OhayoKD wrote:lessthanjake wrote:OhayoKD wrote:2004 when they reached the finals? How much weight are you putting on a series? 2005 is at least defensible if we apply the logic often used for Garnett
And we can do the rankings here or not but ultimately, at least in a career sense, for Bird to push Kobe in value he would have had to been a goat-level offensive player(and to be clear he probably still falls short if you're being strictly corp about things). Realistically he was not anywhere near that, so him "accomplishing more" seems dubious outside of mvp wins.
The Lakers in 2004 were regarded as a complete superteam that was fully expected to easily win the title. Their preseason odds to win the title were amongst the very best ever. Their loss in the finals was the biggest upset in finals history. In the context, I don’t really think them making the finals after a 56-win 4.35 SRS season is suggestive that Kobe must have been a top 5 player that year.
Of course, it doesn’t preclude it necessarily either. A part of why expectations were so high is because Kobe was really good, so the team failing to meet expectations doesn’t mean Kobe can’t have been a top 5 player. But Kobe was also 31st in Engelmann’s RAPM, 27th in RPM, 21st in EPM, 53rd in GitHub RS RAPM, 34th in GitHub Playoff RAPM, etc. And he was rough for a lot of the playoffs, including the Finals. One could maybe make a top-5 argument for him solely on the basis of some box stats (he was 5th in PER and BPM). But I think it’d be a pretty weak argument. It’s not just about the Finals that year.
Well there was also injuries and the pistons, at least by ben's method, being a top 10-full strength team ever(who would make the finals).
Kobe scoring x, y, or z is fine, but you need to get 4 players who are ahead by whatever crtieria you're using.
If I was to use RPM
KG, Duncan, and Shaq being ahead seems clear. I guess you could go with Dirk but Dirk is thumped in the first round putting up 21 points and, contest this if you disagree, is very much reliant on scoring to generate value.
Tmac? well he's higher here but he also misses the playoffs on a team with a -7 srs.
You could do Wallace and Billups as a reward for them winning, but are we really classifying them as better?
To me it's a harder sell that Kobe isn't top 5 here
Yeah, for instance, I’d classify Ben Wallace as better that year for sure. He’s above Kobe in any impact metric you want to look at that year and was a dominant defensive force on the title-winning team.
Dirk is definitely above Kobe that year. You mention Dirk “putting up 21 points” and being “very much reliant on scoring to generate value.” But it’s just extremely hard to argue that he wasn’t getting massive offensive value that season, when that Mavs team literally had the best rORTG in the history of the NBA. And, as much as I love Steve Nash, it was Dirk who had a larger offensive on-off (in fact, Dirk’s offensive on-off was almost twice as big as Nash’s), so it’s fairly clear Dirk was the bigger driver of their incredible offense that year. So yeah, I’d classify the most impactful offensive player on the team with the highest rORTG in history as having generated quite a lot of offensive value. As for being “thumped in the first round,” to be clear, he scored 26.6 points a game on equal TS% as he’d scored in the regular season, and they outscored a very good team in his on-court minutes in the series.
I don’t love him but Kidd’s probably better than Kobe that year—he’s ahead on impact and only didn’t get as far in the playoffs because he met the Pistons earlier, and he got way closer to beating the Pistons while on a way less talented team than Kobe (though Kidd did shoot horribly against the Pistons too, albeit on much less volume than Kobe).
That already gets Kobe well past 5th, and that’s not even mentioning Billups and maybe even Peja. I don’t feel strongly about Billups > Kobe that year, but it’s definitely more than arguable, while Peja is up there (higher in impact, and was actually voted higher in MVP voting, so we shouldn’t be scared off by him not being generally seen as being as good a player), but may have been bad enough in the playoffs to scare me off (though Kobe was bad in the playoffs too, so it’s a tough call).
