Top 25 peaks of the 2001-25: #7-#8 Spots

[LA Bird]

Looking back at the 2017 season more closely now, I am kind of surprised by the Spurs/Rockets series. Kawhi missed G5 OT and G6, both of which the Spurs won anyway without him. With a worse supporting cast, that could have been a second round elimination due to his injuries in a similar situation to 15 Paul. And then even when Kawhi did play, is it really crazy to say Harden was better in 4 of the 5 games? Much of Kawhi's reputation seems to be playoffs based but first round 16/17 Grizzlies farming aside, I am not sure the Thunder and Rockets series were that impressive performances. Obviously, Kawhi also had the one half against the Warriors where he looked like a god destroying the GOAT team but it's still only one half of basketball.

Originally had him 4th for this round but will leave the spot open for now while I see what others have to say.

[Cavsfansince84]

Looking back at the 2017 season more closely now, I am kind of surprised by the Spurs/Rockets series. Kawhi missed G5 OT and G6, both of which the Spurs won anyway without him. With a worse supporting cast, that could have been a second round elimination due to his injuries in a similar situation to 15 Paul. And then even when Kawhi did play, is it really crazy to say Harden was better in 4 of the 5 games? Much of Kawhi's reputation seems to be playoffs based but first round 16/17 Grizzlies farming aside, I am not sure the Thunder and Rockets series were that impressive performances. Obviously, Kawhi also had the one half against the Warriors where he looked like a god destroying the GOAT team but it's still only one half of basketball.

Originally had him 4th for this round but will leave the spot open for now while I see what others have to say.

I think the playoffs are part of it re 2017 but to me its more about the rs he had. Offense+defense. The playoffs was more just him following it up in a strong way and nearly leading them to the game 1 win over the Warriors.

[70sFan]

I thought the Thinking Basketball Podcast highlighted exactly why 2017 Kawhi was better than his later versions--Defensive ability and offensive consistency. He lost his spry and youthfulness after his 2017 Ankle injury. He struggled with nagging injuries in 2019 to the point where he played just 60 regular season games and something the podcast didn't touch on was Kawhi's off-ball movement and cutting taking a step back. It's impossible for me to justify voting for 2019 over 2017 Kawhi given what I perceive a clear gap in ability and impact.

Everyone is beating the dead horse about how big of a crap shoot the next ~10 players are, and I wholeheartedly agree. Is it one of the offensive maestros like CP3, Nash, Dirk or Kobe? Or should the two-way bigs like Giannis or AD get in who have obvious offensive limitations? Split the middle with the wings in Kawhi and Wade?

Difficult to say.

Here are a few of the players I am leaning towards.

2011 Dirk
Dirk+Chandler RS: +11.3, 1400 Minutes
Dirk+Chandler PS: +12.3, 560 Minutes

2017 Kawhi
Kawhi+LMA RS: +6.7, 1900 Minutes
Kawhi+LMA PS: +6.8, 330 Minutes

2005-2007 Nash
Nash+Marion RS: +11.8, 7150 Minutes
Nash+Marion PS: +6.4, 1630 Minutes

Nash+Amare RS: +12.2, 4260 Minutes
Nash+Amare PS: +6.5, 1000 Minutes

2014-2017 CP3
CP3+Blake RS: +12.9, 6500 Minutes
CP3+Blake PS: +6.7, 1000 Minutes

2008-2010 Kobe
Kobe+Gasol RS: +10.8, 5220 Minutes
Kobe+Gasol PS: +6.6, 2420 Minutes

2019-2022 Giannis
Giannis+Middleton RS: +10.2, 5340 Minutes
Giannis+Middleton PS: +9.2, 1330 Minutes

Giannis+Jrue RS: +11.1, 2470 Minutes
Giannis+Jrue PS: +9.6, 1030 Minutes

2006 Wade
Wade+Shaq RS: +10.3, 1430 Minutes
Wade+Shaq PS: +6.0, 670 Minutes

Without doing a deep-dive analysis, there does appear to be a consistent theme here. All of CP3, Nash, Wade and Kobe have similar +/- splits with their 2nd best player in the Regular Season to Post-Season, which sees a dip or drop-off from around +10 to +12 in the Regular Season down to +6 to +7 in the post-season. This drop-off isn't bad, per se, since a +6 to +7 +/- in the post-season, especially for multi-year runs like Nash, CP3 and Kobe had been incredibly impressive and leads to strong championship equity. Ironically, Nash and CP3 were never able to get over the hump for various reasons.

Giannis and Dirk come away looking like the best in this particular scope, which is a signal regarding size trumping all in the NBA.

How did Dirk win affect games?

Dirk's offensive skill set is truly a unicorn. Most modern big men who are All-Time Great offensive forces are either putting immense pressure on the rim or are incredible passers. Dirk can pressure the rim, though in 2011 this wasn't to the same level as it was in the mid-2000's. Dirk can make the right pass, but isn't a passing savant like Jokic or anything close to it.

