RealGM

homecourtloss wrote:In essence, Manu’s game was characterized by the additive nature of his contributions to his team's MOV. His monster RAPM can be attributed not only to his individual skills but also to the additive nature of everything that he did. He wasn't just good at just about everything (most players aren’t); his goodness translated into tangible benefits for the entire team in pretty much all aspects of basketball. This is a reason why his RAPM numbers looked like what they did throughout his career. His play either lead to individual results from him (box score) or helped the results of the players around him.

His versatility was such that he wasn't below average in any aspect of the game. He could score (off the ball in motion off of cuts or as a spot up shooter, with the ball in screen-roll actions, in iso, in transition) defend (individual and team), pass and play-make (with the ball, or off of quick passes off of his motion) effectively. This well-roundedness allowed him to impact the game positively in various ways, not only directly off of his direct box score contributions, but due to the additive nature for his teammates through his actions in every phase of the game.

He had no real weaknesses and good in every aspect of the game, both individually and in a team concept.

1. Defense: Ginobili's defense wasn't just about stopping his man. His defensive often led to turnovers, steals, and fast-break opportunities for the Spurs. I wish we had some Synergy stats from his prime to see this. His ability to disrupt opponents' plays was a catalyst for his team's defensive success, including high % offense off defense. He was also a good vocal leader on defense, getting teammates in position.

Once in transition, his ability to excel there played a role in the Spurs’ offense. He was pushing the ball up the court and making plays in transition or setting up transiron threes or easy scores for teammates. Ginobili's speed and decision-making created fast-break opportunities that boosted the team's offensive efficiency

2. Playmaking and Passing: While not always the primary ball-handler, Ginobili's playmaking abilities often led to high leverage offense opportunities that were created out of nothing sometimes, but also synergized well with what Pop wanted to do on offense even though Pop knew that he had to rein in Ginobili’s wildly, creative and often risky play. His passes and court vision created scoring opportunities for his teammates including many hockey assists.

3. Offensive Movement: Ginobili's non-stop movement on the court was a nightmare for defenders. His cuts, screens, and off-ball plays not only created opportunities for himself but also for teammates. One of the things about Ginobili was that his movement didn’t just lead to catch and shoot opportunities once he got the ball, but his movement would lead to him getting the ball and then creating off of that catch once defenders had been taken out of posirtion via the motion offense and his movement. so, he could score in isolation, he could score on catch/shoot, he could score via cuts, he could make assisting passes off of his motion. Once he got the ball, he could create a hockey assist once he got the ball out of motion.

Doctor MJ wrote:

Spoiler:

So I said "Yes", but I should be really clear:

I've been getting higher and higher on Ginobili with time. Let me state something up front that I need folks to know I acknowledge:

To what extent was Ginobili unable to play more MPG? I'll acknowledge that if this was indeed a major problem, then it makes total sense to be considerably less impressed with Ginobili than I am, and to vote "No" on this poll.

Okay, so in terms of Ginobili, what do I see?

1. His style of play is that of the intuitive genius. He makes improvisations in the moment that surprise everyone on the court, and it's often beautiful.

2. Players like this tend to either boom or bust analytically. A player who sees an opening that could work has some percentage chance of success. If that chance is lower than what the offense could otherwise achieve, then the player can quite easily hurt your team.

But Ginobili pops like crazy in the +/-, which means that was we're talking about here is someone with sufficient dexterity and risk assessment to harness the creativity productively.

3. For those unfamiliar with the specifics of Ginobili, know first that Ginobili is a known darling of +/- metrics. To just give one study that I think encapsulates things in the right general direction:

Calculating Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus for 25 Years of NBA Basketball

Based on this list, which serves as a career average RAPM for most of these players, this is the leaderboard they give:

1. LeBron
2. Embiid
3. Garnett
4. Paul
5. Curry
6. Duncan
7. Jokic
8. Ginobili
9. Draymond
10. Tatum

By no means does this "prove" Ginobili was the 8th best player for the time period in question - it wouldn't even if we didn't know about Ginobili's limited minutes, but we do know that that's a thing too.

But the key point is that this data makes Ginobili look quite good right from the start. I'd say everyone on that list in their peak would be expected to be a Top 10 player today - though aside from Ginobili, I'm sure there's disagreement pertaining to Draymond.

Now though, this data gives most of the weight to the regular season.

How about a pretty-close playoff-only model?

