Peak Giannis V Peak Kawhi

[OhayoKD]

So we start this discussion again... You can argue that Raptors were more talented overall than the Bucks, but arguing for "significant disparity in help" is plain wrong.

The 2019 Raptors were 17-5 without Kawhi, won 59 games the season before, then replaced dwayne casey with nick nurse, saw their defense skyrocket with a mid-season trade for Marc Gasol and replaced Demar Derozan with Kawhi Leonard. Then after Kawhi left they played at a 58-win pace and played like a legit contender in the postseason. The 19/20 Bucks were .500 without Giannis and in 2020 they had a better roster than they in 2019 with nice additions like Wes Matthews.

IIRC if you go by something lineup-adjusted like wins-added from PIPM the Bucks are 40ish wins in 2020 without Giannis.

Assuming no penalty at all for the bucks shooting and bud's coaching(bucks were outshot on open looks all playoffs, bud refuses to call any timeout on 2 15 point comebacks in game 6, nick comes up with the "giannis rules", ect), that still seems like a "significant disparity in help" to me.

Yes, Kawhi hasn't done anything notable outside of Toronto, but that's because he was hurt basically in every postseason run outside of 2016 and 2020. The sample is so small, that we basically argue what's more representative - 2019 or 2020.

Well 2020 Kawhi is a better playmaker(box-creation and passer rating goes up), a better ball-handler, and a better defender. If 2019 Kawhi has an advantage it's that the raptors were a more optimal fit(better paint-protector means defense did not collapse in the postseason).

Giannis simply needs less to contend(19, 22),

Giannis didn't have less in 2022 than Kawhi in 2020 and they finished the season in similar way.

1. Based on what?
2. Losing to the Celtics in 7 without your second best player is not similar to losing to the Nuggets in 7 with a fully healthy roster. Celtics were a better team outright even if you don't think Middleton made a big difference.

needs less to win(21),

While facing significantly weaker competition...

True

is empirically a more valuable regular season player,

Only if you fixate yourself on 2019-20 period and decide that Giannis "coasts" after...

"Fixate" is when you focus on smaller part of a bigger whole. I don't have to decide anything with 21-23. 21-23 is on par per-possession with Kawhi's best rs stretch with Giannis playing more. If you don't want to "fixate" than compare 19-23 to whatever stretch you want with Kawhi. Giannis will still win.

and is empirically a more valuable postseason player(comparable in box-stuff, with giannis having a big advantage in raw on/off or(bigger sample) the type of "indirect" analysis I started this post with whether you use adjusted or raw stuff to derive your off).

Giannis on/off playoff numbers outside of 2022 are quite disappointing for that level of player. Kawhi isn't consistent either, but I don't see Giannis as clearly "empirically a more valuable postseason player".

Giannis's playoff on/off is still "more consistent" than Kawhi's and again if we increase the sample by using the regular season for off Giannis's advantage grows.

Unless you extrapolate Giannis's 2 2023 performances, Kawhi's playoff case is basically just "I am a better postseason scorer and I didn't win enough regular season games to lose as a 1 seed".

The problem is that Giannis criticism isn't something that got created after this performance and you know it.

Good thing my arguments for Giannis don't rely on "when Giannis started being criticized". That being said, the 2023 games are a big outlier for "playoff giannis" in terms of shooting and defensive activity. My argument is that Giannis playoff criticism is mainly box-fixation and ignoring his defensive impact.

Posters were unhappy with Giannis-Hakeem comparisons but the gap here is larger. With Hakeem it's a matter of "consistency, resiliency, and replication". With Kawhi it's "i have never shown this level of influence, i have never replicated my best stuff, and i have a fundemental defecit in skill that does not allow me to come anywhere near the other guy's level of influence on one side "

Kawhi has only won 1 championship as a top 10ish player, he has had excellent help for basically the entirety of his career(as in best help of anyone in the era besides Durant and Steph), and he has never otherwise overperformed(relative to the regular season) in a series he didn't suffer a season-ending injury in. Unlike Hakeem, he very obviously sandbags the rs to save energy for the playoffs, and even when he wasn't(for 2 years as a superstar?) he did not have a emperical profile(box or impact) to Giannis.

Indeed, Kawhi career is very overrated overall, but his problem is that throughout his prime (2016-23), he was semi-healthy only in 3 postseason runs. If your argument is that Kawhi hasn't shown enough due to small sample of size, I may agree with you - but that's not your argumentation here.

Which is why I'm comparing his healthy runs and ignoring durability as a factor...

If Jimmy butler maintains 2021 lvl play for 2023, he will have a better prime(playoff) resume than Kawhi.

