Who was the best player in the 04-05 Season?

[70sFan]

I'm confused by this recent narrative shift. It's getting close to starting to discuss Manu over Duncan over the stretch of their mutual career and that's something I don't entertain at all. Maybe I am too narrow minded, but it doesn't look right for me.

Makes sense.

It's interesting hearing it called a "narrative shift". I don't want to claim it's just me put my thoughts out there - I wasn't the first person in this thread to mention Ginobili - but from my own perspective, this is just stuff that came out of the analysis I've been doing recently.

If it seems bizarre that such a "shift" would happen long after a guy's career, particularly when he played in the analytics era, well, like I said, makes sense. Of course, Ginobili's not a random guy. He's someone with a very unusual combination of impact metrics and MPG, so I'd argue that we should expect it to have been obvious how to evaluate his contribution at the time.

I have seen such a trend, not necessarily here but in general. I think Ben's video, that will come next, will accelerate this shift a lot. We will see, maybe I am wrong.

[Doctor MJ]

He can be at his career best — I already said that was where I landed — and also be playing unsustainably well over a small sample. We nitpick far larger peak stretches from Walton and McGrady.

ftr:

I rank Walton as the top player in the world during his Ramsay-healthy time without hesitation.

I'm a general skeptic on McGrady though.

[tsherkin]

I'm a general skeptic on McGrady though.

For a single season, he was wild as hell. And then he was pretty damned good the year after, too. And I think about everything you might look at will bear that out. But especially 02-03, he was absolutely just tearing things to pieces on the offensive end to an extent no one else really reached that year.

If the skepticism was about his ability to maintain it, that makes sense; dude was taking 6 3PA/g, which was his highest rate at the time and remained his 2nd-most prolific 3pt shooting season over the remainder of his career. And he did it at the best shooting percentage from 3 he ever managed. It was a single-season conjunction of 3pt shooting, draw rate (second-best FTr of his career), and one of his best perimeter/mid-range shooting seasons. He was just firing on all cylinders. Came into camp in shape after actually working hard for once in the off-season, and realized his natural talent.

But sustainable? Yeah, he never reached 38% from 3 again unless you count his final season with Atlanta.

[OhayoKD]

It does make sense to ask whether a guy with big +/- numbers in more limited minutes is getting his teammates effectively cherry-picked, but this is far from any kind of a given.

Not a given in general, but in regards to duncan, who posts net-rating splits that top even magic for his prime and with lineup-adjustments looks like the 2nd or 3rd most valuable player of the last near 30-years, and who we've seen this effect before with other teammates, I'd say it's rather likely. Perhaps 2005 is an exception, perhaps not.

Hmm. So I think there's a point along these lines that makes sense to me:

If a superstar who plays big minutes puts up huge RAPM, and he has a teammate who plays less minutes and puts up a bigger On/Off with a smaller RAPM, the most likely explanation is that that the big minute guy is playing on average with weaker lineups around him.

On that note, if a player's impact also happens to look bigger when you take him out of a team entirely then the rapm or the on/off, there's a good chance both of those metrics are sleeping on his actual value though as always you have to be careful with context and about sample-size

Duncan has the uniquely(and i really do mean unique) lopsided minute distributions, the big rapm, and a indirect/wowy portfolio with the last bit maybe gesturing at mount rushmore case(and rapm not really dismissing the possibility) to go with proof of concept with different systems and different teammates.

Lots of reason to consider any on/off discrepancies a product of noise rather than a reflection of his actual value, though again, the 2005 --playoffs-- might be an exception.

The simplest interpretation of such a theory is one Player B always plays with Player A, but Player A also plays more minutes. In such a scenario, Player A is without question carrying the heavier load.

But if we zoom in just on '04-05 RS, we can see that Rasho Nesterovic played more minutes with Manu Ginobili than with Tim Duncan, and in fact Ginobili played almost as much with Nesterovic as he did with Duncan. You really want to argue that this was Ginobili getting to play with better teammates?

