trex_8063 wrote: But '11-'13 are significant enough years, imo, that I have to give Kobe the slight edge.
Great post in general, but I haven't to question this part right here.
In 2011, Kobe's tail-off in the postseason was pretty dramatic and his overall performance was really unremarkable. Then in 2012, he had his worst offensive season since his third year in the league (albeit much better in the postseason). Then 2013 was a great season offensively, but he wasn't around for the postseason. I don't know how much truck we really want to toss into those seasons as meaningful additions to his narrative. Kobe's career through 2010 largely stands on its own, I think, and he's as good a candidate in this range as anyone, but I don't think those seasons are the best angle to play in his favor.
Meantime, I wanted to address something pertaining to Kobe/Karl Malone that has been coming up repeatedly as a theme.
Let's look at Malone from 86-98 and Kobe from 00-10. These seem to be the fairest stretches to consider for both. So let's look at regular season TS%, postseason TS%, league average TS% and TSdiff between RS and PS for each season.
So, first-pass look:
Karl Malone in that period: 58.0% RS TS, +4.5 (average). 4 straight years at +6.2% over league average in the regular season. His average ORTG in that span was 114.
In the playoffs, Malone averaged 53.2% TS. league average in that span was 53.6%.
So what actually happened is that he went from a guy who deviated from league average by more than Kobe's best individual mark (3.9% in 07) to a guy scoring below league average over that same stretch. That's a pretty remarkably turnaround, nearly a 5% drop in his scoring efficiency. Now, as he aged, Malone significantly improved his TOV%, getting it mostly into the single digits between 94 and 98, which helped blunt the impact of the scoring drop off some, but he still lost 6 points of ORTG, going down to an average of 108. That's actually not a bad overall ORTG, but it's a lot worse than his RS impact and it's not superstar kind of stuff any longer, it's a lot more pedestrian. Naturally, to look at that more accurately, you'd want to look at ORTG deviation from league average, and then also include playoff average ORTG by year and what not, but ultimately what's clear here is that Malone was really not nearly as effective on offense in the playoffs as he was in the RS.
This shouldn't surprise anyone, given that his skill set was built around off-ball movement and opportunity buckets, with a very simplistic set of post skills and then transitioning into PnR action with progressively heavier emphasis on his jump shot as he aged. I wish we had the data before 01, but even then, from 01-03, he was taking ~ 35-43% of his shots from 16-23 feet in the RS. He was killing it, still shooting over 40% each year, assisted on 80% of his shots, but that's also a setup for failure against a coherently organized defensive scheme in the playoffs. Sure enough, his jumper tailed off in the postseason those same years and that proportion helped sink his offensive efficacy to a significant degree.
Now, looking at Kobe.
From 00-10, he averaged 55.7% in an environment where (over that span) the league average was 53.0%, so he was on average a +2.7% player. That means that talk of his relative inefficiency is inaccurate. He had 6 years in that span where he was at +3.0% or better, 3 of which were at +3.4% or better (+3.4, +3.6 and +3.9). This is good. Not incredible, but good. Raw TS% is a bit misleading in Kobe's career because basically from 98-04 was one of the (if not the) lowest periods in league history for offensive efficiency. He was at +3.5% in the brutal 03-04 regular season and +3.3% the next year with the new rules... but he was at 55.1% in 04 and 56.3% in 05, which makes it look like was doing a lot better if you don't examine the league environment and just look at the raw stat. Then again, you can also build a case for the fact that Kobe took two more shots per game in 05 compared to 04 and scored an extra 3.6 points per game as a result (his FTR went from .452 to .502 and he was taking more 3s).
Blah blah, tangent. Long story short, it's very clear that Karl Malone murdered Kobe's face as a regular season scoring force. Scoring, though, not offensive. There's another angle to consider, and that's Kobe's ability as a playmaker, which is often hand-waved away by people discussing his shot selection and the like. Bryant has always been a highly effective playmaker when he's chosen to put forth the effort and over the course of a season, he's done so more often than not.
