3&Ds in the Hall of Fame?

[durantbird]

Michael Cooper recently went in. Does it create a precedent to put in guys like Shane Battier, Bruce Bowen, Robert Horry, Danny Green, Alex Caruso?

Should they be inducted? I think the 3&D concept is becoming increasingly more valuable and inherent in unfolding the full basketball story, which is what the hall does.

[GeorgeMarcus]

The thing with Cooper is he won a DPOY, 5 rings and 8 consecutive all defensive teams. As far as accolades go that puts him on another tier than any of those guys. Not necessarily saying he's a better player but when it comes to the HoF accolades matter

[Doctor MJ]

Michael Cooper recently went in. Does it create a precedent to put in guys like Shane Battier, Bruce Bowen, Robert Horry, Danny Green, Alex Caruso?

Should they be inducted? I think the 3&D concept is becoming increasingly more valuable and inherent in unfolding the full basketball story, which is what the hall does.

Well so let's start talking about Coop:

I love Coop, and I think his all-around basketball career (including his time winning chips coaching the Sparks in the WNBA) has a reasonable case for the Hall, but:

1. Calling Coop 3&D is a bit misleading because the Lakers didn't really look to have him take 3's frequently, he just did it more than most at the time. As such, he didn't really spearhead the movement.

2. Coop's Hall candidacy clearly benefitted immensely from lobbying from Magic & co in which they mentioned his DPOY...which he only got because of lobbying from Magic & co. Coop was about as good of a lock-down defender as you'll ever seen, but do think he was ever actually the most valuable defensive player in the league? Nah.

In the end, I think a lot of what happened here was Coop functioning as that "next best Showtime Laker" not in the Hall, which is something that great dynasties tend to use to gradually get more of their guys in. You might say Coop for the Lakers is a bit like KC Jones for the '60s Celtics.

In terms of the other guys you mention:

Battier - it would take a serious push to elevate him on the basis of his "no stat all-star" rep which didn't seriously get started while he played. The fact that he didn't actually play that long of a career probably kept him from getting the kind of "you can always depend on Battier!" rep that you get with someone like Horry.

Bowen - this would be the guy who would get in if they wanted to enshrine the 3&D concept I think, because I don't remember people being called that before Bowen and the Spurs starting Bowen in this role while on their run was a big deal to people. However, I would consider Bowen to be either the worst or 2nd worst player on this list. He wasn't noteworthy because he was so good at 3&D, but because someone so bad at offense could find a productive niche as 3&D, and even still the Spurs theory behind this revolutionary role player approach with Bowen was iffy because it's not like it actually made for a better starting lineup to have Bowen starting while Ginobili came off the bench. The theory of having a defensive specialist in their instead of a microwave scorer of course makes sense, but quite literally Ginobili was just plain better at Bowen at basically everything in basketball except man defense, while also being better than Parker at basically everything including defense.

This then to say, this is one of those cases where the thing that caused the paradigm shift was kind of a bumbly thing that was impressive not so much because it provided a killer edge for the team using it, but because it provided a proof of concept for the whole NBA that if it could work with Bowen, then it won't be hard to find plenty of other guys at least as good as Bowen.

Horry - in the wake of Coop getting in, Horry is now feeling like a serious candidate to me. Guys like Horry are simply better than the guys who get lower tier all-star nods, and should be treated as such. Like the idea of putting DeMar DeRozan in the Hall above Horry is basically saying that scoring a lot of points while dooming a team to non-contender status is more impressive than a guy who can routinely come in an shore up your playoff death lineup.

I will say, I think I prefer Battier to Horry prime vs prime, but I don't think anyone's going to give Battier a serious chance to make the Hall until after Horry.

While I talk about Horry, I think it makes sense to mention Derek Fisher as well. The reality is that both Horry & Fisher were playoff death lineup type guys on multiple teams, and that's no small thing. I frankly think Fisher should get some consideration before Horry, but again, don't expect that to happen.

Green - I'm just so glad he's being brought up. For the Spurs, he was Bowen 2.0, and he was just plain better overall than Bowen. The fact that he also won chips for multiple teams to me puts him in a higher class.

Caruso - so to me Caruso is in a new sub-category because the most salient thing about him relative to contemporaries is his ultra-high impact short-minutes. In a league where it's been long accepted that bigs are the guys who give you the most impact, Caruso is showing that at least in bursts, you can match the impact of a big by working that much harder.

For Caruso, or someone like him to become a serious Hall candidate, I think he'd have to keep it up for a long career, and continue to keep popping up on championship teams many times. He's done it twice and that's awesome, but it will probably considerably more than that.

Last thing here: All of the guys here other than Coop played at least partially in the PBP era, and the simple stat I've been applying in recent weeks is the RS RAPM VORP I made from Englemann's career RAPM. Note that for guys who debuted before '96-97 like Horry, we're projecting based on later performances what their early impact most likely was - and this is bound to either under or overestimate each player.

But without further ado, here's how these guys are stacking up with this career regular season stat:

Code: Select all

Player  Off  Def  All
Battier 976 1201 2177
Horry   447 1110 1556
Green   868  418 1286
Bowen    12  938  950
Caruso  172  557  729

So you can see among this group, regular season only, Battier's the guy who really stands out with Bowen looking like he'll soon be passed by Caruso to fall to the bottom of the list.