I mean we can just compare the minute distributions of duncan and manu with guys 6 through 12

Spoiler:

[B[Brent Barry[/b]

Duncan only minutes -> 261
Manu only minutes -> 68

Nazr Mohammed

Manu only minutes -> 145
Duncan only minutes -> 119

Beno Udhr

Duncan only minutes -> 64
Manu only minutes -> 22

Glenn Robinson

Duncan only minutes -> 41
Manu only minutes-> 13

Rasho netorevec

Manu only minuites -> 38
Duncan only minutes -> 12

Devin Brown

Duncan only minutes -> 11
Manu only minutes -> 8

[Manu only minutes -> 6
Duncan only minutes -> 0

Add it all up and you get
with "bad" teammates

Duncan only -> 508
Manu only => 300

Make of that what you will.

Okay, so if I'm reading what you said right, you're talking about '04-05 playoff minutes.

Rasho played 38 minutes in the playoffs with Ginobili and without Duncan.
Rasho played 12 minutes in the playoffs with Duncan and without Ginobili.

I was talking before about regular season, so let me put what that looks like:

Rasho played 499 minutes in the regular season with Ginobili and without Duncan.
Rasho played 267 minutes in the regular season with Duncan and without Ginobili.

I'd say it's analogous to a point, except that the playoffs are a lot smaller. Some of that could be expected just from the playoffs being a shorter season, but it also has to do with:

Yeah, I missed "regular season" though, as has been pointed out before, we got large samples of the spurs without both, and it was duncan they struggled without.

I don't know what the minute distributions for all the bad teammates is, but when a team does just fine without you for substantial samples, the on/off(at least for the rs) saying otherwise is probably noise(barring major team context).

Rasho played 25.5 MPG in the regular season.
Rasho played 7.6 MPG in the playoffs.

So I think a likely explanation here is that as Pop trimmed the fat in the playoffs, that meant that there was less time to be played with "bad" teammates, and so players who spent the regular season playing a bigger fraction with the "bad" are going to play with better teammates in the playoffs.

With this in mind, it makes sense to say that a guy like Ginobili might look better by On-Off in the playoffs compared to the regular season.

This doesn't explain Ginobili's general RAPM improvement in the playoffs, nor the stark difference between he and Duncan in the 2005 post-season, but it's something to look for as part of a general trend as coach's shorten their rotations.

i mean rapm isn't impervious to those effects, though i would be curious what the 5-year comparison looks like during the stretch you have many penned as a potential 5-peat centerpiece. As i highlighted when i did the cheema break-down, with the exception of Lebron James, everyone who played 200,000+ regular season possessions or 20000 playoff possessions saw a drop for their career marks in the postseason. Though maybe you are referring to something else?

Frankly I think the whole thing about the 6th man-type role being possibly being a source of +/- inflation is entirely about opponent strength. Someone who spends a decent amount of time with bench players is basically by definition playing with worse teammates, but if he can feast against inferior opponents well enough, his +/- data will be inflated.

But as I've said, thing is such a role would predict that come playoff time such a player would either be less impactful or play less minutes or both. And Ginobili's indicators go 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

I don't think it's entirely that, but yes that is a potential factor to. In soccer you will get supersubs who fans clamor for to get more minutes but they are specifically deployed in favorable situations for them to produce and often see that per 90 peroduction drop if they're moved into the eleven.

I don't know how much that is a factor here though

Sounds like what you're talking about is the ability to sprint rather than run a marathon.

In baseball, closers are guys who often just pitch for a single inning to finish the game, and they basically hold nothing in reserve. They couldn't pitch a whole game like that, and so it's not an apples-to-apples conversation when comparing them with other pitchers.

I think it's reasonable to ask about particular players only being able to play like they do because their minutes are limited. The classic guy I think of like this is Bobby Jones back in the '70s. Ginobili is possibly the best known example from his era, but you could also look at guys like Nate McMillan from the '90s or Alex Caruso today.

I believe that the question should be considered for all of them, but also that they are all also different guys with different bodies.

Well, it's also about being deployed situationally in favorable situations for you to perform as opposed to simply being deployed regardless.

[One_and_Done]

You'll gain alot of cred with Iggy in your corner.

