Peak Manu rank in the 2023 NBA

[Doctor MJ]

Good post as well.

I realize the term red flag wasn't a good one to use. I didn't mean a red flag in terms of being bad for the team (winning = king) but in terms of forecasting great individual impact. A guard like Manu that has fantastic plus-minus but mediocre box score for a super star, simply raises doubts in my head about what exactly is going on. Because "this impact" has to come from somewhere and box score correlates quite heavily with guard impact.

I agree completely that it's difficult to definitively rank Ginobili because some of these factors like lower minutes and a secondary role isn't something typical for a player of his caliber. And I agree he is more impactful than his box score implies. It's just that my ceiling for him would probably be as a borderline top 75 player of all time. Much higher than that and I'm pushed into a position that I'd be very uncomfortable trying to defend.

As for his lack of accolades, if he played more, then he would have had more accolades as you said. So it's kind of mystery in that sense; why he didn't play more. Surely if he was that impactful, there has to be a big reason he wasn't playing more.

Asking why he didn't play more is a critical question, though not one we'll ever have the entire answer.

I do think that with his high motor it makes sense to think that he couldn't do his thing for as many minutes as most, and if you want to add some innate durability concerns to the mix that makes sense.

But another thing to understand is that when a guy gets slotted in in a 6th man-type role (by which I mean, he may still start but still plays a similar role) is that his minutes will get staggered away from the team's primary stars. When you do that, it's not in any way automatic that a guy is going to play the same number of minutes as the other main guys on the team, and I would argue that in general you expect such a player to play less minutes not out of endurance concerns, but simply because you don't think playing through him is the best option when your alpha is on the court, which you'd like to do as often as possible.

To boil it down: I'd say Pop played Ginobili like he did during the prime Duncan years because Pop wanted to play focused on the volume scoring post-up capacity of Duncan, which demanded that guards work predictably toward that end, rather than improvising to make something else happen.

This then gets to a key point: Teams don't use volume scoring post-up play any more because it's clearly inferior to pace & space. Who was the "pace & space" guy on those Spurs? Ginobili. Hence what I'd argue is that while it made sense to relegate Ginobili to the 6th man role under the assumption that interior post-up play was your best option...it wasn't actually Pop's best option. He was mistaken in what he thought was the best move, chose a path that was weaker than what could have been, and has been spared from criticism because the team won championships anyway built around great defense...where Duncan was indeed the proper anchor for the team.

To reiterate what I'd said elsewhere: I'm not saying Pop was an idiot for being confused here - his way of thinking was in line with the paradigm he grew up with and continued to dominate the NBA until the 2010s. Pop is a brilliant basketball mind...who also got this stuff wrong because basically everyone did.

Didn’t watch much ginobli, but if the idea is ginobli lineups represented a shift towards pace and space wouldn’t that inflate his impact offensively more than perhaps his actual ability level?

I think outside of 08, there was a bit of three point luck variance in some of his real good rapm years but I’m not sure

Hmm, to paraphrase:

"Doesn't that mean his tendency to play basketball an intelligent way increased his value relative to how much value he'd contribute if he played dumb?"

Yes, yes it does.

Re: 3-point luck variance RAPM years. His entire career RAPM is fantastic though.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Asking why he didn't play more is a critical question, though not one we'll ever have the entire answer.

I do think that with his high motor it makes sense to think that he couldn't do his thing for as many minutes as most, and if you want to add some innate durability concerns to the mix that makes sense.

But another thing to understand is that when a guy gets slotted in in a 6th man-type role (by which I mean, he may still start but still plays a similar role) is that his minutes will get staggered away from the team's primary stars. When you do that, it's not in any way automatic that a guy is going to play the same number of minutes as the other main guys on the team, and I would argue that in general you expect such a player to play less minutes not out of endurance concerns, but simply because you don't think playing through him is the best option when your alpha is on the court, which you'd like to do as often as possible.

To boil it down: I'd say Pop played Ginobili like he did during the prime Duncan years because Pop wanted to play focused on the volume scoring post-up capacity of Duncan, which demanded that guards work predictably toward that end, rather than improvising to make something else happen.

