Modern NBA: Steph/Klay/Dray or TP/Manu/Duncan

[70sFan]

Okay, so, let me try to parallel the '05-07 Spurs run, since you single that our as the best time for the Spurs.

I can't use '16-17 or else you and others will bring up KD, so I'll focus on '13-14 to '15-16. No KD, and a year of Mark "No NBA team should ever hire him again" Jackson.

If I do the same sort of analysis I just did over 8 years, for those respective 3 year runs, here's what I get:

Curry +9.64
Green +8.19
Thompson +7.97
Duncan +7.70
Ginobili +7.29
Parker +5.81

Tells a very similar story.

Thanks for the numbers. Are these numbers for RS only? Postseason? Both?

Now, I can tell you're trying to be nice based on some of the things you say, and I appreciate it, but there's still an overarching pattern here that's frustrating to me (and not just pertaining to you):

People are so quick to think I'm manipulating data toward my agenda...without themselves coming back with a superior data analysis themselves.

Now, I think the truth for some folks is that they can't do this datawork themselves, and that's no sin, but as someone who can do this work, it's not useful to me to spend time trying to put forth data patterns people can understand if those people will only see that data as rhetoric to be torn down rather than made use of.

Well, in this case this is not about manipulating data towards your or any other agenda. You stated things that are selected in a way to present the reality from certain point of view without acknowledging very important things, like the fact that Warriors missed playoffs two years in a row. Again, I don't accuse you of manipulation, to me it was a bad way to present what you wanted to present, but I think my strong reaction was understandable. I don't think this situation is about me criticizing your data, because I didn't do that - I didn't even quote the numbers provided.

Again, this is not about whether you are right or wrong - remember that I didn't say your conclusion is unreasonable - but that you didn't present a full picture here.

[OhayoKD]

With everyone at the level of their average prime season, which trio would you take for one season in today's NBA?

Interesting that we're tied at 50/50 here.

Let's make clear one thing from the jump:

The Warriors have been more dominant than the Spurs were if you take longevity out of the mix, and I don't think this should be controversial to say. The Warriors are 18-0 in Western Conference playoff series in their last 6 years with these 3 playing together, while the Spurs never made it through the Western Conference in back to back years when these guys were in prime.

Eh, not sure if this is that big of a knock given the "real nba finals" often took place in the west. Excepting for years with Durant. the Warriors biggest threat has always waited in the east.

That being said the Warriors should be expected to win without era-relativity protecting the Spurs. The Warriors would be even more dangerous in the 2000's and the spurs would be less effective now. Unless we do the practice of forcing modern players to be worse via coaching or just creating a new person, health is really the spurs only counter-punch here.

[Jaivl]

It's the core of my favorite team of all-time, how can I choose anyone else than Spurs trio?

Metta World Peace/Shane Battier/Chuck Hayes FTW

[DCasey91]

With everyone at the level of their average prime season, which trio would you take for one season in today's NBA?

Interesting that we're tied at 50/50 here.

Let's make clear one thing from the jump:

The Warriors have been more dominant than the Spurs were if you take longevity out of the mix, and I don't think this should be controversial to say. The Warriors are 18-0 in Western Conference playoff series in their last 6 years with these 3 playing together, while the Spurs never made it through the Western Conference in back to back years when these guys were in prime.

Eh, not sure if this is that big of a knock given the "real nba finals" often took place in the west. Excepting for years with Durant. the Warriors biggest threat has always waited in the east.

That being said the Warriors should be expected to win without era-relativity protecting the Spurs. The Warriors would be even more dangerous in the 2000's and the spurs would be less effective now. Unless we do the practice of forcing modern players to be worse via coaching or just creating a new person, health is really the spurs only counter-punch here.

I actually don’t see Spurs being less effective. 2014 was possibly the greatest team play schemes in the finals.

Remember they had top of the table wing catch and shoot shooters on each side in Green/Leonard. Leonard also was DPOY standard along with going silly in games 4-7. Their bench was deeper than the Mariana Trench too.

Had 3 bigs that can run the offence through that could all pass being Diaw, Duncan, Splitter. And implement 2 man games and can stack sets multiple times.

Manu being a lefty throws the defence in the loop when the offensive set goes to the other side for repeat action.

If Bam can have such an impact in the playoffs then imagine Duncan.

Other years it’s dependent though on what team and list they had. But still it was as well of an oiled machine as you can get.

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, so, let me try to parallel the '05-07 Spurs run, since you single that our as the best time for the Spurs.

I can't use '16-17 or else you and others will bring up KD, so I'll focus on '13-14 to '15-16. No KD, and a year of Mark "No NBA team should ever hire him again" Jackson.

If I do the same sort of analysis I just did over 8 years, for those respective 3 year runs, here's what I get:

Curry +9.64
Green +8.19
Thompson +7.97
Duncan +7.70
Ginobili +7.29
Parker +5.81

Tells a very similar story.

Thanks for the numbers. Are these numbers for RS only? Postseason? Both?

Both.

Now, I can tell you're trying to be nice based on some of the things you say, and I appreciate it, but there's still an overarching pattern here that's frustrating to me (and not just pertaining to you):

People are so quick to think I'm manipulating data toward my agenda...without themselves coming back with a superior data analysis themselves.

Now, I think the truth for some folks is that they can't do this datawork themselves, and that's no sin, but as someone who can do this work, it's not useful to me to spend time trying to put forth data patterns people can understand if those people will only see that data as rhetoric to be torn down rather than made use of.

