RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #35 (Walt Frazier)

[Doctor MJ]

Alright, yes, Manu will and should go well above Kevin Willis despite a substantial gap in minutes, but that is not the scale of comparison. If Manu is a regular “weak MVP” player despite his minutes, then sure, prop him up against Frazier or Pippen, but for me, he is more typically in that lower all-NBA group with Pierce (2005 postseason aside).

I've never made the case for Ginobili over Frazier in this project. I was in debate between Ginobili, Pippen, Stockton, Miller, Havlicek, and others, but I had Frazier distinctly above all of them.

Personal point of distinction with Frazier acknowledged, but my point here is more that if people are pushing Manu for his prime value, then I feel like that is roughly the level of star he needs to be given his minutes. Manu has eight regular seasons where he played more than 24 minutes a game (i.e. half the game — pretty paltry bar), and 2009 was basically a throwaway year. You have stated you see his case more tied to the playoffs, and there he does increase his minutes (as key rotation players do) so that now he has a twelve-year stretch (eleven postseasons) where he crosses that 24-minute mark. Of course, in a playoff setting I think 24-minutes is a pitifully marginal cutoff, and then I note he only has six postseasons above 28 minutes a game. He still has value in those surrounding years — two championships and another narrow Finals loss — but we are talking about a player who is typically fourth or fifth on his team in postseason minutes, and the one series where he was top two (led the team) produced an ignominious sweep and the worst playoff “impact” of Manu’s prime.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea that the Spurs were typically deepest on the wings between Bowen, SJax, Brent, Finley, Kawhi, Danny, etc., and that the 2010 exception was tied to Parker and George Hill splitting time for similar reasons. I have a hard time saying it is to Manu’s credit that for the first ~five years of his career he was playing fewer minutes than Bruce Bowen, but hey, if it were someone like Pete Myers then that would not have happened. However, if we want to say Manu could have played more than he did on worse teams (leaving a question of how much more and to what extent that may have affected his career length or general availability), and that swapping Pierce and Manu would to some extent close the per minute gap, then we also need to admit it is easier to exert “impact” in more select rotations and that some hypothetical Manu matching Pierce’s minutes would almost certainly not be as productive on any possessional basis.

To reiterate, we are for the most part referring to a true prime stretch of seven or eight regular seasons and six postseasons, and the only way I think that justifies his placement here is if he truly was a regular top ~five force throughout that period rather than more of an all-NBA one. And while I can acknowledge the framing of him as a valid top five choice in 2005 specifically based on his outlier postseason stretch, realistically, I am not taking Manu over Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Shaq, or Dirk on any random team. Furthermore, if we replayed that postseason a hundred times, I am skeptical Manu’s average production would provide more than Wade, McGrady, or Kobe (placed on a better team), and to be really honest, I am similarly uncertain that he would be clearly surpassing lesser peak wings like Pierce or even Vince either in total per game contribution on otherwise identical teams. I am willing to mark Manu with a higher peak than those two based on what actually happened, but take away the shooting variance and I am not sure that distinction would be anywhere near as easy to make.

Your perspective not only makes sense but I’d expect most to see things pretty similarly to you. In general this relates to why I’m not really expecting most people to come with me here, I’m just hoping they really think through how they assess Ginobili because I think a lot of the heuristics we use to peg players generally just fall well short of what’s required in a case like this.

Let me put something forward as an either/or:

Either Pop was brilliant for placing a player so capable of plus minus impact into a 6th man type role, or it was a mistake.

Folks here are wise with nuance and may chafe at this black and white thinking, but what I’m trying to get at here is specifically that we simply don’t have anyone with the kind of long-term profile of majority-but-limited minutes putting up plus minus numbers like Ginobili did, and we certainly don’t have others like this who get considerably better in the playoffs.

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

And I’m saying I think it was a mistake. I think Pop did it because he thought the best offense he could build was around interior post-up volume scoring where the guards passed the ball in and got out of the way, and this was a dead wrong way to think about 21st century in general.

Pop is a great coach who did a lot of things right, and his misperception here goes along with the dominant paradigm of the time so I don’t want overstate how damning this is of Pop.

But I think the chips make people think that Pop must have been right in his approach, and then tend to twist what they know into knots that essentially portray Pop as a genius on this, when we know full well that the team improving on offense in later years doesn’t make sense if the Duncan post-up offense was really working that well.

This then to say I don’t think Bowen playing more minutes than Ginobili really had anything to do with Bowen, but rather had everything to do with Pop’s perception of what guards should be doing next to Duncan…which was just plain wrong.

None of this means I’m looking to pretend Ginobili played more than he did - Ginobili is absolutely getting hurt by minutes in my criteria. But I don’t think a skepticism toward Ginobili’s level of play is warranted at this point in my analytical journey.

To put it in plain words that are obviously bold:

Do I think Ginobili was in general a Top 5 level player when he was on the court? Yes, I do. I think he was better at basketball in the time he played than any other shooting guard in the 21st century.

Is there a question of whether he could have maintained this level if he played superstar minutes? Yup, and there always will be.

But do I think superstar minutes shooting guards would have matched Ginobili’s per minute impact if they played his minutes? Nope. I don’t think there’s anything magical about playing a bit less minutes that would have allowed other players to have the impact Ginobili did because frankly, they just didn’t play like he did. Playing a bit less is not going to make a guy’s instincts better, and Ginobili’s instincts on both sides of the ball were outlier-level good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tsherkin]

I've never made the case for Ginobili over Frazier in this project. I was in debate between Ginobili, Pippen, Stockton, Miller, Havlicek, and others, but I had Frazier distinctly above all of them.

Personal point of distinction with Frazier acknowledged, but my point here is more that if people are pushing Manu for his prime value, then I feel like that is roughly the level of star he needs to be given his minutes. Manu has eight regular seasons where he played more than 24 minutes a game (i.e. half the game — pretty paltry bar), and 2009 was basically a throwaway year. You have stated you see his case more tied to the playoffs, and there he does increase his minutes (as key rotation players do) so that now he has a twelve-year stretch (eleven postseasons) where he crosses that 24-minute mark. Of course, in a playoff setting I think 24-minutes is a pitifully marginal cutoff, and then I note he only has six postseasons above 28 minutes a game. He still has value in those surrounding years — two championships and another narrow Finals loss — but we are talking about a player who is typically fourth or fifth on his team in postseason minutes, and the one series where he was top two (led the team) produced an ignominious sweep and the worst playoff “impact” of Manu’s prime.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea that the Spurs were typically deepest on the wings between Bowen, SJax, Brent, Finley, Kawhi, Danny, etc., and that the 2010 exception was tied to Parker and George Hill splitting time for similar reasons. I have a hard time saying it is to Manu’s credit that for the first ~five years of his career he was playing fewer minutes than Bruce Bowen, but hey, if it were someone like Pete Myers then that would not have happened. However, if we want to say Manu could have played more than he did on worse teams (leaving a question of how much more and to what extent that may have affected his career length or general availability), and that swapping Pierce and Manu would to some extent close the per minute gap, then we also need to admit it is easier to exert “impact” in more select rotations and that some hypothetical Manu matching Pierce’s minutes would almost certainly not be as productive on any possessional basis.

