Who was the best player in the 04-05 Season?

[mdonnelly1989]

During that season who was considered the best player in the league?

[wafflzgod]

Tim Duncan imo

If I were to rank the top 5 of that season strictly, I'd go:
1.) Duncan
2.) Nash
3.) Garnett
4.) Nowitzki
5.) Shaq

[Rich Michmond]

Who was considered or who was the best? You're asking two different questions.

[durantbird]

Why Nash not in the poll

[Amares]

It's Duncan, with some cases for Nash and KG. Not sure why Nash is not on the list, but Bryant instead who wasn't even top 10 that year

[70sFan]

Duncan, followed by KG and then Nash. Kobe is probably outside of top 10 considering how injuries and down year, Wade should be in the poll as well.

[trelos6]

Other. Manu Ginobili.

But yeah, prob Duncan.

[Ben AN]

I don't know who was considered the best player. Based off the commentary in this 05 Suns-TWolves game I watched, Kobe, Duncan & KG were the 3 in that conversation. Looking back after the postseason though, I'd go with DWade.

[mdonnelly1989]

Who was considered or who was the best? You're asking two different questions.

Lets keep it at who was....

[mdonnelly1989]

Why Nash not in the poll

I was going to but most on this board don't normally put him in the same catagory as the others.

If you asked who had a better prime between Duncan and Nash. Nash doesn't get a single vote. And not against Shaq or KG either.

[rk2023]

Other - in favor of Nash. Yeah, there was a very advanced scheme in place on Phoenix's behalf and the league did implement rule changes.. but I do not think this cuts much into how impressive Nash doubling the Suns wins and maximizing the pieces around him going from 2004 to 2005 was.

Duncan would be my pick with everybody being considered fully healthy, but he had an injury One of his most underrated seasons at full strength, with a very impressive WOWY impact (on a team that was all-time great with him playing) not too far from Blazer-Mania Walton's WOWY itself - for a reasonable proxy.

[iggymcfrack]

Here’s the in-depth discussion if you want to see it from when this forum really tackled that question hard:
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1008218

Duncan won with 13 first place votes, Nash finished second with 4, and KG finished third with 2. Kobe was not one of the 13 players to receive at least one 5th place vote.

[Doctor MJ]

Other. Manu Ginobili.

But yeah, prob Duncan.

So I'll just piggy back here and say that when I did my last pass doing POY for that season, I was surprised to have Ginobili come out at #1. I had Nash 2 and Duncan 3. The summary:

Duncan was the best player until he went down with injury, but afterward - despite coming back and winning the title as his team's lead scorer - I think Ginobili was pretty clearly the more valuable player.

Most would probably object to Ginobili ever being more valuable - fair enough.
Others might concede my point but still argue Duncan was more valuable for the season's entirety - fair enough.

Others might concede that Ginobili deserves to be the top Spur but would object based on Ginobili's limited minutes that he could ever be the top player in the league. This tends to be the thing I struggle with too.

In a nutshell I'd say that if a guy plays limited minutes and his team doesn't win the chip, it's hard for me to elevate him that high, because no matter how valuable he was in the minutes he did play, his lack of play can be said to have kept his team from the promised land.

But if a team does win it all, and a player who plays more limited minutes is the best player on the court in those minutes that decided the series, well, I think that should be hard to dismiss.

To go into a bit more detail, let's contrast Duncan & Ginobili's minutes in the playoffs that season recognizing ahead of time that literally no one tries to hold minutes against Duncan here:

Duncan 37.8
Ginobili 33.6

An advantage for Duncan to be sure, but does 4.2 MPG really determine the team's MVP necessarily? I'd say no.

Let's not that in the final 2 series of the run Ginobili averaged 36+ MPG both times. So this wasn't a situation where the Spurs won the title without Ginobili playing normal starter level minutes. When they knew they needed him to play more, they played him more.

Now let's look at the PM data per 100, both the On and the On/Off:

Duncan +3.3 -5.3
Ginobili +10.9 +19.9

It's not unusual for Ginobili to trump Duncan here - it's basically a rule that the Spurs couldn't win a title if that didn't happen - but in most years it's not enough to sway me that Ginobili was actually the more valuable player overall. This year though, the difference was incredibly stark.

And of course, while mainstream commentators didn't have +/- in their vocabulary really at the time, everyone was noting that Duncan was struggling coming back from injury. While some gave hyperbolic language to the effect that Duncan should get down on his knees and think Robert Horry for bailing him out, I don't think any major figures at the time were willing to seriously argue that Duncan shouldn't get the Finals MVP.