We've looked at raw efficiency, we've looked at deviation from league average and in both, Malone triumphs not by a small margin, but by a large one. Now remember what I said was Malone's average ORTG? 114, and that includes his first two years in the league, which weren't incredible. Kobe's career-high is 115, which he managed three times (consecutively) after a season of 114. His average for the given period (00-10) is 113. Suddenly, that margin starts to close up a little bit, doesn't it? Kobe's ability to play a distributor/creator role does do a bunch to help close the gap between the two of them.
You could look at RAPM, but that's kind of been done already and I don't want to go down that route. What I did want to do is examine these guys as playoff performers, especially in light of some of these comments where people are failing to appreciate that deviation from league environment is a bit more enlightening than the raw averages themselves.
Meantime, Kobe's average TS% in the given period is 55.7%, as I already said. His playoff average over that time is 54.8% TS if you don't factor in total games played, 54.5% if you do. His ORTG is 111. Ostensibly, what we're seeing is that Kobe was indeed actually a better playoff performer than Karl Malone from an offensive perspective. We're not looking at one star and one roleplayer, or one distributor and one scorer. We're examining two guys who were tasked to be volume scorers on their teams and while Malone was clearly the better choice in the RS, Kobe's more efficient in the playoffs by raw scoring efficiency (and at similar or greater volume) and as a result of his generally lower turnover rate and superior ability to create for others. He's also dropped off less relative to his own RS performance, more in line with what should be seen as an acceptable/normal drop-off come the playoffs. We've seen some studies from some of the posters here indicating that his drop-off is sharper against the better defenses... which really shouldn't come as a huge surprise. A penalty against him in comparison with guys already ranked above him, perhaps, and perhaps in comparison to some current competition like Oscar and West (depending on how those results shake out), but against the Mailman, playoff offensive performance seems to favor Kobe rather strongly.
Now, this would change some if we were to eliminate the last three years of that comparison. Malone posted an ORTG of 105 in the postseason from 96-98 (105 in each year, as it happens) and posted major scoring efficiency drop-offs in 96 (-4.4) and 97 (-3.5) compared to his regular season TS. Entertainingly, Kobe actually got less efficient in the playoffs while playing alongside Shaq, but MORE efficient in the playoffs post-05, when he was with Gasol/Odom.
Malone is at at -4.8 TS% from RS to PS on his career compared to Kobe's -0.9%. I think we can agree that Kobe's scoring efficiency actually deviated less than did Malone's, and he was making it up as an offensive force with his playmaking to further the gap, whereas Malone was not doing much but declining compared to his regular season performances.
Now, what else to consider? In the given periods, Malone's RS and PS scoring averages were 26.2 ppg (skewed down a bit by his first two seasons) and 26.9 ppg, so +0.7 ppg. Kobe's were 28.1 ppg and 27.8 ppg, so -0.3 ppg. That said, he led the playoffs in scoring average in 03, 07 and 08, averaged 30+ ppg 4 times in that span and averaged 29.8 ppg in the postseason from 06-10.
But let's look at this per 100 possessions so we can equalize for minutes and pace.
PTS100 POSS
Malone 86-98
RS: 35.0
PS: 34.7
-0.3 PTS100 POSS
Not a huge change here. There are some pace and minutes differences skewing the actual averages, but his basic scoring rate per possession is pretty much identical across the RS and PS in that stretch.
Bryant 00-10
RS: 36.9
PS: 35.0
-1.6 PTS100 POSS
And for the sake of splitting Kobe's career into WITH SHAQ and NO SHAQ...
Bryant 06-10
RS: 39.2
PS: 38.1
-1.1 PTS100 POSS
So what we see is that even when controlling for Shaq's presence, Kobe's scoring rate actually drops off in the playoffs more than does Malone's. He ends up playing more minutes per game to make up the difference in his scoring average.