Defence is notoriously hard to capture in numbers, and Duncan was anchoring the Spurs on that side of the ball.

[AdagioPace]

You'll gain alot of cred with Iggy in your corner.

Defence is notoriously hard to capture in numbers, and Duncan was anchoring the Spurs on that side of the ball.

the infamous Duncan's on/off 05 numbers are still mysterious and controversial (even though OhaykoKD and DoctorMJ have made a great effort to crack them here, analyzing lineups).
Yeah, using your last remark: would the Spurs defense have collpased without TD? was offense or defense, or both, the source of those ugly numbers? was the injury still relevant?
Neither Manu nor Duncan made the other useless when they where on the floor, based on '05 RS and also on the rest of their career (when their impact looked additive).
The discussion is stimulating because both played on the same team and almost the same games and same opponents. (the other similar case, Draymond vs Curry, was only credible for a couple seasons maybe)

[OhayoKD]

You'll gain alot of cred with Iggy in your corner.

Defence is notoriously hard to capture in numbers, and Duncan was anchoring the Spurs on that side of the ball.

the infamous Duncan's on/off 05 numbers are still mysterious and controversial (even though OhaykoKD and DoctorMJ have made a great effort to crack them here, analyzing lineups).
Yeah, using your last remark: would the Spurs defense have collpased without TD? was offense or defense, or both, the source of those ugly numbers? was the injury still relevant?
Neither Manu nor Duncan made the other useless when they where on the floor, based on '05 RS and also on the rest of their career (when their impact looked additive).
The discussion is stimulating because both played on the same team and almost the same games and same opponents. (the other similar case, Draymond vs Curry, was only credible for a couple seasons maybe)

I think Draymond's argument vs Steph beyond a select season or two would be more viable than manu's vs duncan's just on him having a significant wowy footprint, more even minute distribution, and steph not having a 1999 or even 2003 equivalent.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm a general skeptic on McGrady though.

For a single season, he was wild as hell. And then he was pretty damned good the year after, too. And I think about everything you might look at will bear that out. But especially 02-03, he was absolutely just tearing things to pieces on the offensive end to an extent no one else really reached that year.

If the skepticism was about his ability to maintain it, that makes sense; dude was taking 6 3PA/g, which was his highest rate at the time and remained his 2nd-most prolific 3pt shooting season over the remainder of his career. And he did it at the best shooting percentage from 3 he ever managed. It was a single-season conjunction of 3pt shooting, draw rate (second-best FTr of his career), and one of his best perimeter/mid-range shooting seasons. He was just firing on all cylinders. Came into camp in shape after actually working hard for once in the off-season, and realized his natural talent.

But sustainable? Yeah, he never reached 38% from 3 again unless you count his final season with Atlanta.

Well, let me point out a difference here comparing McGrady to Ginobili & Walton:

Ginobili & Walton were guys who were just freakishly valuable compared to box score stats as a matter of course, and who are being held back by health.

McGrady was a tough-shot guy who largely contributed a negative TS Add in the seasons of his career but in his one shining peak managed to get up to 56% TS.

Can you argue that that peak had nothing to do with small sample variance and that in today's game with better spacing he'd be all that? Sure. But in practice, McGrady just wasn't a guy who gave you extreme positive impact in the NBA for reasons that explicitly tied in to how he played the game. How he played was aligned with the thinking of the times to be sure, but if we're looking to evaluate McGrady for what he actually was, rather than what he might have become in a basketball world with wiser strategy, I'm not that impressed.

[Doctor MJ]

Not a given in general, but in regards to duncan, who posts net-rating splits that top even magic for his prime and with lineup-adjustments looks like the 2nd or 3rd most valuable player of the last near 30-years, and who we've seen this effect before with other teammates, I'd say it's rather likely. Perhaps 2005 is an exception, perhaps not.

Hmm. So I think there's a point along these lines that makes sense to me:

If a superstar who plays big minutes puts up huge RAPM, and he has a teammate who plays less minutes and puts up a bigger On/Off with a smaller RAPM, the most likely explanation is that that the big minute guy is playing on average with weaker lineups around him.