But I'll say flat out that I think Ginobili deserved the Finals MVP and - had they held it back then - the WCF MVP. He was the guy the Pace & Space Suns struggled with, not Duncan. He was the one with big +/- numbers against the Pistons, not Duncan (or Parker) who the Spurs got outscored with them on the floor. And of course, he was also the one with impressive shooting efficiency, while the other two were low.

Realistically I'd argue that the injury to Duncan meant that '04-05 should have been a year where the Spurs came up short...but Ginobili was just too good for any opponent they faced to stop them.

[Djoker]

Nash is the only one who has an argument over Timmy for me because of the sheer offensive impact but I'd still roll with Duncan.

[tsherkin]

I'm going to go Other (Nash) on this one, but I think it was a pretty tight race.

[tone wone]

Other

By the end of the playoffs, Wade.

[Texas Chuck]

Why Nash not in the poll

I was going to but most on this board don't normally put him in the same catagory as the others.

If you asked who had a better prime between Duncan and Nash. Nash doesn't get a single vote. And not against Shaq or KG either.

Of course Nash can't compete with Duncan in prime or career. Nash wasn't even a good player until he was 26 and not a special player until he was 30. He simply can't compete with Duncan in terms of longevity (or peak, but 05 isn't Duncan's peak).

But he doesn't have to compete with Timmy to make the poll. Why was Kobe of all people here? Surely you don't want who did casuals think was the best based on stylistic/hype machine factors rather than actual play during the season in question right?

Nash is obviously a candidate here. Maybe he shouldn't have been MVP, but maybe he should have been. I don't think some of you understand the changes in commitment Nash made after Dallas chose not to pay him, but he's been super transparent about it.

But to cover it again:

Two things happened at the same time--Dallas who had been paying everyone didn't pay him. And he got a supermodel pregnant and he decided to leave one of the biggest party lifestyles in the entire league. He wasn't out drinking and partying every night any longer and he worked really hard on his body and nutrition for the first time in his career. He was already insanely skilled, but now he was in the best shape of his life, he was a on a team playing for a coach tailor made for his offensive skills, unlike Dallas who had Dirk who didn't need Nash to the degree those Sun players did.

His impact was night and day different. He was a good player (eventually) in Dallas, maybe a borderline great player. But he wore down every season(see 3 straight years of him making Mike Bibby of all guys look like an all-NBA guy in the playoffs). But in 04-05? Nah, he was just a beast. And it lasted right through the playoffs. Look at that 2nd round series against Dallas if you want to see an all-time great PG playoff series.

[iggymcfrack]

Other. Manu Ginobili.

But yeah, prob Duncan.

So I'll just piggy back here and say that when I did my last pass doing POY for that season, I was surprised to have Ginobili come out at #1. I had Nash 2 and Duncan 3. The summary:

Duncan was the best player until he went down with injury, but afterward - despite coming back and winning the title as his team's lead scorer - I think Ginobili was pretty clearly the more valuable player.

Most would probably object to Ginobili ever being more valuable - fair enough.
Others might concede my point but still argue Duncan was more valuable for the season's entirety - fair enough.

Others might concede that Ginobili deserves to be the top Spur but would object based on Ginobili's limited minutes that he could ever be the top player in the league. This tends to be the thing I struggle with too.

In a nutshell I'd say that if a guy plays limited minutes and his team doesn't win the chip, it's hard for me to elevate him that high, because no matter how valuable he was in the minutes he did play, his lack of play can be said to have kept his team from the promised land.

But if a team does win it all, and a player who plays more limited minutes is the best player on the court in those minutes that decided the series, well, I think that should be hard to dismiss.

To go into a bit more detail, let's contrast Duncan & Ginobili's minutes in the playoffs that season recognizing ahead of time that literally no one tries to hold minutes against Duncan here:

Duncan 37.8
Ginobili 33.6

An advantage for Duncan to be sure, but does 4.2 MPG really determine the team's MVP necessarily? I'd say no.

Let's not that in the final 2 series of the run Ginobili averaged 36+ MPG both times. So this wasn't a situation where the Spurs won the title without Ginobili playing normal starter level minutes. When they knew they needed him to play more, they played him more.