Instead, Dirk utilized his innate ability to score at will, contested, from the mid-range, to open up the court. Typically putting immense pressure on the rim leads to opening up the court for your teammates, creating gravity at or near the rim and thus warping the defense around the rim to generate open looks elsewhere. Shaq was the poster child for this while Giannis is the Temu version. What Dirk did was have a similar warping affect as Shaq, except from the mid-range area. This led to something different and unique, gravity pulling away from both the perimeter and at the rim, the two best shots in the NBA. Having gravity releasing the pressures from both the rim and perimeter allowed for Dirk and the Mavericks to take advantage of two areas on the court where the Mavericks would have a clear advantage. Of course, Dirk was so good in the mid-range he also had an advantage there as well.

Dirk's 2011 shot-profile
At Rim + In-Paint: 25.8%
Mid-Range: 60.0%
3P: 14.2%

Dirk didn't just dominate in the mid-range, he specifically dominated on the blocks, notable the right block, which he favoured to the left block. This led to easy Chandler finishes if help came from the baseline, or easy 3P shots often from Kidd or with Kidd starting to swing the ball to the opposite corner/wing from the gravity created by Dirk.

I'm fascinated by Dirk in-part because when he is on the court compared to not, there is only one indicator which sees a gigantic shift. Often times, we see Assist% or TOV% or OREB% have drastic differences with offensive anchors. With Dirk, we simply see massive shifts in eFG% throughout the entirety of his prime, often times with the 3 indicators I mentioned prior as seeing no change with our without Dirk.

Dirk's skill-set will always be incredibly valuable, but let's first just look at 2011 and contextualize Dirk. He didn't affect the team's offense in many indicators except for the most important, so why is that?

It is simple. Half-Court offensive rating in 2011 was about 88.6 Offensive Rating. Dirk's mid-range generated 101.3 Offensive Rating alone. That's a +12.7 lift in Offensive Rating. This is why the mid-range shot holds incredible value when shot at a near 50% rate. Half-court offenses are still <50% Offensive Rating (Approaching 100 Offensive Rating but still below).

I don't have time right now to dive into the rest, but I am going to go with Giannis, CP3 and Nash to round out my Ballot for this round.

1. Dirk Nowitzki 2011
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo 2021 (2019, 2020, 2022)
3. Chris Paul 2015 (2014)
4. Steve Nash 2007 (2005, 2006)

Your post makes an excellent case for Dirk. I wonder how you view Dirk vs Durant and why you decided to go with Dirk quite clearly.

[LA Bird]

Looking back at the 2017 season more closely now, I am kind of surprised by the Spurs/Rockets series. Kawhi missed G5 OT and G6, both of which the Spurs won anyway without him. With a worse supporting cast, that could have been a second round elimination due to his injuries in a similar situation to 15 Paul. And then even when Kawhi did play, is it really crazy to say Harden was better in 4 of the 5 games? Much of Kawhi's reputation seems to be playoffs based but first round 16/17 Grizzlies farming aside, I am not sure the Thunder and Rockets series were that impressive performances. Obviously, Kawhi also had the one half against the Warriors where he looked like a god destroying the GOAT team but it's still only one half of basketball.

Originally had him 4th for this round but will leave the spot open for now while I see what others have to say.

I think the playoffs are part of it re 2017 but to me its more about the rs he had. Offense+defense. The playoffs was more just him following it up in a strong way and nearly leading them to the game 1 win over the Warriors.

The regular season where Kawhi had probably the second lowest on/off of any top 25 candidate season for this project? His RS case was 60 wins + improved offense while still being a DPOY level player. Except there was little evidence of him being near DPOY in 2017 - he was coasting off reputation from previous seasons when Draymond should have won DPOY anyway. And the Spurs hit 60 wins because they went 7-1 without him. People are quick to point out the off-court opponent shooting luck because it hurt Kawhi's on/off but they always leave out how much a +7 off benefited his team's overall net. Swap the off-court ratings for Kawhi and Paul and it's a 10 point swing in team net. If we are strictly looking at regular seasons only, I don't see a case for Kawhi going this high.

[lessthanjake]

Looking back at the 2017 season more closely now, I am kind of surprised by the Spurs/Rockets series. Kawhi missed G5 OT and G6, both of which the Spurs won anyway without him. With a worse supporting cast, that could have been a second round elimination due to his injuries in a similar situation to 15 Paul. And then even when Kawhi did play, is it really crazy to say Harden was better in 4 of the 5 games? Much of Kawhi's reputation seems to be playoffs based but first round 16/17 Grizzlies farming aside, I am not sure the Thunder and Rockets series were that impressive performances. Obviously, Kawhi also had the one half against the Warriors where he looked like a god destroying the GOAT team but it's still only one half of basketball.

Originally had him 4th for this round but will leave the spot open for now while I see what others have to say.

I think the playoffs are part of it re 2017 but to me its more about the rs he had. Offense+defense. The playoffs was more just him following it up in a strong way and nearly leading them to the game 1 win over the Warriors.