On that note, if a player's impact also happens to look bigger when you take him out of a team entirely then the rapm or the on/off, there's a good chance both of those metrics are sleeping on his actual value though as always you have to be careful with context and about sample-size

Duncan has the uniquely(and i really do mean unique) lopsided minute distributions, the big rapm, and a indirect/wowy portfolio with the last bit maybe gesturing at mount rushmore case(and rapm not really dismissing the possibility) to go with proof of concept with different systems and different teammates.

Lots of reason to consider any on/off discrepancies a product of noise rather than a reflection of his actual value, though again, the 2005 --playoffs-- might be an exception.

I'm confused about the "when you take him out of a team" point. I thought we already went through this and saw that while the team missed Duncan more when he didn't play a game during the regular season, the data favors Ginobili in the playoffs.

And yes, 2005 is clearly different in general, and I think folks should really consider how they'd think about the situation if the Spurs had fizzled out in the playoffs, because it's really what we should expect to happen if Duncan was the sole outlier talent on the club.

I mean we can just compare the minute distributions of duncan and manu with guys 6 through 12

Spoiler:

[B[Brent Barry[/b]

Duncan only minutes -> 261
Manu only minutes -> 68

Nazr Mohammed

Manu only minutes -> 145
Duncan only minutes -> 119

Beno Udhr

Duncan only minutes -> 64
Manu only minutes -> 22

Glenn Robinson

Duncan only minutes -> 41
Manu only minutes-> 13

Rasho netorevec

Manu only minuites -> 38
Duncan only minutes -> 12

Devin Brown

Duncan only minutes -> 11
Manu only minutes -> 8

[Manu only minutes -> 6
Duncan only minutes -> 0

Add it all up and you get
with "bad" teammates

Duncan only -> 508
Manu only => 300

Make of that what you will.

Okay, so if I'm reading what you said right, you're talking about '04-05 playoff minutes.

Rasho played 38 minutes in the playoffs with Ginobili and without Duncan.
Rasho played 12 minutes in the playoffs with Duncan and without Ginobili.

I was talking before about regular season, so let me put what that looks like:

Rasho played 499 minutes in the regular season with Ginobili and without Duncan.
Rasho played 267 minutes in the regular season with Duncan and without Ginobili.

I'd say it's analogous to a point, except that the playoffs are a lot smaller. Some of that could be expected just from the playoffs being a shorter season, but it also has to do with:

Yeah, I missed "regular season" though, as has been pointed out before, we got large samples of the spurs without both, and it was duncan they struggled without.

I don't know what the minute distributions for all the bad teammates is, but when a team does just fine without you for substantial samples, the on/off(at least for the rs) saying otherwise is probably noise(barring major team context).

Look what's undeniable is that both Duncan & Ginobili are outliers by +/- indicators throughout their career. I understand that the conversation we're having can't help but have a lot of Duncan vs Ginobili going on, but I'm not trying to say Ginobili should be ranked higher in general than Duncan.

I'll admit I'm using the context of the thread to discuss the '04-05 playoffs which is a very specific moment over the course of their careers where I see Ginobili as the team's MVP, and when we talk about just that type a sample it makes sense to think about noise...but we know what the career data tells us too, and it tells us that no-doubt-about-it-superstar Duncan had a teammate who also put up huge impact indicators as a matter of course.

This then to say that trying to use "probably noise" to explain things away here just doesn't make sense to me.

Rasho played 25.5 MPG in the regular season.
Rasho played 7.6 MPG in the playoffs.

So I think a likely explanation here is that as Pop trimmed the fat in the playoffs, that meant that there was less time to be played with "bad" teammates, and so players who spent the regular season playing a bigger fraction with the "bad" are going to play with better teammates in the playoffs.

With this in mind, it makes sense to say that a guy like Ginobili might look better by On-Off in the playoffs compared to the regular season.

