Which star had the weaker support cast?

[AEnigma]

Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson both had a higher shot load than Thorpe, and if we are inflating the “dynamism” of rookie Cassell, then what exactly is Manu.

Funny how weirdly insecure people become with Hakeem.

[One_and_Done]

Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson both had a higher shot load than Thorpe, and if we are inflating the “dynamism” of rookie Cassell, then what exactly is Manu.

Funny how weirdly insecure people become with Hakeem.

Tony Parker was so dynamic he was benched for Speedy Claxton in the finals. Stephen Jackson was valued so much he struggled to get much above the minimum that offseason. These were not good players yet.

[AEnigma]

Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson both had a higher shot load than Thorpe, and if we are inflating the “dynamism” of rookie Cassell, then what exactly is Manu.

Funny how weirdly insecure people become with Hakeem.

Tony Parker was so dynamic he was benched for Speedy Claxton in the finals.

Sam Cassell was literally a bench player. But you know what, sure, in Game 6 of the Finals, at the tail end of a postseason run where he was the team’s second leading player in minutes, Tony Parker split time with Claxton. Great point!

Stephen Jackson was valued so much he struggled to get much above the minimum that offseason. These were not good players yet.

And he was also an 18ppg second lead scorer for the Hawks so that means he was basically an all-star.

Shamelessly saying whatever you can and desperately hoping something sticks.

[thekdog34]

Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson both had a higher shot load than Thorpe, and if we are inflating the “dynamism” of rookie Cassell, then what exactly is Manu.

Funny how weirdly insecure people become with Hakeem.

That wasn't the point, I voted Hakeem. My point was Hakeem's cast was even worse before Cassel and Horry. Kenny Smith could barely bring the ball up the court vs NY

[AEnigma]

Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson both had a higher shot load than Thorpe, and if we are inflating the “dynamism” of rookie Cassell, then what exactly is Manu.

Funny how weirdly insecure people become with Hakeem.

That wasn't the point, I voted Hakeem. My point was Hakeem's cast was even worse before Cassel and Horry. Kenny Smith could barely bring the ball up the court vs NY

Agree there, and their limited guard rotation was ultimately a fatal weakness against the Sonics in 1993. Rookie Cassell instead of Winston Garland and Hakeem might have three titles, which once more speaks to the common problem of building all these assessments around ringzzzz.

[Doctor MJ]

Dr J shouldn't count. It was ABA. Of course he had a weak supporting cast.

I picked Duncan but it's really a toss up with Hakeem. The difference for me is Hakeem's core guys were in or near their primes whereas Duncan did it with rookies, old timers, and Stephen Jackson.

You have a point here , but what you said bugs me .

Your point: Yes, it's not really a coincidence that an ABA guy would be a strong candidate for having a weaker supporting cast than anyone else, and further I don't even think Erving had the weakest supporting cast among ABA champions (Connie Hawkins' Pittsburgh Pipers). So, you're not wrong, per se.

But let's not act like Erving's Net supporting casts were normal among ABA champs. Oakland, Indiana, Utah & Kentucky were all loaded relative to competition. It's just the Erving & Hawkins years where you have one situations like this, and what they did was incredible, and relevant to the spirit of this thread as I interpret it.

[One_and_Done]

Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson both had a higher shot load than Thorpe, and if we are inflating the “dynamism” of rookie Cassell, then what exactly is Manu.

Funny how weirdly insecure people become with Hakeem.

Tony Parker was so dynamic he was benched for Speedy Claxton in the finals.

Sam Cassell was literally a bench player. But you know what, sure, in Game 6 of the Finals, at the tail end of a postseason run where he was the team’s second leading player in minutes, Tony Parker split time with Claxton. Great point!

Stephen Jackson was valued so much he struggled to get much above the minimum that offseason. These were not good players yet.

And he was also an 18ppg second lead scorer for the Hawks so that means he was basically an all-star.

Shamelessly saying whatever you can and desperately hoping something sticks.

Who are you rebutting here? Where did I say Hakeem had all-star Sam Cassell? He didn't, but it doesn't change any of what I wrote.

[Doctor MJ]

Manu's advanced stats are deceptive when you consider the Spurs were 10-3 in games he missed. Manu was also not paid like an all-star in 04 as a free agent. The Nuggets modest offer sheet was regarded as being an overpayment at the time. Whether that's because 'the league wasn't ready for him' doesn't change the fact that he wasn't overly impactful as a rookie.

He was very impactful in those playoffs, and those playoffs are what we are talking about in this thread.

Manu played a whopping 93 minutes without Duncan that postseason. Duncan played 400 minutes without many. He(duncan) also played 200 more minutes without D-Rob.

I'd think that they went 10-3 in a larger "without" sample free of wonky-lineup dynamics(not to mention a near-zero regular season on/off) is more indicative of what rookie-manu was offering in a vacuum. For a guy whose game is primarily-centered on scoring(especially when he was a rookie), a 2 point increase on 3-point worse efficiency doesn't seem like the kind of thing which swings a non-impactful rs player to "extremely valuable" in the postseason.

So I think the most general thing here is that we're starting from different places, and thus seeing different things as the more likely explanation.

You know that pre-prime players shouldn't be assumed to be the equal of their prime selves, and you know that Ginobili didn't have the box score or the respect of an all-star at this time. You also know that +/- is subject to noise, and so a small sample like this isn't going to make you reconsider all the other factors. Not unreasonable at all.

But what I know is that Ginobili was actually a year older than Kobe Bryant, and like Kobe had been playing pro ball since he was 18. He was coming from being the top scorer and arguably top player in Europe in 2001 and 2002, and in 2004 he would lead the Argentina national team to the Olympic gold medal. While American audiences were understandably skeptical of any "Euro" (obviously, Argentina is not in Europe, but the point stands), I kinda doubt that those watching Europe closely at the time would see 2004 as light years removed from 2004.

