therealbig3 wrote:I mean, I know Shaq gets the lion's share of credit for the 3-peat Lakers, while Kobe gets relegated to being second option, but I think in 01 specifically, there's a really strong case to be made that Kobe was their best player during that playoff run.
there is, but that would be separate from duncan being as good as shaq.
For example, the Lakers actually did better offensively in those playoffs (by a lot) in the Kobe on/Shaq off minutes than vice versa. Shaq's on/off in those playoffs was actually a negative, and that was because the Lakers played a lot worse offensively with him on the court. Small sample size noise, strategy, rotations, sure,
just to add context.
in the 4 years before this, shaq's on/off in the playoffs was:
+17.7
+11.6
+14.7
+22.9
and in the 3 years after it was:
+22.9
+11.8
+25.3
so amazing numbers. and of course in 2001, shaq was a 30/15 player who played 42 minutes a game for possibly the best playoff team ever and he had a sparkling +13.8 "on" net rating. so about as dominant as one can be. so it certainly seems unlikely that, in the very season the lakers went up several levels, that they did it with shaq going down several levels in impact while playing 88% of the team's minutes. not that you are saying that, but to just point out what an outlier the -0.3 is and why it probably means nothing (that would be quite an anchor around a team that somehow reached "greatest ever" status). the -0.3 is smooshed in the middle of 7 surrounding years that all agree on massive impact.
and just to add why it really means almost nothing. shaq didn't play 97 minutes in the playoffs. and the lakers were indeed +26 without him for a +14.1 per 100. but 19 of those 26 points were from the 4th quarters of games 3 and 4 against the spurs, where i believe the margin was never below 20 and was usually trending towards 30 or 40. in other words, uber garbage time. the lakers outscored the spurs by 19 points in just 18 minutes without shaq. so 75% of shaq's off margin is from there. without that, his net "off" is more like +4.8 (what you would expect for a "best ever" team without their star) and his on/off is a more typical +9.0 and in line with everything else we can see from that 8 year stretch (and i checked similar garbage time in other games and it was breakeven from what i saw).