To reiterate, we are for the most part referring to a true prime stretch of seven or eight regular seasons and six postseasons, and the only way I think that justifies his placement here is if he truly was a regular top ~five force throughout that period rather than more of an all-NBA one. And while I can acknowledge the framing of him as a valid top five choice in 2005 specifically based on his outlier postseason stretch, realistically, I am not taking Manu over Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Shaq, or Dirk on any random team. Furthermore, if we replayed that postseason a hundred times, I am skeptical Manu’s average production would provide more than Wade, McGrady, or Kobe (placed on a better team), and to be really honest, I am similarly uncertain that he would be clearly surpassing lesser peak wings like Pierce or even Vince either in total per game contribution on otherwise identical teams. I am willing to mark Manu with a higher peak than those two based on what actually happened, but take away the shooting variance and I am not sure that distinction would be anywhere near as easy to make.

Your perspective not only makes sense but I’d expect most to see things pretty similarly to you. In general this relates to why I’m not really expecting most people to come with me here, I’m just hoping they really think through how they assess Ginobili because I think a lot of the heuristics we use to peg players generally just fall well short of what’s required in a case like this.

Let me put something forward as an either/or:

Either Pop was brilliant for placing a player so capable of plus minus impact into a 6th man type role, or it was a mistake.

Folks here are wise with nuance and may chafe at this black and white thinking, but what I’m trying to get at here is specifically that we simply don’t have anyone with the kind of long-term profile of majority-but-limited minutes putting up plus minus numbers like Ginobili did, and we certainly don’t have others like this who get considerably better in the playoffs.

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

And I’m saying I think it was a mistake. I think Pop did it because he thought the best offense he could build was around interior post-up volume scoring where the guards passed the ball in and got out of the way, and this was a dead wrong way to think about 21st century in general.

Pop is a great coach who did a lot of things right, and his misperception here goes along with the dominant paradigm of the time so I don’t want overstate how damning this is of Pop.

But I think the chips make people think that Pop must have been right in his approach, and then tend to twist what they know into knots that essentially portray Pop as a genius on this, when we know full well that the team improving on offense in later years doesn’t make sense if the Duncan post-up offense was really working that well.

This then to say I don’t think Bowen playing more minutes than Ginobili really had anything to do with Bowen, but rather had everything to do with Pop’s perception of what guards should be doing next to Duncan…which was just plain wrong.

None of this means I’m looking to pretend Ginobili played more than he did - Ginobili is absolutely getting hurt by minutes in my criteria. But I don’t think a skepticism toward Ginobili’s level of play is warranted at this point in my analytical journey.

To put it in plain words that are obviously bold:

Do I think Ginobili was in general a Top 5 level player when he was on the court? Yes, I do. I think he was better at basketball in the time he played than any other shooting guard in the 21st century.

Is there a question of whether he could have maintained this level if he played superstar minutes? Yup, and there always will be.

But do I think superstar minutes shooting guards would have matched Ginobili’s per minute impact if they played his minutes? Nope. I don’t think there’s anything magical about playing a bit less minutes that would have allowed other players to have the impact Ginobili did because frankly, they just didn’t play like he did. Playing a bit less is not going to make a guy’s instincts better, and Ginobili’s instincts on both sides of the ball were outlier-level good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I always figured the thing that made Pops smart is that he figured it out eventually, admitted his earlier process wasn't the right one, and went with what was working. He adapted. San Antonio has evolved considerably over the years.

[trex_8063]

When thinking about what has driven improvement in the league......integration has helped, but I suspect most of us agree that probably the biggest factor is size of player pool.

And obviously things like scheming/coaching/strategy/analytics have helped toward getting players guided toward better and more effective outcomes. Skills training, shot mechanics, etc, have also evolved, improving the all-around quality of play. However, these latter things are all EXTRINSIC factors: they are things that players from 50-60 years ago would have absorbed if they had been immersed in them from day one (like today's players).

Otherwise, increasing the size of the player pool that the league can tap into is probably the largest driver of improved player quality.

And I think arguably the biggest driver in player pool size is the popularity of the game. As such, I think there is something to be said for those players who were, quite simply, big draws: the guys that put butts in seats, and who inspired the imaginations of younger generations of players.

I bring this up as another small plug for Elgin Baylor. In his time, he was certainly someone who fits this distinction. I'll offer one quote:

“.....Fans specifically came to see him [Baylor]. When he was on military duty and playing sporadically, they called the box office before games to ask if he would be appearing. The Lakers front office had run figures calculating Baylor’s ability to sell tickets, and they determined that in games when he did not play, the Lakers drew an average of 2,000 fewer fans. That amounted to approximately $6,000 per game, or $200,000 over the course of a season….”

[Doctor MJ]

Personal point of distinction with Frazier acknowledged, but my point here is more that if people are pushing Manu for his prime value, then I feel like that is roughly the level of star he needs to be given his minutes. Manu has eight regular seasons where he played more than 24 minutes a game (i.e. half the game — pretty paltry bar), and 2009 was basically a throwaway year. You have stated you see his case more tied to the playoffs, and there he does increase his minutes (as key rotation players do) so that now he has a twelve-year stretch (eleven postseasons) where he crosses that 24-minute mark. Of course, in a playoff setting I think 24-minutes is a pitifully marginal cutoff, and then I note he only has six postseasons above 28 minutes a game. He still has value in those surrounding years — two championships and another narrow Finals loss — but we are talking about a player who is typically fourth or fifth on his team in postseason minutes, and the one series where he was top two (led the team) produced an ignominious sweep and the worst playoff “impact” of Manu’s prime.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea that the Spurs were typically deepest on the wings between Bowen, SJax, Brent, Finley, Kawhi, Danny, etc., and that the 2010 exception was tied to Parker and George Hill splitting time for similar reasons. I have a hard time saying it is to Manu’s credit that for the first ~five years of his career he was playing fewer minutes than Bruce Bowen, but hey, if it were someone like Pete Myers then that would not have happened. However, if we want to say Manu could have played more than he did on worse teams (leaving a question of how much more and to what extent that may have affected his career length or general availability), and that swapping Pierce and Manu would to some extent close the per minute gap, then we also need to admit it is easier to exert “impact” in more select rotations and that some hypothetical Manu matching Pierce’s minutes would almost certainly not be as productive on any possessional basis.

To reiterate, we are for the most part referring to a true prime stretch of seven or eight regular seasons and six postseasons, and the only way I think that justifies his placement here is if he truly was a regular top ~five force throughout that period rather than more of an all-NBA one. And while I can acknowledge the framing of him as a valid top five choice in 2005 specifically based on his outlier postseason stretch, realistically, I am not taking Manu over Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Shaq, or Dirk on any random team. Furthermore, if we replayed that postseason a hundred times, I am skeptical Manu’s average production would provide more than Wade, McGrady, or Kobe (placed on a better team), and to be really honest, I am similarly uncertain that he would be clearly surpassing lesser peak wings like Pierce or even Vince either in total per game contribution on otherwise identical teams. I am willing to mark Manu with a higher peak than those two based on what actually happened, but take away the shooting variance and I am not sure that distinction would be anywhere near as easy to make.

Your perspective not only makes sense but I’d expect most to see things pretty similarly to you. In general this relates to why I’m not really expecting most people to come with me here, I’m just hoping they really think through how they assess Ginobili because I think a lot of the heuristics we use to peg players generally just fall well short of what’s required in a case like this.

Let me put something forward as an either/or:

Either Pop was brilliant for placing a player so capable of plus minus impact into a 6th man type role, or it was a mistake.

Folks here are wise with nuance and may chafe at this black and white thinking, but what I’m trying to get at here is specifically that we simply don’t have anyone with the kind of long-term profile of majority-but-limited minutes putting up plus minus numbers like Ginobili did, and we certainly don’t have others like this who get considerably better in the playoffs.

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

And I’m saying I think it was a mistake. I think Pop did it because he thought the best offense he could build was around interior post-up volume scoring where the guards passed the ball in and got out of the way, and this was a dead wrong way to think about 21st century in general.

Pop is a great coach who did a lot of things right, and his misperception here goes along with the dominant paradigm of the time so I don’t want overstate how damning this is of Pop.

But I think the chips make people think that Pop must have been right in his approach, and then tend to twist what they know into knots that essentially portray Pop as a genius on this, when we know full well that the team improving on offense in later years doesn’t make sense if the Duncan post-up offense was really working that well.

This then to say I don’t think Bowen playing more minutes than Ginobili really had anything to do with Bowen, but rather had everything to do with Pop’s perception of what guards should be doing next to Duncan…which was just plain wrong.

None of this means I’m looking to pretend Ginobili played more than he did - Ginobili is absolutely getting hurt by minutes in my criteria. But I don’t think a skepticism toward Ginobili’s level of play is warranted at this point in my analytical journey.

To put it in plain words that are obviously bold:

Do I think Ginobili was in general a Top 5 level player when he was on the court? Yes, I do. I think he was better at basketball in the time he played than any other shooting guard in the 21st century.

Is there a question of whether he could have maintained this level if he played superstar minutes? Yup, and there always will be.

But do I think superstar minutes shooting guards would have matched Ginobili’s per minute impact if they played his minutes? Nope. I don’t think there’s anything magical about playing a bit less minutes that would have allowed other players to have the impact Ginobili did because frankly, they just didn’t play like he did. Playing a bit less is not going to make a guy’s instincts better, and Ginobili’s instincts on both sides of the ball were outlier-level good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I always figured the thing that made Pops smart is that he figured it out eventually, admitted his earlier process wasn't the right one, and went with what was working. He adapted. San Antonio has evolved considerably over the years.

I think that’s a fair way to assess Pop’s arc here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tsherkin]

I think that’s a fair way to assess Pop’s arc here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I generally believe that making no mistakes doesn't really happen over any real length of time. So what we do when we err, or how we adapt as new information is introduced, matters a lot more than flawless initial execution.

In the argument of Pops vs Phil, that comes up a lot. Sticking with one system versus adapting styles, right?

[iggymcfrack]

I've never made the case for Ginobili over Frazier in this project. I was in debate between Ginobili, Pippen, Stockton, Miller, Havlicek, and others, but I had Frazier distinctly above all of them.

Personal point of distinction with Frazier acknowledged, but my point here is more that if people are pushing Manu for his prime value, then I feel like that is roughly the level of star he needs to be given his minutes. Manu has eight regular seasons where he played more than 24 minutes a game (i.e. half the game — pretty paltry bar), and 2009 was basically a throwaway year. You have stated you see his case more tied to the playoffs, and there he does increase his minutes (as key rotation players do) so that now he has a twelve-year stretch (eleven postseasons) where he crosses that 24-minute mark. Of course, in a playoff setting I think 24-minutes is a pitifully marginal cutoff, and then I note he only has six postseasons above 28 minutes a game. He still has value in those surrounding years — two championships and another narrow Finals loss — but we are talking about a player who is typically fourth or fifth on his team in postseason minutes, and the one series where he was top two (led the team) produced an ignominious sweep and the worst playoff “impact” of Manu’s prime.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea that the Spurs were typically deepest on the wings between Bowen, SJax, Brent, Finley, Kawhi, Danny, etc., and that the 2010 exception was tied to Parker and George Hill splitting time for similar reasons. I have a hard time saying it is to Manu’s credit that for the first ~five years of his career he was playing fewer minutes than Bruce Bowen, but hey, if it were someone like Pete Myers then that would not have happened. However, if we want to say Manu could have played more than he did on worse teams (leaving a question of how much more and to what extent that may have affected his career length or general availability), and that swapping Pierce and Manu would to some extent close the per minute gap, then we also need to admit it is easier to exert “impact” in more select rotations and that some hypothetical Manu matching Pierce’s minutes would almost certainly not be as productive on any possessional basis.

To reiterate, we are for the most part referring to a true prime stretch of seven or eight regular seasons and six postseasons, and the only way I think that justifies his placement here is if he truly was a regular top ~five force throughout that period rather than more of an all-NBA one. And while I can acknowledge the framing of him as a valid top five choice in 2005 specifically based on his outlier postseason stretch, realistically, I am not taking Manu over Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Shaq, or Dirk on any random team. Furthermore, if we replayed that postseason a hundred times, I am skeptical Manu’s average production would provide more than Wade, McGrady, or Kobe (placed on a better team), and to be really honest, I am similarly uncertain that he would be clearly surpassing lesser peak wings like Pierce or even Vince either in total per game contribution on otherwise identical teams. I am willing to mark Manu with a higher peak than those two based on what actually happened, but take away the shooting variance and I am not sure that distinction would be anywhere near as easy to make.

Your perspective not only makes sense but I’d expect most to see things pretty similarly to you. In general this relates to why I’m not really expecting most people to come with me here, I’m just hoping they really think through how they assess Ginobili because I think a lot of the heuristics we use to peg players generally just fall well short of what’s required in a case like this.

Let me put something forward as an either/or:

Either Pop was brilliant for placing a player so capable of plus minus impact into a 6th man type role, or it was a mistake.

Folks here are wise with nuance and may chafe at this black and white thinking, but what I’m trying to get at here is specifically that we simply don’t have anyone with the kind of long-term profile of majority-but-limited minutes putting up plus minus numbers like Ginobili did, and we certainly don’t have others like this who get considerably better in the playoffs.

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

And I’m saying I think it was a mistake. I think Pop did it because he thought the best offense he could build was around interior post-up volume scoring where the guards passed the ball in and got out of the way, and this was a dead wrong way to think about 21st century in general.

Pop is a great coach who did a lot of things right, and his misperception here goes along with the dominant paradigm of the time so I don’t want overstate how damning this is of Pop.

But I think the chips make people think that Pop must have been right in his approach, and then tend to twist what they know into knots that essentially portray Pop as a genius on this, when we know full well that the team improving on offense in later years doesn’t make sense if the Duncan post-up offense was really working that well.

This then to say I don’t think Bowen playing more minutes than Ginobili really had anything to do with Bowen, but rather had everything to do with Pop’s perception of what guards should be doing next to Duncan…which was just plain wrong.

None of this means I’m looking to pretend Ginobili played more than he did - Ginobili is absolutely getting hurt by minutes in my criteria. But I don’t think a skepticism toward Ginobili’s level of play is warranted at this point in my analytical journey.

To put it in plain words that are obviously bold:

Do I think Ginobili was in general a Top 5 level player when he was on the court? Yes, I do. I think he was better at basketball in the time he played than any other shooting guard in the 21st century.

Is there a question of whether he could have maintained this level if he played superstar minutes? Yup, and there always will be.

But do I think superstar minutes shooting guards would have matched Ginobili’s per minute impact if they played his minutes? Nope. I don’t think there’s anything magical about playing a bit less minutes that would have allowed other players to have the impact Ginobili did because frankly, they just didn’t play like he did. Playing a bit less is not going to make a guy’s instincts better, and Ginobili’s instincts on both sides of the ball were outlier-level good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think this is a very interesting and complex topic, but I'd definitely push back at the idea that Pop just made a mistake in failing to recognize Ginobili's value and played him off the bench for that reason. For one thing, Manu played a lot more in the postseason that most people think through his prime. From 2005-2011, Manu averaged 32.8 MPG in the playoffs and started 47 out of 88 playoff games. Some guys who played 30-34 MPG last playoffs would be Wiggins, Randle, KCP, MPJ, and Draymond. Solid starter minutes. If anything, I think Pop was just trying to stagger Manu and Tony Parker as much as he could since both are very capable at initiating offense and their skillsets duplicate each other somewhat. He played Parker more with Duncan since he's more of a typical point guard and would play better off of him while Manu worked better as the central playmaker off the bench. You talk about Bowen playing more minutes than Manu in the playoffs, but it's not like it was by a large amount. The 3 prime seasons where Manu played less minutes than Bowen, he averaged 32.1 MPG to Bowen's 35.7 MPG. I think there were just a few minutes that got lost in the wash of staggering Tony and Manu and making sure that he was ready to carve up bench units while the other offensive stars were resting.

One thing we can tell is that when Manu did play bigger minutes, it didn't seem to sap his efficiency at all. Famously, in the 2005 playoffs when Pop decided he needed Ginobili to start and play 36+ MPG over the last 14 games, he averaged 21/6/5/2 on .642 TS% during a season when the league average TS% was .529. The three postseasons where he started the majority of games, he posted on/offs of +19.9, +24.9, and +20.3. And of course, the one team where he was the unquestioned alpha leading his squad in minutes, it was the highlight of his career. In the 2004 Olympic semifinals, he led both teams in minutes while dropping 29 points on .878 TS% to eliminate the United States and ultimately lead his team to a gold medal. There's a lot more evidence that he could have fulfilled the heavy minutes volume scorer role that someone like Pierce played if he was thrust into it than that they could have done the reverse.

[iggymcfrack]

Just did a vote count. Frazier is absolutely running away with it as he has 9 votes while Miller, Davis, and Kidd have one each. I'd say that should lead to a wide open thread next time although Havlicek has 6 alternate votes so he will be the clear favorite.

The nomination is obviously much closer. Right now we have:
Gilmore 3
Manu 3
Barry 2
Baylor 1
Howard 1
Schayes 1
Westbrook 1

With alternates, that goes to a 5-3 lead for Gilmore.

[Doctor MJ]

Personal point of distinction with Frazier acknowledged, but my point here is more that if people are pushing Manu for his prime value, then I feel like that is roughly the level of star he needs to be given his minutes. Manu has eight regular seasons where he played more than 24 minutes a game (i.e. half the game — pretty paltry bar), and 2009 was basically a throwaway year. You have stated you see his case more tied to the playoffs, and there he does increase his minutes (as key rotation players do) so that now he has a twelve-year stretch (eleven postseasons) where he crosses that 24-minute mark. Of course, in a playoff setting I think 24-minutes is a pitifully marginal cutoff, and then I note he only has six postseasons above 28 minutes a game. He still has value in those surrounding years — two championships and another narrow Finals loss — but we are talking about a player who is typically fourth or fifth on his team in postseason minutes, and the one series where he was top two (led the team) produced an ignominious sweep and the worst playoff “impact” of Manu’s prime.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea that the Spurs were typically deepest on the wings between Bowen, SJax, Brent, Finley, Kawhi, Danny, etc., and that the 2010 exception was tied to Parker and George Hill splitting time for similar reasons. I have a hard time saying it is to Manu’s credit that for the first ~five years of his career he was playing fewer minutes than Bruce Bowen, but hey, if it were someone like Pete Myers then that would not have happened. However, if we want to say Manu could have played more than he did on worse teams (leaving a question of how much more and to what extent that may have affected his career length or general availability), and that swapping Pierce and Manu would to some extent close the per minute gap, then we also need to admit it is easier to exert “impact” in more select rotations and that some hypothetical Manu matching Pierce’s minutes would almost certainly not be as productive on any possessional basis.

To reiterate, we are for the most part referring to a true prime stretch of seven or eight regular seasons and six postseasons, and the only way I think that justifies his placement here is if he truly was a regular top ~five force throughout that period rather than more of an all-NBA one. And while I can acknowledge the framing of him as a valid top five choice in 2005 specifically based on his outlier postseason stretch, realistically, I am not taking Manu over Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Shaq, or Dirk on any random team. Furthermore, if we replayed that postseason a hundred times, I am skeptical Manu’s average production would provide more than Wade, McGrady, or Kobe (placed on a better team), and to be really honest, I am similarly uncertain that he would be clearly surpassing lesser peak wings like Pierce or even Vince either in total per game contribution on otherwise identical teams. I am willing to mark Manu with a higher peak than those two based on what actually happened, but take away the shooting variance and I am not sure that distinction would be anywhere near as easy to make.

Your perspective not only makes sense but I’d expect most to see things pretty similarly to you. In general this relates to why I’m not really expecting most people to come with me here, I’m just hoping they really think through how they assess Ginobili because I think a lot of the heuristics we use to peg players generally just fall well short of what’s required in a case like this.

Let me put something forward as an either/or:

Either Pop was brilliant for placing a player so capable of plus minus impact into a 6th man type role, or it was a mistake.

Folks here are wise with nuance and may chafe at this black and white thinking, but what I’m trying to get at here is specifically that we simply don’t have anyone with the kind of long-term profile of majority-but-limited minutes putting up plus minus numbers like Ginobili did, and we certainly don’t have others like this who get considerably better in the playoffs.

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

And I’m saying I think it was a mistake. I think Pop did it because he thought the best offense he could build was around interior post-up volume scoring where the guards passed the ball in and got out of the way, and this was a dead wrong way to think about 21st century in general.

Pop is a great coach who did a lot of things right, and his misperception here goes along with the dominant paradigm of the time so I don’t want overstate how damning this is of Pop.

But I think the chips make people think that Pop must have been right in his approach, and then tend to twist what they know into knots that essentially portray Pop as a genius on this, when we know full well that the team improving on offense in later years doesn’t make sense if the Duncan post-up offense was really working that well.

This then to say I don’t think Bowen playing more minutes than Ginobili really had anything to do with Bowen, but rather had everything to do with Pop’s perception of what guards should be doing next to Duncan…which was just plain wrong.

None of this means I’m looking to pretend Ginobili played more than he did - Ginobili is absolutely getting hurt by minutes in my criteria. But I don’t think a skepticism toward Ginobili’s level of play is warranted at this point in my analytical journey.

To put it in plain words that are obviously bold:

Do I think Ginobili was in general a Top 5 level player when he was on the court? Yes, I do. I think he was better at basketball in the time he played than any other shooting guard in the 21st century.

Is there a question of whether he could have maintained this level if he played superstar minutes? Yup, and there always will be.

But do I think superstar minutes shooting guards would have matched Ginobili’s per minute impact if they played his minutes? Nope. I don’t think there’s anything magical about playing a bit less minutes that would have allowed other players to have the impact Ginobili did because frankly, they just didn’t play like he did. Playing a bit less is not going to make a guy’s instincts better, and Ginobili’s instincts on both sides of the ball were outlier-level good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think this is a very interesting and complex topic, but I'd definitely push back at the idea that Pop just made a mistake in failing to recognize Ginobili's value and played him off the bench for that reason. For one thing, Manu played a lot more in the postseason that most people think through his prime. From 2005-2011, Manu averaged 32.8 MPG in the playoffs and started 47 out of 88 playoff games. Some guys who played 30-34 MPG last playoffs would be Wiggins, Randle, KCP, MPJ, and Draymond. Solid starter minutes. If anything, I think Pop was just trying to stagger Manu and Tony Parker as much as he could since both are very capable at initiating offense and their skillsets duplicate each other somewhat. He played Parker more with Duncan since he's more of a typical point guard and would play better off of him while Manu worked better as the central playmaker off the bench. You talk about Bowen playing more minutes than Manu in the playoffs, but it's not like it was by a large amount. The 3 prime seasons where Manu played less minutes than Bowen, he averaged 32.1 MPG to Bowen's 35.7 MPG. I think there were just a few minutes that got lost in the wash of staggering Tony and Manu and making sure that he was ready to carve up bench units while the other offensive stars were resting.

One thing we can tell is that when Manu did play bigger minutes, it didn't seem to sap his efficiency at all. Famously, in the 2005 playoffs when Pop decided he needed Ginobili to start and play 36+ MPG over the last 14 games, he averaged 21/6/5/2 on .642 TS% during a season when the league average TS% was .529. The three postseasons where he started the majority of games, he posted on/offs of +19.9, +24.9, and +20.3. And of course, the one team where he was the unquestioned alpha leading his squad in minutes, it was the highlight of his career. In the 2004 Olympic semifinals, he led both teams in minutes while dropping 29 points on .878 TS% to eliminate the United States and ultimately lead his team to a gold medal. There's a lot more evidence that he could have fulfilled the heavy minutes volume scorer role that someone like Pierce played if he was thrust into it than that they could have done the reverse.

Good thoughts here, but I'd remind that we don't actually have to guess as to whether Pop knew exactly what to do with Ginobili.

Manu is unique. He's the most unique player I ever played with. And he was so unique that Pop didn't even know what to do with him these first two years.

I didn’t know what the hell it was, but it didn’t look right.

I don't think I can coach him.

In the beginning, I’m trying to be Mr. Coach, and he’s doing things that are, let’s say, a little too mustardy for me.

I had to learn to shut up and stop coaching, because if you put him too much in a cage, you lose his benefit.

Pop would be pulling his hair out, but eventually we all saw Manu was steps ahead of everyone else.

I think many would argue "It took Pop a while, but he eventually figured it out"...but we should not forget that Pop was still playing his primary offensive scheme using post-up volume scoring while coaching elite modern basketball players...where this is a sub-optimal way to play. So I'd argue that Pop didn't really figure it all the way out - or that if he did, he didn't do it until after Duncan & Ginobili were past their peak, which is unfortunate.

And I think everyone would probably agree about this if the Spurs hadn't been winning titles along the way led by their outstanding defense, but the winning of chips tends to give us something of a religious faith that the coach must have a master plan that makes things that don't make sense somehow okay.

Pop is an all-time great coach, who I don't think got everything he could have out of his core during their best years because he didn't at the time understand the thing that would soon drive the most significant paradigm shift since the '40s...because almost no one did. Not necessarily Pop's fault, but we should take care not to let us underrate the guy that Pop underrated.

[trex_8063]

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

I think you neglect mention of the third potential reason: load management.

Manu was not an ironman. Despite being limited to <30 mpg in all but TWO seasons [and never as high as even 32 mpg], he managed to play 80 games ONCE in 16 years (and ironically in that one year he managed 80 rs games, he MISSED one [out of six] playoff games).

He missed fewer than 13 games just seven times in 16 years, and he missed 22+ games four times.

I speculate that asking him to play 35+ mpg ("star minutes"), +/- shouldering more primacy in general, +/- not skip so many back-to-backs probably results in more significant injury losses [later] and/or more playoff absenses; and likely a shorter career overall, too.

[iggymcfrack]

I think many would argue "It took Pop a while, but he eventually figured it out"...but we should not forget that Pop was still playing his primary offensive scheme using post-up volume scoring while coaching elite modern basketball players...where this is a sub-optimal way to play. So I'd argue that Pop didn't really figure it all the way out - or that if he did, he didn't do it until after Duncan & Ginobili were past their peak, which is unfortunate.

And I think everyone would probably agree about this if the Spurs hadn't been winning titles along the way led by their outstanding defense, but the winning of chips tends to give us something of a religious faith that the coach must have a master plan that makes things that don't make sense somehow okay.

Pop is an all-time great coach, who I don't think got everything he could have out of his core during their best years because he didn't at the time understand the thing that would soon drive the most significant paradigm shift since the '40s...because almost no one did. Not necessarily Pop's fault, but we should take care not to let us underrate the guy that Pop underrated.

I'm not saying that there wasn't a little bit of an adjustment period for Pop, but I still think you're overstating how much the offense was centered around Duncan once Parker and Ginobili hit their prime. Here's their USG during the span where they were winning chips with all 3 players in their prime:

2005 (reg season): Duncan 28.9, Parker 25.1, Ginobili 24.3
2005 (postseason): Duncan 31.1, Ginobili 26.3, Parker 26.0
2006 (reg season): Duncan 27.7, Parker 27.1, Ginobili 25.0
2006 (postseason): Parker 30.8, Duncan 29.9, Ginobili 26.1
2007 (reg season): Duncan 27.9, Parker 27.4, Ginobili 27.1
2007 (postseason): Duncan 29.5, Parker 29.2, Ginobili 26.8

Like sure, if Pop had a time machine and could see the way that increased 3-point volume would revolutionize the league, he could have done better, but he also wasn't playing some dinosaur offense where everything revolved around Duncan and the guards were bit players. In 2006, Parker was 6th in the playoffs in USG behind only Vince, LeBron, Wade, Arenas, and Melo. In 2008, he was 4th behind only T-Mac, LeBron, and Kobe. In 2009, Parker set a record for the highest USG in a single postseason that would stand until Westbrook surpassed it in 2017. Parker's USG that year currently ranks 4th all-time behind the aforementioned Westbrook season and 2 Luka years.

If anything, Pop might have run the offense through Parker a bit too much when Manu was the more efficient scorer, but it's certainly not like everything was built around Duncan until the core was in decline. They had a very modern offense for the time. We should credit Manu for the incredible success that he had and acknowledge that he could have put up bigger numbers in a different role, but we don't have to run down the Spurs' strategy to do so. Pop has his flaws, especially in more recent years but I don't really think this is something you should ding him for.

[tsherkin]

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

I think you neglect mention of the third potential reason: load management.

Manu was not an ironman. Despite being limited to <30 mpg in all but TWO seasons [and never as high as even 32 mpg], he managed to play 80 games ONCE in 16 years (and ironically in that one year he managed 80 rs games, he MISSED one [out of six] playoff games).

He missed fewer than 13 games just seven times in 16 years, and he missed 22+ games four times.

I speculate that asking him to play 35+ mpg ("star minutes"), +/- shouldering more primacy in general, +/- not skip so many back-to-backs probably results in more significant injury losses [later] and/or more playoff absenses; and likely a shorter career overall, too.

That certainly lines up with Pops' style, because he also did it with Duncan... eventually. Not initially. He ran Timmy like a dog until what, he was 30? Then he started to be more careful and load manage.

[Doctor MJ]

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

I think you neglect mention of the third potential reason: load management.

Manu was not an ironman. Despite being limited to <30 mpg in all but TWO seasons [and never as high as even 32 mpg], he managed to play 80 games ONCE in 16 years (and ironically in that one year he managed 80 rs games, he MISSED one [out of six] playoff games).

He missed fewer than 13 games just seven times in 16 years, and he missed 22+ games four times.

I speculate that asking him to play 35+ mpg ("star minutes"), +/- shouldering more primacy in general, +/- not skip so many back-to-backs probably results in more significant injury losses [later] and/or more playoff absenses; and likely a shorter career overall, too.

Ginobili never playing heavy minutes is a reason to question how many minutes he could play, but not really an explanation for him being shifted away from the primary lineup, and not in line with the quotes I've shared from Pop, Parker & Duncan as to what was going on.

[tsherkin]

Ginobili never playing heavy minutes is a reason to question how many minutes he could play, but not really an explanation for him being shifted away from the primary lineup, and not in line with the quotes I've shared from Pop, Parker & Duncan as to what was going on.

That doesn't really address the durability concern raised, though. That post was about GP, not games started.

[AEnigma]

Typically if you recognize a guy capable of great impact you want to feature him within your standard starting lineup, and so when that’s not what happened, we should all be asking ourselves why the coach did what he did. And the answer is either that he something really counter-intuitive about the best way to use the player…or he simply didn’t max out what he could have with the player. Brilliance, or mistaken.