1998-2019 Playoffs RAPM

Leaders:

1. LeBron
2. Draymond
3. Ginobili
4. Robinson
5. Kawhi
6. Embiid
7. Duncan
8. Durant
9. Garnett
10. Curry

The fact that Ginobili actually passes up Duncan isn't necessarily the big deal - cuz minutes - but the fact that he's showing a clear upward trend is significant. If Ginobili was mostly about feasting on secondary lineups from weak teams, we'd expect that advantage to go down in the playoffs. Instead it's going up.

But now focusing further on the deeper playoffs I'll quote what I recently posted on another thread:

Doctor MJ wrote:So, 70s asked about whether I was using RS, PS, or both, and I said Both.

I figure there's not a lot of curiosity about the RS, so here's some PS data.

This is for the 3 year ranges specified before (Spurs 2005-07, Warriors 2014-16).

If we go by +/- per game:

Green +6.88
Ginobili +6.11
Curry +4.76
Duncan +3.84
Thompson +3.17
Parker +3.11

And since we're talking Ginobili, if I do a per 48 minutes:

Ginobiil +9.09
Green +8.95
Curry +6.08
Duncan +4.92
Thompson +4.26
Parker +4.01

We can also do a "deep playoffs" evaluation by chopping out April. So just based on May & June:

+/- per game

Ginobili +6.40
Curry +4.06
Green +4.00
Duncan +3.67
Parker +3.11
Thompson +1.21

And per 48:

Ginobili +9.33
Curry +5.13
Green +5.09
Duncan +4.60
Parker +3.97
Thompson +1.62

Note that because the Warriors were eliminated in the first round in '13-14, you can definitely see this as cherry picking for the Warrior trio, but I'm actually looking to focus the attention on the Argentine. Ginobili's numbers are truly insane, and a reason to wonder about how strong the Spurs could have been if they had been strategically different in this era.

Key takeaway: Ginobili isn't just standing out more in the playoffs, he's specifically standing out in the deep playoffs in a way I'm not sure we have anyone can match.

Here's where I'll also note that in each of the 4 titles the Spurs won with Ginobili, he led the team in playoff +/-. Going back to '96-97, we haven't seen this from anyone else.

Oh, and there's also the matter that he led Argentina to the Gold Medal in the 2004 Olympics then came back to the NBA and was really the dominant force carrying the Spurs through that 2005 playoff gauntlet.

It's astonishing stuff.

Finally circling back to the MPG issue:

While I don't want to appear as if I'm saying that the MPG limitations could not have been based on something fundamentally real and definitive - maybe that motor wears itself out quicker than most over the course of a game - I think we have to recognize that there's good reason to think that this is one sort of situation where a guy may not ever get used to true optimality. Why?

1. He joined a team that had already won a title with their current young franchise player as the focal point of the team's offense, and wasn't looking to make a switch.

2. He played an improvisational style that at times broke the play the Spurs were trying to use. Former teammate Robert Horry recently commented something astonishing:

Robert Horry wrote:Let me just say this: You got yours because, if Manu Ginobili would have did the things he was supposed to do, I would have had like 10 championships.

This is the sort of statement gives us a window into how things felt within the team when Ginobili did his own thing on the court. They were frustrated by it. They saw it blowing up possessions at times, and at least one of them, thought the bad was really weighing the team down.

Horry, and anyone like him, was 100% wrong in his assessment. The reality is that Ginbili was helping and helping like crazy...

But on a team that was build around another offensive fulcrum, the frustration of letting Manu be Manu could very well have played a part in putting Ginobili with secondary units.

3. It worked really well, as it was. With Ginobili in this secondary role, the Spurs were excellent for a long time and won 3 titles in 5 years, including - perhaps importantly - Ginobili's rookie year. What all this means is that there really never was a time in that first half decade where Pop was likely to be asking himself, "What if we're going about things backwards on offense?". Even when you know it's your defense that's carrying the real load, if your offense is already good built around your star, are you really going to try something radically different?

So yeah, while I'll never be able to prove it, I actually think there's pretty good reason to think that Ginobili would be a first-class superstar in today's game if he were to land in the right place.

I feel like refraining from trying to peg him at a specific slot in today's league, beyond responding to the poll with the "Yes", but I'll say this:

In my latest assessment, I ranked Ginobili as having the most impressive '04-05 campaign out of any player. In years where the Spurs fall short Ginobili's limited MPG makes him hard to consider in such rare, but in a year where he was pretty clearly the best player on the best team through the 4 series victories, hard for me to insist that other players should rank above him when I really don't think they and their extra minutes could have achieved what Ginobili did.

