RE: Kevin Pelton & Realgm - Yes, Kobe IS A Top 10 Player of All Time

[deezerweeze]

the difference was that prime Kobe gives you the best of both worlds. the vast majority of volume scorers in history would not be able to come even close to the 31 PPG/6 APG/34% USG/59% TS/119 ORTG (final 19 games after having his knee drained)on such a horribly constructed offensive team. he was basically doing a billionaires version of 01 Iverson/11 Rose. they ran a ridiculous GOAT level 115.9 ORTG over those final 19 games and suggesting that OREBS was "the actual offensive advantage" those guys had is hilariously wrong. yes, their 32% OREB would be #1 over the course of the season but not even close to anything historic, but they also had they had a 51.2% eFG (equivalent to 7th best), #1 in TOV rate, and were #3 in FT/FGA over those final nineteen. they were amazing because they did everything exceptionally well and Bryant was far and way the engine of that. the only reason such a setup could truly work is because of his extraordinarily combo of GOAT level shot-making/scoring/ball-handling/play-making, and everybody with a brain knows that it was Kobe that made those teams special.

and we know that he could anchor amazing offensive teams using the first line attack. The 08 Lakers had to have had one of the biggest splits between team offense and OREB% in modern history. They were amazing offensively for the season (+5.5 rel)( #4 eFG, #3 TS) despite being a measly 20th in OREB%, and despite only having Bynum around for 35 games and Pau around for 27. After the Pau trade they put up a 117.4 ORTG (+10 relative league average!!) over nearly 40 games (and pau missed 10 of those games!). over that stretch they were #2 in eFG, #1 in TS, #1 in TOV rate, and 19th in OREB%. that was one of the few years (maybe the only year) where he had strong shooting around him and the teams style/mentality/roster construction was slanted more to the offensive end. so no, this was absolutely a guy who could scale things up with strong offensive talent around and really make things click, and he could do so because he was a great passer and creator, and possessed a very high B-Ball IQ. I'm not saying he's Magic but the way you and others paint him is simply mostly bull.

[wutevahung]

Thanks D nice! this is one of the best posts I have ever read in any forum. Though I cannot fully comprehend most of stats due to my lack of background in data science, I enjoyed your research and will definitely read it over and over again.

[wutevahung]

I'm just curious about why a retort to Kevin Pelton is posted here? I mean clearly in terms of a pro-Kobe propaganda piece there is a lot here. But despite all the words and data there is just as much as narrative and subjectiveness in your approach as those you are so heavily criticizing.

I don't want to take anything away from Kobe who is legit great and certainly has a case for the very bottom of the top 10. But I don't see how you can claim the high road of objectivity here with so many caveats and arbitrary choices made here. Sorry.

Well, a lot of people took exception to it, so it should be expected that a rebuttal would be written since Kobe's career is over. It was a particularly sore point when Kobe was left out of the top ten in ESPN's #NBAranks top 100 while LeBron was #3.

A lot of work certainly went in to this, which is laudable, but what everyone needs to understand is that everyone has different criteria and, subsequently, different lists. And a lot of disagreement, since everyone's coming at it with different criteria. Many people can't see any other way than however they see things, and take it as an indictment when someone else ranks Player X lower than they do. I don't see why it matter so much to so many people, to each his own. As far as objectivity goes, let's be honest: objectivity's got nothing to do with being a fan.

I think OP's point for singling out Kevin Pelton is that, though he is known as a numbers guy, the bball stats guru, he did not dig deep enough into the numbers that matched his reputation in his article ranking Kobe. I am sure that most of readers of ESPN, or the posters on realgm, do not have the ability to separate out the signal and the noise on all the advance stats available (I am sure some of you do, but I don't at least haha), which is why it is even more important for the writers to conduct a thorough research, and to explain their researches to the readers in an objective manner.

I am not saying Kevin Pelton wasn't objective. It is fine to have different criteria when qualifying players in the all time list, but if your list is purely stats based, and people are pointing out flaws in the way that you interpret or use the stats, then you can hardly call the criticism biased.

On the other hand, you can hardly call OP's list subjective because he provided #s to support his claims. Numbers don't talk, they support claims when using correctly. Narratives and Numbers aren't contradicting, but complimentary.