And I'm also not just looking at this in 2003 any more, I'm looking back on it with 20 years of perspective...and data. Since we know the +/- thing Ginobili showed in the 2003 playoffs turned out to be a trend that he continued to display over the entirety of his career, I find the harder thing to swallow that it was just a coincidence his +/- was so good in the 2003 playoffs, and so good in general, in particular every other time the Spurs would win the chip going forward.

But there is another point you alluded to that I've separated out that I think is important:

Moreover, if he was that impactful, why did he only play 27-minutes a game?

This isn't just a 2003 playoffs thing. It's the overriding type of question all through Ginobili's career, and I think it's reasonable we come to different conclusions on it.

Here's my interpretation:

1. Ginobili did have a tendency to play with an abandon that may have reasonable cause the Spurs to need to play him less than most players of his abilities, and to the extent that's the case, that puts a cap on his ceiling as a player.

2. This however doesn't explain why he played 20 MPG in his rookie regular season, and several minutes less than that before the all-star break. Because he's a rookie we tend to chalk this up as him being "raw", but again, given his international success, he was the furthest thing from raw.

So why is it that it took so long for Ginobili to get burn?, and, Why is it that even when he did he had a tendency to get placed with the 2nd unit?

3. Well, we do know that Ginobili was prone to improvisation and this frustrated Pop.

Manu Ginobili Colored Outside the Lines

I don’t wanna say he drove Pop out of his mind, but I’m sure there were times he did. I mean, there are those times when he takes a wild chance at the most inopportune time, and you’d wanna trade him or kill him,” says P.J. Carlesimo, who began a five-year, three-title run as a San Antonio assistant in 2002, the same year Ginóbili began his career with the Spurs. “But Pop also gave him more rope than just about anybody else would have, and certainly 100 times more than I would’ve given him. And it usually paid off, which shows in how many games [the Spurs] won with him.

How Gregg Popovich and Manu Ginobili learned to coexist

In the beginning, he would do some things that I thought were unnecessary until that point came when he came to me and said, ‘I am Manu. This is what I do.’ I said, ‘OK, you go ahead and try to save one or two of those passes per game and I’m going to shut up one or two times when they happen during the game.’ We came to this compromise and it’s been lovey dovey ever since.

This isn't just a fun little game of retrospective hyperbole, teammate Robert Horry made waves when he said this recently in a (TV) conversation with Paul Pierce:

When Robert Horry dissed Manu Ginobili

if Manu Ginobili would have did the things he was supposed to do, I would have had like 10 championships

Now it's TV, so it's not meant to be taken that seriously necessarily. But Horry didn't single out Ginobili at random. He's telling us that Ginobili's tendency to improvise caused problems...and clearly frustrated at least him.

So what all this says to me is that we absolutely know that there were issues incorporating Ginobili into the way Pop did things, and this made him play Ginobili less at least in the beginning and likely had everything to do with his 6th man-type roles.

We also know that Pop has said he feels guilty about putting Ginobili in this role, but that it worked, so he kept doing it. And that meant that Ginobili's minutes were likely always to be a bit lower than other players of similar caliber.

4. But there's another thing going on here: We know that Pop already had an offense built around Tim Duncan's post-up ability, and that that's just not the best offense to use with Ginobili. While the +/- tell us that Ginobili played just fine with Duncan, there's definitely a choice being made here to focus on what Pop thought was the best way to play offense with the team he had.

And that gets us to the whole thing about the Spurs offense really only getting great when Pop stopped looking to force the team to play this way. As the Spurs evolved into what we would now call a more "modern" offensive scheme, they got better. And this scheme unsurprisingly looked to feature an offense led by guards, with one of those guards also being a great passer, shooter, and mover without the ball.

I should stop myself there, but yeah, I think Ginobili was extremely underrated by coaches and players then, which then limited his opportunity...but didn't keep him from contributing shocking amounts of value in the minutes he played.

[PhiEaglesfan712]

The obvious answer is Dr J in 1976 because he played in the ABA, which had a weaker talent level compared to the NBA.

You could make a case for 2006 Wade and 2011 Dirk, as their teams never won another title with that supporting cast.

1994 Hakeem is hard to judge because his team repeated the following year, albeit with one of the weakest years in the NBA. I'd argue that the Hakeem's 1995 squad was weaker. (To be honest, the Spurs were the best team and probably should have won it that year, but Dennis Rodman's disruptive behavior got in the way.)

Duncan's Spurs and Curry's Warriors should be automatically disqualified because their teams won multiple titles with their supporting cast. The Spurs won again in 2005 and 2007, while Curry still had his Big 3 (with Draymond and Klay) in 2015, 2017, and 2018. If your team wins 3 titles in 5 years or 4 titles in 8 years, then the supporting cast wasn't really that weak to begin with. I mean, you don't get lucky that many times in a short span.

2023 Jokic is too early to tell. This Nuggets team could turn out to be the next one-year wonder (like the 2006 Heat) or be the next mini-dynasty like the Spurs and Warriors.

[wojoaderge]

The obvious answer is Dr J in 1976 because he played in the ABA, which had a weaker talent level compared to the NBA.

His starting guards were good quality and they were just as good in the NBA

[Mikeball]

It might be Hakeem but they had very good spacing, especially for that era. Kind of think Kenny Smith is underrated.

The thing is that Hakeem may have had the weakest supporting cast but the NBA back then was extremely weak considering the expansion.

Look at the Knicks team around Patrick Ewing. I honestly dont think that it was the much better. Espescially offenisvely.

Considering era and opposition I go with 03 Duncan