio here.

Houston actually outscored Seattle over the course of the series. Seattle won Game One by 4, Game Two by 12, and Game Four by 2. Houston won Game Three by 19. After Olajuwon, Thorpe, and Sleepy Floyd, the rest of the Rocket offense just wasn't very good.


To me, this season provides more GOAT-level defense (not including Russell) with very strong offense that I think would look even better in terms of impact (but slightly worse in terms of counting stats) if paired with better teammates.

For those who worry about Hakeem not drawing fouls because he's all stepbacks and fadeaways, Dream got to the line a career-high 8 times per game this year. Went over 6 times per game in the 4-game sample we have in the playoffs. We aren't talking about an Al Jefferson case where he gets off clean shots at the expense of not getting to the free throw line for even more efficient, clean shots.

1990 —

Spoiler:

1990 Hakeem Olajuwon is quite possibly the greatest defensive season in NBA history by a player other than Bill Russell. Dream played 82 games for 38.1 minutes per game. He averaged 10.4 defensive rebounds, 2.1 steals, and a league-leading 4.6 blocks per game. He led the league in total defensive rebounds and total blocks.

He led the league in defensive rebound rate (28.3%) and block percentage (7%). For those who like these stats, he led the league in defensive wins shares (8.7) and individual defensive rating (93).

Houston was a —4.7 defense. This ranked as the best in the NBA in 1990. For Defense Four Factors, Houston was 3rd in eFG%, 9th in Turnover%, 6th in defensive rebound%, and 7th in FG/FTA. All marks were above the league average.

Olajuwon was All-Defense first team, but somehow, he finished second in DPOY voting to Dennis Rodman. This is perhaps the most egregious award error in NBA history. Olajuwon played 3,124 minutes that season (again, 82 games for 38.1 minutes per game). Dennis Rodman played 2,377 minutes (82 games for 29 minutes per game). Rodman's Pistons were an inferior defense. None of his defensive stats are really all that close to Olajuwon's. He averaged 3.4 fouls per game. Olajuwon averaged 3.8 fouls in significantly more minutes (Olajuwon was actually 9th in minutes per game that season in the NBA).

Olajuwon's Rockets faced the best offensive team in the NBA that season, Magic Johnson's LA Lakers in the first round, and lost 3-1, with Magic's Lakers performing well offensively. Olajuwon averaged 5.8 blocks, 2.5 steals, and maintained roughly the same defensive rebound rate as during the season. LA was a legitimate title contender that year.

Olajuwon in 1990 also gave you 24 points on 50 percent shooting and over 70 percent free throw shooting as a big man. He averaged 2.9 assists and 3.9 turnovers.

My Opinion: If you meld him onto a team with more offensive talent, I do not doubt he could average 21-22 points, 3 assists, 3 turnovers and replicate his defensive dominance.

[ronnymac2]

And for anybody with concerns about young Olajuwon being too vigorous on defense to the point of foul trouble, recognize that he averaged 36.8 minutes per game from 1986-1990 and 39 minutes per game in the playoffs in that same timespan. He was top-10 in minutes per game in 1986 and 1990. He was consistently playing minutes in line with what we typically see from our megastars.

[shutupandjam]

Were I making such a table, I'd use the standard deviation-scaled PI numbers that I put together in my spreadsheet. I could make such a table here, but sufficed to say, I think Robinson looks quite good by that method too. Really I"m more curious your take on your approach and on mine.

Why did you choose NPI here?
What do you think about using the variance of the data in each yearly study to normalize across years?

I chose NPI because it isn't influenced by priors and so it's "cleaner" for comparisons and more comparable across years. Its main disadvantage (noise/stability) is less of a problem when we're looking at a decade of info - I wouldn't present one year of Player X's npi vs. one year of Player Y's, but when we're talking about many years' worth, it's less of an issue for me.

Regarding normalization, with ridge regression, the numbers should be reasonably normalized already supposing the same lambda is used. Regardless, I have normalized all npi rapm numbers year by year anyway, and the difference is minimal (I suppose this would make more of a difference with PI rapm though).