Moonbeam wrote:- Boston Celtics
Key players: Bill Russell, Sam Jones, John Havlicek, KC Jones, Tom Sanders, Bailey Howell



- Boston Celtics
Key players: John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Jo Jo White, Paul Silas, Don Chaney, Don Nelson

homecourtloss wrote:Vote: Manu Ginobli
Alt vote: John Havlicek
Nomination: Draymond Green

Just in time, Taylor comes out with a video about Manu. No new revelations and the same questions about whether he could do the same things for 38 or 40 minutes per game, but Taylor makes a case for Manu being the 1b (in some ways a 1a) to Duncan.

[url]

Watch on YouTube

;t=1609s[/url]

Some relevant graphs (no new real info info other than maybe offensive load when solo on court but good to point out)






I wrote a bit about him in the “Peak Manu in 2023” thread and the nature of his game that translates into this high impact

homecourtloss wrote:In essence, Manu’s game was characterized by the additive nature of his contributions to his team's MOV. His monster RAPM can be attributed not only to his individual skills but also to the additive nature of everything that he did. He wasn't just good at just about everything (most players aren’t); his goodness translated into tangible benefits for the entire team in pretty much all aspects of basketball. This is a reason why his RAPM numbers looked like what they did throughout his career. His play either lead to individual results from him (box score) or helped the results of the players around him.

His versatility was such that he wasn't below average in any aspect of the game. He could score (off the ball in motion off of cuts or as a spot up shooter, with the ball in screen-roll actions, in iso, in transition) defend (individual and team), pass and play-make (with the ball, or off of quick passes off of his motion) effectively. This well-roundedness allowed him to impact the game positively in various ways, not only directly off of his direct box score contributions, but due to the additive nature for his teammates through his actions in every phase of the game.

He had no real weaknesses and good in every aspect of the game, both individually and in a team concept.

1. Defense: Ginobili's defense wasn't just about stopping his man. His defensive often led to turnovers, steals, and fast-break opportunities for the Spurs. I wish we had some Synergy stats from his prime to see this. His ability to disrupt opponents' plays was a catalyst for his team's defensive success, including high % offense off defense. He was also a good vocal leader on defense, getting teammates in position.

Once in transition, his ability to excel there played a role in the Spurs’ offense. He was pushing the ball up the court and making plays in transition or setting up transiron threes or easy scores for teammates. Ginobili's speed and decision-making created fast-break opportunities that boosted the team's offensive efficiency

2. Playmaking and Passing: While not always the primary ball-handler, Ginobili's playmaking abilities often led to high leverage offense opportunities that were created out of nothing sometimes, but also synergized well with what Pop wanted to do on offense even though Pop knew that he had to rein in Ginobili’s wildly, creative and often risky play. His passes and court vision created scoring opportunities for his teammates including many hockey assists.

3. Offensive Movement: Ginobili's non-stop movement on the court was a nightmare for defenders. His cuts, screens, and off-ball plays not only created opportunities for himself but also for teammates. One of the things about Ginobili was that his movement didn’t just lead to catch and shoot opportunities once he got the ball, but his movement would lead to him getting the ball and then creating off of that catch once defenders had been taken out of posirtion via the motion offense and his movement. so, he could score in isolation, he could score on catch/shoot, he could score via cuts, he could make assisting passes off of his motion. Once he got the ball, he could create a hockey assist once he got the ball out of motion.

Doc MJ wrote about some of his impact signals in the same thread:

Doctor MJ wrote:

Spoiler:

So I said "Yes", but I should be really clear:

I've been getting higher and higher on Ginobili with time. Let me state something up front that I need folks to know I acknowledge:

To what extent was Ginobili unable to play more MPG? I'll acknowledge that if this was indeed a major problem, then it makes total sense to be considerably less impressed with Ginobili than I am, and to vote "No" on this poll.

Okay, so in terms of Ginobili, what do I see?

1. His style of play is that of the intuitive genius. He makes improvisations in the moment that surprise everyone on the court, and it's often beautiful.

2. Players like this tend to either boom or bust analytically. A player who sees an opening that could work has some percentage chance of success. If that chance is lower than what the offense could otherwise achieve, then the player can quite easily hurt your team.

But Ginobili pops like crazy in the +/-, which means that was we're talking about here is someone with sufficient dexterity and risk assessment to harness the creativity productively.