[BuzzerBeaterBry]

All I have to say is... Wow.

[kayess]

I've been skimming through it, so I'm not sure is this is answered later on in the post (I do expect it to be, given the amount of work you've put into this) but a couple of things that caught my eye:

1) Nash requiring a ridiculous lineup? I might have agreed with this in 2005; after which, JJ leaves, Amar'e gets injured, and he gets Diaw as a replacement. The result? Nash's on-court ORTG goes down by a couple points.

If anything, Nash is the most lineup resistant offensive star we've seen. Hell, even in 2010 when he and Amar'e were close to being shadows of themselves, his team puts up the league's best O under Gentry. There's simply so many different contexts Nash has been in - different teammates, system, whatever - and he's still able to produce the best O in the league.

I don't quite think it's the "foot on the desk, no doubter" argument for Nash as the greatest offensive player ever that some guy claimed in his blog, but I do think it's proof he's in the conversation.

2) LeBron portability: I don't blame anyone for having this thought, and I only read 1-2 paragraphs, but given how the rest of your article has been structured so far, I would've expected to see the evidence outright in those paragraphs for him marginalizing second stars to a degree that dwarfs everyone else in history (is the basis box-score stats? player ability? usage?)

All the credit to Wade and Bosh for their efforts to play around LBJ (and I'm not saying LBJ is KG or something in terms of portability on O) - but it's not like he didn't bring them anything despite overlapping skillsets. Playing with LBJ brought them the best 2- and 3-man Net Rtg scores they've had in their entire career, at the "cost" of USG and depressed box score stats - not really much of a trade off, if you think about it.

I won't get too much into it, since there's been tons of discussion on this matter already (although new evidence, or evidence seen in a different light is always welcome), but even as a matter of principle: even if you do think LeBron's skillset overlap with his stars demands that the other stars don't use some parts of their skillsets as much, the results he produces are below only a handful of guys (near-consensus gods of portability on O) in history anyway - so if the criticism is that he isn't as good or as portable as these guys, well, who is?

If the point was simply to say that Kobe's portability on O > LeBron as a lead-up to future point, I'd agree anyways, I just don't think it's as severe as your statements imply.

3) Shaq - how many feast or famine possessions per 100 does he create with these, exactly? Yes, he does require post entries, but it's not like he doesn't make things easier for everyone else due to his massive off-ball threat - if Shaq seals his man, or gets position, it's over, see you later - so teams have at the minimum, 1 guy trying to prevent this, and another that has to be ready to help out if it happens. While all that is happening you can run some simple action and get a great look.

There are times when it does look clunky because Shaq needs to keep re-posting, or they're so afraid of Shaq that they're selling out to deny him the ball - but I don't necessarily think this clunkiness is proof of Shaq's inability to make other people better.

[Doctor MJ]

1) Nash requiring a ridiculous lineup? I might have agreed with this in 2005; after which, JJ leaves, Amar'e gets injured, and he gets Diaw as a replacement. The result? Nash's on-court ORTG goes down by a couple points.

If anything, Nash is the most lineup resistant offensive star we've seen. Hell, even in 2010 when he and Amar'e were close to being shadows of themselves, his team puts up the league's best O under Gentry. There's simply so many different contexts Nash has been in - different teammates, system, whatever - and he's still able to produce the best O in the league.

I don't quite think it's the "foot on the desk, no doubter" argument for Nash as the greatest offensive player ever that some guy claimed in his blog, but I do think it's proof he's in the conversation.

Thank you for mentioning this. The turnover around Nash was utterly ridiculous and really should have been enough to make people realize that his impact on offense wasn't based on a bizarre set of players around him.

[BallerTed]

Excellent post OP. I have Kobe in my top 10 as well (#9 to be exact) Do you have any analysis on Kobe vs Barkley?

[Lucky707]

That was a fun read.

Just curious as to why you have Kobe behind Hakeem on your final list. You didn't seem to mention Hakeem much at all in your analysis. I get some level of understanding from the player valuations in your final post where Hakeem has 3 seasons peaking higher than anything Kobe did but would be interested in hearing your reasoning on this.