The regular season where Kawhi had probably the second lowest on/off of any top 25 candidate season for this project? His RS case was 60 wins + improved offense while still being a DPOY level player. Except there was little evidence of him being near DPOY in 2017 - he was coasting off reputation from previous seasons when Draymond should have won DPOY anyway. And the Spurs hit 60 wins because they went 7-1 without him. People are quick to point out the off-court opponent shooting luck because it hurt Kawhi's on/off but they always leave out how much a +7 off benefited his team's overall net. Swap the off-court ratings for Kawhi and Paul and it's a 10 point swing in team net. If we are strictly looking at regular seasons only, I don't see a case for Kawhi going this high.

I think there’s some good points there. Like, there is definitely a tension between extolling overall team results from a player’s team and saying someone’s on-off only isn’t great because the team happened to do really well when he was off the court. Really good performance with Kawhi off the court is a huge part of why the 2017 Spurs were so good. For reference, 2017 Kawhi’s on-court net rating in the regular season was +8.35, which is lower than 2025 SGA (+16.06), 2009 Kobe (+10.88), 2011 Dirk (+10.70), 2021 Giannis (+8.55), and 2006 Wade (+8.38). In other words, with Kawhi on the court, the 2017 Spurs did less well in the regular season than any of these other guys’ teams did with them on the court in the regular season. That’s even the case with guys like 2006 Wade and 2021 Giannis, whose overall team record and SRS was significantly less good than the 2017 Spurs.

Which is all to say that I don’t really think the 2017 Spurs great record is much of a feather in Kawhi’s cap relative to these other guys, since they actually did not do as well with him on the court as these other guys’ teams did with them on the court.

However, Kawhi’s box-score numbers were genuinely amazing that season. For instance, he had a 9.4 BPM—which is higher than any of the above-mentioned years except 2025 SGA. Consequently, despite the mediocre on-off numbers, 2017 Kawhi does look great in impact-box hybrid measures too. For example, he is above all the above-mentioned guys in EPM, except for 2025 SGA. Same thing with his LEBRON (though 2009 Kobe and 2006 Wade is from before that measure exists).

How do we square this? Well, one way to explain this might be to conclude that the 2017 Spurs had a lot of positive variance with Kawhi off the court *and* a lot of negative variance with Kawhi on the court. In other words, if adjusted for luck, maybe Kawhi’s on-court net rating would be above a lot of those guys. I don’t actually know of any particular evidence of that, though (but I also haven’t looked), but it’s something that would square the noisy single-season impact data with the box data. Another explanation might just be that he wasn’t as impactful as his box numbers suggest. I’m not really sure what the explanation is, though I tend to lean closer to the former than the latter. Practically speaking, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot for me, because Kawhi’s playoff-ending injury in 2017 is a complete dealbreaker for me, but figured I’d put down some thoughts on this, especially since I’m leaning towards putting Kawhi on my ballot (just 2019 instead) and players are being ranked without reference to the specific year being voted on.

[Cavsfansince84]

The regular season where Kawhi had probably the second lowest on/off of any top 25 candidate season for this project? His RS case was 60 wins + improved offense while still being a DPOY level player. Except there was little evidence of him being near DPOY in 2017 - he was coasting off reputation from previous seasons when Draymond should have won DPOY anyway. And the Spurs hit 60 wins because they went 7-1 without him. People are quick to point out the off-court opponent shooting luck because it hurt Kawhi's on/off but they always leave out how much a +7 off benefited his team's overall net. Swap the off-court ratings for Kawhi and Paul and it's a 10 point swing in team net. If we are strictly looking at regular seasons only, I don't see a case for Kawhi going this high.

Again, I keep saying that things like on/off are over used in all these projects. It's one tool to use and for star players who play 35-40mpg it can be a very noisy thing. It's fine to use it but to use it in a 'but.. on/off says this' sort of way as though its a near infallible thing has become too prevalent imo. Because what you're really saying with that kind of statement is 'maybe Kawhi or whoever isn't as good as box score metrics or rts% paint him to be' yet at the same time he led them to the wcf and a 25 pt lead in the 3rd qtr before he goes down to injury and the Spurs then collapse and lose that game/series 4-0. Then two years later he goes to a Raptor team that were perennial playoff underachievers and leads them to a title(as a likely worse version of his 2017 self). So I think all of that can be taken into account when we talk about 2017 Kawhi and its fair to say he had a great rs(not necessarily defensively what he'd been in 14-16 but I would guess still quite good on that end) then kept it going in the playoffs. So at this point I don't think any of the guys who are going on ballots clearly stand out but I think Kawhi's argument is still quite good because at the end of the day he is very impactful on both ends and one of the best 3 pt shooters in this 7-12 grouping. On top of being dpoy in 15&16(deserved or not). Also, even if we want to say he coasted a bit or couldn't be as good due to offensive load I think guys like him will usually turn it on when it matters.

[Jaivl]

Then two years later he goes to a Raptor team that were perennial playoff underachievers and leads them to a title(as a likely worse version of his 2017 self).

They also added a post-prime but still very good Marc Gasol, and... look at that roster. That's a superb supporting cast that happened to have a top 80? top 100? guy at the helm. Remember, Toronto DeRozan can't pass and doesn't have a midrange, that'll come around 2020.