This then gets to a key point: Teams don't use volume scoring post-up play any more because it's clearly inferior to pace & space. Who was the "pace & space" guy on those Spurs? Ginobili. Hence what I'd argue is that while it made sense to relegate Ginobili to the 6th man role under the assumption that interior post-up play was your best option...it wasn't actually Pop's best option. He was mistaken in what he thought was the best move, chose a path that was weaker than what could have been, and has been spared from criticism because the team won championships anyway built around great defense...where Duncan was indeed the proper anchor for the team.

To reiterate what I'd said elsewhere: I'm not saying Pop was an idiot for being confused here - his way of thinking was in line with the paradigm he grew up with and continued to dominate the NBA until the 2010s. Pop is a brilliant basketball mind...who also got this stuff wrong because basically everyone did.

Didn’t watch much ginobli, but if the idea is ginobli lineups represented a shift towards pace and space wouldn’t that inflate his impact offensively more than perhaps his actual ability level?

I think outside of 08, there was a bit of three point luck variance in some of his real good rapm years but I’m not sure

Hmm, to paraphrase:

"Doesn't that mean his tendency to play basketball an intelligent way increased his value relative to how much value he'd contribute if he played dumb?"

Yes, yes it does.

Re: 3-point luck variance RAPM years. His entire career RAPM is fantastic though.

I don’t think that’s the same thing though, if hypothetically (again I don’t watch ginobli) you have a situation where ginobli lineups lead pop to run the offense in this really effective ahead of its time way, and other lineups they run it towards a way that generally isn’t as effective that they thought was, that would inflate his impact a little bit right?

It wouldn’t be anything crazy but I think it would be interesting if someone went through that

Just meant on D some of the years it looked kinda crazy it looked like it might have mean somewhat from that

[Doctor MJ]

Didn’t watch much ginobli, but if the idea is ginobli lineups represented a shift towards pace and space wouldn’t that inflate his impact offensively more than perhaps his actual ability level?

I think outside of 08, there was a bit of three point luck variance in some of his real good rapm years but I’m not sure

Hmm, to paraphrase:

"Doesn't that mean his tendency to play basketball an intelligent way increased his value relative to how much value he'd contribute if he played dumb?"

Yes, yes it does.

Re: 3-point luck variance RAPM years. His entire career RAPM is fantastic though.

I don’t think that’s the same thing though, if hypothetically (again I don’t watch ginobli) you have a situation where ginobli lineups lead pop to run the offense in this really effective ahead of its time way, and other lineups they run it towards a way that generally isn’t as effective that they thought was, that would inflate his impact a little bit right?

It wouldn’t be anything crazy but I think it would be interesting if someone went through that

Just meant on D some of the years it looked kinda crazy it looked like it might have mean somewhat from that

Ah, so I do understand the distinction here.

If a coach optimizes a superior strategy with a good fitting lineup, the players are going to be more able to add value. Normally we'd expect that if this happens it happens in the core lineup, but if it were to happen in the bench lineup, it would make the bench players more valuable than we'd expect bench players to be, and when you combine that with a failure to do this in the starting lineup, it would results in a shift in value to the bench unit that we would not expect to happen in today's game.

I don't think that's really what's happening here though. I don't think Pop had a pace & space strategy going for the bench, I think it was more a matter of "When Duncan's not out there, let Ginobili improvise". I'd also point to the fact that come playoff time Pop shortens his rotation, this results in Ginobili playing more with Duncan and less with back-ups, which we'd then expect to decrease Ginobili's on/off indicators if those back-ups were actually the ideal pace & space guys, but the Ginobili on/off indicators actually get more pronounced rather than less.

Re: D indicators looked crazy some playoff years. Well that certainly makes sense as a noise.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Hmm, to paraphrase:

"Doesn't that mean his tendency to play basketball an intelligent way increased his value relative to how much value he'd contribute if he played dumb?"

Yes, yes it does.

Re: 3-point luck variance RAPM years. His entire career RAPM is fantastic though.

I don’t think that’s the same thing though, if hypothetically (again I don’t watch ginobli) you have a situation where ginobli lineups lead pop to run the offense in this really effective ahead of its time way, and other lineups they run it towards a way that generally isn’t as effective that they thought was, that would inflate his impact a little bit right?