I agree, but Bulter's resume is arguably better than Giannis as well.

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From a offensive production vantage sure. Don't think it holds up otherwise.

[OhayoKD]

The bucks successfully reached that level in the playoffs in 19, 21, and 22. Luka said something about "best ever 4-year defensive playoff stretch" but whatever. Criticizing Giannis's regular season defense doesn't work when you're defending Kawhi.

Well, if you think that playoff team numbers represents Giannis overall capacity better, then we should also take a look at Bucks offensive performance:

2019: +3.2
2020: +0.0
2021: +0.5
2022: -5.3
2023: +1.1

It would suggest that Giannis isn't capable of sustaining his offensive production when he increases his de9fensive effort. If that's the case, then I don't think we can just say that Giannis is a two-way monster who just coasts in RS...

Why are you fixating on offense or defense. look at it overall. The defensive improvement outpaces any offensive collapse in 21 and 22(and 19) and Giannis does not lack for anything in an rs comparison with Kawhi those years. In 2019 Giannis is a two-way monster in the RS and the Bucks (overall)get better in the postseason with a -5.2 defense becoming -9.2. That improvement obviously undersells the Bucks because the Raptors add Gasol mid-season and then Kawhi massively scales up his offensive production in the postseason.

That Bucks team with all their flaws were great in the regular season and even better in the playoffs.

I also have no idea how you think the bucks being one of the best teams in the league with a player who still plays like a top 3 player in the regular season proves they're "absurdly stacked". Giannis is simply not an all-time level regular season player when he coasts. He still offers more than your average Kawhi season.

I think that because the Bucks played at almost the same level defensively without Giannis in the last 3 regular seasons. The Bucks have been stacked defensively for years.

Again, why do you fixate on offense or defense. The bucks are 22-20 without Giannis over the last 3 regular seasons. They were 11-8 without him in 2023. By lineup adjusted stuff Giannis was a top 3 player. On what grounds does that make the Bucks "absurdly stacked"? And if the Bucks are "absurdly stacked" then what the hell were the 2019 Raptors who went 17-5 and went near 60 before and after Kawhi

Again, if Giannis isn't all-time level RS player (overrated offense, not trying on defense) and in the playoffs his offense gets more problematic because of increased defensive effort, then it seems that Giannis can't functionally operate as the top tier two-way player in the league history anymore.

[/quote]
Giannis was an all-time rs level player in 2019 and the team improved. Giannis was simply mvp level in 2021 and 2022 and the team improved with their improvement from 2022 in line with what we'd expect with a "top tier two way player" in the postseason(this is also true with 2021 stastically but I'm going to omit it because kd/harden injuries and then giannis's injury in the conference finals obviously distorts things).

I have no idea why you're focusing on one side here and the other side there. Look at everything in totality and Giannis's results are just outright more impressive than Kawhi's

[70sFan]

The 2019 Raptors were 17-5 without Kawhi, won 59 games the season before, then replaced dwayne casey with nick nurse, saw their defense skyrocket with a mid-season trade for Marc Gasol and replaced Demar Derozan with Kawhi Leonard. Then after Kawhi left they played at a 58-win pace and played like a legit contender in the postseason.

Yes, the Raptors went 17-5 without Kawhi. Have you bothered to check out against what competition though? Only 7 of these 22 games were against 50%+ teams, with majority of them against the bottom tier of tanking teams. Kawhi didn't play meaningless games in that RS and I understand that we can count it against him, but it says nothing about the quality of this team.

The next season is a more interesting indicator, I agree here.

The 19/20 Bucks were .500 without Giannis and in 2020 they had a better roster than they in 2019 with nice additions like Wes Matthews.

True, but Bucks didn't pick the games Giannis missed in these seasons, so they couldn't inflate their Giannis-less record like Raptors did. If you go with raw on/off:

2019 Kawhi: +8.0 with, +3.3 without
2019 Giannis: +12.3 with, +2.6 without

Bucks were of course better with Giannis on, but they are actually similar without their stars.

IIRC if you go by something lineup-adjusted like wins-added from PIPM the Bucks are 40ish wins in 2020 without Giannis.

Do you have the same estimation for Kawhi-less Raptors? Would you mind to give me the source?

Well 2020 Kawhi is a better playmaker(box-creation and passer rating goes up), a better ball-handler, and a better defender. If 2019 Kawhi has an advantage it's that the raptors were a more optimal fit(better paint-protector means defense did not collapse in the postseason).

Kawhi was fine for most of 2020 playoffs, he just struggled at the end of the Nuggets series. It happens, but I fail to see this as the proof of anything - especially considering how small the sample is for him.

