Name players alltime that would've done more with what Robinson had

[falcolombardi]

I think 2003 duncan in 95 robinson place has a good chance

Although overcoming rockets hot shooting would be tough

[AEnigma]

Hi Enigma -- if this is directed at me, I definitely never used Robinson's on/off numbers with Tim Duncan to say this is exactly what he'd do during his peak, with no further contextual analysis. But I'm also not saying this data shouldn't make us any more confident in playoff Robinson either.

It was directed at the typical Robinson supporter, based on a comment made in the thread. So you can read it as incidentally but not specifically or deliberately directed to you via your identity as a typical Robinson supporter.

There's a clear trend with a better fit / more talented team, basically every stat we have for Robinson shoots up in the playoffs (vs his younger self or vs what we might expect for an older player).

What stats. It certainly was not his scoring, and you do not have playoff on/off before Duncan. Defensive rebounding, I suppose, but hard to really hang your hat on that.

You probably saw in the other discussion, Robinson's 4-year on/off sample from 98-01 is literally the GOAT in the playoffs. His 3-year PIPM sample would be Top ~15 all time among 3-year peaks (and remember, this is playoffs only!).

How highly do you rate Draymond, Manu, Baron Davis, and Ray Allen for their playoff peaks. Or Westbrook, if you find those options facetious.

Is the minute sample smaller than ideal, and is the fit favorable? Absolutely, which I've said myself. But considering he shows this level of impact in the regular season (so it's not like he's never capable of this impact), and considering he showed it after his peak in the playoffs when granted a better team (despite being older and a supposed playoff "choker"), I have a hard time thinking the older playoff bump is entirely fake. He improved in the playoffs when he had a better fit when he was older, so why shouldn't we expect him to show playoff improvements if he happened to have better fit when he was during his peak?

The question then becomes how much would improved fit / improved team change his impact. Let's say he gets a better team during his peak, but not as good as 99-01. To me, he'd improve with better fit, but perhaps not as much as he would if if his team were as good as 99-01. But I also see his playoff impact increasing if we're looking at his peak years vs his older years. To me, these factors (better player, not quite as good situation as 99-01 though better than the terrible fit he actually in 94-96) balance out, which puts him around the same playoff level in impact as he actually showed in 99-01 with a moderately better team in 94-96. That's a ~top 10 regular season peak (per you) and a ~top 15 playoff peak (per 99-01 PIPM) (or maybe top 20ish if you want to downgrade him more for fit concerns and upgrade him less for his peak years vs older years)

Question for you: If he was given a better fit from 94-95 (say a better offensive costar / depth, who could help score and playmake for him), do you not think his impact would improve? If it did improve, how much by (e.g. if his playoffs is ~30-40th GOAT with the atrocious fit he had per PIPM, what would it be with better fit?) ?

So again I am skeptical you are tracking what “impact” is here, but because you were not explicitly talking about postseason versus regular season “impact”, there is at least room to walk this line for now.

If you were talking about regular season net impact, then we automatically have a problem, because that “bad fit” was precisely why his regular season “impact” was so immense, and corrections in that “bad fit” demonstrably lessened his “impact”. Negative changes in fit are also what necessitated his “impact” to become what it did from 1994-96. Lebron’s teams have never relied upon him as much as they did in 2009 and 2010, and it shows.

However, this is a playoff discussion, so it is probably fairer to guess that you meant playoffs. That is a trickier question. 2017 Westbrook is probably the poster child for how a worse team can even further gas your postseason impact, but you can see similar-ish results with Baron Davis, Ray Allen, and indeed Tim Duncan (which teams are better “fits”: the 2001-03 Spurs, or the 2005-07 Spurs?). And on the subject of Tim Duncan, giving a second star could lead to results like 2005 Duncan or 2001 Shaq where their “impact” looks significantly lessened when the second star leads bench units to success. Or, you know, 2016 Curry. Curry is a fun example of this idea, actually: his highest “impact” is at the beginning of his postseason career, where the Warriors had no real way to replace him, but then his next highest is in 2017.

In any case, the idea is not that adding some better pieces to the 1994-96 Spurs would inherently increase his “impact”. Honestly, that framing is profoundly strange. Remember when I said the goal of the game was not to maximise your team’s reliance on you? Apparently worth reiterating both that and the recommendation you really divorce yourself from this blind faith in impact numbers. They are not a player ranking, they are not a measure of real player quality. Hell, most of the reason metrics like LEBRON and PIPM incorporate a box score consideration is to avoid getting too deeply lost in the weeds of team reliance. I know you have said you take other considerations, but lines like this really do suggest a struggle to not let those form the majority of how you see players. The point of adding better pieces would be to make the team less reliant on Robinson (or any star) when he is off the court and (well, sometimes “or”) outright better when he is on the court.

