2008: CP3 vs KG vs Kobe vs Lebron

[falcolombardi]

KG, Kobe
LeBron
Paul

I gotta agree with this one for 2008

[AEnigma]

With minutes I think Kobe was a pretty easy MVP pick. And here I am extremely sympathetic to lineup complaints: Garnett played 80 minutes total without one of Pierce or Ray on the court, while Kobe (successfully) played over 300 minutes more than that without any of Odom, Bynum, or Pau. Part of this inevitably depends on assessments of all these players, but personally I think that Pierce is the best player in that list and that Ray has a strong argument for third while having a comfortable edge over Bynum or Odom.

[Similarly, I think the Pelicans gave Chris Paul stronger support in his starting lineup, with him only playing 92 minutes without Chandler or West. Pau is the piece that put the Lakers over the top… but I would not say 62 games split between Bynum and Pau is anything to celebrate in terms of support. Paul was not a strong defender yet (although he was always positionally decent), and I am frankly much more impressed by the Lakers’ offensive results given their respective lineups (Kobe had a 114.5 on-court offensive rating and 9.23 on-court net rating, and Paul had a 114.8 on-court offensive rating and 7.35 on-court net rating).]

Postseason, Garnett shrinks some of the minutes gap and wins a title. The respective Spurs series make Paul’s case even worse, while the respective Celtics series make Lebron’s case a bit more natural (although I have never really cared to try to push a slightly pre-prime Lebron definitively above peak Kobe). Positional differences always make these comparisons trickier, because I think there is an easy path to Garnett being assessed as such a transcendent defensive force that he can overcome some generally superb production from Kobe or Lebron. I am not sure I feel he reached that level, but defence is tougher to quantify so I generally will not contradict those who did feel he achieved those heights.

Those are my clear top three. I do not think Paul is an especially merited inclusion alongside them, although I understand why a 2-seed MVP runner-up with robust box production typically will be. I have Paul more on par with DWill, Nash, and Dirk, and while I place him at the top of that group for his postseason play, without that all-defensive headiness, I have never felt it was justified to act as though he had any clear separation from that group:

- DWill’s on-court offensive rating was marginally higher and his on-court net rating was marginally lower; he had more support throughout the various lineup combinations of the Jazz, but not much more.

- Dirk’s on-court offensive rating trailed slightly but he had an even better on-court net rating; the Pelicans murdered the Mavericks in the postseason to an extent that it makes sense to take Paul for the season overall, but Dirk was not any different from the guy who had already won MVP and nearly won a title.

- And then Nash saw the best regular season results of all of them, with the most substantial falloff without him and the least consistent lineup support… but the Suns were abysmal in the postseason, so that rightly holds him back in any retroactive analysis. All the same, a five-game sample size should hardly be creating an entire tier of separation either.

Back to the top three. Being less enamoured with postseason Garnett leaves him little room to make up for that regular season deficit in my eyes — but the heavier we weigh the postseason, the easier such a case becomes. I think Kobe and Lebron were pretty close in the regular season, with the Lakers earning a substantial “relevance” boost over that otherwise abject Cavaliers team. Lebron impressed more against the Celtics, but these are small samples and I am not going to say that should overwrite how thoroughly Kobe eviscerated his conference or how individually stifling Garnett was in the final two rounds. Any of those three has a fine case, but for the overall season I tend to lean toward Kobe myself.

[ardee]

Dude you have no right to call people biased. You attempted to sabotage an entire project just so your beloved Kobe Bryant could be ahead of Kevin Garnett.

The fact that you think people here are biased and you are calling people Kobe Haters when your hatred towards KG bleeds through every single post you makes really makes you a **** part of this forum considering how blinded and unaware you are. Get some self-awareness before you call people haters and biased. You are the cream of the crop of biased perspectives--always have been and always will be the pinnacle of pitiful posting.

You would think after 10+ years here you would grow up a bit, but you are still just as immature and unaware as you always have been.

Oh man you really take it personally that I prefer Kobe over Garnett right?

Of course not. I just don't get how someone can be so disconnected from reality.

"unending bias of so many posters on this board..."

Yet you are the person you openly tried to get KG ranked lower than Kobe. I don't recall doing that myself. I don't recall other KG proponents doing that.

I made arguments in favor of Kobe, and enough people were convinced. The KG folks did the same thing, and their arguments were not convincing.

It's really hilarious that you're SO hung up on the result of a project 7 years ago when in subsequent projects your guy won instead (though I daresay had I been involved in those projects I'd have managed to make sure Kobe was given his due again).

[70sFan]

Oh man you really take it personally that I prefer Kobe over Garnett right?

Of course not. I just don't get how someone can be so disconnected from reality.

"unending bias of so many posters on this board..."

Yet you are the person you openly tried to get KG ranked lower than Kobe. I don't recall doing that myself. I don't recall other KG proponents doing that.