2017+2018, they are a +7.5 (!!!!) team without DeRozan on the court, RS+playoffs. Playoffs only? Just a +7.4...

In terms of impressive things Kawhi has done, leading the Raptors to a title is quite low on my list. Almost any top 10-15 guy would have a great chance.

Tentative list (not a vote):

#7 Giannis (2025, etc)
#8 Wade (2010, 2009, 2006)
#9 Kawhi (2017, 2016)
#10 Kobe (2008, 2009)
(next: Dirk, Davis, KD, SGA, CP3, Nash)

I'm actually really tempted to push 2020 Davis to the moon...

What do you think about Shai vs Wade and Kobe? These three will end up in my next tier probably (after Giannis) along with Kawhi, so I'd like to heat as much as possible about the comparison between the three.

I'm only lurking on the phone Monday through Friday, so any long message has to wait until the weekend But to sum up, I'm lower on Shai than most here, and I don't think he has a case over 2009/10 Wade in particular. Especially dissapointed by his Memphis series. Don't care for him at all as a creator compared to the other 2. OKC was still sneakily good without him (suprisingly enough, OKC's best offense in the playoffs came without him with Jalen). His on/off looks so good because his RS ON court rating was so ridiculously high... but I mean, everybody else was like +13 to +19 lol, that was a perfect storm RS. Defense is still great for a lead guard (still think Wade's mini-rim protection is more valuable). I'd have him around Nash and Paul, maybe above them but close.

[Cavsfansince84]

Then two years later he goes to a Raptor team that were perennial playoff underachievers and leads them to a title(as a likely worse version of his 2017 self).

They also added a post-prime but still very good Marc Gasol, and... look at that roster. That's a superb supporting cast that happened to have a top 80? top 100? guy at the helm. Remember, Toronto DeRozan can't pass and doesn't have a midrange, that'll come around 2020.

Completely fair to bring up Gasol though he only played 26g in the rs at 25mpg. I think the bigger part was the emergence of Siakam tbh. Worth noting that in terms of DRtg Tor was 5th in 2018 and then 5th in 2019 but Gasol also played a bigger role in the playoffs so by then they were prob more like a top 2-3 defense. It was a strong supporting cast and if you wanna say others could have gotten them a title that's fine but I'm not sure I agree. It's one thing for it to be hypothetical and another for a guy to actually do it.

[DraymondGold]

I think the playoffs are part of it re 2017 but to me its more about the rs he had. Offense+defense. The playoffs was more just him following it up in a strong way and nearly leading them to the game 1 win over the Warriors.

The regular season where Kawhi had probably the second lowest on/off of any top 25 candidate season for this project? His RS case was 60 wins + improved offense while still being a DPOY level player. Except there was little evidence of him being near DPOY in 2017 - he was coasting off reputation from previous seasons when Draymond should have won DPOY anyway. And the Spurs hit 60 wins because they went 7-1 without him. People are quick to point out the off-court opponent shooting luck because it hurt Kawhi's on/off but they always leave out how much a +7 off benefited his team's overall net. Swap the off-court ratings for Kawhi and Paul and it's a 10 point swing in team net. If we are strictly looking at regular seasons only, I don't see a case for Kawhi going this high.

I think there’s some good points there. Like, there is definitely a tension between extolling overall team results from a player’s team and saying someone’s on-off only isn’t great because the team happened to do really well when he was off the court. Really good performance with Kawhi off the court is a huge part of why the 2017 Spurs were so good. For reference, 2017 Kawhi’s on-court net rating in the regular season was +8.35, which is lower than 2025 SGA (+16.06), 2009 Kobe (+10.88), 2011 Dirk (+10.70), 2021 Giannis (+8.55), and 2006 Wade (+8.38). In other words, with Kawhi on the court, the 2017 Spurs did less well in the regular season than any of these other guys’ teams did with them on the court in the regular season. That’s even the case with guys like 2006 Wade and 2021 Giannis, whose overall team record and SRS was significantly less good than the 2017 Spurs.

Which is all to say that I don’t really think the 2017 Spurs great record is much of a feather in Kawhi’s cap relative to these other guys, since they actually did not do as well with him on the court as these other guys’ teams did with them on the court.

However, Kawhi’s box-score numbers were genuinely amazing that season. For instance, he had a 9.4 BPM—which is higher than any of the above-mentioned years except 2025 SGA. Consequently, despite the mediocre on-off numbers, 2017 Kawhi does look great in impact-box hybrid measures too. For example, he is above all the above-mentioned guys in EPM, except for 2025 SGA. Same thing with his LEBRON (though 2009 Kobe and 2006 Wade is from before that measure exists).