I think you neglect mention of the third potential reason: load management.

Manu was not an ironman. Despite being limited to <30 mpg in all but TWO seasons [and never as high as even 32 mpg], he managed to play 80 games ONCE in 16 years (and ironically in that one year he managed 80 rs games, he MISSED one [out of six] playoff games).

He missed fewer than 13 games just seven times in 16 years, and he missed 22+ games four times.

I speculate that asking him to play 35+ mpg ("star minutes"), +/- shouldering more primacy in general, +/- not skip so many back-to-backs probably results in more significant injury losses [later] and/or more playoff absenses; and likely a shorter career overall, too.

That certainly lines up with Pops' style, because he also did it with Duncan... eventually. Not initially. He ran Timmy like a dog until what, he was 30? Then he started to be more careful and load manage.

I would say 27/28 — pretty much right as Manu himself was settling in. If you want to talk about Popovich being excessively cautious with Manu those first two years, and in the 2003 regular season especially, alright, but everything after that was basically normal Spurs operating procedure.

It might well be coincidence that Manu was not at full health in the postseason for his two highest load regular seasons, but the decision to keep those minutes low was not an accident, nor do I find it plausible to believe that Popovich sincerely thought guys like Bowen or RJ were “better” than Manu and therefore more deserving of minutes. Again, say he was wrong in the 2003 regular season, sure. Say maybe in 2004 he still had some mistaken impressions based on the playoff minutes, fine, possible. Everything after that was pretty consistent though, and for all those quotations you like to share, I never see one saying, “Yeah I wish we had played Manu like five more minutes a game because he could have handled it.”

[Doctor MJ]

I think many would argue "It took Pop a while, but he eventually figured it out"...but we should not forget that Pop was still playing his primary offensive scheme using post-up volume scoring while coaching elite modern basketball players...where this is a sub-optimal way to play. So I'd argue that Pop didn't really figure it all the way out - or that if he did, he didn't do it until after Duncan & Ginobili were past their peak, which is unfortunate.

And I think everyone would probably agree about this if the Spurs hadn't been winning titles along the way led by their outstanding defense, but the winning of chips tends to give us something of a religious faith that the coach must have a master plan that makes things that don't make sense somehow okay.

Pop is an all-time great coach, who I don't think got everything he could have out of his core during their best years because he didn't at the time understand the thing that would soon drive the most significant paradigm shift since the '40s...because almost no one did. Not necessarily Pop's fault, but we should take care not to let us underrate the guy that Pop underrated.

I'm not saying that there wasn't a little bit of an adjustment period for Pop, but I still think you're overstating how much the offense was centered around Duncan once Parker and Ginobili hit their prime. Here's their USG during the span where they were winning chips with all 3 players in their prime:

2005 (reg season): Duncan 28.9, Parker 25.1, Ginobili 24.3
2005 (postseason): Duncan 31.1, Ginobili 26.3, Parker 26.0
2006 (reg season): Duncan 27.7, Parker 27.1, Ginobili 25.0
2006 (postseason): Parker 30.8, Duncan 29.9, Ginobili 26.1
2007 (reg season): Duncan 27.9, Parker 27.4, Ginobili 27.1
2007 (postseason): Duncan 29.5, Parker 29.2, Ginobili 26.8

Like sure, if Pop had a time machine and could see the way that increased 3-point volume would revolutionize the league, he could have done better, but he also wasn't playing some dinosaur offense where everything revolved around Duncan and the guards were bit players. In 2006, Parker was 6th in the playoffs in USG behind only Vince, LeBron, Wade, Arenas, and Melo. In 2008, he was 4th behind only T-Mac, LeBron, and Kobe. In 2009, Parker set a record for the highest USG in a single postseason that would stand until Westbrook surpassed it in 2017. Parker's USG that year currently ranks 4th all-time behind the aforementioned Westbrook season and 2 Luka years.

If anything, Pop might have run the offense through Parker a bit too much when Manu was the more efficient scorer, but it's certainly not like everything was built around Duncan until the core was in decline. They had a very modern offense for the time. We should credit Manu for the incredible success that he had and acknowledge that he could have put up bigger numbers in a different role, but we don't have to run down the Spurs' strategy to do so. Pop has his flaws, especially in more recent years but I don't really think this is something you should ding him for.

First I'll emphasize again that the point here is not to say that Pop should be blasted compared to his contemporaries, but that we shouldn't use the ignorance of the time period to over/underrate the players involved.

Beyond that you've got some good points here. There was a gradual decreasing of Duncan's shooting primacy as things went, and one could argue that the more noteworthy thing is that the primacy went over more to Parker rather than Ginobili.

One of the things that's really tricky here is that while I think Ginobili was both a better scorer and passer than Parker, the fact of the matter is that since Parker couldn't actually shoot, if you played Ginobili at point/helio, you'd probably want to get rid of Parker and replace him with someone else. If you're going to build a Parker/Ginobili back court, Parker probably needs the ball more in order to function, and when he has the ball more, he'll tend to call his own number.

But I will say: This really isn't relevant in the 2005 playoffs where Pop doesn't just choose to keep the recovering-from-injury Duncan as the clear cut 1st option, but allows Duncan to shoot more per possession than in any other year of his career. To me Pop deserved to lose the 2005 chip and they won it because of Ginobili and others finding ways to impact the game that had nothing to do with Pop's scheme.

I'll finish though by expressing some lament that I seem to have made this about Ginobili scoring a ton as if I were saying that "Ginobili would have had superstar value if only the Spurs had played through him", when what I'm really trying to say is that he already had that value. Do I think Pop should have made better use of Ginobili? Absolutely. Do I think Ginobili would have been even more valuable had this happened? Probably. But the impact numbers we see for Ginobili as is speak for themselves.

[tsherkin]

I would say 27/28 — pretty much right as Manu himself was settling in.

28 makes sense by MPG. Slight reduction the year before, but still nearly 37 mpg. Finally got a chance to look.

[Doctor MJ]

Ginobili never playing heavy minutes is a reason to question how many minutes he could play, but not really an explanation for him being shifted away from the primary lineup, and not in line with the quotes I've shared from Pop, Parker & Duncan as to what was going on.

That doesn't really address the durability concern raised, though. That post was about GP, not games started.

That post was a response to a snippet of my post, which was a response to an entirely different poster, specifically taking issue with something trex saw as missing from my point - rather than trex presenting a new argument that my response to would either be on or off topic from.

