Post#20 » by ReggiesKnicks » Tue Sep 16, 2025 2:44 pm
I thought the Thinking Basketball Podcast highlighted exactly why 2017 Kawhi was better than his later versions--Defensive ability and offensive consistency. He lost his spry and youthfulness after his 2017 Ankle injury. He struggled with nagging injuries in 2019 to the point where he played just 60 regular season games and something the podcast didn't touch on was Kawhi's off-ball movement and cutting taking a step back. It's impossible for me to justify voting for 2019 over 2017 Kawhi given what I perceive a clear gap in ability and impact.
Everyone is beating the dead horse about how big of a crap shoot the next ~10 players are, and I wholeheartedly agree. Is it one of the offensive maestros like CP3, Nash, Dirk or Kobe? Or should the two-way bigs like Giannis or AD get in who have obvious offensive limitations? Split the middle with the wings in Kawhi and Wade?
Difficult to say.
Here are a few of the players I am leaning towards.
2011 Dirk
Dirk+Chandler RS: +11.3, 1400 Minutes
Dirk+Chandler PS: +12.3, 560 Minutes
2017 Kawhi
Kawhi+LMA RS: +6.7, 1900 Minutes
Kawhi+LMA PS: +6.8, 330 Minutes
2005-2007 Nash
Nash+Marion RS: +11.8, 7150 Minutes
Nash+Marion PS: +6.4, 1630 Minutes
Nash+Amare RS: +12.2, 4260 Minutes
Nash+Amare PS: +6.5, 1000 Minutes
2014-2017 CP3
CP3+Blake RS: +12.9, 6500 Minutes
CP3+Blake PS: +6.7, 1000 Minutes
2008-2010 Kobe
Kobe+Gasol RS: +10.8, 5220 Minutes
Kobe+Gasol PS: +6.6, 2420 Minutes
2019-2022 Giannis
Giannis+Middleton RS: +10.2, 5340 Minutes
Giannis+Middleton PS: +9.2, 1330 Minutes
Giannis+Jrue RS: +11.1, 2470 Minutes
Giannis+Jrue PS: +9.6, 1030 Minutes
2006 Wade
Wade+Shaq RS: +10.3, 1430 Minutes
Wade+Shaq PS: +6.0, 670 Minutes
Without doing a deep-dive analysis, there does appear to be a consistent theme here. All of CP3, Nash, Wade and Kobe have similar +/- splits with their 2nd best player in the Regular Season to Post-Season, which sees a dip or drop-off from around +10 to +12 in the Regular Season down to +6 to +7 in the post-season. This drop-off isn't bad, per se, since a +6 to +7 +/- in the post-season, especially for multi-year runs like Nash, CP3 and Kobe had been incredibly impressive and leads to strong championship equity. Ironically, Nash and CP3 were never able to get over the hump for various reasons.
Giannis and Dirk come away looking like the best in this particular scope, which is a signal regarding size trumping all in the NBA.
How did Dirk win affect games?
Dirk's offensive skill set is truly a unicorn. Most modern big men who are All-Time Great offensive forces are either putting immense pressure on the rim or are incredible passers. Dirk can pressure the rim, though in 2011 this wasn't to the same level as it was in the mid-2000's. Dirk can make the right pass, but isn't a passing savant like Jokic or anything close to it.
Instead, Dirk utilized his innate ability to score at will, contested, from the mid-range, to open up the court. Typically putting immense pressure on the rim leads to opening up the court for your teammates, creating gravity at or near the rim and thus warping the defense around the rim to generate open looks elsewhere. Shaq was the poster child for this while Giannis is the Temu version. What Dirk did was have a similar warping affect as Shaq, except from the mid-range area. This led to something different and unique, gravity pulling away from both the perimeter and at the rim, the two best shots in the NBA. Having gravity releasing the pressures from both the rim and perimeter allowed for Dirk and the Mavericks to take advantage of two areas on the court where the Mavericks would have a clear advantage. Of course, Dirk was so good in the mid-range he also had an advantage there as well.
Dirk's 2011 shot-profile
At Rim + In-Paint: 25.8%
Mid-Range: 60.0%
3P: 14.2%
Dirk didn't just dominate in the mid-range, he specifically dominated on the blocks, notable the right block, which he favoured to the left block. This led to easy Chandler finishes if help came from the baseline, or easy 3P shots often from Kidd or with Kidd starting to swing the ball to the opposite corner/wing from the gravity created by Dirk.
I'm fascinated by Dirk in-part because when he is on the court compared to not, there is only one indicator which sees a gigantic shift. Often times, we see Assist% or TOV% or OREB% have drastic differences with offensive anchors. With Dirk, we simply see massive shifts in eFG% throughout the entirety of his prime, often times with the 3 indicators I mentioned prior as seeing no change with our without Dirk.
Dirk's skill-set will always be incredibly valuable, but let's first just look at 2011 and contextualize Dirk. He didn't affect the team's offense in many indicators except for the most important, so why is that?
It is simple. Half-Court offensive rating in 2011 was about 88.6 Offensive Rating. Dirk's mid-range generated 101.3 Offensive Rating alone. That's a +12.7 lift in Offensive Rating. This is why the mid-range shot holds incredible value when shot at a near 50% rate. Half-court offenses are still <50% Offensive Rating (Approaching 100 Offensive Rating but still below).
I don't have time right now to dive into the rest, but I am going to go with Giannis, CP3 and Nash to round out my Ballot for this round.
1. Dirk Nowitzki 2011
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo 2021 (2019, 2020, 2022)
3. Chris Paul 2015 (2014)
4. Steve Nash 2007 (2005, 2006)