How do we square this? Well, one way to explain this might be to conclude that the 2017 Spurs had a lot of positive variance with Kawhi off the court *and* a lot of negative variance with Kawhi on the court. In other words, if adjusted for luck, maybe Kawhi’s on-court net rating would be above a lot of those guys. I don’t actually know of any particular evidence of that, though (but I also haven’t looked), but it’s something that would square the noisy single-season impact data with the box data. Another explanation might just be that he wasn’t as impactful as his box numbers suggest. I’m not really sure what the explanation is, though I tend to lean closer to the former than the latter. Practically speaking, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot for me, because Kawhi’s playoff-ending injury in 2017 is a complete dealbreaker for me, but figured I’d put down some thoughts on this, especially since I’m leaning towards putting Kawhi on my ballot (just 2019 instead) and players are being ranked without reference to the specific year being voted on.

Some interesting discussion of on/off here!

Agreed that Kawhi's on/off in the 2017 regular season is definitely disappointing for this level. There is some evidence that it's downgraded partially by bad luck, as they mention in the latest Thinking Basketball podcast on Kawhi's peak. It did seem like he had poor shooting luck. Per the podcast -- The Spurs defense was +8.5 per 100 better with Kawhi on the bench, and a lot of that is three point shooting (which can be a little noisy even in an 82 game regular season). Opposing Teams shot 29% when Kawhi was on the bench (would be worst in NBA, with next best defense forcing opponents to shoot 32% from three) and opposing teams shot 38% from three when Kawhi was on the court (league average was 36%).

Now I'm not sure the best way to correct for luck. I small samples, it might be best to just revert three point / free throw shooting to the players' average. But if a player consistently has bad/good luck over many years, there could be subtler things going on that they're doing to 'create' good/bad luck (e.g. forgoing open threes to protect the paint therefore making threes easier for opponents; being really active in pace or off-ball motion and so tiring opposing shooters out; etc.).
In at least one version of luck-adjusted plus minus data from TheBasketballDatabase, Kawhi's raw on/off is +1.6 and is +2.8 when luck adjusted. Meanwhile, his raw net rating is +7.7 while on, while his luck adjusted net rating is +8.9. Both of which are a little better... though not great. If there's signal here, I do think it's telling us that Kawhi was clearly on the downturn defensively (especially in the regular season), although I would bet some of it is noise / bad luck.

Probably the simpler thing to do is just look at multi-year data or better stats. In three-year data, 15-17 Kawhi is +11.5 ON and +6.3 ON/OFF (compared to say 19-21 Giannis who's +12.0 and +9.3; 06-08 Wade who's +2.3 and +9.8; 09-11 Wade who's +6.8 and +11.9; 09-11 Dirk who's +6.2 and +10.0; 14-16 Paul who's +11.6 and +15.7; 14-17 Durant who's +11.0 and +8.9; 08-10 Kobe who's +9.5 and +10.1; using basketball-reference for these stats, which is isn't 100% accurate in pace, but is good enough to make a point). So Kawhi's not the most impactful in this stat here, but he's not a total outlier either -- his ON is clearly better than Wade, Dirk, and a little better than Kobe. Kawhi's also expected to be getting better going from 2015 to 2016 to 2017, so there's reason to think this might be underrating the 2017 version of him slightly (although interestingly his on/off is going down) -- throw in that he's in contention for the biggest playoff improver of the bunch and that also helps shrink the gap.

Even without multli-year stuff, single-year RAPM is still plenty favorable on his regular season in 2017, despite the low on/off. He's 7th in Goldstein's RAPM (one of the traditional pure RAPM sources; behind Curry, LeBron, Chris Paul, Gobert, and Kyle Lowry). He's ahead of Durant (who admittedly was adjusting to a very different situation on a team where he wasn't the bus driver). So not earth-shattering, likely not the best regular season impactor of the group, but again plenty less concerning than the raw on/off would suggest, and close enough that a healthy does of playoff resilience or curving up his regular season slightly due to bad luck, and it starts to seem more reasonable to put him above some of the competition here (assuming you're not discounting 2017 because of the playoff injury -- which people may differ on based on their criteria).

[lessthanjake]

The regular season where Kawhi had probably the second lowest on/off of any top 25 candidate season for this project? His RS case was 60 wins + improved offense while still being a DPOY level player. Except there was little evidence of him being near DPOY in 2017 - he was coasting off reputation from previous seasons when Draymond should have won DPOY anyway. And the Spurs hit 60 wins because they went 7-1 without him. People are quick to point out the off-court opponent shooting luck because it hurt Kawhi's on/off but they always leave out how much a +7 off benefited his team's overall net. Swap the off-court ratings for Kawhi and Paul and it's a 10 point swing in team net. If we are strictly looking at regular seasons only, I don't see a case for Kawhi going this high.

I think there’s some good points there. Like, there is definitely a tension between extolling overall team results from a player’s team and saying someone’s on-off only isn’t great because the team happened to do really well when he was off the court. Really good performance with Kawhi off the court is a huge part of why the 2017 Spurs were so good. For reference, 2017 Kawhi’s on-court net rating in the regular season was +8.35, which is lower than 2025 SGA (+16.06), 2009 Kobe (+10.88), 2011 Dirk (+10.70), 2021 Giannis (+8.55), and 2006 Wade (+8.38). In other words, with Kawhi on the court, the 2017 Spurs did less well in the regular season than any of these other guys’ teams did with them on the court in the regular season. That’s even the case with guys like 2006 Wade and 2021 Giannis, whose overall team record and SRS was significantly less good than the 2017 Spurs.