This doesn't explain Ginobili's general RAPM improvement in the playoffs, nor the stark difference between he and Duncan in the 2005 post-season, but it's something to look for as part of a general trend as coach's shorten their rotations.

i mean rapm isn't impervious to those effects, though i would be curious what the 5-year comparison looks like during the stretch you have many penned as a potential 5-peat centerpiece. As i highlighted when i did the cheema break-down, with the exception of Lebron James, everyone who played 200,000+ regular season possessions or 20000 playoff possessions saw a drop for their career marks in the postseason. Though maybe you are referring to something else?

When you refer "isn't impervious to those effects", do you mean RAPM has collinearity issues too?

If so, that's certainly true, but if you're looking to reject all the data we have that can be used to show playoff impact (raw +/-, W-L with/without you, RAPM) it feel like there's nothing left but the regular season default.

Always fine to say "I'm not confident enough in the sample to weigh it significantly", but when you're saying stuff like "probably noise", that's a very different slant in my eyes.

Re: referring to something else? Honestly I was just going by memory from looking at stuff previously.

But if we use Cheema's 25-year post-season study, we can see that there are plenty of guys with a bigger postseason RAPM compared to regular season, and that Ginobili is one of them.

To just list Duncan & Ginobili here:

Duncan: RS: 4.592, PS: 4.289, Diff: -0.303
Ginobili: RS: 3.724, PS: 5.169, Diff: +1.445

Gionbili has 23,031 postseason possessions listed btw, so I think he should qualify based on your stated thresholds, though I must say that I'm not particularly concerned about that threshold. Small sample is always a problem, I don't think we need to get to 20K of something before we have a sample worth considering.

Frankly I think the whole thing about the 6th man-type role being possibly being a source of +/- inflation is entirely about opponent strength. Someone who spends a decent amount of time with bench players is basically by definition playing with worse teammates, but if he can feast against inferior opponents well enough, his +/- data will be inflated.

But as I've said, thing is such a role would predict that come playoff time such a player would either be less impactful or play less minutes or both. And Ginobili's indicators go 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

I don't think it's entirely that, but yes that is a potential factor to. In soccer you will get supersubs who fans clamor for to get more minutes but they are specifically deployed in favorable situations for them to produce and often see that per 90 peroduction drop if they're moved into the eleven.

I don't know how much that is a factor here though

Sounds like what you're talking about is the ability to sprint rather than run a marathon.

In baseball, closers are guys who often just pitch for a single inning to finish the game, and they basically hold nothing in reserve. They couldn't pitch a whole game like that, and so it's not an apples-to-apples conversation when comparing them with other pitchers.

I think it's reasonable to ask about particular players only being able to play like they do because their minutes are limited. The classic guy I think of like this is Bobby Jones back in the '70s. Ginobili is possibly the best known example from his era, but you could also look at guys like Nate McMillan from the '90s or Alex Caruso today.

I believe that the question should be considered for all of them, but also that they are all also different guys with different bodies.

Well, it's also about being deployed situationally in favorable situations for you to perform as opposed to simply being deployed regardless.

Right, which is certainly something I've already spoken to in this thread. If you'd like to make the case that Ginobili's minutes were being cherry-picked based on the opponents in the game, go right ahead, but while I think the question is a good one to consider, I don't think that's what was happening with Ginobili, and in general I don't think that's what's happening with guys who are playing more On than Off.

[tsherkin]

Well, let me point out a difference here comparing McGrady to Ginobili & Walton:

Ginobili & Walton were guys who were just freakishly valuable compared to box score stats as a matter of course, and who are being held back by health.

McGrady was a tough-shot guy who largely contributed a negative TS Add in the seasons of his career but in his one shining peak managed to get up to 56% TS.

Can you argue that that peak had nothing to do with small sample variance and that in today's game with better spacing he'd be all that? Sure. But in practice, McGrady just wasn't a guy who gave you extreme positive impact in the NBA for reasons that explicitly tied in to how he played the game. How he played was aligned with the thinking of the times to be sure, but if we're looking to evaluate McGrady for what he actually was, rather than what he might have become in a basketball world with wiser strategy, I'm not that impressed.