It wouldn’t be anything crazy but I think it would be interesting if someone went through that

Just meant on D some of the years it looked kinda crazy it looked like it might have mean somewhat from that

Ah, so I do understand the distinction here.

If a coach optimizes a superior strategy with a good fitting lineup, the players are going to be more able to add value. Normally we'd expect that if this happens it happens in the core lineup, but if it were to happen in the bench lineup, it would make the bench players more valuable than we'd expect bench players to be, and when you combine that with a failure to do this in the starting lineup, it would results in a shift in value to the bench unit that we would not expect to happen in today's game.

I don't think that's really what's happening here though. I don't think Pop had a pace & space strategy going for the bench, I think it was more a matter of "When Duncan's not out there, let Ginobili improvise". I'd also point to the fact that come playoff time Pop shortens his rotation, this results in Ginobili playing more with Duncan and less with back-ups, which we'd then expect to decrease Ginobili's on/off indicators if those back-ups were actually the ideal pace & space guys, but the Ginobili on/off indicators actually get more pronounced rather than less.

Re: D indicators looked crazy some playoff years. Well that certainly makes sense as a noise.

I meant more than ginobli was kind of the key in that regard rather than the bench in general, but yeah I get what ur saying

I meant like, in that 06-08 period where ibis DRAPM was insane, 06 and 07 even in the RS it looked like it might have been a beet noisy in regards to their defense and 3pt%

[homecourtloss]

Not top 10 for me. It's possible dare I say probable that Manu was running up his +/- against bench units.

As Doc MJ has mentioned, this isn’t a new idea and has been discussed before though +/- numbers aren’t the same as RAPM though I believe you know that. The thing is, though, that we just have too many stints, too many minutes, too many possessions to seriously discuss any type of “inflation” given the nature of how RAPM is calculated. Additionally, he’s a playoffs RAPM monster—if he were “running up his +/- against bench units,” you’d logically think that his playoffs RAPM would be depressed because you’re going to play more minutes against starters even if you are coming off the bench since starters play more minutes in the playoffs, but as we know, this wasn’t the case. Anyway, even if he’s playing against bench units, he’s also playing WITH bench units. One final point on this specific argument—if a player were supposedly able to “run up his +/- against bench units,” you’d think you’d see someone else off the bench post gargantuan impact signals close to Manu’s, but we don’t have that.

I agree that he's underrated but he made only 2 All-NBA teams (both 3rd team) in his career and 2 All-Star games.

Voter based evaluations? Doesn’t matter much. Much of this is tied to minutes played, which is a valid discussion point that’s currently being discussed.

Circa 2005, the likes of Shaq, Duncan, KG, Kobe, Wade, Lebron, TMac, Nash, and Dirk were all clearly better than Manu. From 2005-2011, he averaged >30 mpg in the playoffs and put up 18.8/4.8/4.1 on 59.6 %TS (+5.7 rTS) with 2.7 topg in 32.8 mpg. Good efficiency but on very low volume for a superstar and wasn't a huge playmaker either. And he was definitely a positive defender but he is a perimeter guy so where is this supposedly huge overall impact coming from? I don't know. I'm just not convinced that he is THAT GOOD. He's a top 15/20 in the league good who gets overlooked but not a top 10 type of player to me.

In essence, Manu’s game was characterized by the additive nature of his contributions to his team's MOV. His monster RAPM can be attributed not only to his individual skills but also to the additive nature of everything that he did. He wasn't just good at just about everything (most players aren’t); his goodness translated into tangible benefits for the entire team in pretty much all aspects of basketball. This is a reason why his RAPM numbers looked like what they did throughout his career. His play either lead to individual results from him (box score) or helped the results of the players around him.

His versatility was such that he wasn't below average in any aspect of the game. He could score (off the ball in motion off of cuts or as a spot up shooter, with the ball in screen-roll actions, in iso, in transition) defend (individual and team), pass and play-make (with the ball, or off of quick passes off of his motion) effectively. This well-roundedness allowed him to impact the game positively in various ways, not only directly off of his direct box score contributions, but due to the additive nature for his teammates through his actions in every phase of the game.

He had no real weaknesses and good in every aspect of the game, both individually and in a team concept.