Which is all to say that I don’t really think the 2017 Spurs great record is much of a feather in Kawhi’s cap relative to these other guys, since they actually did not do as well with him on the court as these other guys’ teams did with them on the court.

However, Kawhi’s box-score numbers were genuinely amazing that season. For instance, he had a 9.4 BPM—which is higher than any of the above-mentioned years except 2025 SGA. Consequently, despite the mediocre on-off numbers, 2017 Kawhi does look great in impact-box hybrid measures too. For example, he is above all the above-mentioned guys in EPM, except for 2025 SGA. Same thing with his LEBRON (though 2009 Kobe and 2006 Wade is from before that measure exists).

How do we square this? Well, one way to explain this might be to conclude that the 2017 Spurs had a lot of positive variance with Kawhi off the court *and* a lot of negative variance with Kawhi on the court. In other words, if adjusted for luck, maybe Kawhi’s on-court net rating would be above a lot of those guys. I don’t actually know of any particular evidence of that, though (but I also haven’t looked), but it’s something that would square the noisy single-season impact data with the box data. Another explanation might just be that he wasn’t as impactful as his box numbers suggest. I’m not really sure what the explanation is, though I tend to lean closer to the former than the latter. Practically speaking, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot for me, because Kawhi’s playoff-ending injury in 2017 is a complete dealbreaker for me, but figured I’d put down some thoughts on this, especially since I’m leaning towards putting Kawhi on my ballot (just 2019 instead) and players are being ranked without reference to the specific year being voted on.

Some interesting discussion of on/off here!

Agreed that Kawhi's on/off in the 2017 regular season is definitely disappointing for this level. There is some evidence that it's downgraded partially by bad luck, as they mention in the latest Thinking Basketball podcast on Kawhi's peak. It did seem like he had poor shooting luck. Per the podcast -- The Spurs defense was +8.5 per 100 better with Kawhi on the bench, and a lot of that is three point shooting (which can be a little noisy even in an 82 game regular season). Opposing Teams shot 29% when Kawhi was on the bench (would be worst in NBA, with next best defense forcing opponents to shoot 32% from three) and opposing teams shot 38% from three when Kawhi was on the court (league average was 36%).

Now I'm not sure the best way to correct for luck. I small samples, it might be best to just revert three point / free throw shooting to the players' average. But if a player consistently has bad/good luck over many years, there could be subtler things going on that they're doing to 'create' good/bad luck (e.g. forgoing open threes to protect the paint therefore making threes easier for opponents; being really active in pace or off-ball motion and so tiring opposing shooters out; etc.).
In at least one version of luck-adjusted plus minus data from TheBasketballDatabase, Kawhi's raw on/off is +1.6 and is +2.8 when luck adjusted. Meanwhile, his raw net rating is +7.7 while on, while his luck adjusted net rating is +8.9. Both of which are a little better... though not great. If there's signal here, I do think it's telling us that Kawhi was clearly on the downturn defensively (especially in the regular season), although I would bet some of it is noise / bad luck.

Probably the simpler thing to do is just look at multi-year data or better stats. In three-year data, 15-17 Kawhi is +11.5 ON and +6.3 ON/OFF (compared to say 19-21 Giannis who's +12.0 and +9.3; 06-08 Wade who's +2.3 and +9.8; 09-11 Wade who's +6.8 and +11.9; 09-11 Dirk who's +6.2 and +10.0; 14-16 Paul who's +11.6 and +15.7; 14-17 Durant who's +11.0 and +8.9; 08-10 Kobe who's +9.5 and +10.1; using basketball-reference for these stats, which is isn't 100% accurate in pace, but is good enough to make a point). So Kawhi's not the most impactful in this stat here, but he's not a total outlier either -- his ON is clearly better than Wade, Dirk, and a little better than Kobe. Kawhi's also expected to be getting better going from 2015 to 2016 to 2017, so there's reason to think this might be underrating the 2017 version of him slightly (although interestingly his on/off is going down) -- throw in that he's in contention for the biggest playoff improver of the bunch and that also helps shrink the gap.

Even without multli-year stuff, single-year RAPM is still plenty favorable on his regular season in 2017, despite the low on/off. He's 7th in Goldstein's RAPM (one of the traditional pure RAPM sources; behind Curry, LeBron, Chris Paul, Gobert, and Kyle Lowry). He's ahead of Durant (who admittedly was adjusting to a very different situation on a team where he wasn't the bus driver). So not earth-shattering, likely not the best regular season impactor of the group, but again plenty less concerning than the raw on/off would suggest, and close enough that a healthy does of playoff resilience or curving up his regular season slightly due to bad luck, and it starts to seem more reasonable to put him above some of the competition here (assuming you're not discounting 2017 because of the playoff injury -- which people may differ on based on their criteria).