2. Losing to the Celtics in 7 without your second best player is not similar to losing to the Nuggets in 7 with a fully healthy roster. Celtics were a better team outright even if you don't think Middleton made a big difference.

That comes from the assumption that the Bucks aren't talented - which is a circular reasoning. You first need to prove that the Bucks aren't comparable to the Clippers (or the Celtics) before you start using it to prove anything.

True

So it doesn't matter?

Giannis's playoff on/off is still "more consistent" than Kawhi's and again if we increase the sample by using the regular season for off Giannis's advantage grows.

How would you quantify who is more consistent?

Good thing my arguments for Giannis don't rely on "when Giannis started being criticized". That being said, the 2023 games are a big outlier for "playoff giannis" in terms of shooting and defensive activity. My argument is that Giannis playoff criticism is mainly box-fixation and ignoring his defensive impact.

It's really not a big outlier in terms of shooting. Giannis worst FT% series:

45.2% vs Heat in 2023
48.3% vs Nets in 2021
53.6% vs Hawks in 2021
54.3% vs Raptors in 2017
58.9% vs Raptors in 2019

It's his worst "series" (in reality 2 games) overall, but he had two similarly bad series in 2021 (when he was perfectly healthy) and one below 60% in 2019. The idea that it's massive outlier for Giannis to shoot below 50% from the FT line in two straight games is just wrong. It happened more than 5 times before this year. He averages 61% from the FT line in 2019-23 period.

I agree that people ignore his defensive impact (which is normal, people always ignore defense) and that's a huge mistake. Still, it doesn't make Giannis offensive problems disappear.

From a offensive production vantage sure. Don't think it holds up otherwise.

Why not? He already has two postseasons when he arguably outplayed Giannis (not necessarily h2h) and if we assume he continues to dominate, it becomes very easy to argue that Butler is a more reliable player than Giannis in the playoffs. It takes into account the fact that he doesn't struggle with injuries in most postseasons like Giannis does.

[70sFan]

Why are you fixating on offense or defense. look at it overall. The defensive improvement outpaces any offensive collapse in 21 and 22(and 19)

But does it? In the end, he faced fairly weak competition in 2021 (while struggling a lot with finishing injured Nets team) and he couldn't create any reliable offense against Celtics defense in 2022. I don't say 2022 loss is his fault (I was the one defending him last year a lot), but Bucks desperately needed more on offense many times in Giannis postseason career and he didn't show he can do that consistently (outside of 2021 finals).

In 2019 Giannis is a two-way monster in the RS and the Bucks (overall)get better in the postseason with a -5.2 defense becoming -9.2. That improvement obviously undersells the Bucks because the Raptors add Gasol mid-season and then Kawhi massively scales up his offensive production in the postseason.

Yeah, but they ultimately lost because they couldn't score on Toronto defense effectively, averaging 103 ORtg in the last 4 games. I get that the Raptors were the ultimate powerhouse on defense, but even injured Warriors managed to do significantly better.

That Bucks team with all their flaws were great in the regular season and even better in the playoffs.

They were better in the playoffs against useless Pistons team. If you take away Pistons series, Bucks doesn't look nearly as impressive.

Again, why do you fixate on offense or defense. The bucks are 22-20 without Giannis over the last 3 regular seasons. They were 11-8 without him in 2023. By lineup adjusted stuff Giannis was a top 3 player. On what grounds does that make the Bucks "absurdly stacked"? And if the Bucks are "absurdly stacked" then what the hell were the 2019 Raptors who went 17-5 and went near 60 before and after Kawhi

Again, it would be nice to see what kind of competition they faced in these missed games. Otherwise, ~15 games samples can be incredibly noisy.

I have no idea why you're focusing on one side here and the other side there. Look at everything in totality and Giannis's results are just outright more impressive than Kawhi's

I look at both - I look at a player who can't sustain the excellence on both ends of the court in the playoffs. Is he a better player than Kawhi? As I said, I am close to say yes, but it's definitely as easy as you imply.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Why are you fixating on offense or defense. look at it overall. The defensive improvement outpaces any offensive collapse in 21 and 22(and 19)

But does it? In the end, he faced fairly weak competition in 2021 (while struggling a lot with finishing injured Nets team) and he couldn't create any reliable offense against Celtics defense in 2022. I don't say 2022 loss is his fault (I was the one defending him last year a lot), but Bucks desperately needed more on offense many times in Giannis postseason career and he didn't show he can do that consistently (outside of 2021 finals).

In 2019 Giannis is a two-way monster in the RS and the Bucks (overall)get better in the postseason with a -5.2 defense becoming -9.2. That improvement obviously undersells the Bucks because the Raptors add Gasol mid-season and then Kawhi massively scales up his offensive production in the postseason.

