LA Bird wrote:A best of 3 in round 1 made it easier for an upset so it is not a given that the Rockets still beat the Lakers if they had played them in a later round.
True but Moses was dominating them and I have no real reason to believe they weren't just about neck and neck. They were 2-3 against LA in the regular season too and all but the first game they played that year were close. Moses just canceled out Kareem enough to make Houston better than LA or evenly matched, which is an accomplishment in itself.
And they went to 7 against the Spurs, with Calvin Murphy being the hero in that game not Moses. If Sean Elliot had dropped 42 to lead the Spurs to the win while Robinson shot 6-19 for 21 in a G7, would you still be praising DRob for carrying a team of scrubs to victory?
If he averaged 29.3/11.5/2.0 on 59.3 TS% in games 1-6 including 34.0 ppg on 65 TS% in their first 3 wins, yeah I would. He averaged 28/12/2 in the series, one great game from Calvin Murphy doesn't change that. I don't know why you're laser focusing on a single game of a 7 game series as if that means it's no longer true that he carried his team.
Winning the championship in 83 doesn't prove much because Robinson could also have won in Moses's place. The proof for Moses as a lone superstar came in 81 and I just don't think it is particularly impressive given the circumstances and his lack of playoff success in other seasons.
Name me how many other players have made the Finals with a supporting cast anywhere near as weak as Moses'? How is it not proving much that he did something almost no one else has done? What exactly has David Robinson the first option accomplished in the playoffs outside of embarrassing performances?
And sure Robinson would've won in 83, he would've also been the second best player on the team to Dr. J. Not really comparable to Moses.
Don't know of a postseason scoring stat has Garnett way better than Robinson so you should go ahead and post it. Way better production to me would be something like 5+ ppg or TS% higher and I just don't see it.
Well you can already look at Robinson's series to series breakdown I posted. In KG's own postseason career we can point to vastly superior performances in 99 and 01 vs San Antonio and the 08 ECF vs Detroit. All series better than Robinson's best scoring series against any defenses worth mentioning. Really I want to include a bunch of other performances because thanks to the rules from 99-04 KG in most of those years played defenses stronger than any defense Robinson has ever performed against. Just doesn't feel right also including how KG carved up Dirk and C. Webb while their teams were below league average.
20.4 ppg on 54.2% TS is not far from Robinson's prime average of 21.0 ppg on 51.7% TS against good defenses that you quoted.
That 20.4 ppg on 54.2 TS% was still against better defenses than Robinson has ever played. It's just those are the best defenses Robinson have ever played. And it might not be far, but it's clearly superior production from a version of KG no one would call his peak or even a top 3 season of his.
I think the gap here is this, KG was a more volatile scorer in the postseason. He had a lot of terrible performances, but a lot of good ones. Robinson was consistent, just consistently bad. I'll take the guy that might give me a good series over the guy that'll always give me a bad series. Adding to that we never saw Robinson vs any defenses better than -3. That's a big deal because if he can't be expected to show up against a team like that, why would I think there's any chance he's showing up against the 99 and 01 Spurs?
Given the sample size is like 4 series against good defenses over his prime, I feel like you putting too much emphasis on the difference between having 0 and 1 good series. 0/4 and 1/4 are both poor. Not having that 1 good series doesn't mean Robinson is automatically on a lower tier than Garnett as first option scorers.
0 out of 4 is pretty damning when we're talking about including him with guys that are proven. This isn't 0/4 on being spectacular, it's 0/4 in even being passable. I can't think of anyone else that got 4 opportunities and failed all 4. 1 can be excused, 2 can be excused, 3 is fishy, 4 is a problem. I mean the only reason the sample is only 4 series is because he failed so bad he could never beat a team worth beating and advance to a later round to play a tougher team. I'm not giving him credit because he was so bad we don't have a larger sample of him being bad.