ardee wrote:When someone is giving up approximately 17-20 ORtg points on higher volume, the issue becomes bigger than scoring. A guy like Dirk, rocking 30+% USG on 120+ ORtg, is going to be a virtual black hole on the court. Rewatch the 2011 Playoffs, he sucks defenders toward him from all sides of the court. Even if he doesn't have the ball, defenders are always splitting attention because his mere PRESENCE on the court is a threat. It causes them to sag off their men, and that half-yard of space leads to easy buckets. This is all without Dirk ever touching the ball. Leave alone when he gets the ball, the double comes, and the entire floor gets distorted for the defense.
If you want, I'll dig up video and show you dozens of individual plays where Dirk does this.
THAT'S the offensive impact Dirk has. The threat of scoring he presents is far more dangerous than the actual scoring he does.
KG may be a better passer skill-wise but the assist numbers are a little hollow to me, because it's not like he was ever drawing doubles and getting his team-mates open shots. Why? Because he was never the threat Dirk was.
KG's passing is a non-factor to me in this comparison. The only reason his assist numbers are higher than Dirk's is because the Mavs are so damn good at swinging the ball around that Dirk just got a lot of hockey assists. Dirk's opportunities created FAR outnumber KG's.
So really, when you look at it holistically, your argument that KG does "all the other things on offense better" is wrong. It's not a question of individual skills but the whole package. And because of Dirk's gargantuan gap in scoring, he is able to use his skills to the betterment of his team far more. It's all well for KG to be a good passer, but it's not helping his team a third as much as Dirk if he's not drawing attention to open up the floor for his teammates.
So I disagree that you think scoring is only 10% of the game: when you're as good at it as Dirk, it's far more, because it's not just the scoring but the THREAT of scoring that makes a huge difference.
There are some interesting things here, and I agree with a lot of it...especially your breakdown of how Dirk's presence distorts the defense whether he's shooting or not, and how this threat is a large factor in why his offensive impact is so large. The phenomenon that you describe is what I generally refer to as a spacing effect specific to volume big men scorers with shooting range. Their presence distorts defenses by causing a big man (one whose presence inside is typically important for the defense to work) to be pulled out of his comfort zone to the perimeter. At the same time, as you mention, every other player on the defense has to a) be aware of the scoring threat and b) perform help duties that they wouldn't normally have to do. All of this weakens the defense and produces positive opportunities for the offense to work more efficiently...whether the main guy is shooting or not. I think that this is where Dirk being 7-0 tall is often overlooked as a strength for him...while Kevin Durant or Larry Bird may have similar or (at times) even better scoring volume/efficiency numbers as Dirk, the fact that they may be guarded by an opponent's SF while Dirk has to be guarded by their PF/C makes Dirk's spacing/distortion impact often larger than theirs.
But what's really intriguing to me is that so much of what you wrote about Dirk's offense applies to Garnett as well, just not necessarily to the same degree. I think the key in this discussion is "relativity" vs "absolute". Dirk is relatively better than KG at the things that you named, but he isn't absolutely better. Garnett was excellent at drawing defensive attention, then using that distortion to create good looks for his teammates. That was, in fact, one of his great offensive skills that isn't in the box scores and (like Dirk) shows up in their offensive RAPM scores.
I think one of the main disconnects between our stances is the part that I both bolded and underlined, where you said "KG may be a better passer skill-wise but the assist numbers are a little hollow to me, because it's not like he was ever drawing doubles and getting his team-mates open shots. Why? Because he was never the threat Dirk was."
That's just grossly incorrect. In his Mineesota days, Garnett was one of the most double-teamed players in the NBA. Team's drew up their entire defensive game plan around stopping Garnett...I mean, why wouldn't they? He was clearly the best offensive player on teams that were perennially top-5 offenses. He was an MVP caliber player that regularly led his teams in both scoring and assists. Many of his teammates were poor at creating any shots for themselves, and opposing coaches knew that. Even if one never watched a Timberwolves game, in what world would it make sense that teams wouldn't double such a player? And if you watched them regularly, you'd know that teams often doubled KG before he even got the ball! That part of the reason that he operated so much from the high-post was that it made it more difficult for teams to surround him and easier for him to take advantage of those doubles with his passing game.
I think you are drawing a correlation between ORTG and defensive attention that doesn't exist. Teams focus attention on opposing team's best players. But there is no indication that they use their opponent's ORTG to decide whether to send those doubles. In fact, before we go further, let's take a closer look at what "17 - 20 ORTG points" really looks like (actually 24 ORTG points):
2006 Dirk Nowitzki: 27 ppg (18.2 FGA + 10 FTA = 22.6 shot attempts), 2.9 assists (2.1 TO)
2004 Kevin Garnett: 24.2 ppg (20.7 FGA + 6.9 FTA=23.7 shot attempts), 5.1 asts (4.2 TO)
Yes, Dirk was more efficient. But do you really think opposing coaches were saying "you know, that 24 and 5 weren't very efficient so let's save the doubles"? Or might it have been more like, "Take out KG and this Wolves team is done. Cassell's limping (or absent), so all we have to do is stop him"? Now, having watched a ton of Wolves games I can tell you that over his tenure in Minnesota it was (emphatically) the latter.
As you alluded to yourself, Dirk's spacing/distortion effect happened whether he was hot that game or not. Because while the 28 ppg on 60% TS is truly special, the distortion/spacing effect was still able to help his teammates get good looks even on nights when he shot 9-for-27 from the floor. THE SAME THING WAS TRUE OF GARNETT!
Again, Garnett wasn't as good at providing spacing/distortion as Dirk because Dirk is arguably the best perimeter spacing/distorting big men of all time. But short of Dirk, there is a vanishingly small number of big men in NBA history that were better at that particular effect than Garnett. He drew lots of defensive attention, which opened up lots of space for teammates. And as a bonus, he was also one of the most gifted passing bigs in NBA history, which allowed him to really help his teammates take advantage of that effect (see spoiler below for a post where I go into great non-RAPM detail to describe KG's impact on two offenses at his peak). I think you're absolutely right in pointing out how amazing Dirk was in this aspect of offense. But by not acknowledging that KG was the next best thing to Dirk in that particular way, you're doing him a disservice.
Spoiler:
