OhayoKD wrote:I think now is a good time to start the draymond-ginobli "real mvp" deathbattle
AEnigma wrote:I did not dispute Manu being more valuable per possession, but it is not just “longevity” (although sure, Pierce did provide an extra two seasons of real value and something like an extra four or five seasons of “top 50” value). 2002-14 Pierce averaged 39 minutes a game in the playoffs, and 2003-14 Manu averaged 30 minutes a game in the playoffs. Pierce averaged 34 minutes a game for his career in the regular season, whereas Manu even in his NBA prime (2004-11) only averaged 29 minutes a game — while also missing more games! So I do not think the regular season value provided is remotely close even outside of raw career length.
The entirety of Manu’s potential value argument is tied to the postseason. I agree that Manu maintains his value better in the postseason, but still we come back to a substantial per game minutes gap, and without Pierce going through any Stockton-esque playoff production declines to confidently say that “+3.5 -> +0.7” should be taken as anything especially real or meaningful (I hammer this point constantly, but again, how do we feel about Jokic’s playoff RAPM?). Using Cheema’s database, the mixed sample gives Manu a +4.3 over 149K possessions. Strong, but in a rawer sense, not more value provided than Pierce’s +3.3 over 220K possessions.
You can think that Manu was just so useful in the postseason (despite low minutes) that he made the Spurs more successful than they would have been with a career’s worth of Pierce regardless of however many wins Pierce could have added to their regular season totals. At minimum I can agree they probably lose the 2005 Finals with Pierce in his place. However, I also would expect them to fare better than they did in 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012 (and 2002 on the “longevity” note, plus theoretical value in 1999-01 far eclipsing what Manu offered over Pierce in 2017/18).
So, I actually think that comparing the 3 players - Ginobili, Green & Pierce - together makes a lot of sense.
In the past the order between has generally been seen as Pierce > Ginobili > Green pretty decisively. Maybe Green's position there is just about his not-yet-complete career and he'll blow past Ginobili now, but I do think there's a certain comfort with that ordering that people have, and I think that comfort is suspect.
I think there are just very simple reasons to justify it, but that those reasonings are not actually consistent enough to assert transitivity (A>B>C).
I think the comfortable case for Pierce over Ginobili is minutes.
I think the comfortable case for Ginobili over Green is scoring.
But Pierce doesn't have a glaring minutes advantage over Green prime vs prime, and folks here are savvy enough to be watchful of scoring bias.
So then I'll actually start with the question:
Why Pierce over Green? If the answer is pure longevity, cool, if it matters enough to any particular poster. But is there really any doubt that Green was more impactful than Pierce among the group? Maybe folks think that Green is just way luckier than Pierce in terms of who he plays with, but let's just keep in mind that Green's big impact lies on defense, where he's got a very strong argument to be the best defensive player of his era. He wouldn't have achieved this standing in many circumstances because he wasn't a big prospect likely to be chosen to be a defensive anchor, but we got to see what he can do, and we know how big of a deal it is.
I'll leave it at that other than to say I had Green ahead of Pierce in my pre-project list.
Okay then, what about Ginobili vs Green? I can definitely see the argument but I've come out favoring Ginobili as the more impressive player. I see Ginobili as the clear cut best offensive player of the Spurs' dynasty, while also being an outstanding defender. That alone doesn't clinch he ranks higher, but of course, that's when I tend to look more closely at stuff like +/-.
Let me start off by looking at something where both guys look amazing in the playoffs compared to the regular season.
In the regular season, here's the leaderboard for most years leading the Warriors in +/- for the years we have:
Steph Curry 8
Baron Davis 3
Draymond Green 2
(Ekpe Udoh 2 also, full disclosure)
Playoffs:
Draymond Green 4
Steph Curry 2
various 1
Now for the Spurs:
Regular Season:
Tim Duncan 10
Manu Ginobili 4
David Robinson 4
various 1
Playoffs:
Manu Ginobili 6
Tim Duncan 3
David Robinson 3
Kawhi Leonard 2
In both cases, superficially, it looks like Green & Ginobili emerge as the true most impactful stars of their teams when the chips are really down...but this is where looking at things round by round is insightful.
If we go by total playoff career +/- for the Warriors we get:
1. Green +991
2. Curry +899
If we take out the first round we get:
1. Curry +559
2. Green +508
What at first pass looks like a general playoff advantage, just disappears if we look at things after the first round fodder. It's close - Green's still super-impressive, but this definitely isn't the type of data we're looking to see if we want to make an argument that Green kicks things up to a whole new level when the Warriors are up against the toughest playoff opponents.
Meanwhile, when does Ginobili stand out? The Finals. The Top 2 Spurs also top our Finals +/- leaderboard:
1. Ginobili +180
2. Duncan +157
That's impressive of course, but keep in mind that that Duncan also has that dominant Finals victory over the Knicks early in his career - for which he certainly deserves credit, but if we focus the era from '02-03 onward, here's what we get for a Top 4 across the NBA:
1. Ginobili +180
2. Green +139
3. Curry +136
4. Duncan +133
Thompson checks in at +60 and Parker at +50, ftr.