Going to pause on that “atrocious” fit for a moment. First, they did not succeed because they suddenly had an elite fitting team; they succeeded because Tim Duncan was a top five-ish player from the beginning and David Robinson for at least a couple of years was still a top ten to fifteen player. Tim Duncan is not really a good fit with Robinson outside of the raw talent addition. I mean, he is not a bad fit, the way you might say with Wade and Lebron, or with Howard and some of his later career star guard pairings. Defence tends to stack pretty well, so you always have that right away (this also helped Wade and Lebron to an extent too). But offensively at least, a second big would not be my first choice, and to the extent that defence does stack, that is not especially unique to Robinson over most other centres (but yes, most other centres would have even larger issues on offence, so that is where you give him your scalability point).

Second, in 1998, the lead players for the Spurs were Tim Duncan, Avery Johnson, David Robinson, Jaren Jackson, Vinny Del Negro, Will Purdue (backup big), and Chuck Person. Sean Elliott was on the roster but injured and deeply missed; I think the Spurs might have legitimately been able to win at full health that year, or at least make the Finals, but hey, that is how it goes. Anyway, looking back, in 1996 the lead players for the Spurs were Avery Johnson, David Robinson, Sean Elliott, Vinny Del Negro, Chuck Person, and Will Purdue. Hm, lot of familiar names. Is the idea that the team needed Tim Duncan (and Jaren Jackson) to fit together? They still lost to the Jazz, just like they did in 1994 and 1996 (Sean Elliott missed 1994 too), but this time they not only could blame health, they were legitimately competitive and legitimately able to slow the Utah offence for the first time. Is that a matter of suddenly improved “atrocious” fit? Or is it maybe that just throwing Tim Duncan onto a pretty fair team makes them more resilient and a more serious contender than they were previously?

I have no idea whether giving David Robinson a player like oh Glen Rice would suddenly turn them into a legitimate title contender capable of beating the Jazz/Knicks/Rockets in 1994 or the Rockets/Magic in 1995 or the Jazz/Sonics/Bulls in 1996, but what I do know is that he would almost certainly not be posting huge scoring numbers and +20 on/off splits. Alonzo Mourning was a great defender. Had really strong plus/minus values from 1997-2000, and a pretty good team around him. Never sniffed a title. Does peak David Robinson do better in his place? Yeah, probably, but is there anything there that makes me confident in a title? Not really, no, because simply lessening his scoring and creation burden does not in itself create postseason resilience (Tim Duncan is what does that).

As for your discussion of needing to perform "when asked to be a true lead", I'm personally not tied to needing to be a true lead on offense. He's clearly 1st option on defense, and was fine as a 1st option on offense but IMO would have been better as an offensive costar/1b. That's leader enough for me. Why? Well, Thinking Basketball estimates ~ 50% of NBA champions have a clear defensive first option and offensive costar. That seems like pretty common rate, absolutely beneficial to a championship team.

He had offensive co-stars until 1994, when you fell in love with him for generating massive impact numbers partially by not having any other reliable sources of offence. I do not think it is a coincidence that he had his worst series when he had the least help, but you are trying to have it both ways by praising him for doing everything in the regular season and then dismissing his failures to maintain at all in the postseason. Even with co-stars, his scoring still dipped (except against the no defence Run-TMC Warriors), so if we use that pre-1994 period, are you as enamoured of a player who loses effectiveness in the playoffs (albeit not as much as when he is asked to do everything) and does not have those giant impact numbers?

still Bill Russell's probably the quintessential example.
Question for you: do you downgrade players who are this archetype vs an offensive 1st option who's a worse defender? In theory, this should make you lower on players like peak Russell, 67/72 Wilt, Walton, Garnett, young Hakeem without good passing, etc.

1. David Robinson is not Bill Russell. I mean, he is not any of these guys, but Bill Russell is a massive outlier. Robinson is nowhere near as valuable defensively, nowhere near as smart, nowhere near as good of a leader, nowhere near as reliable in the postseason… Sure, Bill Russell had a top ten peak despite not offering quantifiably all that much on offence (although he did have value). That does not mean any good defender with offence can lay claim to the same, because none of them ever came close to providing the proof of concept he did basically every year of his career.

2. Hakeem was always a fair first option. His issue was just creation. Like, if pre-1993 Hakeem is on the 1990 Spurs in place of Robinson, they probably beat the Blazers (it was close as is).