Now let's look at the PM data per 100, both the On and the On/Off:

Duncan +3.3 -5.3
Ginobili +10.9 +19.9

It's not unusual for Ginobili to trump Duncan here - it's basically a rule that the Spurs couldn't win a title if that didn't happen - but in most years it's not enough to sway me that Ginobili was actually the more valuable player overall. This year though, the difference was incredibly stark.

And of course, while mainstream commentators didn't have +/- in their vocabulary really at the time, everyone was noting that Duncan was struggling coming back from injury. While some gave hyperbolic language to the effect that Duncan should get down on his knees and think Robert Horry for bailing him out, I don't think any major figures at the time were willing to seriously argue that Duncan shouldn't get the Finals MVP.

But I'll say flat out that I think Ginobili deserved the Finals MVP and - had they held it back then - the WCF MVP. He was the guy the Pace & Space Suns struggled with, not Duncan. He was the one with big +/- numbers against the Pistons, not Duncan (or Parker) who the Spurs got outscored with them on the floor. And of course, he was also the one with impressive shooting efficiency, while the other two were low.

Realistically I'd argue that the injury to Duncan meant that '04-05 should have been a year where the Spurs came up short...but Ginobili was just too good for any opponent they faced to stop them.

Very interesting post! I’ve long thought that Ginobili had an incredibly underrated season in 2005 and that he deserved FMVP, but I never thought of it going so far as him being actual POY.

Honestly, looking over the numbers, I don’t see anything to argue against it! The regular season numbers are nearly identical with just a slight edge for Duncan. He plays 2203 minutes to 2193 for Ginobili. Duncan has a 7.6 BPM to 6.9 for Ginobili. His on/off is +17.8 compared to +17.2.

In the playoffs though, the difference is marked. Not only does Manu have the massive difference in on/off that you mentioned (24.2 difference!!!), but he has a far superior BPM as well, 9.2 to 5.8. If you just combine RS and playoffs weighting them equally, Manu will have more VORP than Duncan despite playing less minutes.

And he came up the biggest in the biggest moments. Tied 2-2 with Seattle, he puts up 39 on .867 TS% in a near must-win home game. Game 7 of the Finals when absolutely no one can score, he puts in 23 on .757 TS% when Parker’s at .337 and Duncan’s at .442. Honestly, I think you’re just right here than Manu was the best player in the league that year. Anyone have counterarguments?

[AEnigma]

“Any counter-arguments?”

First off, I will say the case for Manu that year specifically is fair, and I see him as one of six players with a reasonably legitimate claim.

(Interestingly, only three of those names were included on OP’s list. )

My main counterarguments would be essentiality and replicability.

For essentiality, while we can talk about how Manu and Duncan were basically even in regular season on-court and on/off measures (as well as RAPM measures), I try to remember that the Spurs were 9-7 without Duncan and 6-2 without Manu. Without either player, the Spurs were 1-0, so they were 8-7 with Manu and no Duncan and 5-2 with Duncan and no Manu. There is a meaningful difference in how teams perform when you are in the game and out of it, and on that front, I think the advantage is to Duncan.

(By comparison: the 2001 regular Lakers were 5-3 without Shaq and 11-3 without Kobe — no overlap, although the absence of Fisher and others were notable factors.)

As a transition to replicability, we can look at those measures over a longer period. From 2004-11 (Manu’s NBA prime), the Spurs had a 71.5% win rate with Manu and a 59.8% win rate without Manu. Over the same period, the Spurs had a 71.4% win rate with Duncan and a 51.9% win rate without Duncan. There is further nuance we could explore — e.g., how often were other teammates missing time in those stretches, and how often were they playing without each other — but as a ballpark indicator, I think that speaks correctly to how the team was built.

This does not in itself mean Duncan was “better”, but it is a starting point. And on the subject of “better”, I think it is important to ask how frequently we could claim Manu was “better”. Say we agree Manu was indeed “better” that postseason, or “better” in Rounds 3 and 4 particularly (although again, I feel like essentiality merits some consideration). Is that how we are assessing those players in the absolute? We can, and people do, but I feel like a lot of the same approaches can get us to calling Kobe “better” than Shaq in 2001, and Murray/Gordon “better” than Jokic in the postseason, and I think if people balk at those, they should similarly pause before abandoning Duncan in the face of a lesser postseason showing.

Here, quick exercise (awkward phrasing is deliberate):

Player A and Player B are +6.15 when on the court together. Player B without Player A is +10.41 higher than Player A without Player B.

Player 1 and Player 2 are +6.03 when on the court together. Player 2 without Player 1 is +10.15 higher than Player 1 without Player 2.