I gather you didn't really take away the message I was sending. That was very explicitly a small-sample thing from McGrady, because it relied so heavily on volume 3pt shooting and foul draw at levels he never showed he was able to put out. I believe he had the tools to do that more regularly had he put in the time more consistently, of course: the athletic tools were there, the shooting motion was fine, etc, etc, but he never put it together before or after, so yes, I absolutely agree that McGrady's situation was more of a one-off than someone like Manu or Walton in terms of consistency.

Health mattered for McGrady, but that health was also influenced by his crappy training habits. He loved tough shots, but he also played on those horrifically-bad, incompetent-managed Orlando teams where he had no choice but to do that. In 03, he was taking good shots, running PnR, smashing post-ups, looking good above and beyond that. He was also taking a lot of the 3PAs that made me tear out my hair watching Kobe, so there's that too.

You're welcome not to be impressed with McGrady as a whole, for sure. He never came close to that level of play ever again. That year, he was amazing, of course. It was what he should have been and just never became for various reasons.

[scrabbarista]

I accidentally voted "other" because my eyes skimmed over Duncan at the top.

[OhayoKD]

On that note, if a player's impact also happens to look bigger when you take him out of a team entirely then the rapm or the on/off, there's a good chance both of those metrics are sleeping on his actual value though as always you have to be careful with context and about sample-size

Duncan has the uniquely(and i really do mean unique) lopsided minute distributions, the big rapm, and a indirect/wowy portfolio with the last bit maybe gesturing at mount rushmore case(and rapm not really dismissing the possibility) to go with proof of concept with different systems and different teammates.

Lots of reason to consider any on/off discrepancies a product of noise rather than a reflection of his actual value, though again, the 2005 --playoffs-- might be an exception.

I'm confused about the "when you take him out of a team" point. I thought we already went through this and saw that while the team missed Duncan more when he didn't play a game during the regular season, the data favors Ginobili in the playoffs.

And yes, 2005 is clearly different in general, and I think folks should really consider how they'd think about the situation if the Spurs had fizzled out in the playoffs, because it's really what we should expect to happen if Duncan was the sole outlier talent on the club.

yes, the playoffs might be an exception, like i said...

You are bringing up regular-season on/off and minute distributions too though

Yeah, I missed "regular season" though, as has been pointed out before, we got large samples of the spurs without both, and it was duncan they struggled without.

I don't know what the minute distributions for all the bad teammates is, but when a team does just fine without you for substantial samples, the on/off(at least for the rs) saying otherwise is probably noise(barring major team context).

Look what's undeniable is that both Duncan & Ginobili are outliers by +/- indicators throughout their career. I understand that the conversation we're having can't help but have a lot of Duncan vs Ginobili going on, but I'm not trying to say Ginobili should be ranked higher in general than Duncan.

Ginobili isn't a +/- outlier by wowy(iow when he is completely removed from the team), which opens the possibility(for at least the regular-season stuff) that the +/- things you're calling undeniable are a result of the rotations/minute distributions. Now maybe the 2005 postseason is not affected by this, and maybe you can even argue we shouldn't use this for the playoffs at all, but this is just a general weakness in manu's case that someone like say draymond doesn't have(or at least to a similar degree).

With the impact indicators where rotations and minute distributions are annulled as potential factors, manu, repeatedly has looked alot worse than his on/off or rapm might indicate. His on/off looks best, his rapm looks second best, and his wowy looks the worst. That is what I'd expect if the low minutes and rotations were inflating his on/off.

Rasho played 25.5 MPG in the regular season.
Rasho played 7.6 MPG in the playoffs.

So I think a likely explanation here is that as Pop trimmed the fat in the playoffs, that meant that there was less time to be played with "bad" teammates, and so players who spent the regular season playing a bigger fraction with the "bad" are going to play with better teammates in the playoffs.

With this in mind, it makes sense to say that a guy like Ginobili might look better by On-Off in the playoffs compared to the regular season.