Well, in this case this is not about manipulating data towards your or any other agenda. You stated things that are selected in a way to present the reality from certain point of view without acknowledging very important things, like the fact that Warriors missed playoffs two years in a row. Again, I don't accuse you of manipulation, to me it was a bad way to present what you wanted to present, but I think my strong reaction was understandable. I don't think this situation is about me criticizing your data, because I didn't do that - I didn't even quote the numbers provided.

Again, this is not about whether you are right or wrong - remember that I didn't say your conclusion is unreasonable - but that you didn't present a full picture here.

Re: didn't accuse me of manipulation. Right, but you said that if you didn't know me you'd think I was manipulating things, and I spoke to how frustrating it was that people jumped to that as a default. I'm sorry that I wasn't clear and it felt like I was looking to attack you specifically.

Re: without acknowledging very important things. Okay, but from my perspective there are many, many other things that comparably important to what you brought up and it's unrealistic to expect someone to mention all of those things in their initial post. Hence, the way I think things work best is if people just add the nuance as they go along.

[Doctor MJ]

With everyone at the level of their average prime season, which trio would you take for one season in today's NBA?

Interesting that we're tied at 50/50 here.

Let's make clear one thing from the jump:

The Warriors have been more dominant than the Spurs were if you take longevity out of the mix, and I don't think this should be controversial to say. The Warriors are 18-0 in Western Conference playoff series in their last 6 years with these 3 playing together, while the Spurs never made it through the Western Conference in back to back years when these guys were in prime.

Eh, not sure if this is that big of a knock given the "real nba finals" often took place in the west. Excepting for years with Durant. the Warriors biggest threat has always waited in the east.

That being said the Warriors should be expected to win without era-relativity protecting the Spurs. The Warriors would be even more dangerous in the 2000's and the spurs would be less effective now. Unless we do the practice of forcing modern players to be worse via coaching or just creating a new person, health is really the spurs only counter-punch here.

Oh, I'm glad you brought this up because I think others are assuming something similar, but they need to look at the years in question more. If I go based on the 8 year sample mentioned before:

'02-03 Spurs win title
'03-04 Spurs lose to Lakers who do not win title.
'04-05 Spurs win title
'05-06 Spurs lose to Mavs who do not win title.
'06-07 Spurs win title
'07-08 Spurs lose to Lakers who do not win title.
'08-09 Spurs lose to Mavs who do not win title.
'09-10 Spurs lose to Suns who do not win title.

It was only 3 out of the 8 years where the Spurs really had a case for being "the real #2" if the playoffs are how we define this. (And if we look to add more nuance, we should acknowledge that in '15-16 the Thunder and Spurs were both stronger than any of the Western Conference teams that eliminated the Spurs in the '02-03 to '09-10 range, and both would have had a good case to beat the Cavs in the finals that year.)

By contrast if we look at the Warriors:

'14-15 Warriors win title
'15-16 Warriors lose to Cavs who win title
'16-17 Warriors win title
'17-18 Warriors win title
'18-19 Warriors lose to Raptors who win title
<injury seasons>
'21-22 Warriors win title.

So yeah, whether we go by this, or the +/- data in various ranges within the span the Warriors have existed, or by peak W-L records, it's just really, really easy to find stuff that says the Warriors were more dominant than the Spurs, and meanwhile I don't think anyone has actually brought up any set of data that tells a different story.

I feel like this really points to the tendency to push back against the person making claims with data. No matter what I do, it will never show the entire picture, and thus people can think that they are bringing the debate back to a tie, and in doing so undermining the credibility of those who tried to use data to help people see things more clearly...but if we literally can't make any claims like this in the other direction, it really shouldn't feel like a tie, and those presenting the only such pictures we've seen shouldn't be the ones who are going about things in a problematic way.

Let me end by just acknowledging your last point throws a bone in roughly my direction, so I can see you're trying to find common ground here, and I appreciate the effort.

[Doctor MJ]

I might sound simplistic but I think prime Draymond had more value than Ginobili (and I say this as a major Manu fan since his Virtus Bologna days). I think the Warriors trio is a bit better overall due to Draymond. This is the tiebraker for me,even though longevity favours Manu (and so windows to contend for the title). On a 15 years period (with all 3 primes starting together) I would definitely trust the Spurs trio more.

With Ginobili the thing is always the minutes. Aside from being the only guy to dominate the entirety of Team USA in the Olympics, every time the Spurs won a title this millennium, Ginobili was the guy who led the team in post-season +/-. This is an astonishing legacy.

If we're simply talking per minute value, Ginobili honestly might be the best of the 6 players, but with minutes considered, I'd agree, Duncan, Steph & Dray all have to be ahead of him prime vs prime.

For Ginobili in the NBA the question for me will always be:

Did Ginobili actually need to be played in limited minutes as a 20-something, or was there something else going on?

I thought it was fascinating when Robert Horry went off about Ginobili not doing what his told and costing the team even more championships. I'm quite sure that Horry was correct about the first statement and wrong about the second, but if you're a coach, such unpredictability is tough to swallow, and if you already have a guy you've built your offense around, it might make sense to, say, play the wild card as more of a 6th man.

(To be clear, later in his career, Ginobili was certainly a guy who needed to play in more limited minutes, so I'm not saying Ginobili's tendency to go off-script was always the only thing going on here, but I don't think Ginobili's limited minutes was likely only him having poor endurance.)

[Doctor MJ]

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.