3. Although Wilt lessened his scoring load in 1967, he still had full ability to be a top three scorer in the league (and, you know, literally had been the season prior). For what it is worth, I am not totally sold on 1967 Wilt being clearly above 1964 Wilt… but it worked the best for him, so whatever. Regardless, Wilt is a good example of a top tier defender who can also hold up as a top scorer; as we know, David Robinson cannot be that in the postseason. If all we knew of Wilt started in 1967, then maybe I would have questions about his ability to handle a scoring load without Hal Greer and Chet Walker and Billy Cunningham and Jerry West, but that was not how it went.

4. If you want to ask whether I think peak Robinson is better than 1972 Wilt, yeah, I am more open to that, but I do not really see Robinson handling Kareem the way Wilt did, and I am not quite sure that in that era Robinson would be able to match Wilt’s efficiency even when scaling back. But sure, compared to a near retirement Wilt scoring like Mitchell Robinson, it can be a discussion.

5. Garnett is what Robinson fans think Robinson is.

6. Walton has elements of Russell to him in that I think he is a lot smarter than David Robinson and I can trust him more in the postseason. You talk about “atrocious fit” with David Robinson. Okay, what about Walton’s “fit”. How did most of the guys on that team fare in the following years without him? Robinson is a better scorer, absolutely. Does he elevate teammates the way Walton did? I would say no, while acknowledging that it is a small sample for Walton, it is impossible to prove for Robinson, and it is conceivable that the Blazers were a Bob Gross hot-streak and a Philadelphia structural edit (e.g. replacing George McGinnis with Bobby Jones or really anyone who could actually give them some legitimate off-ball value) away from being relatively forgotten.

7. Rather than trying to aim for the tier above, maybe you should be looking more at that Ewing/Mourning/Howard tier. There is no trap for me in you wanting him to be better than he actually is.

8. May as well flip this back on you: why so low on Draymond when he is an impact giant who elevates in the postseason (pretty consistently grading out above Curry) and lacks that oh so annoying scoring primacy.

As for your Karl Malone comment, he would definitely do better with Tim Duncan. To me, many of the people who the media crown as inherent "playoff chokers" can often be partially explained by situation. That's not to say nobody get's worse in the playoffs, just that supposed "playoff chokers" are often overblown. Karl Malone's biggest problem was that his offensive load was slightly higher than he was comfortable with, which became exploitable in the playoffs. And his team’s defense wasn’t a huge help. With a better scoring co-star and defensive anchor like Duncan, many of his key playoff issues would be solved. That said, Karl Malone's defense is clearly below Robinson's, and Malone never showed Robinson's regular season impact, or Robinson's playoff impact when Robinson had that favorable situation. So I don't see Karl Malone being as good as Robinson playing with Duncan.

“He did not play with Tim Duncan so I do not see him being as good with Tim Duncan.”
Malone’s offence was also clearly above Robinson’s, and while he may not have quite matched Robinson’s 1994-96 impact, his 1997 season was not too far off -- and then without a teammate anywhere near Tim Duncan, he still had significant postseason “impact” numbers and brought his team to the Finals twice (one of which nearly ended in a win). I never got the feeling David Robinson was just a Stockton away from a Finals run, but hey, Stockton had massive “impact” of his own, so maybe you disagree.

I'd love to hear a more in-depth argument for Malone's defense > Robinson's, at least in this small sample.

I am mostly being flippant past the assertion that Malone defended Robinson better than Robinson defended Malone and that Malone fulfilled his defensive responsibilities better than Robinson did.

Specifically -- do you have any film evidence (e.g. plays from highlights or film analysis from full games) to suggest that his man defense declined more than just a bad matchup, or that his general rim protection / team defense / help defense declined at all?

Yeah funny how many bad matchups there seem to be.
Do I have film evidence on hand demonstrably proving that Robinson was less effective in help situations than he was in an average regular season game? Shockingly, no. And these series are getting harder to find on Youtube (you can find some portions of Game 4 1994 at least). But I would be interested if you were to watch those series and apply a similar lens that you did to Giannis which would excuse weak contests and delayed recoveries. I am not trying to damn Robinson here, but when you make it a point to build an entire case around “impact” and that impact suddenly vanishes in a postseason scenario — and much like we have seen with Rudy Gobert, it certainly did — then that player deserves to take a hit. Of course, if we remove ourselves from this obsession with “impact”, it is easier to take the approach that David Robinson should not really be expected to be one of those defenders who can almost single-handedly shut down an offence. Just like he should not be expected to carry an offence. But if he is not doing either of those things, or coming all that close, what do all those giant “impact” numbers really have to offer.