This doesn't explain Ginobili's general RAPM improvement in the playoffs, nor the stark difference between he and Duncan in the 2005 post-season, but it's something to look for as part of a general trend as coach's shorten their rotations.

i mean rapm isn't impervious to those effects, though i would be curious what the 5-year comparison looks like during the stretch you have many penned as a potential 5-peat centerpiece. As i highlighted when i did the cheema break-down, with the exception of Lebron James, everyone who played 200,000+ regular season possessions or 20000 playoff possessions saw a drop for their career marks in the postseason. Though maybe you are referring to something else?

When you refer "isn't impervious to those effects", do you mean RAPM has collinearity issues too?

If so, that's certainly true, but if you're looking to reject all the data we have that can be used to show playoff impact (raw +/-, W-L with/without you, RAPM) it feel like there's nothing left but the regular season default.
[/quote]
Not looking to reject all of it, but in general it would be unusual for on/off inflation to eclusively happen in the regular-season. That doesn't mean we can't look at "production" or whatever to mark potential exceptions(2005), but doesn't seem unfair to me they play a factor to an extent for manu in the postseason just because we don't have wowy for the postseason. Especially in years where there's no real production shift(2003).

Always fine to say "I'm not confident enough in the sample to weigh it significantly", but when you're saying stuff like "probably noise", that's a very different slant in my eyes.

Re: referring to something else? Honestly I was just going by memory from looking at stuff previously.

But if we use Cheema's 25-year post-season study, we can see that there are plenty of guys with a bigger postseason RAPM compared to regular season, and that Ginobili is one of them.

To just list Duncan & Ginobili here:

Duncan: RS: 4.592, PS: 4.289, Diff: -0.303
Ginobili: RS: 3.724, PS: 5.169, Diff: +1.445

Manu looks significantly worse in 5-year stuff though:
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmed.cheema8618/viz/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021
(it is rs+double weighted postseason)

Gionbili has 23,031 postseason possessions listed btw, so I think he should qualify based on your stated thresholds, though I must say that I'm not particularly concerned about that threshold. Small sample is always a problem, I don't think we need to get to 20K of something before we have a sample worth considering.

Ah didn't realize. The main point was that longer play tends to drag down averages when you are comparing uneven samples(as we can see when we check the 5-year stuff vs the career-stuff).

[Doctor MJ]

I'm confused about the "when you take him out of a team" point. I thought we already went through this and saw that while the team missed Duncan more when he didn't play a game during the regular season, the data favors Ginobili in the playoffs.

And yes, 2005 is clearly different in general, and I think folks should really consider how they'd think about the situation if the Spurs had fizzled out in the playoffs, because it's really what we should expect to happen if Duncan was the sole outlier talent on the club.

yes, the playoffs might be an exception, like i said...

You are bringing up regular-season on/off and minute distributions too though

Okay, if it feels like I'm moving the goalpost I apologize.

Yeah, I missed "regular season" though, as has been pointed out before, we got large samples of the spurs without both, and it was duncan they struggled without.

I don't know what the minute distributions for all the bad teammates is, but when a team does just fine without you for substantial samples, the on/off(at least for the rs) saying otherwise is probably noise(barring major team context).

Look what's undeniable is that both Duncan & Ginobili are outliers by +/- indicators throughout their career. I understand that the conversation we're having can't help but have a lot of Duncan vs Ginobili going on, but I'm not trying to say Ginobili should be ranked higher in general than Duncan.

Ginobili isn't a +/- outlier by wowy(iow when he is completely removed from the team), which opens the possibility(for at least the regular-season stuff) that the +/- things you're calling undeniable are a result of the rotations/minute distributions. Now maybe the 2005 postseason is not affected by this, and maybe you can even argue we shouldn't use this for the playoffs at all, but this is just a general weakness in manu's case that someone like say draymond doesn't have(or at least to a similar degree).

With the impact indicators where rotations and minute distributions are annulled as potential factors, manu, repeatedly has looked alot worse than his on/off or rapm might indicate. His on/off looks best, his rapm looks second best, and his wowy looks the worst. That is what I'd expect if the low minutes and rotations were inflating his on/off.[/quote]

I'm confused. Didn't I point out that in the playoffs the team's record without Ginobili was awful? I feel like we're going in circles.

When you refer "isn't impervious to those effects", do you mean RAPM has collinearity issues too?