1. Defense: Ginobili's defense wasn't just about stopping his man. His defensive often led to turnovers, steals, and fast-break opportunities for the Spurs. I wish we had some Synergy stats from his prime to see this. His ability to disrupt opponents' plays was a catalyst for his team's defensive success, including high % offense off defense. He was also a good vocal leader on defense, getting teammates in position.

Once in transition, his ability to excel there played a role in the Spurs’ offense. He was pushing the ball up the court and making plays in transition or setting up transiron threes or easy scores for teammates. Ginobili's speed and decision-making created fast-break opportunities that boosted the team's offensive efficiency

2. Playmaking and Passing: While not always the primary ball-handler, Ginobili's playmaking abilities often led to high leverage offense opportunities that were created out of nothing sometimes, but also synergized well with what Pop wanted to do on offense even though Pop knew that he had to rein in Ginobili’s wildly, creative and often risky play. His passes and court vision created scoring opportunities for his teammates including many hockey assists.

3. Offensive Movement: Ginobili's non-stop movement on the court was a nightmare for defenders. His cuts, screens, and off-ball plays not only created opportunities for himself but also for teammates. One of the things about Ginobili was that his movement didn’t just lead to catch and shoot opportunities once he got the ball, but his movement would lead to him getting the ball and then creating off of that catch once defenders had been taken out of posirtion via the motion offense and his movement. so, he could score in isolation, he could score on catch/shoot, he could score via cuts, he could make assisting passes off of his motion. Once he got the ball, he could create a hockey assist once he got the ball out of motion.

I think Ginobili was a fantastic player in his role which is an impact man off the bench, good closer, good secondary playmaker but he isn't some stud superstar. If he was he'd be averaging 40 mpg (the norm back then) and putting up better stats than he did. If he was THAT VALUABLE, for sure Pop would realize it and play him more.

This is being discussed – obviously you want 40 minutes a game from a +5 player but those players are few and far between and those are the GOATs. Gregg Popovich from the very beginning thought he had to rein Manu’s instincts (bsdically his own words that he didn’t know what to do with such a creative force). Maybe Ginobili could’ve played 36 minutes a game at the same level; what we do know, based on results, is that Popovich probably picked the right amount of minutes for him that led to monster impact.

Relying on plus-minus that much is what doesn't make sense to me. There is nothing in Manu's box score that screams mega value. A box score giant with a poor plus-minus footprint is obviously not something to dismiss but a huge plus-minus without the box score to go along with it (which is Manu's case) is also a red flag. Of course in the case of big men, their defense can move the needle a lot without impacting the box score but Manu was a guard. So it's not clear where enormous impact would come from... Guard impact should be evident in the box score.

I I just discussed where his impact might be coming from.

I’m also not sure why you were mentioning about his box score because here you have a player that is top 25 for career BPM, even with his old man seasons, when he played as a 38, 39, 40 year old.

So here you have a top impact metrics guy combined with the top box score aggregate guy and somehow that is red flag?

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I don't want to come off like I'm saying Ginobili is definitely better than them - I like everyone else will probably put Luka/Jokic ahead of Ginobili if and when they clear this gauntlet - but if they never do, then on what grounds are we really sure that they are better for building a championship team.

In the case of Jokic I'll say flat out that Jokic is clearly a better offensive player than Ginobili was, it really is the defense that's the question.

Look, even without the hindsight I could see a very conservative argument favoring Manu over Luka (as I am actually entertaining a similar one in Manu vs Harden), but it was already impossible for me to imagine a scenario of Manu over Jokic, in February 2023.
We really must have gotten to a level of rigidity on what works and what not which I think we're over in this board.
The reason is that while I can see a limit in Luka's ga e coexisting with other talented players, there have always been zero roster constructions issues in finding defensive players to complement Jokic while anyone could work with him on offense.
I love Manu, but that's totally another level of player.

So, you're calling me "rigid" for talking about my lack of certainty, while your bolded point talks about what was "always" the case when this was absolutely not seen as a given until it happened. Not saying that you personally weren't able to see with clarity what was unclear to the rest of the basketball world, but if you don't realize that this is what you're asserting, take a step back and ponder.

For the record, I do think that after this last post-season it absolutely feels silly to wonder whether Jokic's defense was going to be an Achilles heel that playoff opponents could exploit badly enough that his team couldn't expect to beat all comers, but I wasn't calling such concerns silly ahead of time. I was saying I didn't know.

Also for the record I've been on the Jokic bandwagon basically from the jump and have been quite open about wanting to see him emerge as the best player in the world and championship-winning. When the Nuggets broke through this year I was absolutely elated...in part because I didn't see it as a given that they could do it. I wasn't betting against it in any way and feel some vindication seeing it unfold...but until such a thing happens, I have uncertainties.

I'll end by emphasizing that I was trying to make a general statement about such uncertainties - more general than Jokic & Doncic, and more general than Ginobili too. In a context where we celebrate only the last team standing rather than all of the proficient, there are some approaches that look incredibly promising but beyond a certain point struggle to scale the summit. I think we need to be careful about assuming such scalability.

Let's clarify on thing, I am not calling you "rigid" but I am saying that only a VERY rigid approach could justify having Manu over Jokic as of last year, even before the PO run that obviously closed the door to any discussion.
The reason I am saying this is that, even for "reasonable" skeptics about Jokic's game, the point was that you need an extremely optimized and not necessarily realistic team construction to win with him. And even those skeptics had no doubt that you could put whoever you wanted around him and make it work offensively (unlike Luka, whose game doesn't seem to mix so well with other high level talents).
Why is this relevant? Because we are not now comparing Jokic to guys who made or could reasonably make it work with "average" team constructions, but to someone who had a perfectly optimized situation around him.
Manu won with a consensus top10 ever guy (higher according to this board, actually) next to him, was it "reasonable" to think that Jokic wouldn't be successful with a Garnett or a Giannis next to him? I don't think so.
And then you add the fact that you might actually be conservative and find out that Jokic didn't such an outlier level of luck to win (as he didn't) and that could have a role bigger than Manu's and this makes it not close - even in February.

To summarize my thought process.
Manu won in an optimal situation contributing mightily, I don't see how Jokic couldn't do the same. I have way more concerns on the likes of Luka and Harden.
In a situation as a main guy Manu was always way less likely than those three, who though had reasonable concerns (that I don't agree in full) they might not make it.

[Doctor MJ]

Look, even without the hindsight I could see a very conservative argument favoring Manu over Luka (as I am actually entertaining a similar one in Manu vs Harden), but it was already impossible for me to imagine a scenario of Manu over Jokic, in February 2023.
We really must have gotten to a level of rigidity on what works and what not which I think we're over in this board.
The reason is that while I can see a limit in Luka's ga e coexisting with other talented players, there have always been zero roster constructions issues in finding defensive players to complement Jokic while anyone could work with him on offense.
I love Manu, but that's totally another level of player.

So, you're calling me "rigid" for talking about my lack of certainty, while your bolded point talks about what was "always" the case when this was absolutely not seen as a given until it happened. Not saying that you personally weren't able to see with clarity what was unclear to the rest of the basketball world, but if you don't realize that this is what you're asserting, take a step back and ponder.

For the record, I do think that after this last post-season it absolutely feels silly to wonder whether Jokic's defense was going to be an Achilles heel that playoff opponents could exploit badly enough that his team couldn't expect to beat all comers, but I wasn't calling such concerns silly ahead of time. I was saying I didn't know.

Also for the record I've been on the Jokic bandwagon basically from the jump and have been quite open about wanting to see him emerge as the best player in the world and championship-winning. When the Nuggets broke through this year I was absolutely elated...in part because I didn't see it as a given that they could do it. I wasn't betting against it in any way and feel some vindication seeing it unfold...but until such a thing happens, I have uncertainties.

I'll end by emphasizing that I was trying to make a general statement about such uncertainties - more general than Jokic & Doncic, and more general than Ginobili too. In a context where we celebrate only the last team standing rather than all of the proficient, there are some approaches that look incredibly promising but beyond a certain point struggle to scale the summit. I think we need to be careful about assuming such scalability.

Let's clarify on thing, I am not calling you "rigid" but I am saying that only a VERY rigid approach could justify having Manu over Jokic as of last year, even before the PO run that obviously closed the door to any discussion.
The reason I am saying this is that, even for "reasonable" skeptics about Jokic's game, the point was that you need an extremely optimized and not necessarily realistic team construction to win with him. And even those skeptics had no doubt that you could put whoever you wanted around him and make it work offensively (unlike Luka, whose game doesn't seem to mix so well with other high level talents).
Why is this relevant? Because we are not now comparing Jokic to guys who made or could reasonably make it work with "average" team constructions, but to someone who had a perfectly optimized situation around him.
Manu won with a consensus top10 ever guy (higher according to this board, actually) next to him, was it "reasonable" to think that Jokic wouldn't be successful with a Garnett or a Giannis next to him? I don't think so.
And then you add the fact that you might actually be conservative and find out that Jokic didn't such an outlier level of luck to win (as he didn't) and that could have a role bigger than Manu's and this makes it not close - even in February.

To summarize my thought process.
Manu won in an optimal situation contributing mightily, I don't see how Jokic couldn't do the same. I have way more concerns on the likes of Luka and Harden.
In a situation as a main guy Manu was always way less likely than those three, who though had reasonable concerns (that I don't agree in full) they might not make it.

So much of what I'm saying about Manu though, is that playing on a team with two guys known for volume scoring without having skills at actually shooting the basketball or great playmaking, while playing for a coach who literally thought his positive impact was negative, was FAR from the ideal way for us to understand what Ginobili was capable of.

This assumption then of "Well yeah but Ginobili was in the perfect situation" is precisely what I'm trying to get people to re-examine.

[Clyde Frazier]

I didn't vote because I'm not sure, but he'd be all NBA level for sure with better looking numbers and hyper efficiency (~65% TS). As was always the case with Manu, how much is he going to play? I wouldn't ding him too much as long as he has a healthy season.

Ok I'm sitting here laughing right now because I didn't see my post and was about to start my reply with "I didn't vote because I'm not sure"

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I don’t think that’s the same thing though, if hypothetically (again I don’t watch ginobli) you have a situation where ginobli lineups lead pop to run the offense in this really effective ahead of its time way, and other lineups they run it towards a way that generally isn’t as effective that they thought was, that would inflate his impact a little bit right?

there's an element here of defining what "absolute value" means, when comparing eras.
Part of the value Manu brought came from him being innovative and ahead of his time. But that means that others are going to catch up to that in the future, maybe learning from the success that particular player/team had. So, how are we judging "pioneers" in all time lists, when comparing to guys who perfected what they brought?
I am *very* high on trendsetters, but I see others might be more luke warm using the thought process "how would it be if the were born a few decades later".
then, I don't see much of a logic on your point of Pop using more innovative schemes with him and this somehow not being extra credit Manu deserved (he helped his own HOF level coach grow and inprove!). If he couldn't do the same with others it meant he didn't think any kind of player could replicate that.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

So much of what I'm saying about Manu though, is that playing on a team with two guys known for volume scoring without having skills at actually shooting the basketball or great playmaking, while playing for a coach who literally thought his positive impact was negative, was FAR from the ideal way for us to understand what Ginobili was capable of.

This assumption then of "Well yeah but Ginobili was in the perfect situation" is precisely what I'm trying to get people to re-examine.

well, that coach also staggered him as much as possible to the other guys to allow him to explore more raising their ceiling while also having a super high floor with a team able to win in the high 50s without him.
Moreover, Pop showed us both
- what kind of force Manu was when given the ball and freedom to create (and in crunch time he was the key decision maker even with Tony and Timmeh on the floor)
- how effective he could be at enhancing the other guys without dipping into their usage, turning him into an absolutely perfect ceiling raiser

But the two things work together, because as good as I think Manu was on ball he was not in my view an absolute MVP level guy like other names we mentioned here, if asked to have a more helio role full time.

Moreover, you can't tell me that the situation where he landed was an "average" one in terms of talent and structure. Maximum credit to him to help Pop himself to evolve (I remember how predictable was the Spurs offense in 01 and 02, and how the Lakers exploited that), but he landed into a team that just "needed" a Manu Ginobili to make the next step.