[D Nice]

Edited in missing player notes, will edit in a response to some of the stuff raised ITT within the hour. Noticing a LOT of small mistakes right now. But guys, if it wasn't clear the pink prompts aren't supposed to be links - there's a link to the Google Docs SS in the opening post - download the sheets and simply pull up the appropriate sheet where/when indicated. They aren't separate documents, everything is contained in the one file. Also maybe finish reading before trying to raise arguments because some of the stuff being raised is very clearly addressed later on in the post(s).

Seems like the formatting didn't hold on the sheets but not really sure it's fixable either; I don't think the software I used is 100% comparable with google drive. Oh well.

[kayess]

In terms of weighting one against the other I'd give the Raw +/- 60% weight and RAPM 40% weight; single-season RAPM may be more slightly more valid than the Raw +/- aggregation but the any separation in validity is small and the PS data actually pertains to the phenomena of interest

Still haven't finished, but to me this sticks out: I know you were talking about O, and not D when you said this, but I don't think you can raise the issue of small lineup changes being detrimental to Bean, because of his qualities as a shooter, and at the same time use this kind of methodology to determine his impact on D. Even if you were right it'd make sense to add a section on why this doesn't apply for D, but applies for O (other than just the additive nature of defense, and other things).

There's also stuff you mentioned about ABA box-scores being a joke, but there's been great dialogue on how the 1976 ABA talent pool might actually be better than the NBA's. It's not definitive by any means, but it's also not a joke, and takes real work to debunk/prove.

That's enough skimming for me, I'll reply when I've actually read through and processed the entire thing.

[D Nice]

'm just curious about why a retort to Kevin Pelton is posted here? I mean clearly in terms of a pro-Kobe propaganda piece there is a lot here. But despite all the words and data there is just as much as narrative and subjectiveness in your approach as those you are so heavily criticizing.

I don't want to take anything away from Kobe who is legit great and certainly has a case for the very bottom of the top 10. But I don't see how you can claim the high road of objectivity here with so many caveats and arbitrary choices made here. Sorry.

Uhm, what? Elaborate please. Point to something you factually disagree with, a gap in logic, or something. If you maybe read 2% of it and got your feelings hurt or something but have 0 substance to contribute, maybe don't respond? But...

RE: Pelton - because 2 birds with one stone this was the same kind of stuff that had Kobe drop to 13th in the top 100 project and, about 100x worse, 23rd in a Peaks project. I sincerely doubt I'll get a response from ESPNs live troll but there are probably a double-digit number of people here I'd encountered who I'd love to bounce stuff off of/have see this so it serves way more purpose here than in his inbox (lol I literally googled and found a realgm pc board thread based on that article...so apparently placing it here was even more appropriate than I realized).

RE: Subjectivity – No. There is not. Any extrapolations/assumptions are clearly laid out but arguments are typically structured so that even when you look past any what I assume you refer to as propoganda there is only data and analysis left. By all means assail.

RE: High road – I don't know about high road. I know Kevin Pelton is aggressively mediocre, pedals anti-Kobe garbage on the regular and is legitimately taken seriously as a “Basketball Stats” person. No. What you see here is what it is supposed at least try and look like.

3) And part of why I say that is that I think you really should work on tone & presentation. Right now your meaningful audience is limited in 2 specific ways: 1) based on ability to understand, and 2) because your disrespectful tone combined with your Kobe-oriented motivation will make other tune out.

When I sat down to write this I was highly annoyed – I'll make some edits where I remember there is stuff sitting. His article probably gave me RealgmTop100 Flashbacks or something.

2) I love RealGM but this isn't really the best audience. Fine to put this here, but consider putting it elsewhere as well. Clearly you're not impressed by the APBRmetrics guys, but realistically I don't know if anyone here has the background to have detailed debates on what you've done, and I think you should be pursuing devil's advocates.

Yeah...no. Even when Realgm Jars me it at least forces me to dig deeper and I've been exposed to people/posts that have influenced how I think, even if it literally only happened once or twice that's still something. These are the exact fantasy people I was talking about and the people who were telling me Marion > Nash >/= Kobe in 2006 (it's one thing when we quibble over the order of the top 5 or 6 players in the league, wholly another to suggest a fringe top 20 guy is the 2nd best player in the league...to do it that authoritatively turned me off forever). Feel free to post this over there and pm me questions or kickback or something and we can diolouge, you seem to have a handle on all of the math so you could probably field it yourself. Literally the only 2 people I'd ever want to see it on APBR (from what I've seen anyway, obviously have not done much message boarding in years) post on realgm (DRZA/Fplii...does SSB post there? If so 3). So yeah again nah. What exactly do you think they have a handle on that you don't? Also I think you're overstating the importance of mathematic rigor here: I wrote that stuff to elucidate but you don't have to be able to take it apart completely to follow the logic...at least that's how I tried to present it.