Yeah, but they ultimately lost because they couldn't score on Toronto defense effectively, averaging 103 ORtg in the last 4 games. I get that the Raptors were the ultimate powerhouse on defense, but even injured Warriors managed to do significantly better.

That Bucks team with all their flaws were great in the regular season and even better in the playoffs.

They were better in the playoffs against useless Pistons team. If you take away Pistons series, Bucks doesn't look nearly as impressive.

Again, why do you fixate on offense or defense. The bucks are 22-20 without Giannis over the last 3 regular seasons. They were 11-8 without him in 2023. By lineup adjusted stuff Giannis was a top 3 player. On what grounds does that make the Bucks "absurdly stacked"? And if the Bucks are "absurdly stacked" then what the hell were the 2019 Raptors who went 17-5 and went near 60 before and after Kawhi

Again, it would be nice to see what kind of competition they faced in these missed games. Otherwise, ~15 games samples can be incredibly noisy.

I have no idea why you're focusing on one side here and the other side there. Look at everything in totality and Giannis's results are just outright more impressive than Kawhi's

I look at both - I look at a player who can't sustain the excellence on both ends of the court in the playoffs. Is he a better player than Kawhi? As I said, I am close to say yes, but it's definitely as easy as you imply.

I also don't have the on/off.sample including the 22, which would help Giannis a bit here but:

3-year PS on/off Peaks

Kawhi: +13.9

Giannis: +8.9 (Would be higher if I had 22 included but not sure by how much)

[OhayoKD]

The 2019 Raptors were 17-5 without Kawhi, won 59 games the season before, then replaced dwayne casey with nick nurse, saw their defense skyrocket with a mid-season trade for Marc Gasol and replaced Demar Derozan with Kawhi Leonard. Then after Kawhi left they played at a 58-win pace and played like a legit contender in the postseason.

Yes, the Raptors went 17-5 without Kawhi. Have you bothered to check out against what competition though? Only 7 of these 22 games were against 50%+ teams, with majority of them against the bottom tier of tanking teams. Kawhi didn't play meaningless games in that RS and I understand that we can count it against him, but it says nothing about the quality of this team.

The next season is a more interesting indicator, I agree here.

Well that's why I included the next season, the previous season and the roster changes(and coaching change). Fair point on the schedule but I'd need to see how much of an effect that has before i alter my evaluation of the raptors significantly given all the other stuff I mentioned. Right now I see the 2019 Raptors as a 2015 warriors-level team at full strength(including Kawhi) but I guess there's room for interpetation here. Problem with modern teams is that most contenders don't go all out in the rs so it's hard to figure out how good they are(Philly had the best 4-man net-rating post trade but they also had a dissapointing regular season srs and questionable depth so ???)

The 19/20 Bucks were .500 without Giannis and in 2020 they had a better roster than they in 2019 with nice additions like Wes Matthews.

True, but Bucks didn't pick the games Giannis missed in these seasons, so they couldn't inflate their Giannis-less record like Raptors did. If you go with raw on/off:

2019 Kawhi: +8.0 with, +3.3 without
2019 Giannis: +12.3 with, +2.6 without

Bucks were of course better with Giannis on, but they are actually similar without their stars.

Noted, but that's probably a noisier sample than the wowy stuff. With the most stable stuff(noting that even the most accurate ones use box-stuff to some degree), LEBRON has Giannis at 15 WAR and Kawhi at 10 WAR. RPM has Giannis at 12 wins and Kawhi at 4.95 wins. I don't have a PIPM thing on me(or at least one that goes past 2018). I think EPM and PIPM are considered state of the art for publicly available stuff(PIPM is publicly availaible somehwere through 2020 at least) but I can't find the PIPM thing and pre 2023 EPM locked behind a paywall.

IIRC if you go by something lineup-adjusted like wins-added from PIPM the Bucks are 40ish wins in 2020 without Giannis.

Do you have the same estimation for Kawhi-less Raptors? Would you mind to give me the source?

Well the numbers i have access to right now listed above though this is probably a bad use of those metrics since the scales are different

Well 2020 Kawhi is a better playmaker(box-creation and passer rating goes up), a better ball-handler, and a better defender. If 2019 Kawhi has an advantage it's that the raptors were a more optimal fit(better paint-protector means defense did not collapse in the postseason).

Kawhi was fine for most of 2020 playoffs, he just struggled at the end of the Nuggets series. It happens, but I fail to see this as the proof of anything - especially considering how small the sample is for him.