I made arguments in favor of Kobe, and enough people were convinced. The KG folks did the same thing, and their arguments were not convincing.

It's really hilarious that you're SO hung up on the result of a project 7 years ago when in subsequent projects your guy won instead (though I daresay had I been involved in those projects I'd have managed to make sure Kobe was given his due again).

Well, that's not what happened though.

[OhayoKD]

Of course not. I just don't get how someone can be so disconnected from reality.

"unending bias of so many posters on this board..."

Yet you are the person you openly tried to get KG ranked lower than Kobe. I don't recall doing that myself. I don't recall other KG proponents doing that.

I made arguments in favor of Kobe, and enough people were convinced. The KG folks did the same thing, and their arguments were not convincing.

It's really hilarious that you're SO hung up on the result of a project 7 years ago when in subsequent projects your guy won instead (though I daresay had I been involved in those projects I'd have managed to make sure Kobe was given his due again).

Well, that's not what happened though.

Also would think "subsequent projects" seeing KG go higher would indicate the arguments may have been pretty convincing.

Regardless, the absolute ceiling of Kobe for this project was probably 12. KG was only really in danger of dropping to 10 because of a bunch of registered voters initially not turning out.

[MMyhre]

Looks like a **** MVP for Kobe, that team was stacked. He was saving it up for the postseason, but still can`t reward him with the highest regular season honor when he has so many guys doing heavy lifting in the reg season compared to CP3 and LB.

[OhayoKD]

To be clear, I don't really see much of a data-based(era-relative) top-10 peak case for Kobe(Even with wowy-samples, 20-30 wins as a one-off isn't unheard of, and rapm is pretty unfavorable), but I take some issues with the approach here:

Okay, I'll address this post more specifically, because this is something I'm not too fond of in such discussions on this board in general.

So you're looking at 28-30 wins for the season. I was probably undershooting with 25, but even taking a 30 win team to 57 is gargantuan lift and worthy of top 10 all time peak consideration.

The problem with such methodology is that it kind of misses the point of multi-data players evaluation.

1. KBs advanced boxscore production - measured by BPM - is 5.8. Elite, but nothing spectacular.
2. KBs on/off production - measured by net rating - is +9.0 net and +7.0 on/off. Elite, but short of being historically spectacular.

None of this suggest any historical lift and top10 all time peak consideration. Not saying it wasn't a great anchoring of contender-level team nor it wasn't borderline MVP season level. It was, especially combining with the playoffs (but you were talking about RS specifically, so I'll leave it at this point).

Obviously, it's possible that there are intangibles relevant to Kobe's lift that aren't shown in this basic data.

Okay but BPM or whatever isn't "basic" data. It's made-up data generated by applying weights to a cherrypicked assortment of basketball actions. For some reason whenever I make this point, the take-away is the rather milquetoast "well okay the boxscore isn't everything", so let's make this clearer:
Kobe's "spectacular" numbers

Spoiler:

If the extremely effecient thing is directed towards what I said, here’s Kobe synergy profile in 08 and 09, and his percentile rank per synergy. I don’t think it was realistic for him to be highly effecient in 06 or 07

2008
Isolation 91st percentile
Pick and roll BH 92nd percentile
Transition 82nd percentile
Spot up 84th percentile
Post up 96th percentile
Off screen 91st percentile
Cuts 94th percentile
Handoffs 85th percentile
Putbacks 82nd percentile

2009
Isolation 89th percentile
Post up 95th percentile
P and R BH 88th percentile
Transition 76th percentile
Spot up 86th percentile
Misc 96th percentile
Cut 91st percentile
Handoffs 85th percentile
Putbacks 86th percentile

For players with 1000+ plays (synergy on a bad phone is annoying), in terms of halfcourt ppp

In 2008 he was 14th out of 58 guys

In 2009 he was 7th out of 63 guys

Worth noting some guys above him are play finishers like guys like amare and stuff. His 08 mark is great, but his 09 mark is excellent. For reference, Dirk is 7th in 2008 and 9th in 2009. Above cp3/Wade/lebron as well both years (might be wrong about Wade in 08 but I’m not gonna relook it up lol)

We really need to stop using "intangible" with anything that is not immediately available on BBR. You can count how many times a player is doubled. You can count how many times a player's passes bypass multiple defenders. You can count how often a player is protecting the paint. It not being readily available is not the same as it not being quantifiable, and what is readily available is not inherently more relevant(and is just as subjectively defined).

Choose the right weights, and you can easily make a correlative BPMish whatever that finds 2008-2009 Kobe as a top 5 player ever with what we have there. There is no "the" box-score. All BPM and box-related things are, are glorified eye-tests. And when they start being treated as the equivalent of much simpler numbers directly derived from an agreed-upon objective(so basically as close to "objective" as you get in this stuff) with minimal human input...

Such discussions are always a matter of interpretation - the more data you have, the more accurate your interpretation may be.

[/quote]
the more data you have, the less accurate your interpretation may be.