This is a pretty dang massive gap between Ginobili and everyone else. He pulls this off by being the Spurs' lead Finals +/- guy every time they win the chip in this millenium...to go along with the fact that he's also leading the team in Playoff +/- to boot in each of those year.
I really see no one else like this in the records going back to '96-97. With all the noise in the small sample it's not necessarily a shock that there tends to be a lot of mixed-up-ness in data like this...but apparently not where Ginobili is involved.
Now, I'm not utterly blind to the concerns about minutes. My general feeling is that in any given year where the Spurs fail, you can't help but ask how things might have been different if Ginobili had played more - or been capable of playing more. But of course, this isn't a debate about Ginobili vs Russell or Jordan. Compared to basically everyone else at this stage, it's Ginobili doing this 4 times, and all the rest doing it far less.
Further, clearly there are times when Ginobili is hurt in the playoffs and not playing at this same level. That dings the career averages and gives fodder for durability concerns...but if Ginobili actually is potentially the most important Spur several championship runs, that's frankly just not something most players can say.
For comparison looking at similar data with the Celtics:
Most times leading team in +/- during the Regular Season:
Jayson Tatum 5
Paul Pierce 4
Kevin Garnett 3
And the Playoffs:
Jayson Tatum 3
Kevin Garnett 2
various 1 (including Pierce)
I think there tends to be this thought that Pierce was an extremely impactful player, and it's not like he wasn't great, but frankly, Pierce really isn't in the same league as Tatum on this front. Doesn't necessarily mean Pierce is overrated so much as Tatum perhaps underrated, but at the very least this shows an apparent absence of the type of impact we see from Ginobili & Green.
I'll end by circling back to a key point which is makes the most sense to ask about the two scorers in the trio:
Would the Spurs have won as many or more titles with Pierce in Ginobili's place?
Would the Celtics have won as many or more titles with Ginobili in Pierce's place?
I think the second is the simpler question. Yeah, I think the Celtics still win that chip with Ginobili in Pierce's place - assuming Doc let's Manu cook of course. I think Ginobili just plain makes the team stronger than Pierce.
What about the first question? More debatable to me because, like Ginobili, Pierce is also a better offensive fulcrum than Duncan, and so it's not hard to imagine Pierce, or a number of other guys, improving the team's offense by detoxing Pop's volume scoring post-up fetish. Of course, Ginobili didn't even need to be the team's first option to be their most valuable offensive player, and I think Ginobili was a considerably stronger defensive player too. Tough to really answer the question confidently.
I am confident though that Ginobili was the better per-minute player, in general and especially in the playoffs, and I think people should be cautious about using the minutes differences as a tiering rationale.
In the '04-05 playoffs, Ginobili played 35+ minutes in 13 out of 23 games.
In the '07-08 playoffs, Pierce played 35+ minutes in 18 out of 26 games.
So keeping in mind that there's really no reason to think that Pop absolutely had top lay Ginobili no more than 35 minutes no more than 13 times, do we really see a gap here that should put Pierce in a different category compared to Ginobili?
I posted data before that gave Ginobili such a massive Playoff RAPM difference that the gap between Ginobili and Pierce per minute was bigger than the gap between Pierce and a playoff replacement player. Obviously no one would even consider trying to use an 18 > 13 style argument for the replacement level player over Pierce, and and while I realize no one is going to look at Pierce as "not much better than a role player", I do think one needs to ask oneself what kind of a gap the extra minutes are expected to help Pierce make up for.
I find that personally, when I keep myself from anchoring my assessment of Ginobili based around him being "just a 6th man type", it's hard for me to take the extra minutes as the clear deciding factor here.
Now of course, that data represents Ginobili at apex, and as has been mentioned, by career Pierce has way more total minutes played.
But, it is worth noting I think that based on Cheema's Playoff RAPM, Ginobili actually played more playoff possessions in his career than Pierce did. Sure he got more opportunity because he was on a better team, but if the dude was actually way more valuable per possession, and played more possessions too, seems like a pretty big deal to me. The kind of big deal that would leave people easily picking the better playoff guy who played more in the playoffs regardless of broader longevity if the better playoff guy were seen as a clear cut superstar.
And of course, I would submit to folks that that's precisely how Ginobili should be seen, and thus anyone who isn't super-focused on tallying up longevity should strongly consider putting Ginobili above Pierce. What do I mean by not-super-focused on longevity tallies? Well, to channel Jeff Foxworthy:
If Karl Malone isn't in your all-time Top 5, you might not actually be all that focused on longevity.
), but he shot 44% from the perimetre over that stretch and then never crossed 39% in any other prime postseason; we have the ability to parse that for what it is while also acknowledging how it won them the title.
