Is Kevin Garnett a top 10 player of all time?

[falcolombardi]

I can't believe someone is still touting the myth that Dream dominated Robinson. He outplayed him in one series but H2H over their careers its a very clear edge to Robinson on everything but scoring volume.

He also one the first title with a lot of really quality role players and the 2nd one with quality role players and a HoF teammate in Drexler.

When KG had a player of about Drexler's abilities he went to the WCF before said player hurt himself doing a celebration and won a title and had multiple other deep runs in Boston.

KG also led the league in points in a year he was 1st team all-defense so suggesting KG wasn't a good two-way player or capable of scoring is just well silly.

He also played a total of 3 games against Dirk in the playoffs and while yes Dirk had an absurd series, KG managed a mere 24/19/5 himself.... Writing KG off because one of the greatest playoff performers had a good 3 game run against his team when KG's coach decided to put KG on Finley instead of Dirk....

I'm not saying KG is a bad scorer. He's a capable scorer. But compared to the other top 10 contenders, he is a bad scorer. The gatekeepers as a scorer for a top 10 contender is probably Larry Bird/Hakeem/Magic. He's nowhere close to any of them.

Hakeem dominated Robinson in the most important games. Who cares how they did in their RS matchups.

KG only won one on an absolutely stacked team to the brim, and he still almost lost to a one man LeBron team. When push comes to shove, the ball went to Paul Pierce. Kevin Garnett put up 13 points on 44 TS%. KG has consistently proven that when his team needed him most, he comes up very short in the scoring department. The gatekeepers for top 10 are guys like Bird/Hakeem, and the margin of error is very slim. On top of the lack of winning and accolades, I just don't see a case for KG as a top 10 player. I see KG closer to 20 in the Dwyane Wade/Dirk Nowitzki tier, which I think is completely fair as an evaluation.

I posted this over in the thread asking "Is Duncan a Top 5 player?"... but feel it needs to be posted here too.

For the guys who feel KG is "a bad scorer compared to other Top 10 contenders"... well, let's compare him to Duncan. How do you explain away this chart which shows that KG actually outscored Duncan in more games that they played against each other?



Then when you take into consideration that KG was a better defender and passer than Duncan... what conclusion should we be left with on seeing that he also outscored Duncan?

AFAIC, the gap between Duncan and KG is almost non-existent, which is yet another good reason why it makes sense to have Duncan as the gatekeeper of the Top 10, i.e., at #10... so he can be closer to KG in the overall ranking (as KG is just outside the Top 10 IMO).

Win record: 11-9 wade favor

. Pts. Reb. Ast. Stl. Blk.
Kobe Bryant 26.1. 4.1. 4.7. 1.2 0.4
Dwyane Wade 24.3. 4.6. 6.5 . 1.9. 1.1

Do you also have wade above kobe?

[Asianiac_24]

Tim Duncan average 19 points/game in his career on 55 TS%. 20.6 in the playoffs on roughly 55 TS% as well.

Kevin Garnett averages 18 points/game in his career on slightly less than 55 TS%, at 54.6 TS%. 19 in the playoffs on 52.5 TS%.

They are comparable but Duncan scores more over his career on higher %s. Tim Duncan is no Michael Jordan but he's clearly better as a scorer, especially in their primes. Better scorer, WAY higher success, better leader, better late career.

[Jaivl]

Dirk, Kg, Malone and Barkley are kind if a toss up in terms of how I rank them.

15-25 range seems fine.

This poll seems to indicate that the insane hype around KG on this board had died down a bit. A couple years ago, when people started championing Ramp as the end all be all people started making the most insane claims about people Garnett was better than.

I've become more skeptical about this insane defensive impact people claim KG has. Kg unlike a lot of the other all time great bigs, was not around here anchoring elite defenses. I've seen Duncan, Hakeem, Robinson ext, anchor some top 5 defensive teams with **** defensive supporting cast.

However the first time KG actually anchors an elite defense is under Thibs as defensive coordinator in Boston? Thibs who would go on to have a top rank defense with Boozer/Noah in the middle in Chicago? Thibs who would go on to have a top ranked defense with Julius Randle/Mitchell Robinson/Nolens Noel?

I have yet to see any indication that KG despite all the "Ramp" data people tout, has been able to anchor any elite defenses without Thibs defensive schemes (Which were the same schemes they continued to run the 2 years after he left), who has produced multiple top defenses with worst supporting cast since then. All the other great defensive bigs have been able to do it. Hell even someone like Dwight Howard did on those crappy Orlando teams.

Garnett is extremely overrated here, due to reality not matching up with his advanced stats.

Boston was 2nd in DRTG in 2011 and and 1st in 2012.

Also the Bulls had great defenders in Deng, and Gibson with a lot of other good defenders. Noah wasn’t the only elite defender on the team, and Boozer wasn’t as bad as his reputation.

Like I already stated Boston ran the same defensive schemes after Thibs left, because they worked so well for them. My point is that despite all this hype around Garnett as a defender he has only been able to produce anchor an elite defense in a very specific defensive scheme.

Boozer was pretty damn bad. Maybe not Amare bad though. People give KG such an insane amount of credit for the 08' Boston team being a great defense. So when I see KG not producing elite defenses in Minny, despite a guy like Dwight Howard doing it year after year with bad cast in Orlando I become skeptical about it.

Was gonna ignore this because zzzzzz always talking about Garnett is BORING, but it kinda hit me when surfing the new Duncan vs Kareem thread.

Let's compare the historic carryjob of Howard versus the loaded Boston teams Garnett had the luck to reap the benefits from.

Howard on court / Howard off court
2009 - 101.8 DRtg (-6.5) / 102.8 DRtg (-5.5)
2010 - 102.9 DRtg (-4.7) / 106.2 DRtg (-1.4)
2011 - 102.1 DRtg (-5.2) / 104.8 DRtg (-2.5)

Garnett on court / Garnett off court
2008 - 97.3 DRtg (-10.2) / 101.4 DRtg (-5.8)
2009 - 98.6 DRtg (-9.7) / 105.8 DRtg (-2.5)
2010 - 102.1 DRtg (-5.5) / 106.7 DRtg (-0.9)
2011 - 98.1 DRtg (-9.2) / 104.4 DRtg (-2.9)

Surprise - it's all a bunch of lies? Post-prime Garnett elevated a similar base to equal or greater heights? Shocking!

Of course, plus-minus does not tell the whole story. Garnett's subs on his latest years were notoriously weak defenders Rasheed Wallace, Jermaine O'Neal and Kendrick Perkins, so, if anything, Garnett's numbers are more impressive (as are Howard's considering Gortat).