3. For those unfamiliar with the specifics of Ginobili, know first that Ginobili is a known darling of +/- metrics. To just give one study that I think encapsulates things in the right general direction:

Calculating Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus for 25 Years of NBA Basketball

Based on this list, which serves as a career average RAPM for most of these players, this is the leaderboard they give:

1. LeBron
2. Embiid
3. Garnett
4. Paul
5. Curry
6. Duncan
7. Jokic
8. Ginobili
9. Draymond
10. Tatum

By no means does this "prove" Ginobili was the 8th best player for the time period in question - it wouldn't even if we didn't know about Ginobili's limited minutes, but we do know that that's a thing too.

But the key point is that this data makes Ginobili look quite good right from the start. I'd say everyone on that list in their peak would be expected to be a Top 10 player today - though aside from Ginobili, I'm sure there's disagreement pertaining to Draymond.

Now though, this data gives most of the weight to the regular season.

How about a pretty-close playoff-only model?

1998-2019 Playoffs RAPM

Leaders:

1. LeBron
2. Draymond
3. Ginobili
4. Robinson
5. Kawhi
6. Embiid
7. Duncan
8. Durant
9. Garnett
10. Curry

The fact that Ginobili actually passes up Duncan isn't necessarily the big deal - cuz minutes - but the fact that he's showing a clear upward trend is significant. If Ginobili was mostly about feasting on secondary lineups from weak teams, we'd expect that advantage to go down in the playoffs. Instead it's going up.

But now focusing further on the deeper playoffs I'll quote what I recently posted on another thread:

Doctor MJ wrote:So, 70s asked about whether I was using RS, PS, or both, and I said Both.

I figure there's not a lot of curiosity about the RS, so here's some PS data.

This is for the 3 year ranges specified before (Spurs 2005-07, Warriors 2014-16).

If we go by +/- per game:

Green +6.88
Ginobili +6.11
Curry +4.76
Duncan +3.84
Thompson +3.17
Parker +3.11

And since we're talking Ginobili, if I do a per 48 minutes:

Ginobiil +9.09
Green +8.95
Curry +6.08
Duncan +4.92
Thompson +4.26
Parker +4.01

We can also do a "deep playoffs" evaluation by chopping out April. So just based on May & June:

+/- per game

Ginobili +6.40
Curry +4.06
Green +4.00
Duncan +3.67
Parker +3.11
Thompson +1.21

And per 48:

Ginobili +9.33
Curry +5.13
Green +5.09
Duncan +4.60
Parker +3.97
Thompson +1.62

Note that because the Warriors were eliminated in the first round in '13-14, you can definitely see this as cherry picking for the Warrior trio, but I'm actually looking to focus the attention on the Argentine. Ginobili's numbers are truly insane, and a reason to wonder about how strong the Spurs could have been if they had been strategically different in this era.

Key takeaway: Ginobili isn't just standing out more in the playoffs, he's specifically standing out in the deep playoffs in a way I'm not sure we have anyone can match.

Here's where I'll also note that in each of the 4 titles the Spurs won with Ginobili, he led the team in playoff +/-. Going back to '96-97, we haven't seen this from anyone else.

Oh, and there's also the matter that he led Argentina to the Gold Medal in the 2004 Olympics then came back to the NBA and was really the dominant force carrying the Spurs through that 2005 playoff gauntlet.

It's astonishing stuff.

Finally circling back to the MPG issue:

While I don't want to appear as if I'm saying that the MPG limitations could not have been based on something fundamentally real and definitive - maybe that motor wears itself out quicker than most over the course of a game - I think we have to recognize that there's good reason to think that this is one sort of situation where a guy may not ever get used to true optimality. Why?

1. He joined a team that had already won a title with their current young franchise player as the focal point of the team's offense, and wasn't looking to make a switch.

2. He played an improvisational style that at times broke the play the Spurs were trying to use. Former teammate Robert Horry recently commented something astonishing:

Robert Horry wrote:Let me just say this: You got yours because, if Manu Ginobili would have did the things he was supposed to do, I would have had like 10 championships.

This is the sort of statement gives us a window into how things felt within the team when Ginobili did his own thing on the court. They were frustrated by it. They saw it blowing up possessions at times, and at least one of them, thought the bad was really weighing the team down.

Horry, and anyone like him, was 100% wrong in his assessment. The reality is that Ginbili was helping and helping like crazy...

But on a team that was build around another offensive fulcrum, the frustration of letting Manu be Manu could very well have played a part in putting Ginobili with secondary units.