4) I don't your get perspective on APM. Surely you understand that it's not as simple as:

Purity: +/- > APM > RAPM
Math: RAPM > APM > +/-

You spend a lot of time talking about legit RAPM issues...that APM doesn't have, so why wouldn't you use APM alongside the other two?

Part of this is me coming from a chronological perspective. APM was around before RAPM so many of us got used to APM first. When all you had was raw +/- or APM, it was pretty easy to see why APM gave you something the raw stuff didn't, and while RAPM clearly gives us things APM doesn't, if you understand RAPM's biasing issues to me it should be clear that there is insight you can get from APM that you can't get as well from either RAPM or raw +/-.

So I see where you're coming at this logically but I evaluate things from the framework of a decision-maker; Obviously I know the differences are not as plain as I laid them out and ultimately I realize at some point to some people I will appear to brush things under the rug whereas others feel I over-elaborated. It's a balance. Yes you could use both and weigh both in some “ensemble” capacity but I already make it pretty clear I put very little stock in single-season RAPM so going back and adding an entire array of APM to an already-data-intensive post is useless when it isn't clarifying anything or adding to an argument. Maybe you're suggesting that looking at them side-by-side you could make inferences about Lasso error estimation? Is that what you're getting at? Because adding a less accurate model that happens to “dodge” a couple of the small flaws of the primary model mostly takes away from accuracy/efficacy...particularly when we don't even have any granular/quantitative assessment of the types of error we're actually getting in RAPM. Please let me know if I'm still missing something.

RE: NASH (Kayess too): I don't think you guys are reading this the way I intended. I was not positing there was any meaningful gap between Kobe/LBJ on a normal team vs a “distorted” one – I actually argued that his impact literally doesn't change it's just the way his split interprets what is going on (which I think actually does reflect reality): when Nash is on those teams prioritizing guard skill-sets in the FC he tracks maybe 0.3 points ahead of Kobe/LBJ but his defense looks like a -1. When he plays with a normal center (2008/2009 Shaq was who I was primarily referencing here...Gortat to a lesser extent) his offense falls back in line with theirs (perhaps a smidge below) but his defense shows more in the 0.7 range – it's theoretical and doesn't change his 2-way value. It's just when people try and parcel out “offense” vs “defense” I think that in a comparison to Kobe/LBJ that small stuff matters too. And you're living in an alternate universe if a KT/TT/Diaw/Marion 4/5 rotation is not “guard-skewed.” I would think it's bloody obvious if I have a guy ranked at #21 all time on the basis of a 7-year stretch I'm not one of people who subscribe to him being a system player but I guess I literally have to say it.

RE: KG: I'm just guessing you hadn't read it all yet because I literally have an entire sub-section dedicated to this perceived inconsistency.

RE Dirk Stuff: What are you referring to exactly? I didn't think I was piling on Dirk anywhere...I have him ranked 11th on my list which is literally 2 spots higher than I've seen anyone rank him ever, including here where he (at least used to) have a massive stan contingent.

[Texas Chuck]

Uhm, what? Elaborate please. Point to something you factually disagree with, a gap in logic, or something. If you maybe read 2% of it and got your feelings hurt or something but have 0 substance to contribute, maybe don't respond? But...

This alone tells me you don't actually have any interest in what I say nor would you listen to it. And frankly I don't honestly care. You clearly wrote this for a specific audience and they loved it. So my thoughts aren't particularly relevant. But I'll simply quote you a couple times so others can see where I'm coming from.

. It turns out that of all the crap that has been slinged over the years his regular season defense seems to be the only thing that ever merited criticism and even that amounts to a lot less than people realize

So Kobe played for 2 decades and the only thing about him that ever merited any criticism at all was his RS defense and then not really even that? Yep sounds objective right from the jump.