Yeah, actually, the last paragraph here is very interesting. I’d not actually thought to look up whether Kawhi’s single-season RAPM in 2017 was as mediocre as his on-off. You cite one RAPM source where he’s ranked 7th that year. He’s also ranked 14th in TheBasketballDatabase’s single-year RAPM and 15th in the GitLab RAPM. Of course, these aren’t top-of-the-league finishes. But for such a middling on-off to convert into a RAPM that’s among the top handful of players in the NBA, there’s likely some pretty big lineup effects driving the mediocre on-off—whether that’s Kawhi being staggered with lesser players on his team or being particularly likely to be on the court with the opposing teams’ strongest players.

I think if we map that on to the luck-adjusted numbers you mentioned, we start to get a picture that looks similar to what we might expect. Basically, you cite luck adjustments that make his season look a bit better than raw on-off, and while it’s not *way* better, if we layer that kind of minor adjustment onto a player who is ranked 7th-15th in RAPM, then we are probably looking at something that would rank among the top few players (albeit likely not the top). And that seems about right for 2017 Kawhi.

Granted, all of this is talking about single-season RAPM and on-off, which are also noisy and prone to randomness (though luck adjustments will mitigate some of that randomness). So it’s not really conclusive either way. Furthermore, I’m also personally fairly skeptical of luck adjustments, since a player can theoretically affect quite a lot of what happens when he’s on the court, and luck adjustments just wave that away. But I do think that there’s a path to not be too concerned about 2017 Kawhi’s middling on-off numbers—which is that (1) his RAPM being pretty good indicates that the middling on-off is largely driven by lineup factors, (2) layering luck adjustments onto that would leave Kawhi in a very good spot, though likely not at the very top of the league; and (3) even beyond things that luck-adjustments account for, single-year RAPM is noisy enough that being in a good spot but not the very top in this regard is enough to not be a dispositive negative (particularly when the very top would likely be two guys who have already been voted in).

[lessthanjake]

Then two years later he goes to a Raptor team that were perennial playoff underachievers and leads them to a title(as a likely worse version of his 2017 self).

They also added a post-prime but still very good Marc Gasol, and... look at that roster. That's a superb supporting cast that happened to have a top 80? top 100? guy at the helm. Remember, Toronto DeRozan can't pass and doesn't have a midrange, that'll come around 2020.

Completely fair to bring up Gasol though he only played 26g in the rs at 25mpg. I think the bigger part was the emergence of Siakam tbh. Worth noting that in terms of DRtg Tor was 5th in 2018 and then 5th in 2019 but Gasol also played a bigger role in the playoffs so by then they were prob more like a top 2-3 defense. It was a strong supporting cast and if you wanna say others could have gotten them a title that's fine but I'm not sure I agree. It's one thing for it to be hypothetical and another for a guy to actually do it.

I think if we looked at 2006 Wade, 2009 Kobe, 2011 Dirk, 2019 Kawhi, 2021 Giannis, and 2025 SGA, I’d say the 2019 Raptors supporting cast was the 2nd best supporting cast behind only the 2025 OKC team.

I don’t think any of those teams win the title if you replace them with DeRozan or some DeRozan-level player, though. That said, while I think you’d need more than DeRozan, the 2019 Raptors and 2025 Thunder were probably capable of winning a title with noticeably lesser players than Kawhi or SGA. It’d just be similar to how the 2024 Celtics won a title while helmed by a noticeably lesser player (who was also playing worse than normal in those playoffs). Of course, the 2019 Raptors and 2025 Thunder did actually have very close playoff series, which might suggest they needed guys who were every bit as good as Kawhi and SGA. However, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t possibly have won a title if the playoffs were ran again with lesser players at the helm. Those are super stacked supporting casts. Those Raptors definitely needed a genuine star to put it all together, but Siakam, Lowry, Gasol, VanVleet, Danny Green, Ibaka, and Norm Powell is just such a good supporting-cast playoff rotation (note: Danny Green was also new for 2019, not just Kawhi and Gasol).

[One_and_Done]

I'm glad to see Nash getting mentioned, as he certainly deserves consideration soon.

[Cavsfansince84]

I think if we looked at 2006 Wade, 2009 Kobe, 2011 Dirk, 2019 Kawhi, 2021 Giannis, and 2025 SGA, I’d say the 2019 Raptors supporting cast was the 2nd best supporting cast behind only the 2025 OKC team.

I don’t think any of those teams win the title if you replace them with DeRozan, though (or some DeRozan-level player at their position for Dirk and Giannis). The 2019 Raptors and 2025 Thunder were probably capable of winning a title with noticeably lesser players than Kawhi or SGA though. It’d just be similar to how the 2024 Celtics won a title while helmed by a noticeably lesser player (who was also playing worse than normal in those playoffs). Of course, the 2019 Raptors and 2025 Thunder did actually have very close playoff series, which might suggest they needed guys who were every bit as good as Kawhi and SGA. However, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t possibly have won a title if the playoffs were ran again with lesser players at the helm. Those are super stacked supporting casts. Those Raptors definitely needed a genuine star to put it all together, but Siakam, Lowry, Gasol, VanVleet, Danny Green, Ibaka, and Norm Powell is just such a good playoff rotation.

