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TrueLAfan wrote:

ElGee wrote:

TrueLAfan wrote:4. Payton. He was a stud this year, period. More important to his team than Kemp, who had obvious gifts and less obvious--and significant—flaws. (If Shawn Kemp had learned to box out properly, his rebounding might be worth something. He didn’t, really. So it isn’t, as much.) In games 4-6 of the finals, Payton made Jordan work harder than pretty much anyone I had seen since the late 80s. Almost had him at 3; will look at the rest of the posts and could change this.

Can we put this into perspective though, since i think it's giving Payton a boost up people's ballots.

The regular season is 82 games. That's over 6,000 possessions for Payton. In the playoffs he played ~1,500 more possessions. He didn't guard Jordan for all of these games...they had Hawkins on him and even Schrempf at times. So this is, what, 150 defensive possessions? Within that series alone, Payton didn't even play that well.

Now, I think it's perfectly fair to look at that as being reflective of something bigger, and perhaps even use it as a tiebreaker or something. He did play Jordan wonderfully. I just get the feeling people are rocketing Payton up their boards because of these few games and his team's success. I'm fairly confident in saying that Payton was better in 1998 and better in 2000 than he was in 1996.

Finally, you have to ask yourself how big of an impact Payton's defense had on the game. For a point guard, I think it was huge. Compared to a wing, very good. But short of a big. Just watch the games -- he's not having the same impact defensively as Scottie Pippen, let alone the handful of elite bigs ahead of him. In the games against Jordan, Payton's having great defensive games relative to Michael, but it's not like his defensive line is:

2 charges, 5 forced turnovers, 2 basket saves (on help blocks/strips), 2 points against, 2 shooting fouls, no defensive errors, 17% FG's against, 5 defensive rebounds and the general disruption of dribble penetration from the PG.

I only mention that line because it approximates the last Scottie Pippen game I graded defensively.

Well, part of the perspective is that Gary Payton was Defensive Player of the Year. And in this case, part of the perspective is that a player being brought up frequently—David Robinson—had poor defensive play in the playoffs, and it cost his team.

I’ve got Pippen in my top 7 for the season, so I’ve got nothing bad to say about Scottie. But the points being made about postseason play with other players are, IMO, valid; they’re also one of the main reasons why this topic exists. MVP voting is done before the postseason. Several players that had earned regular season MVPs struggled in the playoffs, and a part of what we consider—as others have noted—is whether this would/should have had an effect on the MVP voting in a season. Now, the question of how much emphasis to put on post season play is relative. Some people give it a ton; some people rate it more or less equally with regular season play. As usual, I’m in the middle about this. Considering that David Robinson had a much better regular season than Gary Payton. He was also worse on both offense and defense than Payton in the playoffs. Is that enough to elevate Payton over Drob? For some it is. For me, it isn’t—although it makes it close.

ElGee wrote:TrueLAFan made a point about David Robinson's defensive impact in the playoffs. Indeed, there seems to be some validity to that, if we believe that Robinson has a major influence on their defense as the anchor.

Here are the Spurs DRtg in his 93-96 stretch compared with regular season performance. The opponents ORtg is weighted by games played vs. team (eg a 6 game series counts twice as much as a 3 game series).

1996 111.5 ( 8.0 vs. regular season) 4.7 relative to league average. Weighted opp avg. 112.1
1995 103.1 (-2.3 vs. regular season) -7.9 relative to league average. Weighted opp avg. 109.3
1994 110.3 ( 5.7 vs. regular season) 5.3 relative to league average. Weighted opp avg. 108.6
1993 107.0 ( 0.2 vs. regular season) -0.9 relative to league average. Weighted opp avg. 111.3

So it seems there is something to what TrueLAFan is saying. Perhaps with the exception of 1995's first 2 rounds...but we know what happened after that.

My general problem with Robinson, like everyone else, is his playoff performances. It's not that I viewed him as some sort of choker, just that he faired much better much better in a regular season style and against weaker competition. Which isn't too damning (we shouldn't overstate the unfortunate fact that he ran into Malone and Hakeem at the worst time). His regular seasons still count. I just know what type of contribution I'm getting toward a championship (he's a little too subject to certain styles and matchups, and when he runs into them there's a larger drop off then we see from other stars.)

1993 struggled against Duckworth/Williams vs. Portland. Then a better series against Phoenix (but a bad game 7).
1994 ran into Utah. Struggled.
1995 He DESTROYED LA (Dviac and Campbell) a round before playing Hakeem.
1996 great against Phoenix. Then Utah again...

That's something that I'll take into account, in general, for all of his prime seasons.

therealbig3 wrote:Here's the Spurs' DRating under Robinson in the playoffs:

91: 4-game series against the Warriors, who had a 111.9 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 111.7 (-0.2).

93: 4-game series against the Blazers, who had a 108.3 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 107.7 (-0.6).

6-game series against the Suns, who had a 113.3 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 109.9 (-3.4).

94: 4-game series against the Jazz, who had a 108.6 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 110.6 ( 2.0).

95: 3-game series against the Nuggets, who had a 109.1 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 103.1 (-6.0).

6-game series against the Lakers, who had a 109.1 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 101.3 (-7.8).

6-game series against the Rockets, who had a 109.7 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 110.6 ( 0.9).

96: 4-game series against the Suns, who had a 110.3 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 109.3 (-1.0).

6-games series against the Jazz, who had a 113.3 ORating in the regular season, and the Spurs held them to 114.1 ( 0.8).

As you can see, although the Spurs had some nice defensive series (a couple in 95, and one in 93), they had mostly mediocre defensive series, in which they allowed opposing teams to either score their averages against them, or even do better offensively. An elite defensive team like the Spurs shouldn't allow that...in general, they should hold their opponents to well under their averages.

[...]

So, with the Spurs, you have an elite defensive team dropping to above average levels. And considering how guys like Barkley, Malone, and especially Hakeem had some great series against D-Rob and the Spurs, I think you can conclude that Robinson as the defensive anchor got worse defensively in the playoffs, by quite a bit.