Was it Robinson's best man-defense performance? Of course not. But 1) Man defense was never Robinson's greatest strength. Stats put him clearly below tier 1 (Robinson, Russell, Thurmond) in Tier 2 (Walton, Robinson, Wilt, ~Ewing) above Mutombo/Mourning (source: Hakeem's Greatest Peaks video, minute 19:37). Which is good, but not his greatest strength for being a Tier 1/2 All Tome defender.

I wonder how that would look if we focused on the playoffs.

Plus: 2) people are usually more accommodating with bad man matchups. To me, Robinson's greater strength is rim protection and team defense, which I personally saw less film evidence of declining in this small sample. And if we're worried about this being too small a sample, I haven't seen that much evidence that his defense declines in-era in larger samples. Now you might cite his man defense against Hakeem, but 1) that's also a bad man matchup.

That argument would work a lot better if Malone burned him but the rest of the team were slowed. It would be so nice if we could see something akin to the 1994 Nuggets out of David Robinson. Sadly, we never do (or at least, not during his prime).

and 2) there's pretty clearly extenuating circumstances, with the Spurs' second best defender actively rebelling against the defensive game plan and not aiding the Hakeem matchup either with man defense or help defense

Was Rodman also the reason the Jazz improved on their regular season offensive rating against them twice.

[SpreeS]

HOU was light years ahead of SAN in terms of spacing. It could be one of reasons why Hakeem produced way better than D-Rob.

RS 3PA 90/91/92/93/94/95/96

HOU 18th/2nd/2nd/3th/1st/1st/2nd
SAN 25th/26th/24th/15th/20th/18th/16th

PS 3PA 90/91/92/93/94/95/96

HOU 3th/T-1st/-/1st/2nd/2nd/3th
SAN 16th/13th/10th/12th/13th/16th/15th

[AEnigma]

HOU was light years ahead of SAN in terms of spacing. It could be one of reasons why Hakeem produced way better than D-Rob.

RS 3PA 90/91/92/93/94/95/96

HOU 18th/2nd/2nd/3th/1st/1st/2nd
SAN 25th/26th/24th/15th/20th/18th/16th

PS 3PA 90/91/92/93/94/95/96

HOU 3th/T-1st/-/1st/2nd/2nd/3th
SAN 16th/13th/10th/12th/13th/16th/15th

If only we had some sample of Hakeem’s career where his team did not have top three spacing.

I swear some of you guys treat “spacing” like a magic spell. Seeing it in the Jordan playoff on/off thread too. We are talking a difference of like seven threes a game here, spread across multiple players over the course of 48 minutes. 1986-90 postseason Hakeem is pretty much the same overall scorer as 1991-97. The later just has some higher volume years and a lessened reliance on scoring near the basket (which if anything probably hurt his efficiency, but there is something to be said for the demoralising effect of those deeper 2s going in ).

Yeah, spacing helps, but in that era it helps more in offering easier reads and offensive production independent of the star. Robert Horry and Mario Elie were not being tightly guarded. Steve Kerr was not being tightly guarded. I have said before that Robinson’s playmaking dipped in the postseason too; if you want, that is a fair target for a spacing complaint, because even though he was a better passer than Hakeem, reads become a lot less obvious and much more schematically dubious if Robinson needs to look at and figure out who has the safest midrange shot. And as much as we can respect Hakeem’s individual scoring, team offensive production is a bit easier when you are not relying wholly on a diet of post-ups and mid-rangers. But as far as aiding individual scoring production in that era in a meaningful way? Tenuous at best.

[henshao]

In football it is said you run to set up the pass, but this works the other way around; in basketball the relationship between gravity and spacing is similar. Put another way the spacing in Houston benefited as much from Hakeem in the low block as vice versa

[f4p]

If only we had some sample of Hakeem’s career where his team did not have top three spacing.

exactly. people tend to act like hakeem's whole career was 94 and 95 with great spacing. and even '94 is quite overrated considering the rockets were taking 15 3's a game and shooting it 15th best out of 27 teams. with maxwell at 30% while taking a 1/3 of the team's 3's.

but yeah, people should watch Game 5 of the 1986 WCF. the rockets entire offense is run inside of 20 feet. no one is standing at the 3 point line. hakeem practically gets post catches with another laker in his lap because his teammate is feeding the post from 20 feet away. and he averaged 31/11/4 in that series. and put up huge numbers in 1987. and put up 37.5 ppg on 64 TS% in his epic 1988 1st round. he actually has better PER/WS48/TS%/BPM in the 1986-88 playoffs vs the 1993-95 playoffs. obviously, spacing is nice, but there is basically no evidence that hakeem can't put up enormous playoff numbers without spacing.

[Matt15]

Kareem