While I'm at it, here's a list of the top non-all-stars on my VORP list:

Code: Select all

   Player        Off  Def  All
1. Lamar Odom   1301 1157 2458
2. Andre Miller 2276   81 2357
3. Shane Battier 976 1201 2177
4. Derek Fisher 1162  916 2078
5. George Hill  1238  760 1998


Edit: Just realized I skipped Nene who scores 846 on Off, 1238 on D, and 2084 overall to slot in between Battier & Fisher.

Now, being at the top of this list of course isn't going to get you into the Hall simply because, and Miller's a guy specifically without a ton of playoff success to show for it, but the other guys to me clearly fit a general discussion of role players who should be talked about if we're going to talk about role players who might deserve a place in the Hall.

And yeah, I think Odom needs to be seriously considered there.

One last note, I feel like Hill will be on the outside looking in to this conversation even if one or two of these guys do make the Hall and I'm not really looking to argue this is wrong, but something I find to be noteworthy:

Hill first really came to attention filling in for an injured Tony Parker, and there was a moment where we wondered if Parker was going to get pushed to the side in favor of Hill. Then the Spurs traded Hill for Kawhi and the rest is history. It was definitely a series of correct moves, but:

Hill has a higher career RS RAPM VORP than Parker, and he also - like all competent modern perimeter players - shot the 3.

This then to say that while Parker is Hallbound and Hill almost certainly isn't, I think there's actually a pretty decent case to make that Hill was the better player. He was merely a role player of course while Parker was high primacy...but Parker's high primacy wasn't actually driving the Spurs crazy success and for the modern era, I think there's a good case to be made that a contender should want Hill as a role player, and shouldn't want a Parker-like player at all.

This is another aspect of why I think it's a bit more complicated than people want to acknowledge about how far ahead of the curve the Spurs actually were. Ginobili was ahead of the curve always, but the Spurs themselves weren't necessarily so until the Beautiful Game era of the 2010s.

[B-Mitch 30]

I think one thing to keep in mind with Battier is his college career, where he won a championship and player of the year award, as well as a gold medal at the 2001 Goodwill Games. Him and Jason Terry are the only players to win those two, plus an NBA title.

[Doctor MJ]

I think one thing to keep in mind with Battier is his college career, where he won a championship and player of the year award, as well as a gold medal at the 2001 Goodwill Games. Him and Jason Terry are the only players to win those two, plus an NBA title.

This is a good point. Were we talking about the best college basketball careers from guys drafted in the '00s, you might say it's between Battier & Noah/Horford. I'm expecting Horford to get in at this point, and that might make it so that there's no real push for any other college players in the era, but if they were going to champion one more, it's probably Battier.

Note: Obviously I'm favoring guys who had major success across multiple years over One & Done guys on this front. It's not a question of whether guys like Melo & KD make the Hall.

[lessthanjake]

The following isn’t just about 3&D guys, but I’ve recently come to the view that really top-tier role players are far more important than people really realize. I think the top role players are generally +3 or +4 impact per-100-possession players. And the key here is that the alternative to them on other teams is often going to be someone who is like -1 or -2, because there’s really not a lot of guys in the league who have figured out how to have such impact in a limited role. So they just make a huge difference. And, not coincidentally, it’s very common to find at least one of these guys on championship teams. In my view, when it comes to title chances, it’s definitely not as important as having one of the top few superstars in the league and not as important as having a second star, but it’s not just orders of magnitude less important either. These guys are often the 3rd most important piece on championship teams (sometimes 2nd or 4th), IMO, even though they don’t get lots of recognition.

Some examples of guys I’d put in this category of super role players (other guys may have operated at this level for a small number of years, but these guys were pretty consistent IMO):

- Vlade Divac
- Sam Perkins
- Shane Battier
- Toni Kukoc
- Ron Harper
- Robert Horry
- Aaron Gordon
- Derrick White
- Al Horford (in his later years as a role player)
- Michael Cooper
- Danny Green
- Alex Caruso
- Danny Ainge
- Nate McMillan
- Lamar Odom
- Derek Fisher
- Vinnie Johnson

Should guys like this make the Hall of Fame? Well, I think the answer is no if they’ve not won titles. They may be really valuable building blocks to make a championship roster, but if they don’t actually win one, then I don’t see the basis for putting them in the Hall of Fame. So a guy like Nate McMillan is out of luck. But if they’ve won titles, then I think we should think about whether someone would make the Hall of Fame if they were similarly important pieces on a title team but derived their importance more from scoring. For instance, is a guy like Klay Thompson going to make the Hall of Fame? Or Tony Parker? I think the answer is yes (indeed, it already is yes for Parker). But are those guys more impactful to their team’s chances of winning a title than these kinds of role players, even accounting for the role players generally playing fewer minutes? I’m actually not so sure. So should someone like Robert Horry make the Hall of Fame too? I’m inclined to think yes—even though I think I would’ve said otherwise even a few months ago before really delving into the RAPM numbers for guys like this.