. I don’t know if its simply because KG was a RAPM giant (at least, at the level people understand it, but more on that later) and Kobe was merely excellent that this all got started but any honest examination of this stuff sees Kobe every bit as impressive as Duncan, which is more than we can say for the Bird’s & Magic’s and especially the Oscar’s & West’s yet it seems only Bryant gets shafted.

Here you make it clear that the only case for KG is RAPM(and then knock people's understanding of it) and then tell us that any honest evalution has Kobe as impressive as Duncan despite a whole bunch of smart people who use lots of data just as you do feeling very differently. You allow for no difference of opinion--anyone who disagrees is dishonest.

so from your introduction you've made it clear what everyone must conclude rather than letting all the data you present speak for itself. And here is what you claim you can "prove":

I will demonstrate that:
1) Kobe had singularly elite statistical seasons when you actually look pure metrics and not arbitrarily weighted garbage
2) Kobe has inarguably top 10 level value in terms of “added championships”
3) Kobe’s prime impact at least on par with Duncan/Wade and clearly outstrips Paul/Dirk/T-Mac/Durant
4) Kobe’s impact is far more empirically provable than Bird/Magic (but I still have his prime strength as below theirs) and faaaarrr more empirically provable (and translatable) than Oscar’s/West’s
5) Any fair analysis of statistical impact has Kobe on par with Lebron outside of ‘13/’14 strictly as an offensive player
6) Any fair analysis of team lift/team impact has Kobe looking as good or better than many players consistently ranked above him: Hakeem, Magic, Bird, and Shaq

So lets look at how you present this data:

DATA PREAMBLE
Statistics is supposed to be used to build a robust set of tools but, unfortunately, Hollinger is essentially the guy associated with the “advanced stats” movement and its probably why I’ve had great pushback against it; the guy is a narrative-driven hack: his championing achievement of PER was crafted to make the new ESPN poster boy look better than the then pariah who was unanimously held as the games best player. He's a pure fantasy guy with no actual basketball acumen who substituted his fantasy-informed way of thinking about the game as understanding. He basically reverse engineered a “Shawn Marion/KG weighting system” (those were the fantasy guys favorite players ever) and tweaked it a bit to give Lebron an edge over all-arounders but not lose out to superior volume scorers. And it worked. It took Lebron YEARS to catch/pass Kobe (happened in the same year...2009) yet you had people consistently putting 06-08 Lebron ahead of Bryant solely on the basis of PER. And as things moved on the the moniker “advanced” become synonymous with “better” and , well, here we are: an era where “truth” is a function of arbitrary weights chosen by those of little understanding (and...honestly...average at best intelligence).

In discourse people seem to be allowed to make assumptions about the mathematical weights to ascribe in these all in one metrics but no assumptions may be made as the importance or contribution to “goodness” that the more esoteric stuff (skillset team lift/performance, portability, etc) has. That's a shame. In all fields Analytics is supposed to be used to support quality decision-making…that’s it. As soon as you start missing the point, supplanting your assumptions as facts, you start subtracting analytic value rather than adding it – when you’re dealing with people/methods/metrics like that it really is better to just stick to the tape and the box score. If you want to be 100% matter of fact in your stances you better be doing it from a place of accuracy and intelligence and most often the time with the haters is never the case. If you really want to make the approach data centric the only valid courses of analysis are per-possession efficiency (with secondary care to volume) and per-possession impact (which still does require some context). Anything along the lines of win shares and PER are only good for large, sweeping categorizations or filters ~ I want no part of that.

Theoretical Sidebar:

Spoiler:

Efficiency merely gives us a very understandable lenses under which we can understand effectiveness; ultimately impact is an approximation of effectiveness while efficiency stats only measure how efficiently guys accrue box score stats – efficient players are almost always more effective players but there is substantially more to basketball than that; enough in fact for guys who are less (or even not) efficient to be seen as much more effective players; because these efficiency measures didn’t exist in the past fans actually watched these guys play and hence older generations are far less prone to overrate guys like Dantley/Gervin where the fantasy era kids probably have them as top 30 GOATS while you have kiddies today that think Durant>MJ on offense. The takeaway here is that +/- are effectiveness metrics; their phenomena is the hardest to directly measure but by faaaaarrrr the most important in assessing level of play.