In theory its perfectly fine to say all of this but at the same time, let's also look at the teams/players that the Raptors had to beat in those last 3 series. First, its the Sixers who they beat in 7 games(on a last second shot in game 7), which were led by Embiid and Jimmy Buckets(arguably both top 15 players and you could argue Embiid as high as like 6-7). Embiid was terrible and Jimmy was ok but Kawhi puts up 35ppg on pretty good efficiency and they win. Part of my point is its not even a given that top 10 players will play like it in big playoff series. Then they play the Bucks with mvp Giannis. Again, Kawhi clearly outplays Giannis and the Raptors win in 6. Then they play the Warriors who were obviously breaking down under their 5th straight finals run and lost KD but I'd say Kawhi outplayed Steph, led them in scoring and rebounding and they win a title. Guys who can do that 3 series in a row don't exactly grow on trees(on top of a very strong 1st rd). All while being overall a + defender. There's very few guys in the league who can have 4 straight strong to great playoff series in a row. Which he was also likely to do in 2017(at least 3 in a row).

[jalengreen]

Kawhi put up 34.7 PPG on 63.4% TS% against the 76ers. The rest of his team combined for 50.6% TS% (!). And it came down to a Game 7 buzzer beater. Honestly one of the clearer "a worse player isn't winning a title for this team" cases for me

[One_and_Done]

Kawhi put up 34.7 PPG on 63.4% TS% against the 76ers. The rest of his team combined for 50.6% TS% (!). And it came down to a Game 7 buzzer beater. Honestly one of the clearer "a worse player isn't winning a title for this team" cases for me

Kawhi had a great team around him in 2019, you can't look at just the box scores for one series like that. I say that as someone who is voting for Kawhi. 2017 is the year we should be voting for IMO.

[jalengreen]

Kawhi put up 34.7 PPG on 63.4% TS% against the 76ers. The rest of his team combined for 50.6% TS% (!). And it came down to a Game 7 buzzer beater. Honestly one of the clearer "a worse player isn't winning a title for this team" cases for me

Kawhi had a great team around him in 2019, you can't look at just the box scores for one series like that. I say that as someone who is voting for Kawhi. 2017 is the year we should be voting for IMO.

And the great team around him did not play well against Philadelphia, relying on a good old fashioned carry job from Kawhi. At other points they played well (like in the Finals, where Kawhi wasn't that impressive imo), but the second round was not one of them.

I don't think it makes sense to toss aside what actually happened on the court in favor of your perception of how good the players are. You can be a great player and not play very well in a <=7 game sample size.

[Top10alltime]

Why is Nash and CP3 being put above guys like Kobe and Shai? WHy is Wade and Dirk as well?

I would ask about Giannis, but y'all hate me for going against your fanboyism and having a different take, even though we see others do this as well (not naming names). Sorry if this is hurtful, just saying the truth.

[One_and_Done]

Why is Nash and CP3 being put above guys like Kobe and Shai? WHy is Wade and Dirk as well?

I would ask about Giannis, but y'all hate me for going against your fanboyism and having a different take, even though we see others do this as well (not naming names). Sorry if this is hurtful, just saying the truth.

Because they were more impactful than him.

[Joao Saraiva]

I'll try to vote today but probably gonna go:

Giannis
Kobe
Dirk
Wade

[Joao Saraiva]

Vote 1 Giannis 2021
The guy won with Middleton as a 2nd banana. That's really impressive. Two way player, the best defender available by a fair margin (well, at least among stars since Draymond has a case the way I see it). Good on offense despite not having a huge set of moves, but still very effective as a roll player or slasher. Great rebounder, good enough as a playmaker, Giannis has it all.

Sure luck had some part on his championship given the series vs BKN and the injuries: you gonna need that to win one with that cast. Giannis played a great role and this was by far his strongest playoff run, therefore I'm going with this year.

Vote 2 Kobe 2006
The epitome of his offensive explosion. Very bad cast, a team that had no business being the playoffs and it was a hell of carry job. Impossible shots, outscoring teams by himself, the 81 points and even a 4-3 loss in the playoffs that doesn't embarass him despite some let down in the end of a series scoring wise.

I'm still impressed with the effort all year long. On defense I don't think he was 1st team material cause he had such a big burden on offense, but it's not like he couldn't lock man to man when needed and he certainly did it.

Vote 3 Dirk 2011
Going with 11 despite thinking 06 was the better year overall - just the end of it wasn't nearly as impressive.
Dirk eliminated young KD, prime Kobe, prime Bron, Wade...

Great floor spacing, great own shot creation with that unguardable fade away, a great RS and a superb PS. On defense he's not in the same page as Giannis, but let's not act like Dirk was a bad defender either.

Usually a guy that raised his game in the playoffs and this year made justice to his game, since he had a false reputation based on the 1st round elimination some years before that.

Vote 4 Wade 2006
Young Wade was almost as good as the best RS version of himself: 09 and 10. But in 06 the playoffs were special, and his ECF and Finals make this the year I chose. Great efficiency in both series and Wade ascending to the status of Heat legend, and giving them their 1st ring.