If so, that's certainly true, but if you're looking to reject all the data we have that can be used to show playoff impact (raw +/-, W-L with/without you, RAPM) it feel like there's nothing left but the regular season default.

Not looking to reject all of it, but in general it would be unusual for on/off inflation to eclusively happen in the regular-season. That doesn't mean we can't look at "production" or whatever to mark potential exceptions(2005), but doesn't seem unfair to me they play a factor to an extent for manu in the postseason just because we don't have wowy for the postseason. Especially in years where there's no real production shift(2003).

But we do have long-term playoff WOWY where Ginobili looks better than Duncan, I've shown it to you in this thread. It's very small sample because of course it is, and I didn't give you a regression, but with the W-L I gave, it's hard to fathom how that doesn't side with Ginobili.

And this goes along with the fact that:
We've got long-term playoff On/Off, where Ginobili looks better than Duncan, which you already knew.
We've got long-term playoff RAPM, where Ginobili looks better than Duncan, which I've also posted in this thread already.

Not saying this is proof that Ginobili was better because I'm literally making clear that I rate Duncan higher, but in terms of us "not having the data", it's just not true. One thing to say the sample is too small for you to give it too much weight, quite another to talk as if it doesn't exist and take as proxy data that literally points 180 degrees in the other direction.

Always fine to say "I'm not confident enough in the sample to weigh it significantly", but when you're saying stuff like "probably noise", that's a very different slant in my eyes.

Re: referring to something else? Honestly I was just going by memory from looking at stuff previously.

But if we use Cheema's 25-year post-season study, we can see that there are plenty of guys with a bigger postseason RAPM compared to regular season, and that Ginobili is one of them.

To just list Duncan & Ginobili here:

Duncan: RS: 4.592, PS: 4.289, Diff: -0.303
Ginobili: RS: 3.724, PS: 5.169, Diff: +1.445

Manu looks significantly worse in 5-year stuff though:
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmed.cheema8618/viz/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021/FiveYearRAPMPeaks1997-2021
(it is rs+double weighted postseason)

I'm literally telling you that the statistical argument you were relying upon tells exactly the opposite story of what you were saying, and you give me a whatabout?

Gionbili has 23,031 postseason possessions listed btw, so I think he should qualify based on your stated thresholds, though I must say that I'm not particularly concerned about that threshold. Small sample is always a problem, I don't think we need to get to 20K of something before we have a sample worth considering.

Ah didn't realize. The main point was that longer play tends to drag down averages when you are comparing uneven samples(as we can see when we check the 5-year stuff vs the career-stuff).

I get the point, but to the extent we give credence to your previously mentioned threshold, your concerns clearly don't apply to Ginobili, right? I mean, you're not going to back now and say "Did I say 20K postseason possessions? I meant 30K. That's really how much it takes before you know the data is legit.", right?

[Hook_Em]

Is this the year Dirk shed the “soft” label and played more aggressive? Over 9 FT attempts per game (3.6 more than the previous year). Maybe that’s just cause they replaced Nash with combo guards.

[Djoker]

Maybe I'm just ignorant but I see no case for Ginobili > Duncan as an overall basketball player in 2005. The scoreboard data is nice but Manu played way fewer minutes and it could just be some lineup shenanigans that produce that result. I don't see what Manu could have done the bridge the enormous gap in defensive impact.

[rand]

During that season who was considered the best player in the league?

I seem to recall it was split mostly between Kobe and Duncan with more casual fans tending to pick Kobe or underrate Duncan or both. A handful of other players had their own little corner of backers: Shaq, KG, TMac, Nash, Dirk

[Doctor MJ]

Is this the year Dirk shed the “soft” label?

That would be '10-11.

[Doctor MJ]

Maybe I'm just ignorant but I see no case for Ginobili > Duncan as an overall basketball player in 2005. The scoreboard data is nice but Manu played way fewer minutes and it could just be some lineup shenanigans that produce that result. I don't see what Manu could have done the bridge the enormous gap in defensive impact.

Feel free to read the thread where this has gone over in considerable detail.