1) While I think Robinson's late career defense is very impressive, the fact that he was doing it by Duncan makes it less impressive than if I saw him as a lone defensive anchor. It's possible that's not entirely rational of me, but to me it feels like Robinson got to specialize not only to be more defense-oriented but to take on a specific component of his old defensive responsibilities due to the ever-presence of the young and robust Duncan.

Putting Garnett completely to the side, it makes it hard for me to advocate for Robinson as a true DPOY candidate in these years. You understand what I'm saying?

By contrast to be clear: Were missed time not an issue, Garnett seems to me to have a great case for DPOY year after year in Boston.

I think you make some solid points here. But to be clear, Garnett was able to specialize in Boston too right, with so much offensive pressure off him? And to be fair, Garnett didn't have to be a true rim protector so to some extent his defense is extra-specialized in a sense too. It's hard to remember because he has become such a major offensive liability, but Kendrick Perkins was a fairly solid rim protector in his Boston days.

2) When talking about level of peak and graceful decline, it's crucial to not forget that Garnett was 5 years younger than rookie Robinson when he started, and regression evidence seems to peg him as a superstar level impact-or well before before he reached rookie Robinson age.

True, and so my question #3 really comes into play here: Were Garnett's first 4 years enough to offset any prime advantage Robinson has? To you, they were. I'm not as confident though (I think it's fairly close, but I'm really high on Robinson's prime).

Okay, now on to your questions:

1. Better peak defense? I'm inclined to give the nod to Garnett at this point, but it's close and I may change my mind. My guess is that Robinson, like Garnett, saw an incredibly graceful decline on defense as he aged in part because of an ability to focus more on that side of the ball at that point. So I don't have reason to think his defense is going to utterly skyrocket in value as we get more data. It will be phenomenal, but probably similar to Garnett's - particularly if you adjust considering that it may be that back then it was easier to have defensive impact than now due to rule and strategy changes.

Strength vs strength, the thing I just don't feel I can assume about Robinson is that he was the defensive floor general that Garnett was. There are intelligence and personality angles to this I just think there's no reason to assume that guys had just because they had the body to take advantage of such strengths.

How comfortable do you feel that Garnett just isn't doing as much at the rim as Robinson? Garnett's P&R def was probably better (I don't think it's a blowout here though), but Robinson has a clear advantage in rim protection.

[acrossthecourt]

No one has responded to me about David Robinson's playoff/elite team struggles. That's why he normally drops so far. Otherwise he'd be top 8 or top 5 on every list.

Have people changed their views on this?

That's why he's not comparable to Garnett, not to mention the longevity.

[colts18]

No one has responded to me about David Robinson's playoff/elite team struggles. That's why he normally drops so far. Otherwise he'd be top 8 or top 5 on every list.

Have people changed their views on this?

That's why he's not comparable to Garnett, not to mention the longevity.

DRob 90-98 vs. KG 97-08 vs. top 10 defenses in the playoffs:

DRob: 22.1 PPG, .536 TS%, 11.9 Reb, 3.1 AST/2.5 TOV, 1.2 Stl, 3.3 blk
KG: 20.1 PPG, .510 TS%, 11.4 Reb, 4.3 AST/2.9 TOV, 1.2 stl, 1.3 blk

vs. not top 10 defenses:
DRob: 24.9 PPG, .564 TS%, 12.4 Reb, 2.7 AST/3.4 TOV, 1.3 stl, 3.0 blk
KG: 23.3 PPG, .531 TS%, 13.4 Reb, 4.6 AST/3.0 TOV, 1.5 stl, 1.9 blk


Do you think its just a coincidence that KG's monster series came against bad defenses (02 Mavs, 03 Lakers, 04 Nuggets, 04 Kings)?

[An Unbiased Fan]

No one has responded to me about David Robinson's playoff/elite team struggles. That's why he normally drops so far. Otherwise he'd be top 8 or top 5 on every list.

Have people changed their views on this?

That's why he's not comparable to Garnett, not to mention the longevity.

KG has just as many playoff struggles, if not more. He lost in the 1st round 7 straight times.