[Doctor MJ]

So much of what I'm saying about Manu though, is that playing on a team with two guys known for volume scoring without having skills at actually shooting the basketball or great playmaking, while playing for a coach who literally thought his positive impact was negative, was FAR from the ideal way for us to understand what Ginobili was capable of.

This assumption then of "Well yeah but Ginobili was in the perfect situation" is precisely what I'm trying to get people to re-examine.

well, that coach also staggered him as much as possible to the other guys to allow him to explore more raising their ceiling while also having a super high floor with a team able to win in the high 50s without him.
Moreover, Pop showed us both
- what kind of force Manu was when given the ball and freedom to create (and in crunch time he was the key decision maker even with Tony and Timmeh on the floor)
- how effective he could be at enhancing the other guys without dipping into their usage, turning him into an absolutely perfect ceiling raiser

But the two things work together, because as good as I think Manu was on ball he was not in my view an absolute MVP level guy like other names we mentioned here, if asked to have a more helio role full time.

Moreover, you can't tell me that the situation where he landed was an "average" one in terms of talent and structure. Maximum credit to him to help Pop himself to evolve (I remember how predictable was the Spurs offense in 01 and 02, and how the Lakers exploited that), but he landed into a team that just "needed" a Manu Ginobili to make the next step.

To be clear, I'm not trying to suggest that Ginobili would have won more on a random team. Ginobili, like Duncan let alone Parker, benefitted tremendously from the context in the sense of it causing him to win more games.

Re: Pop showed us what kind of force Manu was when given the ball and freedom to create. Pretty sure that Manu demonstrated this clearly on every non-NBA team he ever played on, including the Argentine Olympic team as it humiliated Team USA.

Re: Pop showed us how effective Ginobili without dipping into their usage. Well, part of the stories that have come out is that Pop specifically yelled at Ginobili whenever he tried to do this early on. He wanted Ginobili to stay out of the way like Bowen and let Duncan & co operate. Ginobili kept refusing to do this and eventually Pop gave up, and so its basically Pop giving up that he deserves credit for. He literally does deserve credit for this, but not at Ginobili's expense.

Agree though that you don't want Ginobili to helio. You want a scheme that makes use of him both on & off ball. Key thing though is that if he's off ball, you're making use of his talents rather than treating him like Bowen.

Re: Ginobili landed on a team that just need a Ginobili. You mean a guy who is a great on-ball decision maker, a fantastic off-ball mover, a great scoring threat in transition and half-court, had instincts to focus on 3's and drives, and was smarter in-the-moment on defense than anyone else on the team?

I would argue that the entire league needed that, still needs that, and will always need that.

[MyUniBroDavis]

I don’t think that’s the same thing though, if hypothetically (again I don’t watch ginobli) you have a situation where ginobli lineups lead pop to run the offense in this really effective ahead of its time way, and other lineups they run it towards a way that generally isn’t as effective that they thought was, that would inflate his impact a little bit right?

there's an element here of defining what "absolute value" means, when comparing eras.
Part of the value Manu brought came from him being innovative and ahead of his time. But that means that others are going to catch up to that in the future, maybe learning from the success that particular player/team had. So, how are we judging "pioneers" in all time lists, when comparing to guys who perfected what they brought?
I am *very* high on trendsetters, but I see others might be more luke warm using the thought process "how would it be if the were born a few decades later".
then, I don't see much of a logic on your point of Pop using more innovative schemes with him and this somehow not being extra credit Manu deserved (he helped his own HOF level coach grow and inprove!). If he couldn't do the same with others it meant he didn't think any kind of player could replicate that.

It would be more so asking if there were others in the league that would cause him to do similar things

[OhayoKD]

1998-2019 Playoffs RAPM

Leaders:

1. LeBron
2. Draymond
3. Ginobili
4. Robinson
5. Kawhi
6. Embiid
7. Duncan
8. Durant
9. Garnett
10. Curry

4 Spurs in the top 7 is pretty wild.

One common denominator though

[OhayoKD]

So here you have a top impact metrics guy combined with the top box score aggregate guy and somehow that is red flag?

The red flag is the team didn't seem to miss him nearly as much when he was gone for games. But that is also really just a regular-season thing so whatever.

That said, despite the on/off, I'm pretty confident saying he wasn't a secret superstar in 03 rs or playoffs