Awfully similar numbers. One of them is 2004-11 Duncan and Manu in the postseason, and the other is Jokic and Jamal in the postseason.

This is an illustration, not an equation. Manu is a lot better than Jamal, and there is a lot of nuance lost in that cursory comparison — although that distinction would apply less to 2001 Shaq and Kobe, so the general principle I think still applies.

[Doctor MJ]

Other. Manu Ginobili.

But yeah, prob Duncan.

So I'll just piggy back here and say that when I did my last pass doing POY for that season, I was surprised to have Ginobili come out at #1. I had Nash 2 and Duncan 3. The summary:

Duncan was the best player until he went down with injury, but afterward - despite coming back and winning the title as his team's lead scorer - I think Ginobili was pretty clearly the more valuable player.

Most would probably object to Ginobili ever being more valuable - fair enough.
Others might concede my point but still argue Duncan was more valuable for the season's entirety - fair enough.

Others might concede that Ginobili deserves to be the top Spur but would object based on Ginobili's limited minutes that he could ever be the top player in the league. This tends to be the thing I struggle with too.

In a nutshell I'd say that if a guy plays limited minutes and his team doesn't win the chip, it's hard for me to elevate him that high, because no matter how valuable he was in the minutes he did play, his lack of play can be said to have kept his team from the promised land.

But if a team does win it all, and a player who plays more limited minutes is the best player on the court in those minutes that decided the series, well, I think that should be hard to dismiss.

To go into a bit more detail, let's contrast Duncan & Ginobili's minutes in the playoffs that season recognizing ahead of time that literally no one tries to hold minutes against Duncan here:

Duncan 37.8
Ginobili 33.6

An advantage for Duncan to be sure, but does 4.2 MPG really determine the team's MVP necessarily? I'd say no.

Let's not that in the final 2 series of the run Ginobili averaged 36+ MPG both times. So this wasn't a situation where the Spurs won the title without Ginobili playing normal starter level minutes. When they knew they needed him to play more, they played him more.

Now let's look at the PM data per 100, both the On and the On/Off:

Duncan +3.3 -5.3
Ginobili +10.9 +19.9

It's not unusual for Ginobili to trump Duncan here - it's basically a rule that the Spurs couldn't win a title if that didn't happen - but in most years it's not enough to sway me that Ginobili was actually the more valuable player overall. This year though, the difference was incredibly stark.

And of course, while mainstream commentators didn't have +/- in their vocabulary really at the time, everyone was noting that Duncan was struggling coming back from injury. While some gave hyperbolic language to the effect that Duncan should get down on his knees and think Robert Horry for bailing him out, I don't think any major figures at the time were willing to seriously argue that Duncan shouldn't get the Finals MVP.

But I'll say flat out that I think Ginobili deserved the Finals MVP and - had they held it back then - the WCF MVP. He was the guy the Pace & Space Suns struggled with, not Duncan. He was the one with big +/- numbers against the Pistons, not Duncan (or Parker) who the Spurs got outscored with them on the floor. And of course, he was also the one with impressive shooting efficiency, while the other two were low.

Realistically I'd argue that the injury to Duncan meant that '04-05 should have been a year where the Spurs came up short...but Ginobili was just too good for any opponent they faced to stop them.

Very interesting post! I’ve long thought that Ginobili had an incredibly underrated season in 2005 and that he deserved FMVP, but I never thought of it going so far as him being actual POY.

Honestly, looking over the numbers, I don’t see anything to argue against it! The regular season numbers are nearly identical with just a slight edge for Duncan. He plays 2203 minutes to 2193 for Ginobili. Duncan has a 7.6 BPM to 6.9 for Ginobili. His on/off is +17.8 compared to +17.2.

In the playoffs though, the difference is marked. Not only does Manu have the massive difference in on/off that you mentioned (24.2 difference!!!), but he has a far superior BPM as well, 9.2 to 5.8. If you just combine RS and playoffs weighting them equally, Manu will have more VORP than Duncan despite playing less minutes.

And he came up the biggest in the biggest moments. Tied 2-2 with Seattle, he puts up 39 on .867 TS% in a near must-win home game. Game 7 of the Finals when absolutely no one can score, he puts in 23 on .757 TS% when Parker’s at .337 and Duncan’s at .442. Honestly, I think you’re just right here than Manu was the best player in the league that year. Anyone have counterarguments?

I definite appreciate the agreement. My stance here will never be more than a fringe view, so it's nice not to be alone.