Ultimately when you try to measure per possession efficiency/per possession impact there the “metrics” out there fall into three categories: the “Pure” measures {RAPM, Raw +/-, TS%, TO%, ORTG/DRTG}, the “Aggregated & Weighted” measures: X-RAPM, WS, PER, and all of their respective derivatives} and “Synergy” data {Situational PPP/PPS stats}. Analytically I tend to categorize these stats as GOOD, BAD, or WHATEVER, and will go into some detail regarding which of these metrics fall into the various categories (for me) and why that is the case. I'll then conclude the section with the Statistical Toolkit from which the meat of the post is reasoned.

It speaks for itself. You arbitrarily decide what is valuable and what's not (oddly it matches exactly with Kobe's strengths) while insulting anyone with a different perspective. I don't doubt you worked hard on this and I don't doubt much of your post supports Kobe's greatness- and Kobe was unquestionably great. But if you want to take the stance you are taking here, then you really need to lose all the insults and the arbitrary choices and simply present all the data--even that not particularly flattering to Kobe.

[Swagalicious]

He arbitarily decided what matters? Did you even read the explanation on why the other stats do NOT matter? That's why he didn't bring up the other "statistics", because they are truly the most arbitary values of them all. What would you like him to disclose, PER and its clones? Makes no sense imo. Plus, plenty other stars shine much brighter than Kobe using that same exaxt set of stats.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[eminence]

Seems like massive undervaluing of the pre-merger league... I'm normally the one on the modern side of the argument that basketball has done nothing but improve. But this seems extreme (only KAJ/Wilt had MVP level seasons pre-merger?). 7 Kobe seasons above peak Oscar/West/Russell... Just a bit too much for me.

[MyUniBroDavis]

I'll try to read this later, but looking at the list, without any background knowledge, first of all, I don't think Kobe has a case over Russell. I also don't think I'd put Kobe over wilt. I have a huge empty spot where knowledge should be when it comes to bird and magic because I literally get in trouble talking about the 80s when my dads around but I'm not sure if he is above bird. I think that my general opinion of him being 9-12 is still the same here considering that I doubt an arguement can be made for Russell and Kobe, and I actually don't know the wilt pro con arguements since I only started being active recently, so I didn't see much on him.


I like Kobe though, so I'll prolly be biased reading this and hope it pushes him ahead of a few people

[Johnny Firpo]

I guess he is close, I wouldn't put him in personally, but I understand if someone feels the need to do it. I cannot, however, argue him higher than 9th, maybe, maybe 8th. I could be in the minority, but I always felt that he wasn't as good as the media wanted to make us believe. He was very, very good, just not as good as they implied, hyped him up to be.

[andrewww]

Uhm, what? Elaborate please. Point to something you factually disagree with, a gap in logic, or something. If you maybe read 2% of it and got your feelings hurt or something but have 0 substance to contribute, maybe don't respond? But...

This alone tells me you don't actually have any interest in what I say nor would you listen to it. And frankly I don't honestly care. You clearly wrote this for a specific audience and they loved it. So my thoughts aren't particularly relevant. But I'll simply quote you a couple times so others can see where I'm coming from.

. It turns out that of all the crap that has been slinged over the years his regular season defense seems to be the only thing that ever merited criticism and even that amounts to a lot less than people realize

So Kobe played for 2 decades and the only thing about him that ever merited any criticism at all was his RS defense and then not really even that? Yep sounds objective right from the jump.

. I don’t know if its simply because KG was a RAPM giant (at least, at the level people understand it, but more on that later) and Kobe was merely excellent that this all got started but any honest examination of this stuff sees Kobe every bit as impressive as Duncan, which is more than we can say for the Bird’s & Magic’s and especially the Oscar’s & West’s yet it seems only Bryant gets shafted.