He might not have struggled offensively, but the Clippers underperformed defensively throughout regardless of Kawhi's offensive production. Kawhi couldn't do anything about the clippers defense collapsing so it didn't matter what his numbers were.

2. Losing to the Celtics in 7 without your second best player is not similar to losing to the Nuggets in 7 with a fully healthy roster. Celtics were a better team outright even if you don't think Middleton made a big difference.

That comes from the assumption that the Bucks aren't talented - which is a circular reasoning. You first need to prove that the Bucks aren't comparable to the Clippers (or the Celtics) before you start using it to prove anything.

In this case I'd just need to prove the Clippers aren't worse than the Bucks as help. I think them being a 48-win team before Kawhi(up to intepretation how they were affected by the pg for role players/prospects trade) suggests they're at worst comparable to the bucks with all their horses. Then the Bucks lose middleton and take a better team than the nuggets to 7(at least by regular season srs, though srs undercuts both I think)

True

So it doesn't matter?

It does, I'll have to think about how much though. 2021 is harder to evaluate because of the different injuries and the Suns being overstated by their regular seaosn performance

Giannis's playoff on/off is still "more consistent" than Kawhi's and again if we increase the sample by using the regular season for off Giannis's advantage grows.

How would you quantify who is more consistent?

Good thing my arguments for Giannis don't rely on "when Giannis started being criticized". That being said, the 2023 games are a big outlier for "playoff giannis" in terms of shooting and defensive activity. My argument is that Giannis playoff criticism is mainly box-fixation and ignoring his defensive impact.

It's really not a big outlier in terms of shooting. Giannis worst FT% series:

45.2% vs Heat in 2023
48.3% vs Nets in 2021
53.6% vs Hawks in 2021
54.3% vs Raptors in 2017
58.9% vs Raptors in 2019

It's his worst "series" (in reality 2 games) overall, but he had two similarly bad series in 2021 (when he was perfectly healthy) and one below 60% in 2019. The idea that it's massive outlier for Giannis to shoot below 50% from the FT line in two straight games is just wrong. It happened more than 5 times before this year. He averages 61% from the FT line in 2019-23 period.

I agree that people ignore his defensive impact (which is normal, people always ignore defense) and that's a huge mistake. Still, it doesn't make Giannis offensive problems disappear.

Shooting your worst ever series percentage and 15-points lower than your average playoff percentage is an anomaly though. You wouldn't take a player's worst percentage as their mean. And at his mean, the Bucks could easily be up 3-2 here.

As importantly the Bucks have been able to improve in the playoffs in spite of Giannis's "offensive problems" because of the defense so using 2023 to question Giannis as a playoff performer relative to Kawhi is wierd.

From a offensive production vantage sure. Don't think it holds up otherwise.

Why not? He already has two postseasons when he arguably outplayed Giannis (not necessarily h2h) and if we assume he continues to dominate, it becomes very easy to argue that Butler is a more reliable player than Giannis in the playoffs. It takes into account the fact that he doesn't struggle with injuries in most postseasons like Giannis does.

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Because I think the "arguably outplayed" goes out of the window if you account for defense for 2022 and Giannis is getting better playoff results.

They were better in the playoffs against useless Pistons team. If you take away Pistons series, Bucks doesn't look nearly as impressive.

Yeah, but their numbers get hurt by playing a raptors team that was much better than their srs indicates so it evens out. The Raptors don't look like an all-time defense in the regular season even though proven to be in this and the following rs+playoffs(gasol being the key addition on that end) and Kawhi obviously steps up offensively so that ends up hurting the Bucks playoff d-rating.

Again, it would be nice to see what kind of competition they faced in these missed games. Otherwise, ~15 games samples can be incredibly noisy.

That's fair but the 82 games before and after supports it. And at least with nurse/gasol they keep it up in the playoffs.

I also don't have the on/off.sample including the 22, which would help Giannis a bit here but:

3-year PS on/off Peaks

Kawhi: +13.9

Giannis: +8.9 (Would be higher if I had 22 included but not sure by how much)

Here's their career playoff on/off:

[Cavsfansince84]

I think these guys are close enough in era that I can ask myself which one I'd prefer to lead my team into the playoffs with somewhat complimentary players around them and I'd slightly lean towards Kawhi. I think his offense translates slightly better against more defenses and his superior 3pt/ft shooting makes up for whatever def gap there is.

[iggymcfrack]

It kinda depends on how you look at it, like if I can take a player from any moment in time and grab them I'm taking 2017 pre-injury Kawhi. He was on another level and was just starting to go absolutely NUTS in the playoffs. If I have to take an entire season, RS+playoffs though, I've gotta take Giannis just because so few of Kawhi's runs ended healthy.