3. It worked really well, as it was. With Ginobili in this secondary role, the Spurs were excellent for a long time and won 3 titles in 5 years, including - perhaps importantly - Ginobili's rookie year. What all this means is that there really never was a time in that first half decade where Pop was likely to be asking himself, "What if we're going about things backwards on offense?". Even when you know it's your defense that's carrying the real load, if your offense is already good built around your star, are you really going to try something radically different?

So yeah, while I'll never be able to prove it, I actually think there's pretty good reason to think that Ginobili would be a first-class superstar in today's game if he were to land in the right place.

I feel like refraining from trying to peg him at a specific slot in today's league, beyond responding to the poll with the "Yes", but I'll say this:

In my latest assessment, I ranked Ginobili as having the most impressive '04-05 campaign out of any player. In years where the Spurs fall short Ginobili's limited MPG makes him hard to consider in such rare, but in a year where he was pretty clearly the best player on the best team through the 4 series victories, hard for me to insist that other players should rank above him when I really don't think they and their extra minutes could have achieved what Ginobili did.

penbeast0 wrote:Is Baylor actually less efficient as an NBA, not ABA, player than Barry? I know Barry has playmaking on him, though Baylor was the better rebounder.

Let's look only at scoring though. Using TS Add (I know, my new favorite stat measure), Baylor had 4 years over 100, Barry only had his first two plus some impressive ABA years in the early, much weaker, ABA. On the other hand, Baylor had 2 seasons worse than -50 while Barry only had one. Barry has the highest and the lowest numbers; both are much better early in their careers.

trelos6 wrote:Nomination: Dwight Howard

Fantastic defender in his prime. Also had very good rim gravity. Yes, couldn't do anything outside the rim, but boy was he amazing with his catch radius and dunking prowess. Hung around due to his defensive ability. Great weak MVP level peak (at this point in the top 100), and 10+ years as an All-D level center.

Doctor MJ wrote:

penbeast0 wrote:Is Baylor actually less efficient as an NBA, not ABA, player than Barry? I know Barry has playmaking on him, though Baylor was the better rebounder.

Let's look only at scoring though. Using TS Add (I know, my new favorite stat measure), Baylor had 4 years over 100, Barry only had his first two plus some impressive ABA years in the early, much weaker, ABA. On the other hand, Baylor had 2 seasons worse than -50 while Barry only had one. Barry has the highest and the lowest numbers; both are much better early in their careers.

Good points.

penbeast0 wrote:Is Baylor actually less efficient as an NBA, not ABA, player than Barry? I know Barry has playmaking on him, though Baylor was the better rebounder.

Let's look only at scoring though. Using TS Add (I know, my new favorite stat measure), Baylor had 4 years over 100, Barry only had his first two plus some impressive ABA years in the early, much weaker, ABA. On the other hand, Baylor had 2 seasons worse than -50 while Barry only had one. Barry has the highest and the lowest numbers; both are much better early in their careers.

penbeast0 wrote:Is Baylor actually less efficient as an NBA, not ABA, player than Barry? I know Barry has playmaking on him, though Baylor was the better rebounder.

Let's look only at scoring though. Using TS Add (I know, my new favorite stat measure), Baylor had 4 years over 100, Barry only had his first two plus some impressive ABA years in the early, much weaker, ABA. On the other hand, Baylor had 2 seasons worse than -50 while Barry only had one. Barry has the highest and the lowest numbers; both are much better early in their careers.

tsherkin wrote:

trelos6 wrote:Nomination: Dwight Howard

Fantastic defender in his prime. Also had very good rim gravity. Yes, couldn't do anything outside the rim, but boy was he amazing with his catch radius and dunking prowess. Hung around due to his defensive ability. Great weak MVP level peak (at this point in the top 100), and 10+ years as an All-D level center.

08-11 Dwight was a pretty strong offensive weapon. Very efficient from the floor, that's before he entirely forgot how to be even moderately competent at the line. Lots of great off-ball movement, ran well in transition, offensive rebounding to the max, most of his most-efficient seasons (all of them at consequential volume), worked very well with his perimeter guys in a more distributed offensive environment.

Before his ego got in the way, basically. And of course he was an insane defensive rebounder and a very, very good defender.

Dwight was amazing in his day. Too many comparisons to the wrong guy caused issues. Not appreciating the value he did bring, also an issue. Definitely a headcase, but damn, that was a nasty 4-year stretch for him.

homecourtloss wrote:~16,000 minutes of data from 2008-2011

With Howard on court: 112.5 ORtg
With Howard off court: 104.5 ORtg