Here you make it clear that the only case for KG is RAPM(and then knock people's understanding of it) and then tell us that any honest evalution has Kobe as impressive as Duncan despite a whole bunch of smart people who use lots of data just as you do feeling very differently. You allow for no difference of opinion--anyone who disagrees is dishonest.

so from your introduction you've made it clear what everyone must conclude rather than letting all the data you present speak for itself. And here is what you claim you can "prove":

I will demonstrate that:
1) Kobe had singularly elite statistical seasons when you actually look pure metrics and not arbitrarily weighted garbage
2) Kobe has inarguably top 10 level value in terms of “added championships”
3) Kobe’s prime impact at least on par with Duncan/Wade and clearly outstrips Paul/Dirk/T-Mac/Durant
4) Kobe’s impact is far more empirically provable than Bird/Magic (but I still have his prime strength as below theirs) and faaaarrr more empirically provable (and translatable) than Oscar’s/West’s
5) Any fair analysis of statistical impact has Kobe on par with Lebron outside of ‘13/’14 strictly as an offensive player
6) Any fair analysis of team lift/team impact has Kobe looking as good or better than many players consistently ranked above him: Hakeem, Magic, Bird, and Shaq

So lets look at how you present this data:

DATA PREAMBLE
Statistics is supposed to be used to build a robust set of tools but, unfortunately, Hollinger is essentially the guy associated with the “advanced stats” movement and its probably why I’ve had great pushback against it; the guy is a narrative-driven hack: his championing achievement of PER was crafted to make the new ESPN poster boy look better than the then pariah who was unanimously held as the games best player. He's a pure fantasy guy with no actual basketball acumen who substituted his fantasy-informed way of thinking about the game as understanding. He basically reverse engineered a “Shawn Marion/KG weighting system” (those were the fantasy guys favorite players ever) and tweaked it a bit to give Lebron an edge over all-arounders but not lose out to superior volume scorers. And it worked. It took Lebron YEARS to catch/pass Kobe (happened in the same year...2009) yet you had people consistently putting 06-08 Lebron ahead of Bryant solely on the basis of PER. And as things moved on the the moniker “advanced” become synonymous with “better” and , well, here we are: an era where “truth” is a function of arbitrary weights chosen by those of little understanding (and...honestly...average at best intelligence).

In discourse people seem to be allowed to make assumptions about the mathematical weights to ascribe in these all in one metrics but no assumptions may be made as the importance or contribution to “goodness” that the more esoteric stuff (skillset team lift/performance, portability, etc) has. That's a shame. In all fields Analytics is supposed to be used to support quality decision-making…that’s it. As soon as you start missing the point, supplanting your assumptions as facts, you start subtracting analytic value rather than adding it – when you’re dealing with people/methods/metrics like that it really is better to just stick to the tape and the box score. If you want to be 100% matter of fact in your stances you better be doing it from a place of accuracy and intelligence and most often the time with the haters is never the case. If you really want to make the approach data centric the only valid courses of analysis are per-possession efficiency (with secondary care to volume) and per-possession impact (which still does require some context). Anything along the lines of win shares and PER are only good for large, sweeping categorizations or filters ~ I want no part of that.

Theoretical Sidebar:

Spoiler:

Efficiency merely gives us a very understandable lenses under which we can understand effectiveness; ultimately impact is an approximation of effectiveness while efficiency stats only measure how efficiently guys accrue box score stats – efficient players are almost always more effective players but there is substantially more to basketball than that; enough in fact for guys who are less (or even not) efficient to be seen as much more effective players; because these efficiency measures didn’t exist in the past fans actually watched these guys play and hence older generations are far less prone to overrate guys like Dantley/Gervin where the fantasy era kids probably have them as top 30 GOATS while you have kiddies today that think Durant>MJ on offense. The takeaway here is that +/- are effectiveness metrics; their phenomena is the hardest to directly measure but by faaaaarrrr the most important in assessing level of play.

Ultimately when you try to measure per possession efficiency/per possession impact there the “metrics” out there fall into three categories: the “Pure” measures {RAPM, Raw +/-, TS%, TO%, ORTG/DRTG}, the “Aggregated & Weighted” measures: X-RAPM, WS, PER, and all of their respective derivatives} and “Synergy” data {Situational PPP/PPS stats}. Analytically I tend to categorize these stats as GOOD, BAD, or WHATEVER, and will go into some detail regarding which of these metrics fall into the various categories (for me) and why that is the case. I'll then conclude the section with the Statistical Toolkit from which the meat of the post is reasoned.