I responded making clear that I don't agree with trex's assessment of what was missing from my point.

I'll also point out that if you look back at my original much longer post, you'll see I do my customary acknowledgement of Ginobili's durability concerns, just as I've done many, many times in these past few threads despite the fact that we all know all about this already, which I do to avoid having conversations go in circles where people jump in and say "But what about durability?" again.

I'm sorry to be snippy here - and not just because I always regret it, but because I know full well I'm taking an outlier position that I don't expect most to agree with me on. You need to have a certain zen to play the part I chose to play, and do it effectively, and I struggle with this when stuff gets brought up that I not only know I've addressed before in general, but I know that everyone involved doesn't need to be reminded of it because it's just a known thing.

So yeah, the basic dilemma here is how people deal with Ginobili's limited minutes and the causes of them, but nothing I'm bringing up is actually focused on that dilemma, because I expect that basic dilemma is already understood by all and isn't really a point of new conversation. What I'm bringing up are the assumptions baked into our at-the-time assessments of Ginobili because he was seen as a 6th man-type rather than a superstar, and we all took his +/- stats with a massive grain of salt that I don't believe we ever resolved.

At the time, aside from the fact that public +/- stats were new, Ginobili's sample was small. There was every reason to have skepticism toward those data points. But then Ginobili played for another decade plus, and ended up with a +/- track record that is completely unlikely anyone of similar stature who played in the databall era...which then became more clearly the pace & space era, which of course "pace" and "space" were what Ginobili was bringing to the Spurs.

So I come to y'all in 2023, and I'm saying: I think we need to re-think how we saw this dude before, because Ginobili's data is getting MORE strange - more of a clear cut weirdo outlier - the more years into the future we go.

With all this in mind, if we now start fresh:

What about Ginobili would folks like me to speak to that I haven't as yet spoke to?

[tsherkin]

So yeah, the basic dilemma here is how people deal with Ginobili's limited minutes and the causes of them, but nothing I'm bringing up is actually focused on that dilemma, because I expect that basic dilemma is already understood by all and isn't really a point of new conversation. What I'm bringing up are the assumptions baked into our at-the-time assessments of Ginobili because he was seen as a 6th man-type rather than a superstar, and we all took his +/- stats with a massive grain of salt that I don't believe we ever resolved.

We do circle back to the same core issue, right? Is he so good in those limited minutes that it makes up for his inability to be present for more games/play more minutes? And then of course, as you have rightly noted, how is that impacted by coaching? On the heels of the whole Kawhi talk, though, Manu's general lack of health should be a penalizing element for him to some extent... but to what degree?

[iggymcfrack]

Ginobili never playing heavy minutes is a reason to question how many minutes he could play, but not really an explanation for him being shifted away from the primary lineup, and not in line with the quotes I've shared from Pop, Parker & Duncan as to what was going on.

That doesn't really address the durability concern raised, though. That post was about GP, not games started.

That post was a response to a snippet of my post, which was a response to an entirely different poster, specifically taking issue with something trex saw as missing from my point - rather than trex presenting a new argument that my response to would either be on or off topic from.

I responded making clear that I don't agree with trex's assessment of what was missing from my point.

I'll also point out that if you look back at my original much longer post, you'll see I do my customary acknowledgement of Ginobili's durability concerns, just as I've done many, many times in these past few threads despite the fact that we all know all about this already, which I do to avoid having conversations go in circles where people jump in and say "But what about durability?" again.

I'm sorry to be snippy here - and not just because I always regret it, but because I know full well I'm taking an outlier position that I don't expect most to agree with me on. You need to have a certain zen to play the part I chose to play, and do it effectively, and I struggle with this when stuff gets brought up that I not only know I've addressed before in general, but I know that everyone involved doesn't need to be reminded of it because it's just a known thing.

So yeah, the basic dilemma here is how people deal with Ginobili's limited minutes and the causes of them, but nothing I'm bringing up is actually focused on that dilemma, because I expect that basic dilemma is already understood by all and isn't really a point of new conversation. What I'm bringing up are the assumptions baked into our at-the-time assessments of Ginobili because he was seen as a 6th man-type rather than a superstar, and we all took his +/- stats with a massive grain of salt that I don't believe we ever resolved.

At the time, aside from the fact that public +/- stats were new, Ginobili's sample was small. There was every reason to have skepticism toward those data points. But then Ginobili played for another decade plus, and ended up with a +/- track record that is completely unlikely anyone of similar stature who played in the databall era...which then became more clearly the pace & space era, which of course "pace" and "space" were what Ginobili was bringing to the Spurs.

So I come to y'all in 2023, and I'm saying: I think we need to re-think how we saw this dude before, because Ginobili's data is getting MORE strange - more of a clear cut weirdo outlier - the more years into the future we go.

With all this in mind, if we now start fresh:

What about Ginobili would folks like me to speak to that I haven't as yet spoke to?

I generally agree with your larger point. In fact, a lot of the stuff that’s been brought up lately has made me think that Manu belongs in my top 30 which is a lot higher than I would have had him previously. With that said, I don’t think you’re doing very well addressing specific concerns.

Tsherkin was stating that a lot of the reason Manu didn’t play a lot of regular season minutes may be because he wasn’t very durable in terms of games played. A long post about why Manu was underrated and why his case might be hard to understand doesn’t really address the point raised which I think is a valid one and is worth looking into.

[iggymcfrack]

So yeah, the basic dilemma here is how people deal with Ginobili's limited minutes and the causes of them, but nothing I'm bringing up is actually focused on that dilemma, because I expect that basic dilemma is already understood by all and isn't really a point of new conversation. What I'm bringing up are the assumptions baked into our at-the-time assessments of Ginobili because he was seen as a 6th man-type rather than a superstar, and we all took his +/- stats with a massive grain of salt that I don't believe we ever resolved.

We do circle back to the same core issue, right? Is he so good in those limited minutes that it makes up for his inability to be present for more games/play more minutes? And then of course, as you have rightly noted, how is that impacted by coaching? On the heels of the whole Kawhi talk, though, Manu's general lack of health should be a penalizing element for him to some extent... but to what degree?

Personally, I’d feel that Manu’s career value is at the very least higher than a typical player who played 27K minutes since he showed the ability to play more minutes in the playoffs, and at least some of the reason for his fewer minutes was his role next to 2 other volume scorers. I don’t think he necessarily could have stayed healthy playing typical minutes over his 16 seasons, but I’d value his longevity as high or higher than say Frazier.