Does it matter? We're comparing peak playoff scoring ability between guys who are knocking on the door of the top 10 all-time, so minutiae of this sort matter. Ultimately, it still looks like Kobe was the better playoff performer from an offensive perspective, so you have to decide if Malone's defensive/rebounding advantage was of sufficient significance to neutralize/overcome that difference. For me, I want my volume scorer to be able to take over games, and Kobe's clearly the more explosive scoring threat. Malone has two postseasons of 30+ ppg, one of 3 games and one of 5. All of his other seasons are under that marker. He has 2 postseasons of 29+ ppg when playing 10+ games, and 1 more if you include a 9-game postseason, and he had to play just shy of 45 mpg to get one of them (88). And again, the difference in efficiency CLEARLY favors Kobe.
Where am I going with all of this? Eh. Kobe's postseason scoring doesn't actually look a ton more impressive than does Malone's. He's had stinkers aplenty and we've got various forms of bias in the way we intersect with his playoff performances. We remember that he won, we like volume numbers... there's some evidence that I've shown suggesting that his efficiency drop-off is worse as a scorer, but that his overall offensive productivity remains superior. It's all food for thought as we move forward in our debates.
A comparison of relative defenses faced and coupled with teammate assistance would be useful, and some of that has been done, but none of that seems to do much to sway from the general principles put forth here with simpler examination. Kobe's major advantage is as a passer, which permits him to be valuable even when his J isn't falling. Malone wasn't much without his J, especially later on in his career, particularly since he wasn't a dominant offensive rebounder or a terribly impressive isolation scorer.
Ooh, and one more angle of consideration:
Karl Malone 86-98
RS: .503 FTR, 52.9% eFG
PS: .477 FTR, 46.9% eFG
That 6% drop in eFG% really stings. He's still elite at drawing fouls, but like Robinson, if he isn't hitting FGs, it kind of neuters his overall offensive utility, which is where the drop-off comes from in terms of TS%. That's a major point of separation between these two, as we'll see in a second.
Kobe Bryant 00-10
RS: .391 FTR, 48.9% eFG
PS: .361 FTR, 48.4% eFG
So, first pass, not too much of a loss in ability to get to the line and a mere 0.5% drop in his eFG, still leaving him better than what Malone managed. His ability to make buckets, although for him influenced by his prolific 3pt usage, is ultimately higher than Malone's in the playoffs.
Kobe Bryant 06-10
RS: .386 FTR, 49.7% eFG
PS: .370, 50.6% eFG
Negligible decline in foul draw and a 0.9%
increase in eFG% come the playoffs. He shot 35.0% from 3 in that stretch, compared to 34.8% in the regular season version of that stretch. The difference was actually 49.0% 2FG in the RS and 50.1% 2FG in the PS of that stretch (negligible difference in 3pt volume, too).
So now we're starting to dig into some of the differences between these guys as scorers come the playoffs. Malone was able to consistently get to the line, but he wasn't able to consistently make baskets in the playoffs. Kobe has been able to do both. Malone's case based on dramatic RS superiority is weakened by Kobe's playmaking ability and Kobe's post-Shaq playoff performances. Now, if we get too specific, we get into cherry-picking and the period I selected for Malone isn't optimal, so it's better to consider Kobe's entire 00-10 period in the interest of fairness. Malone would look better if I selected his prime as well. If you look at 88-95, Malone averages 59.2% TS in the playoffs, for a +5.6% differential over the league average of 53.6% over that time. He averages 54.7% TS in the playoffs, and comes out at an average drop of -4.4%.
So anyway you slice it, Malone got a lot worse in terms of scoring efficiency and productivity in the playoffs, particularly in the context of a comparison to Kobe Bryant. Kobe may not be MJ, but he was a very, very good RS scorer, a good playmaker, and he was able to do better on offense in the playoffs than did Malone. That's a pretty large point of separation in my mind.
Comments?