It speaks for itself. You arbitrarily decide what is valuable and what's not (oddly it matches exactly with Kobe's strengths) while insulting anyone with a different perspective. I don't doubt you worked hard on this and I don't doubt much of your post supports Kobe's greatness- and Kobe was unquestionably great. But if you want to take the stance you are taking here, then you really need to lose all the insults and the arbitrary choices and simply present all the data--even that not particularly flattering to Kobe.

I don't think his analysis even if he omitted certain parts...was any more offensive than your response. I also clearly know that you're not a fan of Kobe's so its not illogical to deduce that it seems that you're the one going on the offensive here.

[Texas Chuck]

andrewww, take my opinion however you'd like. I'll not hide from the fact that I don't like Kobe. I've been open and transparent about that my entire time here. However, I think if you look at my posts on Kobe as a player you will find that I tend to think more highly of him than most on this board.

But my comments had nothing to do with Kobe but rather what I saw as a hypocritical approach. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered as it was clear the thread was written for a pro-Kobe audience and was being appreciated by that group. But yeah I wasn't going to just be blinded by the mounds of text and data and ignore the obvious agenda. I knew that my comments would offend certain Kobe and Laker fans who didn't want to hear that.

[andrewww]

andrewww, take my opinion however you'd like. I'll not hide from the fact that I don't like Kobe. I've been open and transparent about that my entire time here. However, I think if you look at my posts on Kobe as a player you will find that I tend to think more highly of him than most on this board.

But my comments had nothing to do with Kobe but rather what I saw as a hypocritical approach. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered as it was clear the thread was written for a pro-Kobe audience and was being appreciated by that group. But yeah I wasn't going to just be blinded by the mounds of text and data and ignore the obvious agenda. I knew that my comments would offend certain Kobe and Laker fans who didn't want to hear that.

Oh Im not offended. People will have their opinions and thats fine. I just thought you jumped to your conclusions a bit quick when the OP obviously went into great detail with an assertion that is most certainly not unrealistic (top 10). Of course this is catered to a pro-Kobe audience, most threads in the PC board are slanted a certain way. In this case, it just happens to be a player that is most polarizing and one that you're not a fan of. Funny how the greatest player for your franchise in Dirk is one of the biggest Kobe admirers in the league

[parapooper]

He arbitarily decided what matters? Did you even read the explanation on why the other stats do NOT matter? That's why he didn't bring up the other "statistics", because they are truly the most arbitary values of them all. What would you like him to disclose, PER and its clones? Makes no sense imo. Plus, plenty other stars shine much brighter than Kobe using that same exaxt set of stats.


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So most boxscore stats have problems because their weighting is arbitrary. That is indeed a problem.

But the solution he presents here, if I understand correctly, is an ATG ranking that is based on a scoring system where he subjectively assigns each player season to one of 7 completely arbitrary levels. Then he assigns each of the levels a completely arbitrary score. Then he sums up those scores to obtain a ranking that is already doubly arbitrary and subjective at this point. Then he proceeds to adjust the rankings (by arbitrary amounts) based on various completely arbitrary additional criteria he selected.
So there is a lot of analysis, interesting stats and some good reasoning in all that text but what he does in the end to get his ranking is again completely subjective and arbitrary - as in another person doing the same thing would just subjectively choose or randomly pick different yearly rankings, weightings, adjustment criteria and adjustment weightings. Also, the ranking can be very easily manipulated on a player-by-player basis (on purpose or subconsciously), in contrast to PER or whatever, which are arbitrarily weighted but at least there is no subjective player-by-player input.

I like the general approach of summing up season scores and it's not like subjective inputs for each player are bad in principle or that I have huge problems with his inputs or final rankings, but it's a bit much how he criticizes other stats harshly for several pages and then comes up with a stat that is open to the same criticisms as well as additional ones.
It's a nice system to sum up his own thoughts and determine one's own overall rankings from more granular inputs that are easier to rank than a whole career - but I don't see how this proves to anyone what he is trying to show - that Kobe is inarguably top10.

Also, if you argue for pages about how RAPM is the best stat and like Kobe why not just click here and look at the Y-axis - covers Kobe's prime basically perfectly, while LeBron, Duncan and KG have teenage and old-age seasons (Happy 40st to KG btw) depressing their impact.
http://public.tableau.com/shared/KQNSCKFYT?:display_count=yes